07.22.10
Posted in KDE, News Roundup at 3:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: KDE news from the past few days
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Last month I mentioned that I was looking at switching my desktop environment (DE) from GNOME to KDE and I was considering a move away from Ubuntu completely. About a week ago I installed KDE on my computer and started tweaking things to see how I like it. It’s not too bad, actually. As you can see from the shot on the right I’ve been able to make my desktop a combination of eye candy and functionality. I killed the top panel but was able to keep some of the applets thanks to plasmoids.
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I decided to tweak my desktop a little more and made a few more screenies to show the changes. I moved the digital clock to the bottom of my desktop, mostly to keep it visible if I maximize an app window and can’t see the time in the original position. I also added a Timer plasmoid to replace the timer on my GNOME panel. It doesn’t work as nicely as my GNOME timer did since I can’t set up times associated with a specific task, and I haven’t figured out how to get a sound played when the timer reaches nil, but I do get a nice obvious notification so it’s not so easy to miss as long as I’m at my computer. I also moved the Shutup plasmoid to the lower right corner to make better use of my screen real estate. I added two plasmoids on the lower left to switch my wallpaper and to give me quick access to the files I used to keep on my GNOME desktop.
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Day Three. I am at work, sitting at my desk waiting for a vehicle before I go out. I thought I’d take the time to comment on some things I have noticed with KDE4 so far.
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Now, the default Dragon Media Player of KDE have a serious competition in Bangarang. Dragon player is simple yet totally functional, which I think are the most basic trait to became the default in any desktop environment. On the other hand Bangarang is new, it’s good and it is rapidly improving.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, News Roundup at 2:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News about applications and games that run under GNU/Linux
Applications
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DeVeDe is an application that converts various video file formats into a disc that can be played in a DVD player. Other applications and tool chains can be coaxed into doing this but DeVeDe has the advantage of being a dedicated utility that has been designed for a single function.
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Instructionals
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Games
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Things may be changing though, over the past couple of years more and more indie games have been released for both PC and Mac, and to a lesser extent, Linux. More significantly, in May Valve updated Steam to include support for Mac, when talking to Doug Lombardi (Valve’s VP of Marketing) he made a bold statement “Steam for the Mac is the biggest news for Steam since the platform was launched in March 2004.”
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My friend Hamish Wilson emailed me about a new classic roguelike game named Dungeons of Dredmor and it’s being developed by a new indie GNU/Linux friendly company named Gaslamp
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At the end of last month the VDrift project did their first snapshot release in more than a year for this open-source drift racing game that’s supported on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems. The VDrift 2010-06-30 snapshot incorporates a great deal of changes, among which are a rewritten physics engine and a new deferred rendering engine that brings a great deal of visual improvements to this free software game. In this article are some screenshots on this OpenGL racing game and more of the new work found within this release.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, News Roundup at 2:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: GNU/Linux news picks from several days ago
Desktop
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I do everything with Linux. There are a few instances where I need Windows, but Linux handles this easily, as well. Again, more on this in future posts.
And did I mention that Linux is immune to Windows viruses, malware, trojans and pop ups? When you run Linux, you’ll have no need to run anti-virus software!
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Five uses for an Ubuntu Live CD.Once you’ve installed Ubuntu from a LiveCD you might never give much thought to what else you could use it for. If so, then meet today’s Daily 5…
Kernel Space
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Linux kernel maintainers have offered Google three ways of returning Android into their good graces.
Google’s options for re-admission to the kernel are: put the stubs of Android’s wait locks into the main kernel, introduce Android’s wait locks as PMQOS constraints, or adopt a patch written by a Linux kernel maintainer that would re-implement wait locks in a “socially acceptable way”.
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Graphics Stack
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A few days back there was the release of two updated NVIDIA legacy drivers for Linux, but only their newest legacy driver (they have three different legacy drivers at present) gained support for X.Org Server 1.8. This support though is needed for the older NVIDIA drivers to operate on newer Linux distributions like Fedora 13 and openSUSE 11.3. On this Sunday evening we have now confirmation from NVIDIA that they have no plans on providing xorg-server 1.8 support for their oldest legacy driver.
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07.21.10
Posted in Apple, Hardware, Microsoft, Windows at 6:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another Microsoft proponent (the current Microsoft-Watch editor) joins the band which predicts doom for Microsoft’s next attempt at phones, which are not even out yet
“Even Microsoft-watch.com doesn’t seem excited by Windows Mobile 7,” says Tim, the editor of OpenBytes who links to this post from Microsoft Nick, a big booster of the company. He reckons that Vista Phone 7 is “D.O.A.” (dead on arrival).
Microsoft didn’t bother to send me one of the Windows Phone 7 prototypes they’ve been circulating to media over the past week–which is okay, because I had my hands full reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S–but I’m hoping they’ll see the light over the next couple of days, if only so I can jump into the review fray.
A lot of those reviews seem very polite. There’s some praise for the Windows Phone 7 operating system, which attempts to aggregate Web content and applications into subject-specific Hubs, as opposed to arranging individual Apps on a grid-like home screen. And then there’s Galen Gruman, who basically went nuclear.
We wrote about Gruman's review a day ago. OpenBytes calls it “The fall of the Redmond Empire” and makes the following observation:
There is plenty more material showing what I think is the gradual loosing of control of “territories”, one only has to look at any tech forum or blog post where people post about alternatives. Even two years ago, the site Microsoft-watch was renowned as a meeting place for Linux users (in fact I met many online friends there who I am still in contact with.)
It seems like many Linux users are now buyers of Android phones. Google activates over a million such phones per week. As for Apple, it is still fighting against its own customers, but they sometimes find their way around artificial limitations:
How a 15-yo Kid Tricked Apple With a Disguised iPhone Tethering App
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Inside, the app contained hidden code that made it a full tethering application—a program that allows you to use your iPhone as a 3G modem. Using this ability you can surf the web from your computer, using the iPhone as a bridge to the internet. You can do this using your iPhone’s preferences too, but that way you will have to pay the additional $20 per month that AT&T wants you to pay for this kind of service. That is $20 extra on top of whatever you are paying for your iPhone data plan. With Handy Light, the tethering service was completely free.
That’s one of the things which are totally wrong with Apple; they deliberately limit the capabilities of their products and block customers. What kind of customer would tolerate this kind of treatment? Apple is having a ‘Novell moment’. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree.
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At a recent local LUG I regularly attend, Braddock Gaskill gave a wonderful presentation on an open source 8-bit computer he had created. This was his first public debut of the device and every person in attendance was enthralled. Later, we met over coffee since I wanted to let him know (and ask if it was ok) that I thought his device would make for a great piece for Linux Journal. Braddock agreed and we started to chat about both the Humane Reader & Humane PC.
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Environment
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JW: Looking for a solution to the predicament we are in, of living unsustainably, the importance of values comes up again and again. The focus in China is mainly on science and technology, on hardware – on things that if you drop them will hurt your toe. The importance of values hasn’t really kicked in, but it’s absolutely essential. Where do you get these values? Clearly western values haven’t stopped the west from screwing up the environment. So, it’s worth looking to China’s philosophical and cultural roots.
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Copyrights
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If you need some good reading whilst lazing on the veranda of your summer villa, look no further than Privilege and Property – Essays on the History of Copyright
Edited by Ronan Deazley, Martin Kretschmer and Lionel Bently, it’s bound (or not) to be a stimulating intellectual work.
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It’s time someone noticed the nails keeping copyright upright upon its perch.
Copyright is history. Lawyers can read it and weep.
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And what makes you think you should automatically get free money from people using these technologies when the content creators you represent fail to adjust or adapt at all? But rather than adapt, Copyswede is just taking the position that more technologies should be taxed and the market should be distorted further. The plan is to tax mobile phones 100 kronor (about $14), because having the government step in and force people to give you money is, you know, a lot easier than actually having to work for a living.
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ACTA
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The Ministers of Economic Affairs and Justice argue for renewed openness about ACTA trade agreement.
Resigning ministers Maria van der Hoeven of Economic Affairs (EZ) and Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin are disappointed that the negotiations on trade treaty ACTA remain behind closed doors.
CLUG Talk – 27 Nov 2007 – AGM: Compiz-Fusion-Beryl-BURN! (2007)
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, News Roundup at 6:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Gathering of some Free software and Open Source news
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We run down the 10 best open source alternatives to the business software we use every day.
Running a business can be costly at the best of times, so we’ve delved into the open source world and plucked out some great alternatives to those heavyweight proprietary applications that we all know and need.
These applications could prove viable solutions to real business needs and could save you and your organisation money in the process. What’s more, if you’re just starting out these pieces of software could have your business up and running (and earning) a site quicker, not to mention keeping you in the black for longer, which is no mean feat in 2010.
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The 2010 New Zealand Open Source Awards are now open for nominations at http://www.nzosa.org.nz/.
This year’s Awards will focus particularly on achievements from over the past two years.
“There were so many strong nominations for the 2008 event,” said panel chair Don Christie, “that we are keen to hear back from projects that have moved forward in the last years, as well as new initiatives using free and open source solutions.”
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In the field of graphic arts, vector clip art is associated with pre-made images used to represent whatever medium. It is comprised completely of illustrations made using computer software, and it does not contain stock photography.
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The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is pleased to announce that Shane Curcuru, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Roy T. Fielding, Jim Jagielski, Sam Ruby, Noirin Shirley, Greg Stein, and Henri Yandell have been elected to serve on the ASF Board of Directors.
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Mozilla
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OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE HOUSE Mozilla has upped the bounty it offers to anyone that discovers a bug in its software.
In a blog post Mozilla said that the evolving threat landscape had lead it to raise its reward to $3,000 in order to “better support constructive security research”.
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Education
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For K-12 IT directors, the major appeal of open source software (OSS) generally focuses on savings in licensing fees and access to software that would not otherwise be affordable. Many also are finding that OSS simply is the best solution for their school districts–even compared to commercial versions.
IT directors with OSS experience largely have been opportunistic about how they got started. In a series of interviews conducted for THE Journal, three IT directors shared their experiences–the hows and the whys–launching OSS in their districts.
They have very different stories, but have all learned that the transition to an open source “shop” takes time.
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BSD
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The FreeBSD Security Team have identified a little bug in FreeBSD where a lost mbuf flag can result in data loss.
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Government
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The government’s decision not to renew an agreement with Microsoft for up to 800,000 NHS desktops could be an opportunity for open source suppliers to prove their worth.
According to an article on IT channel website Microscope.co.uk, the government did not feel the deal, known as an enterprise agreement, which aims to give lower prices in return for group buying was not value for money. It prefers individual NHS Trusts to buy what they want, rather than being forced to be part of an enterprise wide deal.
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The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects – such as OSOR.eu and SEMIC.eu – on open source and on electronic data exchange.
The EC published the budget details last week Thursday for its e-Government project. Apart from the 3.344 million Euro planned for the new platform to provide collaborative services for current Semic.eu and OSOR.eu users, another 8.8 million Euro are foreseen to provide support for existing and future communities around eGovernment in general, including the growing Open Source community on OSOR.eu and the community around interoperablity assets on Semic.eu.
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Openness/Sharing
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Why should the free and open source software community regard their work as a commons? For people focused on building a specific piece of software, the need to label it a “commons” may seem gratuitous. What’s the value? But there are some good reasons for understanding free/open source software as a commons, as I explain in a recent essay published by the FLOSS Roadmap project.
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It’s hard to predict how an open source hardware revolution could change consumer electronics. There are very few ideas that stem from complete air — nearly every great new thing has come from modifying something that came before.
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Programming
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Adobe has announced that its partnering with Sourceforge to expand its open-source offerings and have more flexibility with the related programs. Basically, all of Adobe’s open-source and standards efforts will be hosted and managed on Sourceforge through the site’s new developer platform. Adobe is actually the first customer of the newly launched platform.
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The US State Department has thrown its weight behind an initiative to promote software development for the good of East African residents.
The Apps 4 Africa contest was launched earlier this month and aims to encourage developers to produce software that will improve the quality of life for residents of this region.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Hardware, News Roundup at 5:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Nokia should have stuck with ARM; OLPC with Fedora gets another 75,000-unit order; Tablets prove good for Linux
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If you’ll remember, Google TV has received a considerable amount of attention first when the platform was announced and then again when Logitech showed off the Revue with Google TV set top box. This platform and set-top box will bring with it the ability to search for content wherever you want (Internet, cable, satellite, etc) along with being able to stream content from a networked computer – two things that traditional service provider issued set-top boxes usually do not allow.
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Nokia/MeeGo
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With the introduction of Intel’s Poulsbo (GMA 500) chipset it marked a point at which Intel’s Linux graphics support was no longer stellar, but as they had outsourced the graphics IP from Imagination Technologies, they could not provide an open-source driver stack like they do with their in-house IGPs. Not only was this Intel Poulsbo Linux driver closed-source, but the level of support was appalling and it was a bloody mess of a situation. The overall situation since has only become worse and even MeeGo (their own Linux OS) will be shipping without Intel’s EMGD driver.
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Sub-notebooks
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Authority of the state government has ordered 75,000 laptops under the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme for wide coverage of schools by the mission aims at creating educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.
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Tablets
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ABI Research reckons Linux-powered non-smartphone mobile devices will comprise 62 per cent of operating systems by 2015.
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