• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

On Zareason

Is your company afraid of Linux? (1 of 3)

Fear #1 (Linux what?): OK, here is an extremely short history lesson and I’ll provide links for those who can’t help that inner burning desire to know all you can know about every topic. Linux is commonly pronounced /li’nuks/ and refers to the family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel and are primarily used for servers. Basically, a guy named Linus Torvalds in 1999 rewrote Unix from scratch and made it “Open Source”. Open source in its very basic terms means it is free for anyone to use. Keyword here is free. Yay! right? Well, yay if you were a University or College or some government organization like NASA. That is about the extent for which Linux was used for many years. Only the most geeky (yeah, that’s right) of computer geeks started to adopt Linux into personal use and eventually into business.

Desktop

• Pearson Education – You will NOT use Linux

  The kicker? The “MyLab” courses are rendered using Javascript and Flash. Those are both cross-platform technologies last I checked (that both ran perfectly fine in Firefox).

  Now I understand that it can take a lot of time and resources to support another operating system/browser. Even if Pearson isn’t willing to “support” Linux/Firefox users on their website they could at least let us login using the operating system/browser of our choice after seeing their warning message.

Kernel Space

• ZFS

  • Native ZFS Is Coming To Linux Next Month

    Prior to the emergence of Btrfs as a viable next-generation Linux file-system, Sun’s ZFS file-system was sought after for Linux due to its advanced feature-set and capabilities compared to EXT3 and other open-source file-systems at the time. While ZFS support has worked its way into OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and other operating systems, ZFS had not been ported to Linux as its source-code is distributed under the CDDL license, which is incompatible with the GNU GPL barring it from integration into the mainline Linux kernel. Next month, however, a working ZFS module for the Linux kernel without a dependence on FUSE will be publicly released.

  • LLNL Talks To Us About Their Linux ZFS Port

    Brian Behlendorf, the lead developer of this Linux ZFS port at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, shared the following information with us about their work and that of KQ Infotech on their ZFS module to be released in mid-September.

  • ZFS as a Linux kernel module? What is the point?

    At the end of the day, all of this excitement means nothing. Who cares if this ZFS port for the Linux kernel comes out next month? I don’t. Don’t misunderstand me. I love ZFS as I use it all the time on Solaris and OpenSolaris. It is a wonderful file system. This Linux port is also extremely limited in functionality. Today, the GPL’d Btrfs, a competitor to ZFS, is considered “generally stable“. Why not use that instead without all the concerns listed above?

Applications

• Online collaboration with Feng Office

  Online collaboration with Feng Office

  This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine.buy_online Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

  OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, Feng Office – which is the odd one out? Yes, it’s Feng Office, but not because most people have never heard of it, and not because it lacks the extreme feature set of the other two. Feng Office is not about sitting at your desk writing office documents, it’s about collaborative working.

  Feng still allows you to create text documents online, but that’s just a small part of running projects, taking notes, tracking tasks, passing milestones, keeping contact with your organisation and perusing reports of how the projects are progressing.

• 5 of the Best Free Linux Screen Capture Tools

  The phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” refers to the idea that a solitary still image can provide as much information as a large amount of descriptive text. Essentially, pictures convey information more effectively and efficiently than words can.

• CoverGloobus – Beautiful Covert Art and Lyrics Display App For Your Desktop

  I hope you guys do remember the awesome little preview application called Globus Preview. Here is another beautiful application from the same team. It’s called CoverGloobus. It displays cover art and lyrics in your desktop and it supports almost all popular linux media players. Also, the supported themes are really good in my opinion.

• Guayadeque 0.2.7 Released With File Browser, Record From Streams, Last.fm Improvements And Many More New Features

  There was no new Guayadeque version in a long time but the development was actually very active and today we finally have a new version. Here are the highlights of Guayadeque 0.2.7:

  * libre.fm support
  * implemented crossfading between tracks
  * record from streams
  * a file browser (play files by browsing them on your HDD)
  * option to delete files from library and hard drive
  * lyricsplugin.com as lyrics search engine
  * you can now save the lyrics in a local folder
  * the last.fm panel can now search for tracks in your library
  * implemented reading/writing images into m4a files
  * library search covers scan now into audio files too
  * live search
  * and a lot more features and fixes

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to install Ubuntu Tweak 0.5.6 beta in ubuntu 10.04/9.10

  • Turn your Linux computer into a wireless access point using hostapd

  • Painless Panorama Stitching in Linux with Hugin

• Wine

  • Bordeaux 2.0.8 for Linux Released

    The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.8 for Linux today. Bordeaux 2.0.8 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have updated firefox to 3.6.8, Added support for Apples Safari 5.0 Web Browser, Updated to the latest winetricks release and fixed desktop shortcuts.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Ben Cooksley

    At the moment I maintain System Settings and the Device Actions control module. I am also an Administrator of KDE’s own forums, where I help sort out problems users have encountered, in addition to the sysadmin tasks.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Amber Graner chats with Stormy Peters, Executive Director of The GNOME Foundation

    SP: I’ve been involved with free software since 1998 or 1999. I was managing the CDE desktop team at HP and started investigating GNOME …

Distributions

• Puppy Arcade 9 – New release!

  Gaming not what it used to be? Bored by the plethora of 3rd person shooters which seem to dominate the games market?

  Well there has been no reason to say that ever since Puppy Arcade had it’s first release – Puppy Arcade caters for probably every platform of yesteryear you could want and then some more.

  Puppy Arcade is a distro I have covered numerous times in the past, in fact it is one of the few which I try keeping up to date with. An excellent distro which is a testament to not only the hard work of its creator (Scott Jarvis) but also his genuine love of the emulation scene. Redundant hardware in need of a new life? Use Puppy Arcade to turn it into a retro console!

• Reviews

  • Jolicloud 1.0 review

    As the name suggests, Jolicloud is a cloud-based operating system. It is derived from the desktop edition of Ubuntu 9.04, and is the first stable and publicly downloadable, Linux, cloud-based distribution that I am aware of. Version 1.0, the first stable edition, was released several weeks ago. This review, the first for Jolicloud on this site, also marks its listing in the Mobile & Cloud category.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Are the Apple Macs Running Ubuntu as Well?

      This piece, due to appear in the next issue of Linux User and Developer, takes a look at the Ubuntu Platform Rally held in Prague, Czech Republic. The linked article has all the details. What caught my attention was the Apple Macs in the room. Are they also running Ubuntu or perhaps some design ideas are being taken from them?

    • Ubuntu 11.04 Developer Summit Announced

    • Ubuntu One taking care of Windows users … not so much users of other Linux distributions

      What about a free, open-source Ubuntu One client that could be used in any Linux distribution?

    • Ubuntu 10.10 Default Wallpaper Revealed, Updated Community Wallpapers And Light Themes

    • The New Wallpapers and Theme of Ubuntu 10.10

      Canonical uploaded today the new wallpapers and default theme for the up-coming Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system. Seventeen new beautiful wallpapers and a lightweight and eye-candy theme will please every existing and future Ubuntu 10.10 user!

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Linux Mint 9 offers new software manager, backup tool

        The Linux Mint team has released the final version of Linux Mint 9 (“Isadora”), based on Ubuntu 10.04. Linux Mint 9 features a new software manager with 30,000 packages, a new backup tool, and menu and interface improvements, says the team.

Devices/Embedded

• The E-Reader Price Wars Heat Up

  Competition stepped up in June when a price war broke out. First Barnes & Noble slashed the price of its Nook by $60, down to $199; the company also started selling a Wi-Fi-only Nook for $149. Within hours Amazon dropped the price of its Kindle by $70, to $189. And ten days later, Sony cut the price of each of its three Reader products by $30, bringing its most expensive 3G version down to $249.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Motorola Backflip Rooted, Courtesy of ModMyMobile

      As the title of this article (and blurrycam shot above) indicates, the guys over at ModMyMobile.com have gained root access to the MotoBlur-packin’ Motorola Backflip.

    • [ROOT] All versions of Backflip

    • Exclamation Backflip root!!

    • Evo-like Android Device Breaks Cover, Possibly Headed for Verizon

      BoyGenius is reporting this evening on a 4.3 inch, kickstand packing, HTC Monster that is said to be launching on Verizon. BGR is describing it as a Nexus One with a 4.3 inch screen. The device is said to have an 8 megapixel camera, 3.5 mm headphone jack, as well as a front facing camera (boo-yah!). Oh, and get this, it might even be global!

• Tablets

  • Whither the Ubuntu Tablets?

    I’m a huge Linux and Free Software advocate, and I do want to see it succeed in a general sense in the tablet market. I think that Android is the best bet to make that happen. People see “Apple iOS” marketed on iPhones and iPads, and most people have at least passing familiarity with an iPhone, so they think to themselves “Oh, the iPad is like a gigantic iPhone. I can handle that.” People see the word Ubuntu and either say “What’s that?” or they say “Oh yeah, I remember when Wal-Mart was pushing those crappy $200 desktop PCs with Ubuntu.” Either way, they have a strong negative reaction.

  • Another $50 Android iPad Copycat Spotted in the Wild

    My title might cause some controversy I know, but no matter how you look at it, virtually all the new tablets coming out are more or less better featured iPad clones. We need originality, something that is powered by Android and not based on what Apple has. Will this tablet take off at all? Only time can tell.

  • How Much Does Linux Need the Desktop?

    Of course, the concept of Linux-based operating systems going on tablets is nothing new. There already are tablets based on Android, which is Linux-based, and many people expect sophisticated tablets to run Google’s upcoming Linux-based Chrome OS. But Ubuntu is Ubuntu. Its interface has become steadily easier to use over the years, it’s familiar to a lot of people, and it could eventually find its biggest market on niche devices such as tablets.

    Of course, success on tablets doesn’t necessarily have to outrule continued presence on desktop computers. I have no doubt that Ubuntu and other distros will continue to evolve on desktops. It’s interesting, though, to consider the potential for Linux-based operating systems on non-standard computing devices—or at least devices that we have historically thought of as non-standard.

  • Android tablets flowing

    A year ago netbooks were the one must-have mobile device. This year it is the tablet PC that is an essential accessory.

    Apple’s iPad wasn’t the first tablet PC available but it is the best-known of these devices. But it will face stiff competition in the coming months as most hardware makers switch on to Android-based tablet devices.

    Chief among the Android tablet makers is Asus. The company which kick started the netbook market with its Linux-powered EEE PC, is now getting ready to launch an Android-based tablet. The device will be known as the EEE Pad and will begin shipping in March 2011. The tablet is expected to sell for under $400 (under R3000) and will have a 10-inch screen. Under the casing the EEE Pad will run an ARM processor.

Open-sourcing SETI

The challenge with increasingly complex SETI search techniques is that the resources and expertise of the SETI community is fairly limited. “The number of people in the world actively involved in SETI could fit into a phone booth,” said Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute.

Databases

• NBD Benchmark: CUBRID Performance Test Results

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GCC – ‘We make free software affordable’

  GCC and GNU Emacs are the two facets of the GNU operating system that have probably done more than any other to take GNU and free software from idealistic concept to a utilitarian reality. Having previously looked at GNU Emacs and the Hurd, Richard Hillesley looks at the history and progress of GCC.

• Gnash 0.8.8: A Huge Improvement Over Previous Versions

  I found Gnash 0.8.7 to be more than a bit problematic. In general it worked on something less than half the websites I tried which required Flash. YouTube videos worked exactly once. If you tried to watch a second video you received this message: “An error occured, please try again later”. The workaround was to prevent YouTube from setting cookies or clearing your browser of all YouTube cookies between videos. Finally, Gnash 0.8.7 was incredibly resource hungry, often driving my CPU to 100% usage and bringing things on my system to a crawl. All in all, this was still far from a decent solution.

  Early this week Gnash 0.8.8 was released. Despite the small increment in version number, which would make this seem like a minor maintenance release, the difference between version 0.8.8 and the earlier 0.8.7 is like night and day. First, alot of websites that did not work with Gnash before seem to work just fine now. My thoroughly unscientific sample indicates that roughly two thirds of the sites I visit which use Flash are now functional. In addition, YouTube now works 100% of the time without having to clear or restrict cookies.

Undead Commodore 64 comes back for Christmas

The Commodore 64 will rise from the grave before Christmas, according to the tiny company determined to reanimate the long-dead 80s icon.

AGs call on Craigslist to banish adult ads

Science

• Energy-saving LEDs ‘will not save energy’, say boffins

  Federal boffins in the States say that the brave new future in which today’s ‘leccy-guzzling lights are replaced by efficient LEDs may not, in fact, usher in massive energy savings.

  This is because, according to the scientists’ research, people are likely to use much more lighting as soon as this becomes practical. The greater scope for cheap illumination offered by LEDs will simply mean that people have more lights and leave them on for longer.

Security/Aggression

• Who’s Hiding What and Why

  Note that the Pentagon’s orchestrated screaming has not been about technical data that might in fact get GIs killed, but about revelation of the ugly things the US is doing to people. Consider the footage of an American helicopter gunship killing pedestrians in a city street, and apparently having just a swell time doing it. This didn’t reveal military secrets. But it showed the gusnip crew as the butchers they are. Bad juju for the military. PR is all.

• Cyber-crime Site Pushes Forged Passports, Licenses

  McAfee researcher Francios Paget found a Russian site selling, among other things, fake passports for dozens of countries. The operation is not inexpensive for the buyers, however. The cheapest passport is for Azerbaijan and costs $870 (USD). A French passport costs $5,530. To get it, a customer must send the forgers personal information plus a signature and photo, according to Paget.

• Snooping Camden CCTV car hypocrites

  Make no mistake – these cars not about road safety. They’re about the thrill of power that petty bureaucrats get when they can turn the screw on you in a culture of “we caught you” – regardless of whether what you were doing was actually in any way a problem or dangerous. And of course, most of all – they’re about revenue-raising.

• Let’s hope that this picture stays on the wall

  Just received a third CCTV car image – what a day!

  I know that it’s only a single yellow, so I suppose that it might have been parked lawfully – but those who know their 1984 will appreciate the delicious irony of this brute being captured in this spot…

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Report concludes that nearly 80 percent of oil from Gulf spill remains

  A report released today by the Georgia Sea Grant and the University of Georgia concludes that up to 79 percent of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon well has not been recovered and remains a threat to the ecosystem.

  The report, authored by five prominent marine scientists, strongly contradicts media reports that suggest that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill remains.

• Playing Hide and Seek With Oil

  A new report authored by five prominent marine scientists provides a powerful contradiction of the government’s recent report that only 25 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster remains in the Gulf of Mexico. On August 4, the government issued a news release that stated, “The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed using chemicals — much of which is in the process of being degraded.”

• The Death Of The Fossil Fuel Companys Part Deux

  Third, General Motors has announced that they plan to produce 45,000 Chevy Volt extended range electric vehicles in 2012, up from the original plans to produce 30,000 cars. However the number of cars General Motors plans to produce is small compared to Nissan’s plans, the Nissan plant in Smyrna Georgia will be capable of producing 150,000 cars per year, for only that one plant!

Finance

• Taking Economic Liberty Seriously

  On March 5, 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court declared New York shopkeeper Leo Nebbia to be a criminal because he sold two quarts of milk and a 5 cent loaf of bread for the combined low price of 18 cents. As Justice Owen Roberts explained in his 5-4 majority opinion in Nebbia v. New York, the state’s Milk Control Board had fixed the minimum price of milk at 9 cents a quart to eliminate the “evils” of price-cutting.

• China’s Hot New Bestseller: “The Goldman Sachs Conspiracy”

  Yesterday I bought a copy of Li Delin’s (李德林) latest book-“高盛阴谋” (Goldman Sachs Conspiracy). Li is a well-known financial journalist and author who has written several other books, including the November 2009 “干掉一切对手——看高盛如何算赢世界 (Eliminate All Competitors–How Goldman Sachs Wins Over the World”. You can read Li’s blog (in Chinese) on Caijing here.

• Chinese Bestseller Slams Goldman Sachs For Crisis

  Li’s book takes ample license in its attacks on Goldman Sachs. The company’s ultimate goal, he says in the first chapter, is to “kill China.”

• Arthur Levitt, Policy Advisor, Goldman Sachs

• Basis Urges U.S. Judge to Let Goldman Suit Proceed

  Basis Capital, an Australian hedge fund, urged a New York judge to allow its $1 billion lawsuit over the marketing of credit default swaps by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to proceed, calling Goldman’s request for a dismissal a “distraction.”

  The lawsuit by Basis Capital’s Basis Yield Alpha Fund focuses on Goldman Sachs’s sale of the “Timberwolf” collateralized debt obligation. The complaint, filed June 9 in Manhattan federal court, says the fund was forced into insolvency after buying mortgage-linked securities created by Goldman Sachs, in what one of its own executives described internally as a “shi**y deal.”

• Goldman Sachs Loses Muscle in Corporate Finance

  “Goldman is struggling a little bit here,” said Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities in Lutz, Florida. “It has to overcome some pretty sizable public relations issues, which are related to the way it does business and the products it creates. The company is good enough to overcome all of this stuff, but it would be hard for me to imagine that there’s no impact as a result of what we’ve seen over the last 12 to 18 months.”

• Goldman Sachs And SEC Put Meyer Lansky To Shame

  But the SEC threw the case when it came to fraud- as covered by the Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. It is here that the reader must understand that fraud is not only a civil offense but also a criminal offense- and that the company or the individual found guilty of violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act can be charged with the criminal count of fraud in a criminal proceeding. So by refusing to charge Goldman with violations of Section 10(b) of the SEA, the SEC was playing to lose- and allowing Goldman to win. Not only that but damages in Section 10(b) are not limited to the loss, which the aggrieved party has incurred; there are penalties.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Psywar Film Reveals The Hidden Battle for Your Mind

  The new documentary “Psywar,” featuring CMD founder John Stauber, explores corporate and government use of propaganda and public relations to manipulate American people. The movie explores how the U.S. government staged events to manipulate public opinion about the Iraq war, like the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, the supposedly spontaneous mob that pulled over the larger-than-life statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• California students get tracking devices

  The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children’s whereabouts, attendance and even whether they’ve eaten or not.

• Google Street View car pulled over and searched

  As regular readers will know, Google is the subject of probes from data-protection regulators in Germany, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic and the Metropolitan Police (although our own Information Commissioner has given them a free pass).

• Sony obtains Australia ban on PS3 hack chip

  Sony has won a temporary ban to prevent Australian distributors selling a hardware hack for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).

  The PS3Jailbreak “dongle” allows gamers to play homemade and pirated games on the game’s console.

  The ban prevents OzModChips, Mod Supplier and Quantronics from importing, distributing or selling the device.

Intellectual Monopolies

• NYTimes finds more IP news but doesn’t report its consumer cost

  The New York Times now carries a lot of stories that are of interest to anyone concerned about the high cost of intellectual property protection. The first story today is a debate over who is right AARP or the industry. AARP says the cost of branded drugs rose 8.3% in 2009 link here. Last year the industry complained that the figure was based on wholesale prices, not the retail prices consumers actually paid. Responding to that criticism, AARP switched to retail and still got a big increase. The industry countered that they should use the consumer price index figure which includes generic drug prices–which showed a much lower price increase and argues that the US has the lowest prices for generics in the world.

• What everybody knows

  “Authors are only motivated to write if they know their rights will be protected.”

  “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”

  The second of these quotes, from Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson,” is very familiar, I think, and demonstrably false. Indeed, even Boswell acknowledged its falsity as he recorded it, and attributed the comment to Johnson’s “indolent disposition.” The first quote comes from this fascinating article in the online version of the German magazine “Der Spiegel” reporting research that suggests that German’s 19th century industrial expansion may have been at least partially driven by the absence of strong copyright protection.

  That authors must have strong copyright protection in order to create is presented in this article as a conventional belief, the kind of thing that everybody knows and accepts as a matter of course. Such bromides are almost always false, like Johnson’s remark, or at least incomplete. Perhaps the greatest value of the Spiegel article, short as it is, is that it demonstrates that a complex situation, such as the cultural impact of printing, copyright and the distribution of books, cannot be reduced to truisms. Complex analysis is required, and Eckhard Hoffner’s research is an example of such analysis.

• Take-Two Interactive loses fight for Bioshock.com

  Take-Two is the developer behind the successful BioShock video game series. The first-person shooter game was announced in October 2004, two months before the domain name Bioshock.com was registered by Name Administration Inc, a Cayman Islands-based company that makes money from trading in and displaying adverts on its massive network of domain names.

• Ansel Adams Trust Sues Over Sale of Negatives

  The suit alleges trademark infringement, false advertising, trademark dilution, unfair competition and other claims. It does not specify damages but asks the court to order the defendants to pay restitution of their profits from any sales, as well as award any other monetary relief.

• Facebook sues social media site with ‘book’ in name

  Teachbook filed a trademark application in March 2009, and Facebook opposed the registration last year. There were “ongoing discussions” over use of the name and Shrader believed “we were working constructively with (Facebook),” but is now expecting to file a response to the California-based technology company’s lawsuit in court.

• Copyrights

  • Lies Of Omission – James Gannon Doesn’t Tell You All The Details

    So what about James Gannon? James recently posted an article on Facebook, in which he argues for stronger digital locks. James does not mention that he works at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, a law firm that does work for The Canadian Recording Industry Association, which has a vested interest in digital locks.

  • Sweden to Finally Get Second a Pirate MEP?

    The EU election last June was a surprise for many, as the Piratpartiet got a seat with over 7% of the votes. Then when the Lisbon Treaty passed and they were awarded a second seat in the European Parliament. However, it wasn’t without drawbacks as the second seat has yet to be filled. That may happen soon.

  • Rupert Murdoch’s Anti-Fair Use Comments Used Against Him In Court Yet Again

    Remember back when Rupert Murdoch acted like fair use was a myth that would be “barred by the courts” when challenged? Yeah, that’s been coming back to bite Murdoch. Earlier this year, we noted that a former advisor to Michael Jackson was suing News Corp. over Fox News’ decision to air interview footage without a license, and the complaint highlighted Murdoch’s anti-fair use statement. Of course, when it came time to defend itself (guess what?) News Corp. lawyers relied heavily on fair use.

    Looks like that’s happening again. News Corp. has been sued yet again for copyright infringement, this time for airing a video (without licensing the clip) of Brad Pitt having trouble driving a motorcycle. Instead, Fox News folks simply downloaded it from TMZ, a property owned by AOL. Wait a second… so with Rupert Murdoch running all over the place claiming that Google News linking to his content is “theft,” yet Fox News has no problem downloading a video from a competing media organization and using it? Fascinating.

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

    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.

  • Southern African Music Collection Society Fighting Attempt To Put Public Domain Works Under Copyright

    My first reaction was to be surprised. After all, when was the last time you saw a music collection group support the public domain or the idea of widespread shared culture? Hell, in the US, we have ASCAP telling us that things like Creative Commons are dangerous and must be fought.

  • ACTA

    • US [NOT] Proposing to Eliminate Secondary Liability from ACTA

      According to Inside U.S. Trade (August 27, 2010), the U.S. has adopted “a major policy shift” and “proposed removing controversial language from the Anticounterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that would have required signatories to impose secondary liability on Internet firms for intellectual property rights infringements by individuals.” On closer read of the ACTA text as we know it, the truth may be that secondary liability is not going away at all.

      There has been no official text of the ACTA agreement released since April 2010. The latest leaked text is from July 2010, after the Lucerne but before the Washington D.C. round of negotiations. Neither of those options indiacte any US position proposing to take out internet service provider (ISP) liability. USTR is refusing to comment on the proposal reported by Inside US Trade. It is therefore impossible to say with any certainty what the U.S. is proposing to change. My best guess is: nothing.

      The July leaked text of ACTA contains a chapter on “Enforcement Procedures in the Digital Environment” composed of seven major subsections. Sections one through three identify obligations of countries to enforce copyright law on the internet, and sections four through seven mainly require punishment of people who evade digital rights management hardware or software or define the exceptions to such obligations.

      The digital rights management provisions do not depend on ISP liability and therefore the best interpretation of the news is that these sections still remain as US priorities, and they have their own problems.

• Distributions

Desktop

• Review: ZaReason Verix Laptop

  One of the challenges of being a Linux desktop user is the difficulty in finding systems that ship with Linux pre-installed. Major OEMs often offer a handful of Linux offerings, but to get a wider range of hardware and choices of Linux distributions you have to look to smaller vendors that are really interested in promoting Linux — like ZaReason.

  ZaReason sells a full line of Linux machines, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and servers. They also sell peripherals and some other gear, but what I was most interested in was a laptop with Linux. Specifically, a laptop with muscle. So I asked ZaReason to send me a review unit, the Verix 1656 with Intel’s Core i7 and maxed out RAM.

  [...]

  The Verix gets two thumbs up. It’s not perfect, but it’s a really good laptop and one I’d recommend to anyone who wants a solid and speedy Linux laptop. My main complaint with the Verix? It’s a review unit, which means I have to send it back. If you buy one, though, you won’t have that problem.

Kernel Space

• Next Generation of Btrfs Linux Filesystem Nears Prime Time

  Since at least 2008, the Btrfs Linux filesystem has been talked about as a next-generation technology one day potentially rivalling or supplanting the current dominant Linux filesystems.

  According to Chris Mason, founder of the Btrfs effort and now director of software development at Oracle, Btrfs is today generally stable and usable even though it’s yet to be finalized. And although he admits the filesystem still has some issues to overcome as development continues, Mason said he would like to see Btrfs ultimately replacing existing Linux filesystems like the popular Ext3 and Ext4 systems that are often the default on enterprise Linux distributions.

• No BTRFS In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat After all

  A while ago we were telling you there are 20% chances to get BTRFS support in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. Well, it didn’t make it.

Applications

• Inkscape 0.48 review

• Review: Backupninja backups for Linux

  When you hear the word “backup,” what do you think? Critical? Complicated? Costly? When you think of backing up Linux desktops or servers what do you think? You don’t? You run screaming? Thankfully that is not necessary. There are tons of tools in the Linux-verse capable of running a multitude of backs. From the overly simple to the overly complex, in Linux you can find a tool for just about every situation and every experience level.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Kontact: How does it compare to the competition?

    With all of this talk about KDE 4.5 lately, I thought I should take a moment to mention a tool that hasn’t had much (or any) talk here on Ghacks. That tool is Kontact. But what is Kontact? Kontact is the KDE groupware suite that includes more tools than your standard suite, has a lot of pluses, and a few minuses. But even with its minuses, Kontact is a spot-on tool for anyone needing a solid groupware suite to keep them as organized as possible.

Distributions

• How to Choose a Desktop Linux Distribution

  With all the many reasons to use Linux today–particularly in a business setting–it’s often a relatively easy decision to give Windows the boot. What can be more difficult, however, is deciding which of the hundreds of Linux distributions out there is best for you and your business.

• Red Hat Family

  • Jefferies says Red Hat still well-positioned to capture share in Federal IT

    Jefferies & Co. maintained its ‘buy’ rating on business software company Red Hat Inc. with a price target of $35.

    “We believe Red Hat continues to be well-positioned to capture share in Federal IT, but the new 8 year, $2 billion social security administration (SSA) claims processing contract is likely to be spread across many vendors. If Red Hat does win a portion of it, they could be displacing International Business Machine Corp.,” said Katherine Egbert, an analyst at Jefferies.

• Debian Family

  • Debian at 17: As Important as Ever

    Debian kicked off when Linux distributions were still a relatively novel concept. The only older surviving distro is Slackware, Red Hat didn’t enter the picture until 1994. Depending on how you look at it, Debian either enjoys a very small niche user base, or one of the largest of any Linux distribution. Strictly speaking, Debian is widely (though it’s hard to say how widely) deployed on servers and not quite as popular on desktop systems compared to Fedora, Linux Mint, or Ubuntu.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • OpenOffice 3.2.1 Available In The Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Proposed Repository

      OpenOffice 3.2.1 (bug-fix release) was released almost 3 months ago but only now is available for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx users, in the lucid-proposed official repository.

Open source media Centre Boxee adds Movie Library

Following its launch as public beta in January of this year, the Boxee developers have announced the release of a new beta – version 0.9.22.13692 – of their popular part-open-source cross-platform media centre with social networking and community features. According to Boxee VP of Marketing Andrew Kippen, the latest public beta adds “the foundations of a new Movie Library to complement the TV Show Library”.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Education for the open web fellowship: new deadline

    In May, Mozilla and the Shuttleworth Foundation announced a new Education for the Open Web Fellowship. The aim is to support practical ideas that help people learn about, improve and promote the open nature of the internet, as part of our commitment to supporting leaders working at the intersection of open education and the open web.

  • Firefox 3.6.9 release candidate rocks up for sturdy testers

    Mozilla pumped out a release candidate version of Firefox 3.6.9 yesterday.

    The pre-beta update is intended only for brave souls willing and able to have a poke around in the unfinished code.

Oracle

• The long, sordid tale of Sun RPC, abbreviated somewhat, to protect the guily and the irresponsible.

  Once upon a time (1984), Sun created an RPC implementation for Unix, with the intent of implementing RFC 707 (High-level framework for network-based resource sharing). Now, in those days, a good way to ensure that people used code that you wrote was to upload it to usenet, and in 1985, Sun did that. (Google has one of the posts archived here: Sun RPC part 8 of 10)

• An update on JavaOne

  Like many of you, every year we look forward to the workshops, conferences and events related to open source software. In our view, these are among the best ways we can engage the community, by sharing our experiences and learning from yours. So we’re sad to announce that we won’t be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle’s recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we’ve participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996.

Licensing

• Should Open Source Communities Avoid Contributor Agreements?

  A collaborative activity dubbed Project Harmony is now under way between corporate and corporate-sponsored participants in the free and open source software communities (not to be confused with the Apache Java project of the same name). The project seeks to harmonise the various participant and contributor agreements – collectively termed “contributor agreements” by some – used by many open source projects.

  The goal of the project’s initiators is to reduce the legal costs of analysing paperwork faced by companies contributing to open source projects. Initiated and sponsored by Canonical, meetings have already been held several times under the Chatham House Rule, including one recently during LinuxCon in Boston. The participants also number several people who are skeptical of the value of copyright aggregation, myself included. At the meeting I was asked to write about my skepticism; this article is the result. I’m by no means the first to tread this ground; you’ll also want to read the earlier article by Dave Neary, and the comprehensive article by Michael Meeks ends with a useful list of other articles.

“Legislative Guidance” on Fair Dealing: The Plan to Reverse CCH?

My post this week on several writers groups objections to Bill C-32 has generated considerable discussion, with some taking me to task for focusing on their letter’s warning of “unintended consequences,”"years of costly litigation,” and “serious damage to the cultural sector.” Instead, they argue that I should have focused on the call for additional “legislative guidance” on the fair dealing reforms. After all, who could be against greater clarity in the law?

In the discussion that has followed, I believe that it has become increasingly clear that the “legislative guidance” is not really about the fair dealing reforms found in C-32, but rather fair dealing more generally. Unfortunately, the writers’ letter only speaks of their concerns and does not provide any specific policy or legislative reform recommendations that would clarify their intentions. However, with the government having opened up the fair dealing provision, those groups may see an opportunity to reverse the Supreme Court of Canada’s CCH decision that characterized fair dealing as a user right and established guidelines for its interpretation.

USA Today shaking up staff in ‘radical’ overhaul

USA Today, the nation’s second largest newspaper, is making the most dramatic overhaul of its staff in its 28-year history as it de-emphasizes its print edition and ramps up its effort to reach more readers and advertisers on mobile devices.

Security/Aggression

• Pentagon Official Reveals Computer Security Breach… As Part Of Effort To Get More Power Over Critical Infrastructure?

  We’ve already noted that various government officials have been engaging in a massive hype campaign about “cyberwar” threats, in an effort to get more control over certain networks. But there’s also a bit of an inter-departmental battle within government agencies over who should get to control these new powers

• Massive computer outage halts some Va. agencies

  A failure of servers at Virginia’s centralized information technology superagency has left several state agencies unable to do their work.

  At least two dozen agencies were affected by the Wednesday afternoon crash at the problem-plagued Virginia Information Technologies Agency.

• Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes

  Kyle Cassidy traveled 15,000 miles over two years photographing Americans in their homes and asking one question: “Why do you own a gun?” A good question, particularly since most of these guns are not easily reconcilable with the notion of self-defence and their true place should be somewhere in the Armed Forces.

• MalCon: A Call for ‘Ethical Malcoding’

  I was pretty bummed this year when I found out that a previous engagement would prevent me from traveling to Las Vegas for the annual back-to-back Black Hat and Defcon security conventions. But I must say I am downright cranky that I will be missing MalCon, a conference being held in Mumbai later this year that is centered around people in the “malcoder community.”

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• WikiLeaks under fire over child abuse files

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Why Does The NY Times Rely So Often On Single Anecdote Trend Pieces Not Supported By The Data?

  We saw it more recently in the NY Times piece we wrote about claiming that cable TV was winning against the internet by purposely keeping authorized content offline, based off of a single anecdote of a guy who ditched his cable subscription only to go back a year later… just a day or so before the stats came out showing that people are actually ditching their cable connections.

• NC State Senator Admits Broadband Companies Wrote His Bill & Says He ‘Carries Water’ For Companies

  What was most interesting about the situation in North Carolina, however, was how blatant state politicians were in highlighting that it was really the broadband companies who were calling the shots. In our story from April of 2009, it was noted that when the state representatives sponsoring the bill were asked questions about it during a committee hearing, they asked Time Warner employees to answer for them. Think about that for a second. The sponsors of the bill couldn’t answer the questions, so they asked industry folks to answer instead. We had thought that was about as blatant as a politician could be in admitting that the bill was actually written by the industry and that the politicians didn’t even understand what they were sponsoring.

• Salisbury to test fiber-optic cable system

  One local on-ramp to the Internet just got a lot bigger and lightning fast.

  The city of Salisbury begins beta testing of a brand new fiber-optic cable system next month.

  Salisbury and North Carolina’s Municipal League have overcome strong objections from a powerful state senator, Sen. David Hoyle of Gaston County, who supports the cable companies who say local government competition is unfair.

  After the implosion of the textile industry, Salisbury is trying to weave a new future with new fibers; fiber-optic cable.

• State Senator Admits Cable Industry Helped Write Pro-Industry Legislation

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ENDitorial: Leaked draft of the new Czech Copyright Act

    A leaked draft of the new Czech Copyright Act was obtained by Pirate News at the beginning of August 2010, after the Ministry of Culture has initially declined the request of Czech Pirate Party to have access to the document three days after the draft was sent out for feedback to organizations affected by the proposal. The draft presents a storm of “improvements” which grant millions of euro from public sector budgets to collecting societies.

    [...]

    That means that in order to achieve free distribution of copylefted work, the author has to notify the collecting society and he carries the burden of proof, that is, he has to prove that license has been provided, or if you like, the user of gratuitous license has to prove the collecting society has been notified, which is even harder. The amendment draft thus violates the declared support of public licenses.

  • Czech Gov’t Drafting Copyright Bill to Legally Gut Creative Commons, Chop Creators Royalties By Nearly Half

    If you ever thought that no one would ever actually legally attack Creative Commons and, if they did, you’d hear about it, consider this the article you “hear about it”. A draft copyright bill from the Czech Republic has leaked online and it may be one of the most disturbing copyright bills ever created.

  • Pirate Bay Receives Notice To Keep a Torrent

    The founder of the small software company Coding Robots was shocked when he found out that one of his works had been cracked and shared on The Pirate Bay. However, instead of asking The Pirate Bay to remove the torrent the company’s founder did quite the opposite. He sent a ‘Notice of Ridiculous Activity’ because the crack didn’t live up to his expectations.

  • Music Royalties Strangle Playlist.com

    Now called simply Playlist, the site allows users to create and share playlists using either song files that are hosted by the company itself or on third-party servers. When it plays the files that live on playlist.com, the service racks up millions of dollars in royalty costs. When the files play from external servers, the site functions, in a sense, as a playable search engine.

    As the screenshot from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing shows (right), Project Playlist now owes millions of dollars in royalty costs to each of the major labels for playback of the music it hosted, having finally reached licensing agreements with all four major labels by May of this year. Those hard-won licensing agreements may well spell doom for Playlist.com, as they have for so many other start-ups.

  • DCC, Bittorrent and Usenet – Is Bittorrent so great?

    Before the days of the Internet when computers with 48k were deemed sufficient, I was one of a few who were accessing Micronet. Little did I know at the time (when I was downloading lawfully free software onto tape) was that I was taking the first steps into what would be a global phenomena and eventually something which would become so large, even the best of ISP’s could buckle under the demand to feed their end users hunger for data.

  • Open Bytes article – ‘DCC, Bittorrent and Usenet – Is Bittorrent so great?’ – is Tim wrong?

    It is unlikely that online copyright infringement would ever stop, no matter what was done, however it’s like smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes was once socially acceptable. It no longer is socially acceptable. Or drunk driving – at one time everyone did it, now it’s so socially unacceptable that very few do so anymore.

    The curious thing is that all of the laws which have been enacted, appear to have had virtually no effect on online copyright infringement. What has had a huge effect was legal options. People love to show their appreciation for value, especially when they can show that appreciation directly to the artist, or software developer.

  • Don Henley Still Really Confused: Actually Claims Copyright Office Is Not An Advocate For Copyright Holders

    This is incredibly laughable if you know anything about the Copyright Office, which has been the leader in pushing for ever more draconian copyright law and has a history of almost always siding with content creators over the public. The 1976 Copyright Act, which completely flipped copyright on its head in this country came out of the Copyright Office, and some of the same folks are still there (including the boss, Marybeth Peters) — and haven’t changed their opinion much. Peters, in particular, has always been a staunch supporter of copyright holders over the public.

  • Disney, WB Claim Ad Firm Working With Pirate Sites Is Guilty Of Contributory Infringement

    So, the websites themselves are already pretty far removed from the actual infringement. The files are hosted on other sites. They’re shared by other people. These sites just allow users to post links. And… then on top of that the studios aren’t even suing these sites, which are a few steps away from the actual infringement: they’re suing this ad firm, which is another degree of separation away. Wow.

  • ACTA

    • Dutch Green Left party has concerns about the ACTA Treaty

      Dutch political party Green Left (Groen Links) is completely fed up with the ACTA Treaty’s haziness, reports Webwereld. One of Webwereld’s readers tipped off Mariko Peters (GL) about ACTA’s continuing secret negotiations as well as contradictions in communications about possible changes in Dutch law as a result of the Treaty. Maria van der Hoeven, Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs replied.

    • ACTA: An international threat to freedom and liberty

      ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which is currently being negotiated, largely in secret, between the United States, the EU and 9 other countries.2 This draft agreement seeks to regulate a wide range of copyright, patents and trademark issues, including, most controversially, providing for additional regulation of the Internet. There have been a number of leaks (here, here, here and here) and the European Commission published an official draft text on 22 April.

      ACTA is a covert attempt, at the global level, to further reduce the public interest element in copyright, patents and trademarks, in the balance between the rights of creators, users, and the public at large, without proper debate and scrutiny in each nation state. The current form of ACTA is a threat to future innovation and freedom of citizens. ACTA is primarily driven by the US and the EU. Developing countries such as India and Brazil have been shut out of the process from the start.