• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Desktop “Partner” of the Year

  Apparently, if you consider only that other OS you can make a proposal look good. Against MacOS and GNU/Linux the costs are staggering. TDSB has 60K PCs and 256 support people, 240 machines per support person. RedHat and others can set up systems where one support person can deal with thousands of machines. Could it be that the IT people did not believe CMS’ advice and lay themselves off upon migrating to Vista? Chuckle… The truth is only M$ and its partners benefit when a school board migrates to a product from M$. On top of that students are harmed by the exposure, instilling dependency on that other OS.

• Relationship Stress Test…Here Honey, Try This…

  We use Linux.

  Now, Diane is well aware of the problems that Windows Users face. She’s been one of them for as long as she’s been using a computer but once she sat in proximity to a Linux computer and someone who knew how to use it, that all changed.

  Diane is retired from the Airline Industry. She spent years in the Accounting and Purchasing Divisions of several airlines and companies so she’s no stranger to spreadsheets and databases. In the last part of her career she also used many on line applications to do her work.

Server

• Linux Servers: A Real Data Center Choice

  Linux provides the basis for much virtualization technology — Xen, VMware, KVM and OpenVZ, for example. Cloud vendors that use Linux exclusively, such as Amazon.com, attest to the fact that Linux provides the perfect virtualization backdrop for their services.

  [...]

  Linux is no longer viewed as just an anomaly among “real” data center OSes. Its developers and converts have made it a respectable and competitive choice for businesses that seek to lower their IT overhead and regain some profit. Converting to Linux isn’t difficult, even for those who find themselves drowning in a sea of proprietary software and hardware. It’s a real choice for developers, cloud vendors, database vendors, virtualization companies, hosting companies and you, the business owner. Linux is here to stay. Linux is a real commercial offering. Linux has proven itself as a real data center OS. And, the developers keep it real for everyone.

Google

• The Chrome OS Spin Doctors Are Revving Their Engines

  In a matter of weeks, Google’s very first operating system aimed squarely at computers will be upon us: Chrome OS. As Dana Blankenhorn notes, Google has a FUD engine going surrounding the operating system that rivals the very best FUD campaigns from Microsoft’s past. Google is spoon feeding us 100 Chrome experiments, and appears to be wooing powerful hardware makers such as Dell. Like the iPad, the pent-up love for all things Google will probably make Chrome OS a short-term success, but where does it really fit in?

Applications

• TeamViewer 5.0 review

  Now a Linux version is available. TeamViewer offers a bit more than just remote desktop sharing. It comes bundled with a host of other features such as the ability to manage share lists, record sessions and have voice conversations using VoIP.

• Review of rekonq 0.5

  rekonq has a clean minimalistic interface – the type of interface most web browsers prefer nowadays. It has a Chrome type wrench icon from where you get the various browser options. There is also the bookmark next to it. Like Google Chrome, it has an integrated URL bar from where you can search the web, your history or simply enter the URL. It also serves as an indicator when a page is being loaded.

• Top 10 Totally Amazing Wallpapers Made Using Inkscape

• Multimedia

  • Make Music For Free

    Free Linux music packages Ardour, Hydrogen and Jack will help you fall in love with a whole new world of creative possibilities

  • Clementine 0.4: Amarok 1.4 reborn!

    A few things I’d like to see implemented include some of the more helpful items that were in Amarok 1.4 such as being able to add a “play count” column in the queue display list, and some of the playlist builder functions (“random 50″ and “random 100″ were two that I used a lot in Amarok 1.4).

    That said, I’m extremely happy with what it can do as it currently stands, and those wants are pretty minor compared to what they’ve already done with it. I’m really kind of amazed that there isn’t much buzz surrounding this great application. So here’s to hoping that this quiet little project gets the attention it deserves!

  • Virtual DJ Software for Linux: Mixxx

    When I was still using Windows, I remembered playing or should I say scratching with the popular audio/video mixing software made by Atomix Productions called VirtualDJ. Though I didn’t really enjoyed DJing that much, I missed those days when I finally get to somehow experience what it’s like to be a DJ. So I started looking for DJ software program that I could install on my Linux box. Unfortunately, I only found a few and most of them are really old or are poor in quality if compared to VirtualDJ. But there is one Linux-compatible, free and open source DJ software program that is quiet promising, and its name is Mixxx.

• Instructionals

  • Get Faster Download Speeds for Ubuntu Packages with Synaptic

  • Installing Ubuntu In Nexus One

  • Sighted: Nexus One Running Ubuntu

  • Android 2.2 Port for Desire, Ubuntu on EVO 4G and DROID

  • How To Install Latest Intel Driver 2.12 On Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

  • Apache Web Server: Install

  • Using Dual Displays on Linux

  • MediaWiki and Script Translation for the Morevna Project

  • Fix missing icons in Ubuntu Netbook Remix

  • MediaInfo: Get extended information about media files

  • [Tip] PostgreSQL Tip of the Day – mass modification of sequences

  • Book Review: Foundation Blender Compositing by Roger Wickes

  • Turn Your Compact Canon Camera Into a Super-Camera With CHDK

  • Introduction to Puppet: Streamlined System Configuration

  • Getting Amarok running in Ubuntu 10.04

  • iRedOS-0.6.0: Open Source Mail Server With Postfix, Dovecot, Amavisd, ClamAV, SpamAssassin, RoundCube

  • Review: Getting Started with Processing

  • Minimizing Linux Maximally

  • Installing the Enterprise-Ready Network Monitor Zenoss

  • Instant Photo Sharing with Bubba Two

  • Data recovery of deleted files from the FAT filesystem

  • Linux Multi-Distro Package Manager Cheatsheet

Xfce

• Orage: Xfce calendar application

  As we continue on with our travels down the Xfce path, I thought it would be smart to highlight the Xfce calendaring application Orage. This tool is not an “all in one” tool like Evolution, nor does it have all of the bells and whistles of the Mozilla Sunbird calendar. But what it does, it does well and does so without taking up tons of your resources or your desktop real estate.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • And they call it Puppy Love…

    Puppy will run upon pretty much anything out there.

    It gives you a blisteringly fast machine with a sensible selection of pre-installed applications.

• New Releases

  • Guadalinex 7

  • NuTyX 06072010 (Live)

  • Clonezilla 1.2.5-32

  • MoLinux 6.0 (Educativa)

  • SystemRescueCd 1.5.8

  • Tuquito 4

• Red Hat Family

  • KVM Adoption Isn’t All About Commercial Support

    The open source KVM virtualization technology is being promoted by many different vendors, often as a mechanism to help enable cloud deployments. Among the biggest backers of KVM are Linux vendors Red Hat and Ubuntu, though in at least one use case the solutions they’re marketing aren’t necessarily the solutions that cloud deployments are using.

    Hosting provider The Planet recently launched a new cloud service offering built on KVM technology without the benefit of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) or Red Hat’s Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). Instead The Planet has chosen to take its own path, leveraging the freely available Ubuntu Lucid LTS release and without engaging in a commercial contract with Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu.

• Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Time to consider Ubuntu for your cloud needs?

    Stemming from Canonical’s relatively modest customer base, especially outside of cloud deployments, the vendor behind Ubuntu doesn’t have to worry about existing customers doing a similar price comparison between the pay-per-usage cloud approach and traditional support subscriptions. This is definitely an advantage for Canonical over Red Hat.

  • Oh where oh where could our CDs be

    Lucid, 10.04, was released nearly 3 months ago and still to this date the Ubuntu Chicago LoCo Team has not received our shipment. Not only has our shipment not been received but nobody seems to be answering my emails. Getting a bit tired of telling everyone, nope you can’t have any CDs because I don’t have any CDs, and not being able to have a decent gathering to promote Ubuntu because we have zero materials. Maybe this blog post will make its way to someone’s desk that can help or who possibly cares.

  • Freezing Maverick – behind the scenes on Ubuntu 10.10

    Ubuntu 10.10 (codename Maverick Meerkat) is well into the development cycle, with the planned celebrity release date of 10 October 2010 (10/10/10). The development time frame of Ubuntu is quite condensed, and this is managed with a number of stages. These stages tend to symbolise milestones of the schedule, and usually refer to a restriction on what activity can happen during this time.

    We have long passed the Alpha 1 CD image stage and I anticipate the release of Alpha 2 by the time you read this. You will no doubt be eager to test Alpha 3, which is currently scheduled for 5 August. Alpha 3 will be the last CD image created before the development of Maverick starts entering the second half of the ‘freeze’ stages.

Devices/Embedded

• The Fragmentation of Linux: Two Points of View

  The fragmentation of Linux has become a hot topic in recent weeks as industry leaders debate how the community can collaborate to compete against single, vertical operating systems without creating an ecosystem that pulls the community in too many directions at once to be truly effective. As FOSS developers work at a fever pitch to create Linux-based OSes, handheld devices, enterprise-level servers, and mobile phones, the point at which they join forces can make the difference between getting a leg up on other operating systems and lagging behind.

• Nokia/MeeGo

  • Meego flies in benchmark test

    Tests run by independent benching site Carrypad confirmed that Google’s open source OS took a licking. The benchmark was the Sunspider Javascript test. This is a processer intensive test that measures how quickly applications get displayed in a web browser.

  • MeeGo Demolishes Android 2.2 in Javascript Test

    As I begin a series of tests on the Aava prototype phone today, the first thing I wanted to get out of the way was a Sunspider javascript test. It’s CPU-intensive and forms an important part of the chain of events that take place to get a web application displayed on your browser. Yes, it’s one of many variables but it’s a good indicator of CPU performance.

• Android

  • OpenFeint Gaming Comes To Andoid

    iOS game developer OpenFeint has announced that the company will be bringing its open-source gaming platform to Google’s Android OS.

  • Android Grows at a Blistering Pace

    Apple ranked number two with 24.4 percent share and Microsoft third with 13.2 percent, while Palm rounded out the top five with 4.8 percent.

    Android’s growth should come as no surprise to mobile enthusiasts. More than 20 Android phones are available in the U.S. currently. Handset makers such as LG and Samsung that have been slower than rivals Motorola and HTC in adopting Android are now planning to launch new Android devices.

    Earlier this week, LG said it will have two Android smartphones and an Android-based tablet available by the end of the year. Samsung has already announced that its first 4G Android phone on Sprint will be available this summer.

  • Google updates its Android development kit

    OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE HOUSE Google has updated its Android software development kit (SDK) to match the latest version of Android 2.2.

Open source chosen for first major contract for Indian ID cards project

MindTree is using open source software to build the applications. This was the choice of the authorities in charge of the project. But Lahiri says open source such as Linux is scalable and mature enough for a project like this. Mindshare will use some vendor applications.

University Challenge & the open source debating society

One of the better blogs you might like to read up on in follow up to this event comes from Scott Wilson who talked about open innovation, development and collaboration. Wilson said that his focus was on barriers to community as he discussed areas such as, “Governance, diversity and personal barriers to engaging in an Open Source development community and how as a member of such a community you can make a contribution.”

The state of the open source nation

Five years on, Simon Brock catches up with those original open source projects he covered in this very column

It’s now five years since this column changed its title to Open Source, before which it had been restricted to Unix server software. We changed it because so much of the open-source Unix software we covered was also available for Windows and the Mac, and a broader remit seemed more sensible.

Newspaper chain Journal Register Company announces move to open source

“Does this mean that [moving forward] all newsrooms will publish using Scribus or will tone all photos using Gimp? No, but if an operation — part Journal Register or an outside company — wanted to, they could,” the press release read. “The tools we discovered, trained on and used as part of the Ben Franklin Project could allow a news organization to throw away their old methods and start anew.”

A Topic for Discussion – Open Source Feature-Richness?

The person making these comments is a professional writer who I follow, with several books published. So the opinion about the software not being feature rich is a valid issue and being too complicated is something that I too find with writing software in general. But that the author feels it is less feature rich because it is Open Source, or more correctly, because it is free is something that bothers me.

Symbian

• Platform kit for Symbian S^3 goes 100 per cent open source

  Product Development Kit (PDK) 3.0, released today by the Symbian Foundation, is targeted at device developers. The kit includes all the source and binary files required to generate the new S^3 operating system and run it in the supplied emulator.

• Nokia boosts Java development for Symbian 3 phones

• Nokia opens Symbian to Java apps

Web Browsers

• Browser Speed Test – Opera’s Claim Put To The Test

  Both Opera and Google are obsessed with the speed of their browser. With each release, each claim to be the fastest browser. Google has even gone on to make a game to demonstrate the speed of its browser Chrome. With today’s release of Opera 10.60, Opera is now claiming that it is the fastest browser on earth. So, we decided to see if it is indeed the fastest browser or if it is Google Chrome. We also decided to throw in the latest dev build of Chromium and Firefox 4.0 beta to the test.

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Public License rewrite deletes Netscape

    Mozilla is perhaps best known today for its Firefox web browser. Underlying that browser however is the open source license that enables its development community to thrive. The Mozilla Public License (MPL) has remained nearly untouched since 1999 and now at long last is undergoing a process of evolution.

SaaS

• Enterprise-Grade Hadoop for Petabyte Analytics

  If you’re slightly bewildered by all the buzz over this new technology with the funny-sounding moniker, you’re not alone. The official story is that Hadoop was the name of the inventor’s kid’s stuffed elephant. However, for most IT professionals, it could easily be an acronym for “Heck, Another Darn Obscure Open-source Project.” The fact that Hadoop, managed by Apache, includes subprojects with similarly opaque names–such as Pig, Hive, Chukwa, and ZooKeeper—contributes to the queasy feeling that this is an untamed menagerie of squealing beasties.

• Five open source tools for building and managing clouds

  Open source technology is going to seriously impact the cloud computing world, and there are two main reasons why: Open source software is essentially free, and it is not generally encumbered by the software license models of proprietary software. Many proprietary software vendors, such as Microsoft and Oracle, are trying to maintain old and expensive license models, even though they impede the flexibility gained by virtualization and cloud computing.

Databases

• Q&A with Roger Burkhardt, CEO of Ingres

  Since Ingres was re-created in 2006 we have tripled our revenues and established ourselves as the second-largest open source company after Red Hat.

CMS

• My Top 10 Most Useful Joomla Components

Business

• Why the Technology Matters – An Analysis of Consona’s Acquisition of Compiere

  While Consona has aquired a number of software companies based on this model, that doesn’t seem to be the strategy behind the Compiere deal. Compiere brings only 130 customers to Consona and I doubt Compiere’s open-source business model was generating big profits. Instead of buying customers and profits, Consona seems to be thinking ahead about how they can lead the market in the next generation of technology. The acquisition is more about growing organically – selling more Compiere systems – than it is about harvesting customer support contracts.

BSD

• Taking a peek at GhostBSD 1.0

  The PC-BSD project brings a user-friendly pre-configured KDE desktop to the FreeBSD community. Which is all well and good, but what if you’re more of a GNOME person? Well, it turns out there is a project in the works for you too. The GhostBSD project is in its early stages, but it’s paving the way for users who enjoy running GNOME on a FreeBSD base without any configuring or installing extra software. I had a chance to exchange emails with Eric Turgeon, the project’s founder and lead developer.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GOLEMs are better than “Intellectual Property” – Passing criticism on “IP”

  Have you ever heard someone saying “Intellectual Property is a dumb term, please do not use it” in the parliament? Well it happened in the German Bundestag: Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoeren said it during the internet enquote this week. Afterwards one of the other experts, Prof. Rainer Kuhlen supported him and added that collecting societies abuse this term “so they can get goods with licensing agreements and circumvent copyright law”. (I already wrote about that in German blog entry.)

  [...]

  A bit later in 2004, Richard Stallman also wrote about that topic, in his article “Did You Say ‘Intellectual Property’? It’s a Seductive Mirage”:

  It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—plus a dozen other laws into one pot and call it “intellectual property”. The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely.

Government

• Linux Oz head builds open-source SBR link

  John Ferlito, president of Linux Australia, has revealed that he and several associates are developing a way for open-source users to interface with the government’s Standard Business Reporting (SBR) system.

• SBR gets open source tool, AUSkey coming to Linux

  National Linux advocacy body Linux Australia has added its support for the federal government’s Standard Business Reporting initiative by planning an open source SBR integration project, meanwhile work begins at the ATO on AUSkey for Linux.

• U.K. government could drop Microsoft for Linux

  It wouldn’t be anything really new, either, for the U.K. government to look toward open source. In 2003, the government signed a five-year agreement with Sun to look at using some of its open source systems in government.

• UK Officials Suggest Moving To FOSS To Cut Cost

Openness/Sharing

• ‘Open source’ software for the stage

  Sara Coffin likes to think of Schreibstuck as the dance equivalent of open-source software that allows members of the public to modify and redistribute the original code to suit their own needs.

• Open Data

  • MapQuest Launches Open-Source Version Based on OpenStreetMap

    AOL’s MapQuest has announced an interesting partnership open-source online mapping outfit OpenStreetMap. Through the partnership, MapQuest will begin using data provided by OpenStreetMap to power a version of its product. This new product, available for now in the UK at open.mapquest.co.uk, will reside separately from the main site and will not use any commercial mapping data.

  • MapQuest Going Open Source

• Open Hardware

  • Hardware hacking heaven

    OSCON this year will be a delight for anybody interested in working with hardware. A full open source hardware track offers a range of talks to get you started with hardware hacking, and gives a great insight into the current options for prototyping.

Programming

• Does Python 2.7′s Release Mean the End of the Line for Python 2.x?

  The open source Python language is at a crossroads with two major versions available to developers. The end of the road for the Python 2.x branch is now a little closer, with the release of Python 2.7 this week.

  Python 2.7 is intended to be the last major Python 2.x release as the open source project aims to help developers migrate to the newer Python 3.x release codebase. Python 3.x first hit general availability in December of 2008. Though the Python 2.x branch is now at the end of the line in terms of new releases, Python 2.x still has a lot of life left in it.

Standards/Consortia

• Smokescreen alternative to Flash

  There are already a number of Flash alternatives available to users, including the promising open source Lightspark and Gnash players.

  The most interesting alternative, however, is not a replacement Flash player but a separate technology that converts existing Flash content into HTML5 and Javascript, on the fly.

Financial Columnist Lectures Little Kids Who Want To Give Away Lemonade That They’re Destroying America

Stuart sends over a column from a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Terry Savage, that I could have sworn was satire until someone convinced me that it’s not. Savage is apparently a “financial” columnist, who apparently is a bit confused about her basic economics. Over the long weekend, she decided to celebrate the American way by berating and lecturing some children who set up a lemonade stand because they wanted to give away the lemonade for free. According to Savage, these kids represent all that is wrong with America. I’m not joking.

[...]

Wait, what? You know what the Declaration of Independence also didn’t include? Anything about how much “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” costs. You know why? Because it has nothing to do with whether or not something costs money or is free. So that’s not “something to think about” because it makes no sense.

Best Buy Says Creator Of iPhone/Evo Video Can Keep His Job; Guy Says He’d Rather Not

Given the massive backlash against Best Buy for this move, it appears the company is backtracking quickly. Best Buy’s CEO did a blog post saying the company had “completed its investigation” and Brian was being offered his job back. The CEO also points out — as people did in the comments, that some of the original concern wasn’t so much about the famed iPhone/Evo video (which doesn’t mention Best Buy), but other videos he had done that had mentioned the company (which have since been taken down).

Security/Aggression

• Facebook security flaw remotely controls accounts

  Roger Thompson chief research officer at AVG revealed a Javascript injection attack that lures users by providing a link to a video, which it claims “99% of people can’t watch”. The link forwards users to another page that asks them to paste Javascript code into their browser’s address bar.

• NSA setting up secret ‘Perfect Citizen’ spy system

  The US National Security Agency (NSA) is embarking on a secret domestic surveillance project dubbed “Perfect Citizen”, intended to monitor and protect important national infrastructure such as power grids and transport systems.

• Threat of ‘cyberwar’ has been hugely hyped

• NSA Launches Infrastructure Cybersecurity Program

  The National Security Agency plans to launch a program aimed at assessing vulnerabilities and developing capabilities to help secure critical infrastructure like power plants, air traffic control systems and the electrical grid.

• 41% of IT pros admit to snooping on confidential information

  The results of a Cyber-Ark global survey show that 35 percent of respondents believe their company’s highly-sensitive information has been handed over to competitors. Thirty-seven percent of the IT professionals surveyed cited ex-employees as the most likely source of this abuse of trust.

Finance

• Wall Street Reform Bill Yields Big Win for Little Countries

  At a minimum, once U.S. firms will be required to detail their payments to foreign governments, the citizens of these countries will know how much their governments are receiving and from whom, giving them a fighting chance to hold their government accountable for investing those funds in critical needs such as food, health and education.

• Senate Bank Reform Bill One Vote Short

  The fate of the Wall Street reform bill is up in the air after the death of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. The bill is a single confirmed vote short of the 60 votes needed to get past a threatened filibuster by Senate Republicans. From day one, the Bankster team has supported the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and that is still one of the strongest pieces of the bill. It is a great time to send off the last emails to Senators telling them to put a new cop on the block in the form of a CFPB.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Switch the Subject

  In addition to recommending a professional PR campaign to try and coax tourists back to Arizona in the wake of the state’s tough new immigration law, the task force appointed by Governor Jan Brewer suggested that Arizona try to “change the tone of the dialogue” by talking about the effects that tourism boycotts have on vulnerable employees within the state.

• Coast Guard bans reporters from oil cleanup sites

  It’s a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN’s Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it “very easy to hide incompetence or failure.”

• Chez Sludge: How the Sewage Sludge Industry Bedded Alice Waters

  For the first time, thanks to an ongoing “open records” investigation by the Food Rights Network, the public and the press have easy online access to dozens of internal SFPUC files, documenting the strange tale of Chez Sludge, or how the sewage industry bedded Alice Waters.

  [...]

  San Francisco’s SFPUC is in the forefront of the latest maneuver in this toxic scam, “composting” its toxic sludge and marketing it as “organic Biosolids compost,” thus co-opting a venerable terms used in Organic agriculture. This greenwashing scam slipped rather unnoticed by the public from 2007 until the fall of 2009. That is when the San Francisco Chronicle reported on an effort by two public interest groups who petitioned the [SFPUC to halt the program. In December 2009, the The Atlantic reported that the city had rejected the petition and that the SFPUC was preparing to increase its toxic sludge to gardens giveaway ten-fold in 2010.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Wireless industry says ‘bill shock’ rules are unnecessary

  The wireless industry urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) not to mandate that cell phone companies make their billing practices clearer, a possibility the agency is considering in its effort to mitigate “bill shock.”

  The commission started a proceeding in May seeking comment on whether it should make regulations to prevent consumers from receiving higher-than-expected cell phone bills.

  [...]

  An FCC survey released in May picked up national attention for reporting that nearly one in five American consumers have been subject to sudden and unexpected rises in their monthly cellular phone bills.

Copyrights

• Copyright abuse in Nevada politics

  This interesting abuse or misuse of copyright law again shows an old fox obeying the law but getting what he wanted, including great publicity in a campaign where it is not all that easy to get news coverage.

• Angle Sends Cease-And-Desist To Reid — For Reposting Her Own Website

  Sharron Angle has resorted to an unusual maneuver to counter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s attacks on her past quotes and positions, the Reid campaign has announced: A cease-and-desist letter, demanding that Reid no longer republish Angle’s previous campaign website.

• Sharron Angle: We’re going to “pursue” Harry Reid for reposting my Web site — possibly in court

• More bad news on pharma R&D productivity

  CMR International, a firm that tracks that performance of the pharmaceuticals sector, released a rather depressing report on research and development productivity last week. The report will set you back $10,000, but highlights have been made public:

  [...]

  - Pharma is having a tough time selling its new drugs: New drugs launched within the last five years accounted for less than 7 percent of industry sales in 2009, down from 8 percent in 2008, highlighting the big problems that companies are having in trying to reinvigorate their portfolios.

• Woot Asks AP To Pay Up For Quoting Woot Blog Post Without Paying [Updated]

  There are so many reasons to love Woot, including their recent awesome letter and video about their acquisition. But, even better may be that in today’s Woot offering, they mock the Associated Press for its coverage of the Woot acquisition, because the AP just happens to have also copied text from the awesome Woot letter. Now, that’s all well and good for most publications, but this is the AP that we’re talking about. The same AP that threatens bloggers for copying headlines and snippets. The same AP that insists it needs “hot news” to protect others from “free riding” on its work. And, most importantly, the same AP that has a famously ridiculous pricelist for quoting five words or more from an AP article.

• AP, MediaNews Boss Sends Legal Threat To Blog For Quoting Colorado Newspapers

  It’s no secret that the Associated Press is hot for the “hot news” doctrine (even as they seem blind to how it will come back to bite them). However, most of the lawsuits involving “hot news” to date have strayed away from really testing the legal limits of, say, blogs writing about newspaper stories and quoting parts of the story in the process. That may be changing. Dean Singleton is the chair of the Associated Press, as well as the CEO of MediaNews, one of the big newspaper chains out there. Apparently he’s decided to test the waters on threatening bloggers over “hot news.”

• Men At Work to pay five per cent of earnings over Down Under breach

  THE composers of the legendary 1980s international pop smash hit Down Under have been ordered to pay five per cent of earnings from the song after it was found to have breached copyright law.

• Ticketmaster’s Terms of Service Cannot Make You a Criminal

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of academics and public policy groups are urging a federal judge to dismiss a criminal indictment that could give websites extraordinary power to dictate what behavior becomes a computer crime.

• Hairdresser hit with £1,500 bill

  Neil Hull had bought a Performing Rights Society (PRS) licence… however, the relatively unknown Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL) took him to court because, unbeknown to Neil, he needed a licence from IT, too

• The Twilight copyright saga: Forbidden love and forbidden T-shirts

  Late last year, Summit sued to shut down an unofficial Twilight fan magazine, in part for using stock publicity photos that Summit had distributed to the news media. The production company had licensed the use of the photos for “journalistic purposes,” and it argued that Beckett Media, the magazine’s publisher, violated the license because its use of the pictures wasn’t journalistic enough.

• MPAA starts new crackdown on movie piracy, takes down 9 sites

  The MPAA is at it again, going after movie pirates. This time, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is helping out the movie industry, and they’ve seized nine different domains: Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net. These were mostly ad-supported movie streaming sites that showed pirated versions of current theatrical releases.

• Feds Seize 9 Domains For Copyright Infringement, But Based On What Law?

  According to the Wall Street Journal, federal authorities seized 9 domain names of sites that were offering pirated movies.

  The nine domain names were registered using U.S.-based registrars, allowing authorities to take control of their site addresses.

• Federal Court of Appeal Rules ISPs Not Broadcasters: May Be End of ISP Levy Proposal

  The Federal Court of Appeal issued is decision today [not online yet] on whether Internet providers can be considered broadcasters within the context of the Broadcasting Act. The case is the result of last year’s CRTC New Media decision in which many cultural groups called on the Commission to establish an ISP levy to fund Canadian content. The ISPs argued that such a levy was illegal since they fell under the Telecommunications Act, not the Broadcasting Act. The cultural groups argued that ISPs should be considered broadcasters in the case of the transmission of video programs. The CRTC punted the issue to the Federal Court of Appeal.

• Digital Economy

  • Challenge to Digital Economy Act

    News that TalkTalk and BT are challenging the Digital Economy Act in court is extremely welcome. It is a vindication of our view that the legislation should not have been rammed through parliament in the dying days of the last government.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Doesn’t Cost Anything – But Maybe It Should

Linux is easy to learn, highly capable of fulfilling a typical computer user’s needs, and 100 percent free. So why is it that Linux still has such a miniscule share of the overall desktop market? Maybe its gratis nature has been keeping it down. It seems that when consumers don’t know enough about a product, they judge it by its cost — and “free,” at least on a subconscious level, translates to “not as good.”

New Linux OS REMnux Designed For Reverse Engineering Malware

Many security professionals who find themselves needing to analyze a specific piece of malware end up in a difficult situation. The classic approach to analyzing malware is to set up a virtual machine on a PC specifically designed for that purpose and then let the malware loose and see what it does. But that usually only shows you part of the picture; much of the malware’s behavior can remain hidden without the ability to do some deeper analysis.

Google

• On GoogleCL, a ‘Virtual RMS’ and Highly Unusual Linux Distros

  Is a command line really what Google needs now? Opinions were mixed at the debut of GoogleCL, the search giant’s new and daringly named command line tool. Reactions ranged from “I’ve had to write bits and pieces of it myself. Thanks!” all the way over to “The APIs were already out there. Of course, the best APIs can already be used from the command line with curl, so I care even less about this.”

Ballnux

• HTC Desire with North American 3G graces FCC with its presence

  Rumors of a June 8 launch of Telus’ HTC Triumph — a rebranded version of the Desire, seemingly — came and went without a trace, but now, we’ve got another reason to think that the model’s launch might be just around the corner.

• Samsung spins $100 Android 2.1 phone for Sprint

  Sprint announced a Samsung handset running Android 2.1 that sells for $100 with a two-year contract. The Samsung Intercept is equipped with a 3.2-inch touchscreen display, a 3.2-megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and an optical joystick, says the company.

Graphics Stack

• xf86-video-ati 6.13.1 Driver Released

• A New Release Of The AMD XvBA Back-End To VA-API

Applications

• Free software at your fingertips

  One of the common misconceptions about GNU/Linux is that it “doesn’t have any applications”. Every time I hear this, I immediately respond with “how far did you look?”. Truth is, Linux has thousands upon thousands of applications. Some are installed by default in Linux distributions, and some are purposely not installed, but available and can be installed with a couple of clicks. Depending on which distribution you use, and how you install it, your list of installed applications when you are finished installing the operating system itself will vary.

• Three video transcoding applications for Linux worth knowing

  If you are a movie junkie like me, chances are you have quite a number of movies on your computer that would be nice watching on your DVD player or home theater system, mobile phone or portable multimedia device.

• Instructionals

  • Distributed data processing with Hadoop, Part 2: Going further

  • IRC, Still the Best Support Around

  • Set up Xen 4.1-unstable & 2.6.32.16 pvops Dom0 on top of Ubuntu 10.04 Server

  • Installing WordPress 3.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

  • Install or Upgrade to Latest KDE SC 4.5 RC in Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” From PPA

  • BadTokenException Error In Android Dialog

  • Continuous integration with Buildbot

  • Sync Your Desktop Browser to Your Android Phone

    Let’s say you are doing research on your desktop browser and you need to leave your computer to run some errand. Wouldn’t it be great if you can sync what you are reading to your mobile phone so that you can continue your research on the move? If you are using an Android phone (running Froyo) and Google Chrome/Firefox, you just got yourself a great deal.

  • Kiosks: The Virus Source You’re Unaware Of

    Lifehacker offers a straightforward solution. Once your removable media has served its purpose, simply format them on a PC booted up with a Live CD. Live CDs are self-contained boot discs (usually running a variant of Linux) that let you use a computer without accessing—or installing—anything on your hard disk.

  • An introduction to Linux kernel programming

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• Georg Greve on KDE and the Supporting Membership Program

  At LinuxTag 2010, the KDE community announced the “Join the Game” campaign to support KDE e.V.’s Supporting Membership Program. The first new member was Georg Greve, founder of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). We caught up with him for a ‘short’ interview that turned into a two hour conversation about life, the universe and everything. The pertinent bits are excerpted below.

• Planet KDE Goes International

Distributions

• The Job of the Linux Distribution

  The Gnome project creates the desktop environment used in Ubuntu, Red Hat, and many other operating systems. Each distribution tweaks Gnome a bit by adding or removing applications, but most of it is the same between the different systems. For all practical purposes, to the non-techie, non-geek, Gnome is the operating system, because it’s what they see and interact with. In Ubuntu, the default Gnome browser, Epiphany is removed and replaced with Firefox. The Gnome office suite is not used, favoring the more popular OpenOffice.org suite instead. Each distribution picks what it feels are the best parts available from the open source community.

• New Releases

  • Salix LXDE 13.1 Released

    Salix LXDE edition 13.1 has been released! Based on Slackware 13.1, it features the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, “an extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment”, with a clean look and feel. The main applications that complete the LXDE experience are the lightweight and fast PCManFM file manager and the popular Openbox window manager.

• PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • PCLinuxOS quarterly ISO updates released

    The PCLinuxOS developers have released the quarterly ISO updates for the GNOME, KDE and LXDE editions of their Linux distribution. The 2010.07 releases include a number of desktop and package updates, but don’t add any new features to the operating system.

  • PCLinuxOS

  • Mandriva 2010 Spring Is Released

  • The Long Awaited Release of Mandriva 2010 Spring

  • Mandriva 2010 Spring: A Review for Newbies

    There was a time in which Mandriva was considered a somewhat “intermediate” Linux distribution. In 2009, when I started using it, I found it slightly “difficult”. However, with the 2010 release, I have noticed how the distro has been oriented to the ease of use. I’m not saying that it is easy, as no OS is, but I must confess that I perceive less entanglement now. So, today I can confidently recommend beginners to install it as their debut distro in the fascinating world of Linux.

  • Mandriva fights through money woes, releases 2010 Spring distro

    Reprieved from its financial troubles with fresh investments, Mandriva released the final version of Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring. The latest stable release is touted for offering faster boot times, enhanced “Smart Desktop” file-organization technology, easier printer and wireless configuration, new scientific apps, plus updates including GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.3, and the new Go-OO branch of OpenOffice.

  • Mandriva Preparing For Organizational Reboot

    “Mandriva possesses in its DNA all the requisites of an Open Source world leader. A community of 3.5 million users, a leading position in the BRIC zone, and prestigious clients in both the public sector and major business,” stressed Jean-Noël de Galzain, President of IF Research. “We are going to focus on the company management and promoting a new, dynamic commercial activity based on innovative products offered on a new distribution network.”

• Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase

    Today, July 7th, Canonical proudly announced that it will support the Ubuntu Free Culture showcase, which will offer photographers, artists and musicians from all over the world and with any background, the opportunity to see their work in the next release of the Ubuntu operating system, Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), due for release in October 10th, 2010.

Devices/Embedded

• MIPS64-based module supports 40Gbps network processing

  NetLogic Microsystems announced a Linux-based hardware/software development kit it says is the first fully deterministic networking solution that concurrently processes Layers 2-7 at 40Gbps wire-speed. The NLX321103A solution combines the MIPS-based XLP832 eight-core, 32-threaded system-on-chip with the NL11k and NETL7 Layer 7 “knowledge-based” processors, the company says.

• ARM muscling in on desktop space

  Until now Brit chip shop ARM’s processor designs have been restricted to smart phones and other embedded devices, but new developments in a partnership between ARM and Canonical, the company which develops Ubuntu Linux, could see a new push into the traditional computing market.

• Phones

  • Flash Player 10.1 Ported To MeeGo, Android

    Movial has announced enablement and certification services for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 on both systems-on-chip and mobile platforms for MeeGo and Android.

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • Fennec 1.1 ships on Maemo as MeeGo heats up

    • What Nokia must do to stay relevant in mobile

      MeeGo will be used on everything from advanced smartphones to netbooks, connected TVs, and tablet computers, the two companies say. Nokia still hasn’t announced its first MeeGo-based product, but it will be delivered this year, says Vanjoki.

  • Android

    • Rover unveils five tablets based on Android, Windows CE

      Russian Rover Computers has revealed five new tablets, ranging from 5- to 7-inch models. The processors are also varied and include Samsung ARM chips, while the range-topping RoverPad TegA W70 gets NVIDIA’s Tegra CPU. All five are likely rebadged OEM offerings, with the TegA W70 based on the Compal Tegra tablet.

    • Android Gains Marketshare While All Others Lose It

      With the market moving so quickly, things are bound to change. The survey was conducted before Apple’s latest iPhone 4 was released in June. Also, look for Google to exceed Microsoft’s share in the next period since it is trailing by a minuscule .2 percent.

    • Android 2.2 SDK refresh

      The Android 2.2 SDK that was released at Google I/O contained a preview of the Froyo system image and today, we are releasing an update to bring it into sync with the system image pushed to Nexus One devices.

    • Report: Fujitsu develops its first Android phone

      And we have yet another cell phone maker joining the Android bandwagon. Various Japanese media, for example Sankei Digital [JP], are reporting that Fujitsu is currently working on an Android-based smartphone.

    • Ubuntu on Nexus One, Froyo on Sprint’s Hero

      One of the most popular sides of Google’s Android operating system is the openness to hacks and modifications it enables. We’ve already had the chance to take a look at a wide range of custom made Android ROMs for handsets that would not taste the platform otherwise, but today’s news bring something new into the equation. An Android 2.2 Froyo port available for users of a HTC Hero on Sprint’s airwaves in the US has just emerged accompanied by a video of Nexus One running under Ubuntu, complemented by detailed instructions on how this can be done.

    • Android sees healthy growth at expense of Apple, RIM, MS

      Android’s share of the smartphone OS market went up between February and May of this year while everyone else took a hit, according to the latest data from comScore. The analytics firm released its three-month MobiLens report Thursday, observing that Android’s share of smartphone subscribers had gone up a full four percentage points in the US, though it still remains fourth on the list after RIM, Apple, and Microsoft.

    • Motorola

      • Motorola aims low with Android-based Charm

        Motorola announced a low-end Android 2.1 phone for T-Mobile equipped with a new version of its MotoBlur UI layer. The Motorola Charm is equipped with a 2.8-inch, 320 x 240 touchscreen, 802.11b/g/n, a three-megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a “Backtrack” touchpanel on the back of the device.

      • Droid X reviews praise battery life, multimedia

        eWEEK has run two favorable reviews of the Motorola Droid X, praising the phone’s multimedia performance, call quality, battery life, and camera, but criticizing its Wi-Fi performance and MotoBlur interface. A Wired review, meanwhile, calls the Droid X “one of the finest Android devices available” — if one can handle the size.

• Sub-notebooks

  • For Those Intel Netbooks, There’s A MeeGo 1.0 Update

    This update carries over 100 bug-fixes, including the upgrading of the Linux kernel against the 2.6.33.5 kernel, improved 3D performance via DRM and Mesa updates, web browser enhancements, improvements to visuals and the window manager, full support for the GNOME Proxy, and many other changes.

Open Source Project Management Tools

The pre-selection of project management programs started by focusing on some of the most famous web-based ones, excluding the following (for the following reasons):

Proprietary Technologies Are Buggier Than Open Source?

Katonda has published a list of top 9 bugs and blunders of the last few weeks. In that list Apple and Microsoft seems to lead the world of bugs by delivering some of the most lethal bugs.

Mozilla

• Firefox 4 Beta Brings Speed Boost

  Firefox has been taking heat from Google Chrome over speed for some time, but the world’s most popular open source browser is getting ready for a comeback. Can Firefox 4.0 woo back some of the early adopters who’ve embraced Chrome? It looks like it will have a very good shot.

• User interface overhaul arrives in Firefox 4 beta

Business

• Open Source Software: Less Feature-Rich Than Proprietary Competition?

  Commercial open source software is a newer trend than open source software itself. Over time, it is likely that the distance, in terms of feature sets, between proprietary software packages and open source ones will be closed by contributions from commercial interests. At least that’s true for many important packages. It goes to show that even though many people in the open source community frown on commercial interests, companies that back open source projects can have a profoundly positive effect on them.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Where we’re going: Working together for Free Software

  By working together for free software in a focused movement, we can do much more than the sum of our individual or project efforts.

  That’s where this campaign is headed–to strengthen the entire movement by promoting the underlying message that all free software projects work for a unified ideal: an end goal of software freedom. It represents a new theme in the Free Software Foundation’s work and a shift in focus that recognizes we are ready to engage a much wider audience. The approach for “Working together for free software” is to find new common ground to facilitate an effective public campaign for software freedom that will benefit everyone.

• New ideas for the Free Software Foundation

• Two GCC stories

  The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) project occupies a unique niche in the free software community. As Richard Stallman is fond of reminding us, much of what we run on our systems comes from the GNU project; much of that code, in turn, is owned by the Free Software Foundation. But most of the GNU code is relatively static; your editor wisely allowed himself to be talked out of the notion of adding an LWN weekly page dedicated to the ongoing development of GNU cat. GCC, though, is FSF-owned, is crucial infrastructure, and is under heavy ongoing development. As a result, it will show pressures that are only seen in a few places. This article will look at a couple of recent episodes, related to licensing and online identity, from the GCC community.

Project Releases

• Version 1.3 of WordPress for Android adds stats

  The WordPress developers have announced the release of version 1.3 of their WordPress for Android app. Using the mobile application, users can easily post to and edit their WordPress blogs from an Android mobile device.

• RDPDesk Launches 3rd Version of RD Connection Manager

  RDPDesk, one of the leading companies in the field of security connection solution development would like to announce the launching of version 3.0 of RD Connection manager, a free open source remote desktop management solution which is licensed under the GNU General Public License

Government

• Malaysian Government has reached 97% OSS Adoption — WOW!

  When I started working on GNU C++ in 1987, I could almost feel the course of history changing with every line of code I wrote. When I started Cygnus Support in 1989, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before companies began to realize that proprietary software restrictions did nothing to help their competitive advantage and everything to harm it. And though early funding for my work came from government agencies (US DARPA in 1987 and French INRIA in 1988), I never quite expected to be visiting and promoting open source in Malaysia [short version] [longer version]. Yet such is the reach of open source software! Now the Government of Malaysia proudly reports an astonishing 97% adoption rate for open source software in this new report:

Science

• Black hole emitting a giant gas bubble 1000 light-years wide

  A black hole only slightly heavier than our Sun is emitting the most powerful jets of energy ever seen, rivaling that of quasars a million times larger, and creating a bubble of hot gas and fast-moving particles 1000 light-years across.

  When black holes devour matter, they release massive amounts of energy. Physicists had thought this energy mostly took the form of radiation, primarily X-rays. However, as this newly discovered black hole so dramatically illustrates, at least as much energy, if not a great deal more, is released as jets of fast moving particles. These streams of particles smash headlong into the interstellar gas nearby, which heats up the gas and causing rapid expansion. The resulting bubble is a mix of the hot gas and the particles from the black hole.

• As NASA’s Plutonium Supply Dwindles, ESA Eyes Nuclear Energy Program

Security/Aggression

• Pirate Bay Hack Exposes User Booty

  Security weaknesses in the hugely popular file-sharing Web site thepiratebay.org have exposed the user names, e-mail and Internet addresses of more than 4 million Pirate Bay users, according to information obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com.

Finance

• Goldman Sachs has sent me a letter . . .

  They’re decrying the fact I might fault them for having anything whatsoever to do with the rise of the price of global wheat. Harper’s will publish the letter, of course, with my response . . .

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Researchers tout new weapon in Internet censorship arms race

  Trying to get out in front of what they call a censorship arms race, a team of researchers has come up with technology that lets users exchange messages through heavily censored networks in countries such as China and North Korea in hidden channels via user-generated content sites such as Twitter or Flickr.

• Google breached Australians’ privacy: Commissioner

  Google Australia breached the Privacy Act when it inadvertently collected data from private wireless networks using its Street View cars, Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis said today.

  In response, the search and advertising giant was forced to publicly apologise.

• Internet filter rules under review in Australia

  The Australian government is conducting an independent review of websites due to be blocked by its controversial internet filter.

Copyrights

• Tom Silverman Proposes Radically Transparent Music Business

  The basic recording contract upon which most of the popular music business has been based for the past 50 years is fundamentally broken.

  This is not the sentiment of one of the countless critics who throw stones at the music industry from afar, usually for vague philosophical reasons, but rather the pragmatic opinion of a true insider: Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, which sold millions of records by hip-hop artists including Club Nouveau, Coolio, De La Soul, Digital Underground, Everlast, House of Pain and Naughty By Nature.

• Brazil’s Approach on Anti-Circumvention: Penalties For Hindering Fair Dealing

  Brazil recently unveiled its much anticipated copyright reform proposal and it provides a statutory example of applying this principle. Article 107 includes an interesting balance to legal protection for digital locks.

  Not only does the proposal permit circumvention for fair dealing and public domain purposes, but it establishes equivalent penalties for hindering or preventing the users from exercising their fair dealing rights. In other words, the Brazilian proposals recognizes what the Supreme Court of Canada stated several years ago – over-protection is just as harmful as under-protection.

• ACTA

  • Defending against laws which threaten user freedom

    As our mission here at the Free Software Foundation is to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users, we also have to defend against ill-conceived and misguided laws. Many of you may already be aware of an international trade agreement being negotiated by the G8 nations called ACTA, but another law known as the Digital Economy Act is of concern, specifically to citizens of the UK.

    We have already published a petition condemning ACTA on a number of specific grounds which we urge you to sign if you haven’t already. If you would like to know more, please read the rationale for this declaration. Right now, you can take action!