08.29.10
Links 29/8/2010: GNU/Linux Jobs Demand, Archos 7
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Contents
GNU/Linux
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CIOs seek special skills in Linux admins
The demand for Linux administrators is on the rise, but CIOs have trouble finding IT pros with all of the qualities needed to run an open source environment.
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The Last Temptation of the Linux Application Developer
There is a finite supply of developers in the world, and app developers don’t grow on trees. Specifically, I think desktop Linux application developers are soon going to be in short supply: an unintended consequence of the fact that Android and MeeGo are each Linux-based.
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PS3 ‘jailbreak’ already frozen by courts
Sony today took quick action to shut down PS3 modders with legal action against PS Jailbreak. The console maker was granted a temporary ban on PS Jailbreak in Australia that will prevent the USB mod, which ‘unlocks’ the PS3 to allow unapproved software, from being sold in the country until a final decision from courts on whether it remains legal. The terms discovered by PS3Hax also give Sony control over current inventory and will likely see it reverse engineer the hack to patch against it as well as destroy the stock.
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IBM: Apple Tops in Patching Critical Security Holes
However, when IBM broke out data for “Critical and High Vulnerability” disclosures, Microsoft is king of the heap, with 73% of disclosures involving Windows. Linux was #216%, and Apple was #3 with 9%, as you can see in the figure below.
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Droid 2: A Nice Tweak
As the Smartphone Summer of 2010 lurches to a close, Verizon Wireless and Motorola have refreshed their product lines with the Droid 2 ($200 with a two-year contract), an update to the 10-month-old popular Droid slider phone.
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Kernel Space
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An ancient kernel hole is closed
The problem was discovered by Rafal Wojtczuk of Invisible Things Lab (ITL) while working on Qubes OS, ITL’s virtualization-based, security-focused operating system. ITL’s CEO Joanna Rutkowska describes the flaw on the company’s blog and Wojtczuk released a paper [PDF] on August 17 with lots more details. In that paper, he notes that he reported the problem to the X.org security team on June 17, and by June 20 the team had determined that it should be fixed in the kernel. But it took until August 13 before that actually happened.
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Applications
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Instructionals/Technical
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Devices/Embedded
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Aluratek’s E-reader Cracks the $100 Barrier
Aluratek’s Libre e-reader comes in different colors and is priced at $169 on the company’s website. The device can open e-books in the PDF, ePub, MOBI, PRC, RTF and text electronic book formats.
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Why Amazon Won’t Release Kindle Sales Figures
But how many Kindles have you sold, Amazon? Strangely enough, the company won’t say. It never has.
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Phones
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HP Tablet Hobbled by Lack of WebOS Apps
Now that Hewlett-Packard has announced plans to release a webOS tablet early next year, its next big goal–in addition to building the device–is to persuade software developers to write apps for the mobile gadget. Given the early popularity of Apple’s iPad, as well as the imminent arrival of numerous tablets running Google’s Android OS, that task could prove challenging.
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HP teases 3 new prototypes
Since the recent HP buyout of PALM we have been waiting for what HP may have in store for us. Well HP’s CTO Phil McKinney has tweeted some pictures of 3 new devices that could be released in the near future. The picture has the devices blacked out so we can only see their outlines but 1 seems to be a tablet, other a phone, and 3rd is something on his wrist maybe a media player? The second link on his twitter status leads us to a SXSW panel that he will be speaking at about devices of the future. So these devices may be further off than we think, or he might bring the future to us now.
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Nokia/MeeGo
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Nokia and Intel Explicate MeeGo Advantages in LinuxCon
Early this year, the MeeGo project was introduced by Intel and Nokia and brought the market a distinctive concept of using the Linux platform in the mobile device.
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Intel and Nokia found R&D lab
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Android
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Android “Horrendous” For Developers, Still Beats iOS
While developer interest in Android is finally starting to catch up to iOS, the open-source OS is far from the most convenient system to work with. Joe Hewitt, the extremely talented developer behind the iPhone’s Facebook app, recently switched over to Android due to his frustration with the restrictive nature of App Store policies.
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Archos 7 Android tablet
Dominating the front of the 7 is a resistive 16 million colour 800 x 480 7in LCD screen with a matt finish. Archos has a tradition of quality displays and the 7 Home Tablet doesn’t disappoint; it’s crisp, bright and colourful although the viewing angle is not exactly robust in the vertical plane.
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Acer Android tablet release date wobbles
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Advanced Task Manager app maker makes $80,000 with Android app
I’ve written before about the challenges of making money on Android apps.
Well, Arron La, maker of the Advanced Task Manager app has released some interesting data that suggests that, even with its problems, Android can make a decent amount of money for someone. No, it’s not crazy iPhone app money, but it’s a start.
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Bango: Android Web Browsing Up 400%
U.S.-based Android users are an active (and likely multiplying) bunch, according to new data from a mobile payment specialist called Bango. The company’s determined that, between the first and second quarters, the volume of Web browsing conducted on Android devices increased by a whopping 400 percent.
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The 22 Best Android Apps
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Tablets
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Toshiba is building an Android tablet
Apparently, the Taiwanese component makers have it pegged for an early Autumn release with between 40,000 to 50,000 units forecast.
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Free Software/Open Source
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Time to take another look at Open Source?
Despite recent economic improvement, 82% of organizations are facing flat or falling IT budgets in 2011, up from 78% in 2010. As a result, implementation success comes from providing strategic value while minimizing both capital and operational expenses. Alternatives such as cloud-based services and open-source derived products have the potential to reduce these costs while meeting business application requirements.
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Events
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Taking a Pause For Ohio LinuxFest
We have an awesome schedule line-up with Free talks: Jon Maddog Hall to deliver the kick-off keynote Friday September 10, Stormy Peters to answer the AM keynote question Who is stealing your desktop and closing keynote of Christopher “Monty” Montgomery on the The Digital Media Frontier.
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But I don’t know Linux well enough to go to LinuxFest
Maybe you need some time learning Linux on the desktop skills. Even if you have always used Windows, by the end of the Ohio LinuxFest Linux Basics class, you will be savvy enough to install Linux and transfer your daily work into the GNOME desktop environment with Ubuntu. This class is a great too for anyone who wants an overview of Linux to broaden your IT knowledge. Either way, you will have a hands-on experience which will turn you into a bug-one crushing warrior.
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Get Your Training On at OLFU
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Web Browsers
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Google Chrome to get Gmail Labs-like experimental features
Google OS spotted a new addition to the Chromium browser: an about:labs page. Load it up, and you’ll see experimental browser features which you can enable — like side tabs on Windows and tab expose on Mac.
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Google quietly revs Chrome dev to version 7
Bugs are nothing new to the developers version of Chrome, which is intended to be a rougher version of the browser than the beta or stable channels. A new bug indicates that the new developers version is incompatible with streaming Netflix movies, while another appears to be affecting the rendering of extension fonts. Some users are reporting that the search function in the location bar is no longer working for them, although that doesn’t appear to be affecting all users at this time. Because these bugs are in the developers version, it’s expected that they’ll get fixed before the beta and stable versions receive updates.
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Oracle
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Oracle MySQL users have little loyalty to Oracle
Oracle MySQL end users say it’s still too early to see how Oracle will invest in the open source database platform, but they won’t hesitate to migrate to other MySQL forks if Oracle MySQL hits a dead end.
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Ghost of Sun’s Schwartz chides Oracle’s Google lawsuit
In November 2007, Jonathan Schwartz wrote on his blog “Congratulations Google, Red Hat and the Java Community!” praising Google’s use of Java in Android.
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CMS
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WordPress for BlackBerry, Android and Symbian Updates Available for Download
The Android build, now at version 1.3.5, has a longer change list, including: more stable preview of blog posts, a fix regarding multi-language support which made long strings of text break the interface, a patch for an issue which caused the option to turn off the Mobile Theme to randomly disappear, and another one for the occasional adding of random extra paragraph HTML tags when editing a blog post.
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Healthcare
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Government Saves Lives with Free Software
At VA Hospitals nationwide, the government was deploying VISTA. No, not Microsoft Windows Vista, VISTA – the open source medical records system. It keeps track of all of information concerning a patient’s care – no matter where in the country they go. Medications, pharmacies, doctor visits, dates, diagnosis.. it is all there. Nurses recommended that VISTA work with scan-able wrist bands. Now patients’ wrists are scanned prior to medicating and procedures with immediate feedback for the medical professionals who are providing the care as the care is administered. It saves lives and the government money. This is change that I can believe in.
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Openness/Sharing
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Open Data
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Linked data is opening 800 years of UK legal info
Earlier this month, the National Archives of the United Kingdom launched legislation.gov.uk to provide public access to a primary source of legal information for citizens. Legislation.gov.uk covers more than 800 years of legal history in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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Opensource and Javascript: Polymaps Used To Make PrettyMaps
This is not the first chunk of geo code that SimpleGeo has opensourced (just go check Github). They are in the business of selling geodata and geo cloud services. By releasing these tools they make it easier for companies without geoexpertise to get hooked on their services. As SimpleGeo opens up it’s market and takes on more customers we’ll see that happening. Along the way it’s a great benefit to the mapping and mobile commmunity.
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Earthquakes are HUGE on Data.gov
After launching just over a year ago with only 47 data sets, the “Raw Data Catalog” catalog on Data.gov now has 2,326 entries that have been collectively downloaded almost three-quarters of a million times. Of course, even these sizable download counts understate the actual impact of this data, which is being embedded in a variety of sites and apps, like those being developed for the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge.
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Standards/Consortia
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Panvidea Supports WebM Open Media Project
Panvidea™, a global leader in on-demand video encoding, preparation, processing and distribution for entertainment and advertising content across any digital platform, has today announced broad and comprehensive support for Google’s new WebM project, along with Adobe, Microsoft, and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors. The new WebM open web media format, based on the VP8 open source video codec, is immediately available to all users of Panvidea’s cloud based video encoding and processing service (www.panvidea.com) at no additional charge as part of the company’s already extensive list of the highest quality video and audio codecs and containers.
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Youtube gets an HTML5 website for mobiles
MOBILE HTML5 VIDEO is now accessible at Youtube through a website dedicated to the format for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
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Leftovers
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Google continues its assault on the price of a phone call
But if you use Google’s new, free phone-calling option (http://gmail.com/call), that figure drops to zero.
On Wednesday, the Web giant announced that American users of its Gmail Web service could call numbers in the United States and Canada for free from within their browsers. Calls elsewhere cost less than many traditional long-distance domestic calls: You pay 2 cents a minute to call Ireland, Korea, Argentina and many other countries. (Google’s rates top out at 99 cents a minute for those calling the island nation of Nauru.)
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How web journalism can make people seem hateful
There is very little evidence, if any, that Sarah Palin hates teachers, or that Andrew Breitbart is a racist. Yet a recent flood of viral stories propagated by internet journalists allegedly catch prominent conservatives red-handed in acts of hate.
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As errors grow, so does a credibility gap
A single major error can damage a news organization. But incessant lesser ones can be more harmful. Like a cancer, they gradually destroy credibility and eventually sever the organization’s bond of trust with its audience.
Many readers say that’s happening with The Post. This summer, and especially over the past month, there has been a spike in complaints about inexcusable “little” mistakes.
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Many complaints involve mistakes online, where editing sometimes seems minimal. Several readers have said inaccurate information has remained even after they alerted writers or the Web site.
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New Digg Is Live: What It Means For Digg and For You
What Digg may benefit from is the new seamlessness of the submission and consumption processes. Users that are looking for a curated stream alongside the popular content can do it on Digg. The majority of Digg’s userbase will likely find the new design refreshing and it very well may gain some traction among users that feel overwhelmed with the real-time news stream or the pontifications in their news feed. Better yet, Digg may attract a whole new audience looking for a place to discover news through curated sources.
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Michael Grade: BBC too big
The former BBC and ITV chairman Michael Grade has called for the corporation to be reduced in size, claiming it is “almost unmanageable now” and “too big”.
Grade, who was BBC chairman for two-and-a-half years from May 2004, also said he thought that some of the licence fee should be shared with Channel 4.
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Titanic Is Falling Apart
Already explorers have documented caved-in roofs, weakening decks, a stern perhaps on the edge of collapse, and the disappearance of Titanic’s crow’s nest—from which lookout Frederick Fleet spotted history’s most infamous iceberg. (Watch an animation of Titanic’s iceberg collision, breakup, and sinking.)
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IBMer blames mistress for making him mis-talk
obert Moffat, once tipped for the top job at IBM, has blamed his mistress for encouraging him to give her information which she used for insider dealing.
He is facing securities fraud and conspiracy charges, and prosecutors are asking for a six month prison sentence.
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Intel Said to Be Near Purchase of Infineon Division
Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, is close to an agreement to buy Infineon Technologies AG’s wireless business, three people with direct knowledge of the discussions said.
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Satyam Founder Gets Bail as Case Drags on
The former chairman and founder of Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services was released on bail on Wednesday by the High Court in Andhra Pradesh, state of south India.
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Three Sentenced in Scam Targeting Tech Vendors
Three people were sentenced to prison terms Thursday for their roles in a multimillion-dollar scheme targeting payments to IT and consulting services vendors from four state governments, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
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Science
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MOON SHRINKING FAST – shock NASA discovery
Imagery from a NASA spacecraft has revealed that the Moon has shrunk significantly in recent times: indeed, instruments placed by the Apollo astronauts are thought to have recorded the rumbling, crunching sounds of lunar shrinkage carrying on in just the last few decades.
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Lunar orbiter sees shrinking Moon
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Mars as big as Moon is a Hoax
The Mars Hoax is once again showing up in emails all around the world. It states that the planet Mars will appear in the sky as large as the Moon on August 27, 2010. This will not happen! It is all a hoax! And, many of you are perpetuating this email falsehood.
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See third fireball on Jupiter
A third impact of a body onto the planet Jupiter in thirteen months has been recorded by two amateur astronomers in Japan. The resulting flash is shown on a video taken by one of the Japanese astronomers.
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Boffins learn to adjust body clocks
Good news today for sufferers from jet lag, bipolar depression, interstellar or interplanetary colonists and others plagued by disorders relating to the circadian rhythm – or body clock.
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Security/Aggression
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Wikileaks publishes CIA ‘Red Cell’ memo on risks of US perceived as “exporter of terrorism”
The leak is the third to hit Wikileaks since Assange faced a storm of allegations in Sweden, just four days ago.
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McAfee re-issues fake visa waiver virus warning
Proving there’s not much new under the sun, McAfee is warning travellers to the US to be aware of the danger of fake visa waiver websites.
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Japanese press step into execution chamber
Japan’s justice minister Keiko Chiba has invited the press to enter the Tokyo Detention Centre execution chamber, shortly after she personally attended the hanging of two convicted murderers.
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Rustock Botnet Responsible for 40 Percent of Spam
More than 40 percent of the world’s spam is coming from a single network of computers that computer security experts continue to battle, according to new statistics from Symantec’s MessageLabs’ division.
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Rustock Botnet Changes Tactics
Rustock’s use of TLS is now averages between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of all spam, peaking at 0.5 percent, a tiny fraction of the levels seen in March when it reached averages of around 25 percent with a peak of as much as 77 percent.
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British Airways sorry for ‘landing on water’ nonsense
British Airways has apologized for telling 275 passengers en route from London to Hong Kong that their Boeing 747 was in imminent danger of crashing into the sea.
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Environment/Energy/Wildlife
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Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor: it’s not too late to turn back
Regardless of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or not, nuclear programmes breed mistrust and constitute a major proliferation threat. The international community is failing to address this problem. A lasting solution to the spread of nuclear weapons should include an end to enrichment, the phase-out of nuclear power and complete disarmament by all nuclear weapon states.
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How many Arctic cowboys does it take to lasso an iceberg?
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How Green Tech Can Help the World Go Oil-Free
Unfortunately for the Gulf’s fishing and shrimping economy, many of us will choose not to feed ourselves from its supply for a while, but the decision to stop feeding our voracious addiction to petroleum with deep sea deposits is more controversial. Even as the fishing industry, wildlife, and wetlands that were hit by the Gulf spill remain in a desperate condition, offering a bleak reality check on the consequences of our oil dependence, one can still hear “Drill Baby, Drill!” echoing through the halls of Congress.
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To Protect, Renew, and Re-Tool: An Interview with Kristina Hill on Managing the Effects of Climate Change
Kristina Hill, PhD, Affiliate ASLA, is Chair of the Landscape Architecture department at the University of Virginia. Recently, the American Society of Landscape Architects interviewed her about how best to manage the effects of climate change, especially in designing cities.
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New Study Shows Americans Used Less Energy and More Renewables in 2009
U.S. energy use fell in 2009 and Americans used more wind and solar power and less electricity generated by burning coal and natural gas, according to a survey by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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New Evidence Links Sprawl to Parking Minimumss
A team of economists from the University of Munich recently released a study examining the effects of mandatory parking minimums on development in urban and suburban Los Angeles. The team found that parking minimums “significantly increase” the amount of land devoted to parking, to the detriment of water quality, pedestrian safety and non-automotive modes of transportation.
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1962 oil company ad boasts about ability to melt glaciers
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Scientists Say as Much as 79% of Oil Remains in Gulf of Mexico
A group of scientists have found that up to 79% of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico may still remain, contradicting earlier findings by a U.S. government study that found nearly 75% of the oil had dissipated.
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People have NO BLOODY IDEA about saving energy
People who make an effort to be eco-friendly – for instance by recycling glass bottles, turning off lights and unplugging cellphone chargers – have no idea what they’re on about, according to a new survey. Those who don’t bother are more likely to know what actually saves energy and what doesn’t.
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Australia drops the ball on green IT
More than four out of five Australian IT departments have never seen their power bill – a stark example of how a lack of metrics has led to Australia falling behind the UK and US when it comes to greening ICT.
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BBC dumps Gulf oil spill on Middlesbrough
In case you’ve ever wondered just how far a Mars rover might have wandered if it had set out from your front door, or indeed the exact area covered by the Chernobyl radiation cloud, if that ill-fated nuclear facility had been built at your mum’s house, then look no further than BBC Dimensions.
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Activist: Gulf fishermen being held responsible for toxic seafood
Louisiana fishermen’s activist Kindra Arnesen says dock owners are asking fishermen to sign waivers that put the full responsibility for toxins found in the catch on the fishermen themselves.
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Study: Oil spill cleanup workers suffered chromosome damage, respiratory issues
Spanish fishermen who took part in a clean-up operation after the Prestige oil tanker spill in 2002 have shown symptoms of chromosomal damage and respiratory problems, a study released Tuesday said.
The study, conducted by Spanish researchers between September 2004 and February 2005 on 501 fishermen who helped clean up Europe’s worst oil spill, was published in the American review Annals of Internal Medicine.
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Finance
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Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis
As the housing boom began to slow in mid-2006, investors became skittish about the riskier parts of those investments. So the banks created — and ultimately provided most of the money for — new CDOs. Those new CDOs bought the hard-to-sell pieces of the original CDOs. The result was a daisy chain that solved one problem but created another: Each new CDO had its own risky pieces. Banks created yet other CDOs to buy those.
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Quantitative Easing round 1.5
QE in 08/09 has been applied. Basically the FED prints money and buys stuff. Note that this is no different from how the modern banking system works. Banks create money out of thin air (that is the money multiplier) and PEOPLE buy stuff with it. Market centric wisdom says that markets will allocate that money to the most productive use. SO let the banks create money, lend it and let the people make the smart decisions.
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Little Geeks on the Prairie
That’s where the Cringely Startup Tour stopped recently to visit Maverick Software Consulting and find out where’s the beef. This Maverick (the consulting company) has come up with an amazing business model for software consulting services — one that employs American programmers yet meets or beats the cost of using programmers in India or China. But it is much more than just a price-competitive service: Maverick Software Consulting also gives prospective technical employers a newer and better way to directly recruit good programmers.
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While Maverick looks only marginally profitable on paper, the business has no debt, is completely bootstrapped, is keeping dozens — eventually hundreds — of jobs in America. And if they can scale the business the way they think they can there’s nothing that says the founders won’t soon be paying themselves a bootload of money while remaining mavericks — unbranded.
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Man Spreads Homelessness Awareness on YouTube
Saturday was Invisible People.tv day at YouTube. InvisiblePeople.tv is a site/project that utilizes social media tools like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace to spread awareness about the growing homelessness problem.
The channel was featured on YouTube’s home page over the weekend, and YouTube discussed it in a company blog post, speaking with Founder Mark Horvath.
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Home sales plunge 27 pct. to lowest in 15 years
Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.
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Ex-UBS whistleblower hits out at ‘corrupt’ US justice
Former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld hit out on Saturday against the “corrupt” US judiciary which sent him to jail even though he was the whistleblower who led to the US tax fraud case against the bank.
“The Department of Justice’s corruption is evident today — why am I the only one in prison when I had revealed everything?” the US banker asked in a French-language interview with Swiss newspaper Le Temps.
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Lobbying
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India Plans to Lobby for Drop in U.S. Visa Fees
A new U.S. law that increases visa fees to pay for border security is a national issue for India rather than one that only affects Indian outsourcing companies, according to India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).
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Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
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Google seeks UK privacy lobbyist
Are you a privacy lawyer? Would you take pride in working for a company with “a real soul”? Is your brain impervious to cognitive dissonance? Could you grow a brass neck?
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Spain investigates Google Street View wi-fi snooping
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Google censors Sex Party political ads
The Australian Sex Party has charged that anti-filter corporate campaigner Google censored its lampoon advertisement “Jerk Choices,” reclassifying it as Adult Only despite the parody already having been played in prime time on free to air television.
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Greens would require ISPs to offer PC-based net filters
The Greens propose spending the $40.8m the Labor Government has budgeted for cyber-safety initiatives on range of measures including mandating the supply of PC-based filtering by ISPs, further research into cyber safety risks, strengthened law enforcement, and net literacy education.
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MSNBC rejects anti-Target ad from liberal group
MSNBC rejects ad from liberal MoveOn.org calling for Target boycott over political donation
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Facebook Deletes North Korean Account, but It Resurfaces
A Facebook account established by a North Korea-linked Web site was deleted by the social networking service on Friday, but a new group sprang up over the weekend to take its place.
The account belonged to Uriminzokkiri, a Web site that provides Korean-language news and propaganda from North Korea’s central news agency. The Web site appears to be run from servers in China but is ultimately controlled from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
The Facebook group appeared on Thursday and carried links to articles on the Uriminzokkiri Web site and videos on the site’s YouTube channel. In its short life the Facebook group managed to attract a handful of Facebook friends before becoming unavailable during the Friday U.S. business day.
“The page in question was removed because it violated our terms of use,” said Kumiko Hidaka, a Facebook spokeswoman by e-mail.
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North Korea-linked Facebook Page Deleted Again
For the second time in less than a week a Facebook account created by a North Korea-linked Web site has been deleted by the social networking site.
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WikiLeaks founder says he’s been targeted by smear campaign
“It is clearly a smear campaign,” Assange told Arabic news network Al-Jazeera in a live telephone interview Sunday. “… The only question is, who was involved?”
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AOL Gives Parents Tool for Eavesdropping on Kids’ Social Networking
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PC World admits dumping customer data
CUSTOMER DATA IN SKIPS has been PC World’s idea of secure financial information disposal and it has got the retailer into a spot of bother with the authorities.
DSG, which owns PC World, has been found in breach of the Data Protection Act by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
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Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
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US gov proves ISPs lie about bandwidth
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BT broadband advert banned over speed claim
In a TV advert, a voice-over said BT is “rolling out up to 20 meg speeds” to give “consistently faster broadband”.
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Chile: Network Neutrality is law
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Epson sues a cartridge vendor
Epson has been pursuing the alleged patent infringement since 2006. It has issued cease and desist demands to Medea International to no avail and now wants its day in court.
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Third edition of OED unlikely to appear in print format
“It is likely to be more than a decade before the full edition is published and a decision on format will be taken at that point,” she said.
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Copyrights
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Playlist.com goes titsup
Founded in 2006 as Project Playlist, the revenue-lite operation made widgets for social network sites as Facebook and MySpace, and in its heyday boasted almost 40 million users.
The largest amount, $16.6m, is owned to Universal Music; but independent network Merlin is also owed $1.68m, with songwriters’ association ASCAP out of pocket by $377,323, according to Chapter 11 documents.
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Clip of the Day
A Profile on Linus Torvalds
Novell Links: Notes About GroupWise, Fog Computing, OpenSUSE, and Staff Moves
Summary: Weekly notes and links about Novell’s business, including OpenSUSE and former Novell staff
ONE of Novell’s businesses which suffered the most based on the latest report [1, 2, 3] corresponds to GroupWise. The latest gainer is usually Google, but sometimes it’s Microsoft or IBM. Here is a new example of Novell being dumped:
Yet, after appointing its first IT lead in January since opening in 1991, the museum has shifted from the ageing Novell GroupWise email platform to Microsoft Online Services – the first of many changes to come – in three months.
Novell’s business is failing and the company yearns for its legacy, the days of dominance in the area of networking. A little while ago Novell uploaded a decade-old BrainShare Pilgrimage video [1, 2]. Why does Novell spread this type of stuff in YouTube?
Fog Computing
Novell’s latest Fog Computing push continues to receive some coverage [1, 2, 3, 4]. To quote one article, “Numerous vendors are adjusting their strategies accordingly: Novell, for instance, earlier this week officially launched the Novell Cloud Security Service (NCSS), which wraps identity and security management around SaaS applications.”
Here is Novell marketing proprietary software for Fog Computing (newly-uploaded video):
OpenSUSE
Looking at OpenSUSE without paying attention to its own version of the news, there is nothing substantial. The past two weeks have been very quiet and there was even a scheduled downtime. “We will have a service outage this saturday (21 August) due to work on power supply in one of our server rooms,” said the announcement.
Several posts were published about OpenSUSE Conference 2010 [1, 2], about FrOSCon (including from Sirko Kemter, who is attending many such events [1, 2, 3, 4]), and Jos, the new community manager of OpenSUSE, who is catching up and meeting colleagues at GUADEC. From Vincent (of GNOME/Novell):
Jos, the new openSUSE community manager, happens to live just a few kilometers away from the Hague. He was still at his previous work back then, but we were able to share a dinner before the Canonical party.
Vincent says that Novell might hire more SUSE-assigned staff:
But recently, we’ve been joined by two friends: Frédéric, who’s working on SUSE Meego, and Jos, the new openSUSE community manager. And guess what? We expect more!
OpenSUSE continues to improve and contribute to Firefox 4.0 on KDE and to KDE in general [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. There is also OBS packaging going on [1, 2, 3]. OpenSUSE’s dependence on Novell is still a risk.
People
“Senetas looks to boost consulting division,” says this article and Novell skills happen to be sought.
It is on the acquisition hunt to boost its consulting practice and wants to add Novell consultants to its team.
Looking very quickly at former Novellers in the news, there is Chris Keller with history at Novell, a quick mention of someone with Novell skills, and a former president of Novell.
Tom Quinn isn’t the kind of entrepreneur who needs help getting his ideas in front of the right people. He’s a former president of networking software maker Novell (NOVL), and he invented the motion-controller technology behind Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii while running a company called Gyration, where he raised $40 million in venture capital.
There is William Clark in this press release and also in this item:
Prior to Deltek, Clark was Vice President of World Product Marketing at Novell, Inc., an industry pioneer in Netware products. At Novell, Clark led company-wide efforts to establish product families, go-to-market strategies, value positions, and competitive differentiation for its diverse array of products.
Existing Novell employees were approached for a comment in Processor and IDG too:
Jason Dea, product marketing manager at Novell (www.novell.com), says now that the cost savings of virtualization have been realized and acknowledged, the focus is shifting to the promise of cloud computing, enabled by virtualization, as a better way for administrators to run workloads and potentially run new workloads that were not possible with yesterday’s technology platforms.
ii. CFOs hesitant to invest in cloud: strategist
Paul Kangro, applied technology strategist at Novell, said security concerns coupled with the view that cloud could be a waste of money has resulted in CFOs being sceptical of what the cloud can achieve.
There is nothing too exciting here, but in case these people end up in particular companies, they might become a substantial risk. Companies are merely aggregations of individuals. █
Some Sanyo Products (Phones) Also Tainted by Microsoft ‘Linux Tax’
Summary: As Kyocera decided to buy Sanyo’s mobile phones unit, the Microsoft extortion passes on to yet another brand which makes Android phones
ON a couple of occasions in the past we wrote about Sanyo’s Linux situation [1, 2]. As far as phones are concerned, it’s in Kyocera’s hands now and Kyocera Mita sold out to Microsoft. According to this new article, the “Zio M6000″ Android phone shares an identity with both Kyocera and Sanyo, whose mobile business Kyocera bought.
Kyocera’s first Android phone was announced in March under the name Zio M6000. The phone is now available under the company’s venerable Sanyo brand from no-contract mobile provider Cricket Communications, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leap Wireless International.
This phone is taxed by Microsoft and should therefore be avoided. There are Android phones whose makers do not pay Microsoft for Linux, so their makers should be rewarded.
“M.A.D. is already hitting the market, at least in the new and lucrative smartphones business.”It is clear that software patents have gone the wrong way (not advancing innovation, just taxation), especially in mobile phones. Vivek Wadhwa wrote about this subject recently [1, 2, 3] (he cites hypePhone patents) and in his personal blog he caries on ranting about software patents. What gives his rants credibility is that he actually got some software patents in the past and he now regrets this.
M.A.D. is already hitting the market, at least in the new and lucrative smartphones business. Apple is one of the aggressors (suing Linux/Android) and Groklaw has just published this excellent overview of the HTC/Nokia/Apple lawsuits situation, in isolation (there are more patents and parties involved in this ‘nuclear war’ of patent monopolies). Pamela Jones writes:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found it hard to follow the various patent lawsuits involving Apple, Nokia and HTC. First there are so many cases filed all over the place, it’s hard to understand the big picture. And I kept asking myself what it was all about. I mean, what’s it all about really? Because some exhibits filed by HTC have just been unsealed, we get to read Apple admitting in one of the documents that the HTC litigation is indeed about Google and Android and the Open Handset Alliance. Or as Apple puts it, “HTC’s products implicate the Android operating system developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.”
This article may easily give the impression that Microsoft is not part of the problem, but Microsoft is already extorting a high number of handset makers, including Kyocera/Sanyo. How big and thus destructive does this ‘nuclear war’ of patent monopolies have to get before some large monopoly like Microsoft, Apple or Nokia calls for the end of software patents? █
IDG’s Fauxpen Source Blog Adds Microsoft People
Summary: IDG continues to deceive people regarding “FOSS”, now with the appointment of a Microsoft person to run the “Open Source” blog; Ostatic overlooks the aspects which make Microsoft a unique foe of software freedom
IDG has had a fauxpen source blog for just under a year. From the very moment it showed up we warned about those whom IDG had assigned to run it. Editorial control determines convictions, biases, or even the level of self-censorship and funding sources of the publisher (e.g. advertisers or whitepaper clients) have a huge impact.
It was just last week that IDG seeded the "Microsoft loves open source" nonsense (yes, that’s where it originally came from) and it didn’t take long for Bort and Shimel from the fauxpen source blog to add more fuel to it. We explained both in:
- IDG Spin: Microsoft a Victim in Patent Racketeering, Loves Open Source (Bort spin)
- Microsoft Tactic: We Love Open Source, But Those ‘Zealots’ Don’t Love Us Back (Shimel spin)
Other writers in the fauxpen source blog are actually from proprietary software vendors, namely Black Duck and OpenLogic. There are almost a dozen writers there though, so Amy Vernon and others who are not in the pocket of those in the business of fear or proprietary software tend to add balance sometimes. But now they add Microsoft people, starting with the post “A FOSS project isn’t necessarily a software product.”
It’s written by Microsoft's Walli from CodePlex. He is removing the "F" from "FOSS", thus redefining “FOSS” to something Microsoft can accept. To him, Free software is communism (based on his very recent post).
That’s just Microsoft’s goal in ‘taming’ its competition. It’s about perception and stereotypes and since Microsoft is a major client of IDG, why not? Maybe Greenpeace should also give a blog to Shell and BP, which now has some green colours in its logo.
“It’s about perception and stereotypes and since Microsoft is a major client of IDG, why not?”Not only “Free software” but also “FOSS” is now under threat of losing its meaning. Just consider subversion of the “FOSS” word by people like Microsoft Florian, a .NET developer. It is reality distortion in action, a clear case of entryism.
The editor of OStatic is sadly enough falling for a lot of it because Microsoft marketers/spinmeisters are increasing PR and charm offensives as part of their attempt to paint others as the source of trouble (Richard Stallman, FSF, ‘dirty hippies’ et cetera). Owing to disinformation campaigns from Microsoft Florian and others, there’s painting of Microsoft rivals as “evil” with reinforcement through polls that can be manipulated (timing, push polling, and documented cases of Microsoft rigging polls). OStatic reaches the conclusion that “For Microsoft and Others, Proprietary And Open Source Coexist,” but for Microsoft, Open Source can only ever be complementary to proprietary software. That’s because Microsoft is in a unique position of actually owning its underlying platform, which is proprietary. IBM does not own GNU/Linux, so it can never truly carry other applications in the dependency sense. Just see what Windows has been doing to the bootloader for example. █
“I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense — I deserve it.”
Windows Partition Still a Danger to GNU/Linux Partition/s
“[W]hat things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?”
–Bill Gates
Summary: Bill’s partition still refuses to live in peace with existing alternative options such as GNU/Linux
MICROSOFT loves messing about with the bootloader and blame “difficulty” for doing so, as we have already shown in some previous posts such as:
- Microsoft Still Sabotages Linux MBRs in Vista 7
- Microsoft Continues to Sabotage GNU/Linux Installations Using ‘Updates’
- The History of Microsoft’s Multi-boot Sabotage
“Via proxies,” writes to us a reader, “Microsoft is continuing to hold back technology, by breaking the boot loader.
“This would not be the first time, Microsoft and its minions have interfered with the boot loader.
“The developer gives Really Bad Advice, rather than steering these problem administrators off of windows or at least into a virtual machine where the damage is somewhat mitigated:
“If you suffer from this problem, then please do the following…”
“Solution? Don’t use Microsoft products, don’t let others use Microsoft products. We all end up paying for it, just like with any other form of industrial pollution. This time they are again interfering with file systems and ensuring that via the outdated hardware and BIOS, we’re still stuck with shitty MS-DOS disk formats from the 1980s.
“Microsoft has been breaking competing applications for a very long time.”
–Anonymous“Microsoft has been breaking competing applications for a very long time. Back before M$ tied MSIE to its OS, the MSIE installation process disabled the market leader, Netscape, if it was present. The list of other legal problems was long. Yet, the habit of breaking competing software seems to get left out of the repeated anti trust actions.
“Information Technology people have always hated the quality of Microsoft products and the behavior of Microsofters. That’s nothing new [1, 2]. The Wikipedia article has been worked over too much by Microsoft spinmeisters as with any other article related to Microsoft or its politics.” █
VITA Disaster Appears to Have Been Caused by Microsoft Windows
Summary: Virginia is having a computer failure which may last a whole week and Windows seems to be at the heart of it
YESTERDAY we wrote about some of the latest security concerns at the Pentagon. It’s a Microsoft Windows problem. Over at Linux Today, the editor writes: ‘I guess those bad foreign infiltrators don’t follow the rules, like the USB device ban. And they’re still not saying “Windows.” The Foreign Affairs article is worth reading, if only for its missing some seriously obvious points, like “don’t use a proven malware vector like Windows.”‘
A reader has sent us additional information about security disasters presumably caused by Windows. “The US state of Virginia has a computer failure that has lasted four days and is expected to last through the weekend,” wrote this reader.
“Unemployment benefits, aid to mothers with dependent children and many other services are disrupted. Also according to the Times Dispatch, this is not the first time Virginia has had these kinds of problems with Northorp Grumman’s system unprecedentedly expensive system. The whole thing has the stink of a post 911 “real ID” and privatization power and money grab.
“It does not take long to find Microsoft involvement with the service, called VITA.”
–Anonymous“It does not take long to find Microsoft involvement with the service, called VITA. The agency uses Microsoft software for web
service, email and recommends it on all systems from desktops to mainframes. A search of the Vita site for “Linux” mostly turns up FUD about security warnings and the last document, which specifies software for systems, contains a lot of FUD about Solaris, Novell and only recommends Linux as an “alternative” for “low end servers”. It is no surprise that a system made by experts like that is expensive and failure prone. Perhaps Northrop Grumman sold Virginia a left over “SmartShip” network [2] [3].
“If the state is going to hand what should be protected public records to a private firm, the least they can do is hand them to a company like Google or IBM with the technical expertise to run things. People who use and push Microsoft are obviously incompetent.” █
Mono Accessibility for Microsoft
Summary: Software which makes GNU/Linux and Free software developers more accessible to Microsoft continues to be developed at Novell
WE occasionally hear about Mono being further developed but rarely about Moon Lie (Moonlight). Moon Lie is still being developed a little, based on this new post about Mono Accessibility 2.1. It is said that for KDE there are benefits in Mono Accessibility too:
Mono Accessibility 2.1 Released
[..]
A huge benefit of this work is that kde will be able to use it without pulling in a bunch of gnome dependencies allowing for a clean desktop independent accessibility infrastructure.
Mono dependencies continue to pose a risk to users and developers, who are simply giving Microsoft too much control over the API of choice. With promotion of Gnome-don’t (Mono) comes a certain liability and while it’s not constructive to ban such programs, shipping them by default (as some distributions do) is helpful to Microsoft, which is suing GNU/Linux and harming its adoption in all sorts of nefarious ways. █
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