• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Ubuntu 10.04 (Initiator And Target)

  • Upgrading OpenCart

  • Making Ubuntu look like Windows 7

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • digiKam 1.4.0 released…

    Dear all digiKam fans and users!

    digiKam team is proud to announce digiKam 1.4.0 release!

Distributions

• Indamixx Portable Studio Refreshes It’s Line of Mobile Music Making Netbooks. Portable Linux Daw, Releases It’s Fastest Netbook to Date.

  Trinity Audio Group Inc.’s Indamixx featuring Transmission 4.0, a custom audio OS aimed at the professional recording and DJ market ships pre-installed on faster Intel Atom based Netbook. Linux based product now available at Retailers such as Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat’s extended support option offers breathing room

    Red Hat is taking good care of its customers — and that’s one of the intended benefit of open source software.

    The Linux giant recently announced that it would offer an optional subscription to extend the life cycle support to 10 years for its enterprise Linux.

  • N.C. Technology to honor Szulik

    Szulik, who stepped down as chairman of Raleigh-based Red Hat this month, was the company’s CEO for nearly a decade and transformed it into one of the Triangle’s largest and most successful technology companies.

  • Vyatta 6.1 Is Certified for IPv6

    Vyatta has released a new version of its software-based router/firewall solution. Vyatta 6.1 is the first update to the 6.x line, but is a solid release by itself. The update brings IPv6 certification and new tools for those using cloud solutions.

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 14 Alpha Has Linux Kernel 2.6.35 and KDE SC 4.5

      Highlights of Fedora 14 Alpha:

      · Linux kernel 2.6.35;
      · KDE SC 4.5;
      · GNOME 2.31.2 desktop environment;
      · Session and system management;
      · Desktop virtualization;
      · Faster JPEG compression and decompression;
      · Updated and new programming languages;
      · Better utilities for developers;
      · Sugar 0.90 desktop environment;
      · Better netbook experience with MeeGo;
      · Fedora EC2 images;
      · IPMI server management made simple;
      · SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) support;
      · Perl 6 support with Rakudo;
      · Powerful data analysis tools.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Linux Mint 9 Xfce Final Released

        The Linux Mint team has gotten another flavor of its latest release out the door. Linux Mint 9 Xfce is now deemed ready for a wider audience and has shed the ‘release candidate’ label.

Devices/Embedded

• Iomega says its removable drives will be USB 3.0

  NAS units have grown in popularity as users’ want to stream data to multiple devices. Some units allow users to ditch the standard operating system, usually a customised version of Linux, and install their own fully fledged Linux distribution, meaning a pint sized, energy efficient server is easily had.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Critics’ Choice: Smartphone Review Roundup of Droid 2

      OK, so that was a wee bit sarcastic. Fact is, this has been the year of Android phones, starting with Google’s Nexus One. The tide has crested in recent months, with the HTC Incredible, HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Droid X, and now, Motorola’s Droid 2 ($200 on Verizon after a $100 mail-in rebate and new two year-contract). It all adds up to a horn of plenty for Android smartphone fans, making it difficult to choose between models, especially since many are offered on Verizon.

    • Huawei to Launch Android 2.2 Smartphone at IFA

      Huawei Technologies plans to launch the U8150, which is based on Android version 2.2, at the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA) consumer electronics show, the company said via e-mail.

    • How to root the Droid 2

    • Rumor: DROID Incredible Froyo Update Coming September 1st?(Updated)

    • Verizon pushes out first Droid 2 update, doesn’t cure signal woes

    • Exclusive: Motorola MB520 Kobe / Diablo for AT&T in the wild

      As we’d heard before it’s definitely destined for AT&T bearing Android 2.1 with Blur (complete with Blur logo on back), though our tipster tells us we can expect an update to 2.2 over the air.

    • Top 10 Android Business Apps

      While I’m always a skeptic when it comes to analyst prognostications (you don’t sell reports if you don’t predict multi-million dollar markets), this forecast is well on its way to being spot-on. In a recent interview for the Guardian in the UK, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said 160,000 Android phones are being activated each day, up from 100,000/day in May and only 60,000/day back in February. That’s an impressive growth curve, although actual devices shipped are still well behind the iPhone. To apply a betting metaphor, I’ll take the under on Android catching iPhone in 2012.

      As Android grows, so does the importance of the Android Marketplace. Apps are what smartphones are all about, and while Android still trails there too, it’s catching up even quicker than with the platform. Finding good apps, though, is still a bit hit and miss — frustratingly so for a company that built its reputation on search. With scores of new apps flooding the Marketplace each day, I expect to be writing app roundups like this for quite a while.

    • Will AT&T ever sell an open high end Android device?

      Other Android devices you can find on AT&T include the HTC Aria (the best of the bunch), Motorola Backflip (strange design and older OS), Samsung Captivate (nice hardware, but locked down a bit and poor overall performer with AT&T junk), and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (again Android 1.6 loaded at launch). We even see the smartphone/tablet device, the Dell Streak, launching with Android 1.6.

    • Introduction to Android 2 application development

• Sub-notebooks

  • Netbooks The Next Target For Google Chrome OS

    This is all starting to change however with many Linux based OS’s getting some love and now Google’s Chrome OS is looking to jump in as well. Tuesday, reports leaked of a Acer netbook coming very soon with Google Chrome OS backing it up.

• Tablets

  • Acer Chrome OS netbook specs leaked in bug reports

    It’s no surprise that Acer is working on a netbook that will run Google’s Chrome OS. So far Acer’s been pretty quiet about the details, though. But Macles spotted a few details by following a rather convoluted paper trail.

ROSE Blog Interviews: Susan Rose, OLF Medical Track Committee Chair

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 4 Gets Sweeter in Beta 4 With Tab Candy

    Mozilla developers are out this week with the latest major update of the Firefox 4 Web browser. With the beta 4 version, Firefox 4 integrates two new key features into the open source browser, providing a new way to organize tabs and synchronize browser activities.

    The new tab features come by way of a Mozilla project known as Tab Candy, which enables users to group and organize sets of tabs together. In Firefox 4, Tab Candy has been rebranded as Firefox Panorama as it heads for public release.

  • Firefox Beta 4 comes with Panorama Tab Manager

    Previously known as Tab Candy, this is a new way to arrange your tabs in a more visual manner while working with large number of tabs. Watch this video by Firefox developer – Aza Raskin.

SaaS

• The Technology Behind the OpenStack Cloud Computing Project

  In NASA’s case, they just want to focus on their responsibilities (processing massive amounts of data coming in from space exploration) and avoid having to maintain an in-house, proprietary processing infrastructure.

• Welcome to CloudBees

Databases

• Oracle case against Google :Winners real open source databases like FirebirdSQL and PostgreSQL

• Why Large Hadron Collider Scientists are Using CouchDB

  The Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS) at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) will deploy the NoSQL database CouchDB into production this summer, CouchDB corporate sponsor Couchio announced today.

Project Releases

• IBM Lotus Symphony 3 Beta 4 is now available

Iranian Government Runs Public Warez Server

The Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology is directly connected to the Iranian Government. Aside from evaluating and advising policy makers on science and technology issues, the largest research outfit in the country also provides a warez server where Photoshop, MS Office and many other applications can be downloaded for free, totally legal thanks to Iran’s lenient copyright policy.

Attorneys General Continue Grandstanding Against Craigslist

This is hardly a surprise, given the well-coordinated media campaign against Craigslist, but despite multiple “settlements” with various state attorneys general, it appears that those AGs keep going back to the headline-generating well of demanding Craigslist “fix” things. You may recall that nearly two years ago, after being hounded by some AGs, Craigslist settled with the AGs, despite clearly being protected by Section 230 of the CDA. However, despite it being “settled,” some AGs felt it wasn’t enough and six months later there was another settlement. And, of course, it wasn’t long before the AGs started complaining again.

Science

• Video Showing Half a Million Asteroid Discoveries

Security/Aggression

• Fine for Edinburgh data snooping policeman

  Defence agent David Hunter said: “Although there is the statutory defence of accessing the information for police purposes that does not really apply here.

  “His nose got the better of him and he was curious.”

  Sheriff Derrick McIntyre asked Mr Hunter if Merron could be described as a “nosy parker” who was “filling in time”?

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Emails about BP oil spill rig say cement job went ‘to plan’

  An email exchange on the day the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded revealed that workers thought that the cementing of the well had gone “well”, it has emerged.

Finance

• Despite Reform, Banks Have Room for Risky Deals

  When Congress passed a new financial regulation bill last month, it sought to prevent federally insured banks from making speculative bets using their own money. But that will not stop banks from making bets that some critics deem risky, even as the rules go into effect over the next few years.

• Kotlikoff: U.S. Financial System Fundamentally Corrupt

• Fiscal Austerity and America’s Future

  There are three main views of the financial crisis and the most recent recession. In the first two views, the debate over the fiscal deficit is quite separate from what happened in the crisis. But in the third view, the financial crisis and likelihood of fiscal austerity are closely linked.

• As economy slows and Fed voices conflict, markets look to Bernanke for guidance

  With the housing market retreating, unemployment lingering and top officials at the Federal Reserve in open disagreement over what to do, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is under rising pressure to offer solutions in an address Friday that is likely to be his most important since the end of the financial crisis.

• Fraud Ruling Is Reshaping Federal Cases

  Just hours later, his office filed a motion to dismiss its most prominent criminal case, a seven-year-old corporate-fraud prosecution against two former top executives at Westar Energy, the state’s largest electric utility.

  The reason? The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in June that narrowed the scope of the statute known as theft of “honest services,” leaving him with little choice but to drop the charges, Mr. Grissom said in a short statement.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• WikiLeaks builds a legal shield in Sweden

  Two young Swedes hammer away at computers in a space that is part garage, part college dorm, littered with cables, Coke cans and an empty bottle of ketchup.

  It looks like an unlikely place for the U.S. Pentagon to be worried about.

  But this cramped room in a Stockholm suburb acts as a nerve center for WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website which has published thousands of secret documents on the war in Afghanistan and has promised to post many more.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Rights Holders Launch Initiative To Protect Content In Africa

  Foreign content producers and broadcasters hope the soon-to-be-launched Africa Media Rights Watch will help convince the region’s regulators and consumers alike to increase respect for copyright.

  DISCOP, which organises television content markets in emerging regions, opened shop in Africa last year to bring together broadcasters seeking African and international programming with content distributors, DISCOP Africa Executive Manager Cherise Barsell said in a 24 August interview. But with film and TV piracy rampant in Africa, Basic Lead, the organiser of DISCOP Africa, and consultant Balancing Act-Africa decided to see how the problem affects the continent’s audiovisual sector, she said. Basic Lead is headquartered in Paris and Los Angeles.

• “Writers Groups” presume too much

  Even assuming that every member of each of the collectives actually represented by this “coalition” understand the issues and agree with the letter’s stated position, surely the signatories are aware there are other writer collectives in Canada. Like, say, the Writers Guild of Canada. Further I would hope that they are also aware that there are professional Canadian writers who do not belong to any collective at all. Like me.

• Copyrights

  • Meeting with BIS about the Draft copyright infringement code

    BIS were able to give us some information about likely dates. Everything is falling behind schedule. The cost consultation will result in a ‘Statutory Instrument’ which will decide what portion of the scheme is paid by ISPs (ie, ends up on consumers’ bills) and whether Appellants will have to pay. We should have a public response by the end of this month. We won’t. This is holding Ofcom’s work in turn.

    Additionally, the fact that TalkTalk and BT remain angry and opposed to the Bill’s implementation, and are contesting it via Judicial Review in the High Court, means that Ofcom cannot properly proceed with their work to get the Code implemented.

    Government timetables are never quite as easy as they might seem, but these very tight deadlines, mandated by an Act that did not get proper scrutiny, are continuing to cause error and uncertainty, and failing to give proper reassurance about the effect on our fundamental rights.

  • Big Win for Copyright Collectives

    Some writers groups have reacted angrily to the education exception, claiming it will cost them millions in revenue and arguing that it amounts to an “expropriation of property.” Yet a new decision from the Federal Court of Appeal provides powerful evidence that these fears are exaggerated with the new expanded fair dealing rules still striking a reasonable balance between creators and users.

  • Estimating the Economic Impact of Mass Digitization Projects on Copyright Holders: Evidence from the Google Book Search Litigation

    The debate surrounding the GBS settlement is important to students, writers, researchers, and the general public, as it may decide whether a federal appellate court or even the U.S. Supreme Court allows the best research tool ever designed to survive. If the theory of Microsoft and some publishing trade associations is accepted, the courts may enjoin and destroy GBS, just as Napster was shut down a decade ago.

  • Musopen Wants to Give Classical Music to the Public Domain

    Music lovers take note: the classical music archive Musopen needs your help to liberate some classic symphonies from copyright entanglement. Museopen is looking to solve a difficult problem: while symphonies written by Beethoven, Brahms, Sibelius, and Tchaikovsky are in the public domain, many modern arrangements and sound recordings of those works are copyrighted. That means that even after purchasing a CD or collection of MP3s of this music, you may not be able to freely exercise all the rights you’d associate with works in the public domain, like sharing the music using a peer-to-peer network or using the music in a film project.

  • BMI Appeals Ruling That Lets Venues Route Around BMI, Claiming It Somehow Harms Musicians

  • ACTA

    • Has the U.S. Caved on Secondary Liability in ACTA?

      Following the ninth round of ACTA negotiations in Lucerne, Switzerland in July, it became apparent (after the updated ACTA leaked) that the U.S. had caved on some of its demands to include DMCA-like anti-circumvention language in ACTA. The ACTA provisions still go further than the WIPO Internet treaties by mandating the inclusion of provisions to address circumvention devices, but the treaty moved much closer to the EU approach and became more consistent with the WIPO Internet treaty flexibilities. This represented a major shift for the U.S. and was clearly a loss from what it hoped to achieve within ACTA.

    • Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Accord Likely To Be Signed In September

      The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is likely to be signed here in September, at a vice-ministerial level meeting of 11 parties, Kyodo News quoted the Trade Ministry as saying.

      The International treaty is designed to create an international framework to halt the distribution of counterfeit brand goods and pirated music and film products.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: New X Server, 3D drivers for Radeon 5000 and new stable kernels

  While the new kernel versions mainly correct minor bugs, X.org’s next generation X Server offers a range of improvements. Various code segments released by AMD developers allow the X.org open source drivers for Radeon GPUs to utilise the 2D and 3D acceleration features available with Radeon series 5000 graphics cards.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • O³Spaces Workplace Certified for Univention Corporate Server

    O³Spaces has certified its Workplace Enterprise and Express document management solutions for the Univention Corprate Server (UCS) enterprise Linux operating system.

  • Embarcadero unveils big plans for Delphi

    Embarcadero, which acquired CodeGear in 2008, is set to extend Delphi beyond its roots as a language for building 32-bit Windows applications. Developers will be able to leverage 64-bit systems and run applications on Mac OS X and, later on, Linux and other platforms.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Fix Analog Devices AD1986A Speakers not working in Ubuntu 10.04

  • Fix the Brasero copy/burn error

  • Your own local repository for Mandriva

  • Set up an LDAP server on Fedora

  • How to Make Incremental Backups With Rsync

  • Packet Analyzer: 15 TCPDUMP Command Examples

  • 15 (More) Awesome Conky Configurations

  • Is packaging new software hard?

  • How to use custom keyboard shortcuts for a better workflow

  • Unix How-To: Checking Responses with ckrange

  • PostfixAdmin and Fetchmail

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Tagging: KDE SC 4.5.1

• GNOME Desktop

  • Nautilus’s revamped ‘places’ sidebar

  • publicly thanking dwdiff

    High on the list of things I really enjoy doing is thanking people who contribute to free software. Also high on the list is using software that works well.

    So I just wanted to combine the two and say a public thanks to GP Halkes, for writing and maintaing dwdiff.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Linux Mint 9 Xfce Screenshots

    Most people that come into contact with Linux Mint tend to agree that it’s an excellent distributuion for beginners. In my opinion this is accomplished by the visual appeal and mint-specific tools you won’t find anywhere else.

  • Trying out the Chakra Project

    The Chakra Project looks very promising, albeit very unpolished at the moment. If they can manage to fix up the rest of the distribution, getting it just as polished feeling as the installer, this will definitely be one to look out for. I look forward to trying it out again once it hits a stable release.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat plays Switzerland in balkanized cloud world

    Bryan Che, manager of cloud computing products at Red Hat, said that the DMTF was chosen among many different possible standards bodies because Red Hat has a history with the organization. “We do not want Deltacloud to be under the control of any one vendor, including Red Hat,” Che explained, which is why the project was moved to Apache and the API specs are being handed to DMTF. (Red Hat, by the way, is a member of the DMTF Cloud Management Work Group.)

• Debian Family

  • The Debian apocalipsys

    All my started projects about contributing to Debian gets stopped, until I see Debian as Debian. It’s a pity, but I have to migrate too many systems and that is a lot of work for the next days, only at home… and then I need a solution at work too. This is not for vicious, I’m going to loose skills learned about my OS of choice to jump to others where I will be a newbie. And Debian still has very very nice things.

  • Making Debian Rule, Again (Margarita Manterola)

    She conducted a survey (about 40 respondents) to ask what Debian’s problems are, and grouped them into categories like “motivation” and “communication” (tied for the #1 spot), “visibility” (#3, meaning public awareness and perception of Debian) and so on. She went on to make some suggestions about how to address these problems.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu Multi-Touch Videos: Evince And Inkscape

      Keep in mind that the multi-touch feature is still very early in development. Even so, it already looks impressive as both Evince and Inkscape can’t handle multi-touch by default yet it works great as you can see in the videos above.

    • Allison Randal appointed Technical Architect of Ubuntu

      Allison Randal has been appointed Technical Architect of Ubuntu at Canonical by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth. Randal is known for her work as an architect of the Parrot virtual machine and chairman of the Parrot Foundation and is a board member of the Perl and Python Foundations.

    • 5 Short Yet Beautiful Ubuntu Ads For Your Inspiration

      Ubuntu is already the most popular Linux distribution and probably the first ever Linux distro to overshoot popularity of Linux itself. Now, what Ubuntu needs is a lot of promotional activism from the community. Here is a few Ubuntu adverts from YouTube that I hope will inspire designers among you to get up and start working.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Use Puppy Linux 5.0 for secure on-the-go browsing

        This version especially seems to be stable, fast, and capable. I have taken to running it from a bootable USB drive and the performance has been very nice. Being able to drop these onto untrusted systems and use them as a browser, VPN client, and productivity tool has been handy. Using HoneyPoint Personal Edition, the nmap plugins and some other Puppy installs of security tools gives me a great platform for working incidents, gaining visibility and catching rogue scans, probes and malware that are in circulation when I pull in to help a client. Over and over again, the distro has proven itself to be a very powerful tool for me.

        I suggest you take a look at the distro, LiveCD or USB and see how it can help you. I think you’ll find it fun, easy to use, and quite addicting. The pictures of the puppies dont hurt either.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Ubuntu Fans, This Theme Is For You: Download Ubuntu Theme For ADW Launcher

      Ryan launched the theme 4 days ago and so far it’s been well received scoring a 4.28/5 average with more than 5000 downloads.

    • New, inexpensive color e-readers have Android under the hood

      Although Google’s Android mobile operating system is principally designed for phones, it is also increasingly showing up on low-cost tablets and other kinds of mobile devices. The platform is rapidly emerging as a major contender in the e-book reader market, where it is attracting a growing number of hardware vendors.

      Barnes and Noble’s popular Nook is arguably the most prominent Android-based e-book reader, but there are also a number of intriguing offerings from other vendors. Some are differentiating their readers by eschewing battery-friendly e-ink in favor of color LCD screens. These products take a more tablet-like approach and give users the advantage of a multifunction Internet-enabled device at nearly the same price point as regular e-book readers.

    • WordPress for Android adds new comment feature

      The WordPress developers have announced the release of version 1.3.4 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.

    • Dell Answers Critics Demanding Streak’s Source Code

      The problem, according to a small but vocal group of developers and enthusiasts online, is that the Streak uses code licensed under the GNU General Public License, which allows third parties to both use and modify the code, provided that the company or person publishes the object code, either as part of a shipping device, on a physical medium, or publicly available via a server.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Jolicloud, an Ubuntu netbook OS

    Krim had already used Ubuntu servers for Netvibes and had been using Linux for 18 years so the OS choice for Jolicloud was a no brainer. Despite having scant experience with desktop Linux for a while, Krim’s team went full steam ahead with his next project. From initial conception to release, it took them just over a year to get Jolicloud rolled out.

    “We built Jolicloud on top of Ubuntu because I met Mark Shuttleworth at a Google event and I used Ubuntu servers for Netvibes. This Debian based Linux had a good reputation and good drivers. We could have picked Fedora. To be honest we didn’t spend too much time thinking about it.”

Blender Gets Mixamo Motions

Mixamo has announced new support for Blender users looking to create high-quality character animations for their 3D projects.

Bossies Awards 2010: The best open source software of the year

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Free All Software

  “Software should always be free because all users of software deserve freedom,” says Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, and a longtime activist.

• Hacking for change

  In Bangalore, Linux was used exclusively and extensively by academia. Early adopters of Linux, the scientific community in the Indian Institute of Science and research organisations deeply benefitted from free, collaborative and open nature of the GNU movement. So, the earliest informal Linux Users Groups were perhaps born in these academic circles.

Project Releases

• Rails 3.0: Release candidate 2

  The release candidate process is progressing as planned. This second candidate has very few changes over the first, which means that unless any blockers are discovered with this release, we’re targeting the final release of Rails 3.0 for this week(!!!).

Licensing

• The future of open source licensing

  Glyn argues that this “is worse than the GNU GPL with copyright assignment”, where a single copyright holder is able to provide a closed-source version. Is it really worse to have a situation in which everyone has an equal opportunity to go closed-source than one in which the control and power lies with a single vendor?

  Either way, Glyn also notes that the ability of the copyright holder to act as a monopolist is “hardly what Richard Stallman had in mind when he drew up the GPL”. This is probably true, but it should be noted that Stallman has defended selling license exceptions (also known as dual licensing), which is the practice that enables vendor-controlled open core strategies (which Stallman opposes).

  In fact, it is worth considering that the issues that seem to cause the most controversy around open source-related business strategies – vendor-controlled open source projects, open core licensing, copyright assignment, and dual licensing – are all perpetuated by copyleft and the GNU GPL.

  It doesn’t have to be the case that the GNU GPL leads to a dominant open source vendor, of course. Glyn explains how assigning copyright to a non-commercial entity, such as the Free Software Foundation, avoid this problem. Another approach (although one that has problems of its own), is to ensure that individual contributors own the copyright to their own contributions.

USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know

After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. But is it already obsolete?

Consumer electronics and computer vendors used the Consumer Electronics Show this past January to launch USB 3.0, an update to the popular standard external data transfer interface. The new speed of USB 3.0 generated a lot of interest.344

Insider’s View: How Grandstanding State Attorneys General Make Life Miserable For Law Abiding Tech Companies

For years, we’ve pointed out how various state attorneys general seem to focus much more on grandstanding against certain companies, rather than actually helping in certain situations. What was really amazing was the incredibly clear pattern every time it happened. It would involve an attorney general who was running for higher office, going to the press and threatening some company, even if there was no legal basis whatsoever for the threat. It’s as if every AG running for higher office has taken a page out of the playbook of Eliot Spitzer who used this strategy for years to get him headlines that took him right into the NY governor’s mansion (which, of course, he then left due to a different sort of headline a few years later…).

Health/Nutrition

• What’s New for Dinner

  Recent estimates blame agriculture for as much as 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and nitrogen fertilizers account for more miasma than all those methane-belching cows and sheep combined. But even as the power of the American food movement waxes, organic farms still make up less than 1 percent of this country’s cropland. The unignorable presence of that other 99 percent has forced many environmentalists to a singularly pragmatic conclusion: If there is going to be a significant attempt to slash the use of water, fossil fuels, fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides — the resource-sucking carbon and chemical footprint that has come to define the modern agro-industrial complex — the bulk of that effort will have to emerge from the operations of large-scale, conventional farms. The assault on business as usual will come from the everyday operations of Frank Muller’s farm.

Security/Aggression

• Who is Andrew Wilke?

  A former Duntroon cadet, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and worked for US defence giant Raytheon.

  He continued his defence career as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessment.

  He caused a huge storm in 2003 when he resigned and spoke out against the Howard government on the Iraq war, saying there was no intelligence to indicate Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

  Dr Peter Bowden from Whistleblowers Australia says Andrew Wilkie is a hero.

• Secret US military computers ‘cyber attacked’ in 2008

  A 2008 cyber attack launched from an infected flash drive in the Middle East penetrated secret US military computers, a Pentagon official says.

  The attack by a foreign spy service was the “most significant breach” ever of US military networks, Deputy Defence Secretary William Lynn said.

  Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, Mr Lynn described it as a “digital beachhead” to steal military secrets.

  [...]

  Mr Lynn, a former defence lobbyist and military budget official under former President Bill Clinton, warned the Pentagon had to speed up the process by which it develops and acquires cyber defence kit.

• Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested Over Anonymous Source

  About four months ago, Ed Felten blogged about a research paper in which Hari Prasad, Rop Gonggrijp, and I detailed serious security flaws in India’s electronic voting machines. Indian election authorities have repeatedly claimed that the machines are “tamperproof,” but we demonstrated important vulnerabilities by studying a machine provided by an anonymous source.

  The story took a disturbing turn a little over 24 hours ago, when my coauthor Hari Prasad was arrested by Indian authorities demanding to know the identity of that source.

• Hotel raider caught red-handed after burglary escapes due to ‘lack of evidence’

  But they were forced to drop their haul when staff spotted the pair on CCTV and raised the alarm.

  The security video then captured the duo running through the hotel and jumping 15ft from a roof into the car park to escape.

  At that moment police arrived and arrested one of the offenders on suspicion of attempted burglary at the Hotel Rembrandt in Weymouth, Dorset.

  But hotel staff were shocked when they received a call from the police three days later to say they were dropping the case because of insufficient forensic evidence.

• Look what I found at the bus stop

  …a CD containing the scans of 112 patient records taken from the Intensive Care Unit of New Cross Hospital’s Heart and Lung Unit in Wolverhampton.

• Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

• Fixed Penalty Notices

  Prior to this I discussed FPNs on Radio 4, when I made it clear that FPNs are a way of disposing of a case without any admission of fault on the part of the person who takes them and no criminal record of any kind. Nevertheless, anecdotally I gather that they have wrongly been treated as such in our criminal courts when it comes to good character directions in trials and so forth.

Finance

• Will Perpetrators of Financial Crimes Ever Face Justice?

  A review of the settlements shows an array of fraudulent and illegal actions.

  * Predatory, deceptive and abusive lending related to mortgages
  * Securities fraud, including creating investment vehicles designed to fail
  * Accounting fraud
  * Brokerage fraud
  * Bribery of government officials
  * Undisclosed conflict of interest in financial analysis and advice
  * Lying to shareholders and investors
  * Robbing consumers with abusive overdraft fees
  * Robbing homeowners by overcharging them by hundreds or thousands of dollars, when they were already in bankruptcy and foreclosure

  A review of cases reveals a pattern: no admission of wrongdoing, earnest promises to do a better job and a fine representing a fraction of the infraction. Because the fine is paid by shareholders, no one is held accountable and the whole incident is swept under the rug.

• Lessons from the Bell, California Fiasco

  High government salaries means soaring pension costs that taxpayers cannot afford.

• Leaked Documents Provide Glimpse Behind Baseball’s Financial Curtain

  From that, we know that the New York Yankees’ valuation sits at a cool $1.6 billion, with the average club worth just under $500 million.

  [...]

  Maury Brown of the excellent Biz of Baseball blog has done a tremendous job of breaking down all the nitty gritty in the Deadspin exclusive. Here are some of the juicier tidbits:

  • Of the five teams who had their info leaked, only the Mariners didn’t make a profit in a given year, losing $4.5 million in 2008.

  • Thanks to the league’s generous revenue-sharing program, the Pirates received some $69 million from MLB over the 2008 and 2009 seasons.

  • As it relates to revenues received from concessions – which are typically run by outside entities, which then cut the team in on some percentage of the profits – the Marlins made $1.64 per fan in attendance last season.

  • The Pirates franchise, for all of its on-field ineptitude, invested some $44 million in player development over the ‘07 and ‘08 seasons.

  Don’t think MLB will sit idly back as this story develops.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The Rise of Branded Journalism

  Once upon a time, the writers and analysts who covered Kaspersky Lab as it slogged towards victory against the likes of McAfee and Symantec included Dennis Fisher at eWeek, Paul Roberts at The451 Group, and Ryan Naraine of ZDNet. These men were among the top editors and analysts covering the anti-virus space of the day (2004–present).

  Now, each and every one of these highly credentialed gentlemen produce superb content for Kaspersky Lab — as employees. They are contributing to the Company’s well-regarded global IT Security news site, Threatpost. With talent like Fisher, Roberts and Naraine working the levers, Threatpost is, well, a legitimate threat to the ZDNet’s, CNet’s, and SC Magazine’s of the world…

• Public Campaign, CMD & Media Matters Issue Joint Letter After News Corp.’s $1 Million Donation to Republican Governors Assoc.

  We are writing today to ask that the White House Correspondents Association reconsider its decision to allow Fox News Channel a front-row seat in the White House briefing room in light of reports that Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., has donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association — a massive ethical lapse that demonstrates Fox News’ inability to function as an objective media institution.

  Media outlets are supposed to cover elections and issues to inform voters, not help to elect candidates who espouse certain positions. With so much News Corp. money invested in the election of Republican gubernatorial candidates, can Fox News be expected to disinterestedly cover those races or Republican politics in general?

• Bill O’Reilly and the Fox-Comcast Crushing Machine

  Some felt the choice of O’Reilly was improper given his reputation for inflammatory rhetoric and bullying of people who disagree with him. One person who took exception to the award was Barry Nolan, host of another cable show produced by Comcast called “Backstage with Barry Nolan.” One month before the awards ceremony, Nolan emailed the Academy’s governing board and asked them to reconsider giving the award to O’Reilly. Nolan also made public his opposition to the award.

• Bombastic TV Host Glenn Beck And Religious Right ‘Professor’ David Barton Team Up To Rewrite American History

  David Barton, a Texas-based Religious Right activist and self-styled historian, recently cited the Muhlenberg tale as evidence that Christian pastors were involved in “every aspect” of the founding.

  Unfortunately for Barton and his allies, the story is almost certainly untrue. No contemporary accounts of it exist. The tale first appeared in 1849 – long after Muhlenberg’s death – during a time when an influx of immigrants from Germany was eager to prove its loyalty by holding up a hero with genuine revolutionary credibility.

  Most likely, the tale is a “pious legend” designed to inflate the importance of a historical figure by underscoring his essential goodness. It’s akin to stories of the young George Washington refusing to tell a lie about that cherry tree.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• New Law to Stop Companies from Checking Facebook Pages in Germany

  Good news for jobseekers who like to brag about their drinking exploits on Facebook: A new law in Germany will stop bosses from checking out potential hires on social networking sites. They will, however, still be allowed to google applicants.

  Lying about qualifications. Alcohol and drug use. Racist comments. These are just some of the reasons why potential bosses reject job applicants after looking at their Facebook profiles.

  According to a 2009 survey commissioned by the website CareerBuilder, some 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. And some 35 percent of those employers had rejected candidates based on what they found there, such as inappropriate photos, insulting comments about previous employers or boasts about their drug use.

• Julian Assange Gets The Bog Standard Smear Technique

  The Russians call it Kompromat – the use by the state of sexual accusations to destroy a public figure. When I was attacked in this way by the government I worked for, Uzbek dissidents smiled at me, shook their heads and said “Kompromat”. They were used to it from the Soviet and Uzbek governments. They found it rather amusing to find that Western governments did it too.

  Well, Julian Assange has been getting the bog standard Kompromat. I had imagined he would get something rather more spectacular, like being framed for murder and found hanging with an orange in his mouth. He deserves a better class of kompromat. If I am a whistleblower, then Julian is a veritable mighty pipe organ. Yet we just have the normal sex stuff, and very weak.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Madonna Slapped with Material Girl Lawsuit

  Talk about a fashion don’t! Madonna is being sued over the rights to use the “Material Girl” name for the trendy juniors clothing line that she designed with daughter Lourdes. Apparel manufacturer LA Triumph slapped the superstar with a lawsuit Thursday, claiming that it had been marketing clothes under the “Material Girl” brand since 1997.

• Copyrights

  • Publishing Raymond Carver’s ‘Original’ Stories as ‘Fair Use’

    This is a paper on copyright law as it relates to the controversy of publishing Raymond Carver’s stories in their unedited form.

    The controversy arose when Raymond Carver’s widow, Tess Gallagher, expressed her desire to publish these stories because Carver’s editor, Gordon Lish, had dramatically changed their character and style. Indeed, she claimed that these unedited stories represented the “real” Caver, whom she wished to reveal to the world. However, Carver’s estate no longer owns the copyrights to these stories.

    The issue is particularly interesting because the “original” versions of the stories are considerably different from the published versions as edited by Lish. Thus, there is some ambiguity as to whether they are covered by the copyright of the published stories; in essence, they are the building blocks of the published versions, and thus it is unclear whether they would be considered derivative works.

    These questions aside, this papers explores the role of an editor and various ways that editors receive recognition for their efforts. It then explores joint authorship under American law, and how the Carver situation would be different in a jurisdiction where moral rights are recognized. Finally, “fair use” is applied to to the particular facts to permit the revelation of Carver’s unedited oeuvre.

  • Pirates Not Liable For Violating Publicity Rights

    Jordan, whose real name is Ashley Gasper, claimed that the defendants wrongfully misappropriated his name and likeness by selling counterfeit DVDs featuring his “dramatic performances” and by using his name and likeness on the covers. The jury agreed with Jordan and awarded him approximately $2.85 million, including $2.5 million in punitive damages.

  • Samsung Blu-ray players won’t play Warner, Universal movies after firmware update, require a rollback

    As annoying as continuous Blu-ray player updates are, usually having the latest one is the best way to play more movies. Unfortunately the opposite was the case for Samsung (again) with the v2.09 update posted recently for its 2009 BD-Px600 line of players. Forum posters on CNET and AVSForum report the upgrade blocked them from playing Universal and Warner Bros. movies, which conveniently lock up after displaying the title image.