Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Biometric Hardware with Linux and GPL violations

  So I had the chance to watch one of the biometrics terminal boot. What was my surprise when I see on the small LCD a Penguin and the word LINUX.

  Well this product is made by ZK-USA, and consulting their site there is some reference to Linux OS.

  I didn’t had access to the documentation in box but I can’t see anything on their website related to GPL. I’m no specialist at GPL, but I will go deep on this tomorrow, related to the papers that came with the hardware to see if they are violating GPL or not.

• Desktop

  • Don’t Waste Money on a New Computer for College

    Heading off to college? Here’s my suggestion: buy a used laptop from Craigslist and install Ubuntu onto it. Seriously.

  • Is Linux-on-the-desktop already mainstream?

    Best estimates, according to Martin, is that Linux has a share roughly equal to that of MacOSX; which is certainly not a slouch on the desktop/laptop market.

    Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, people decried the fact that Linux wasn’t mainstream – it’s clear that today, it certainly is. A minority, yes, but a mainstream minority – Linux is not in the same category as, say, IBM AIX. So if you wanted to know “when Linux would be mainstream on the desktop,” the answer is probably “around 2009.”

• Kernel Space

  • Some numbers and thoughts on the stable kernels

    Much attention goes toward mainline kernel releases, but relatively few users are actually running those kernels. Instead, they run kernels provided by their distributors, and those kernels, in turn, are based off the stable kernel series. The practice of releasing stable kernels has been going for well over five years now, so perhaps it’s time to look back at how it has been going.

    [...]

    A couple of conclusions immediately jump out of the table above. The first is that the number of fixes going into stable updates has clearly increased over time. From this one might conclude that our kernel releases have steadily been getting buggier. That is hard to measure, but one should bear in mind that there is another important factor at work here: the kernel developers are simply directing more fixes toward the stable tree. Far more developers are looking at patches with stable updates in mind, and suggestions that a patch should be sent in that direction are quite common. So far fewer patches fall through the cracks than they did in the early days.

  • The kernel column #91 by Jon Masters

    Linux 2.6.35 was finally released last month after what can only be described as a (comparatively) mundane development cycle. With the high drama of the previous cycle, that was hardly very difficult to achieve. Sure, there were the typical Linus rants of the month (the main one focused on Linus’s dislike of the ‘defconfig’ files that he sees as cluttering up the kernel tree with tens of thousands of lines of reference configuration files that could live elsewhere – like on the websites for the various supported architectures that create them) and there were a few harsh words for one of the C library maintainers. But there was no giant flame war related to graphics, or security modules, nor calls of protest at Linus’s ever ongoing effort to herd the developers into a focus on stability and regression-fighting prior to release. It was, in short, a rather sleepy summer month in which it seemed people were often busy being away on vacation or being at one of the usual round of conference events. I myself managed both of these things to a greater or lesser extent, and I was grateful for a little less mailing list traffic to catch up on.

  • Graphics Stack

    • X server 1.10 development cycle

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Shotwell 0.7.2 Released, How to Install Shotwell 0.7.2 in Ubuntu Lucid, Maverick

    • Manage Mail Server Connections

    • G’MIC: More Than 190 Image Filters And Effects For GIMP

    • MirrorBrain – Download Redirector and generates Metalinks, Torrents and crypto-hashes

    • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Mandriva 2010.1 Spring (LAMP)

    • Exercising Multi-core

    • Porting Perl To Python

    • Book review – Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macros

    • Qmail OpenLdap On Ubuntu

  • Games

    • I frag better than you, and I do it in Linux*

      West’s talk described how gamers, specifically Linux gamers, can give back to the Linux community first by appealing to those who don’t know that gaming on Linux is an option.

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Student project opportunity: MeeGo-based Fedora Spin (Marketing and Design help needed)

        Crossposting to the Teaching Open Source planet in order to see if any marketing/branding students might be interested in this as a fascinating capstone/case-study. From an email by Paul Frields to the Fedora Marketing list (italics) with my annotations for students inline.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian with a Hint of Mint: Linux Mint Ships Debian-based Distro

      Yes, the rumors are true. Linux Mint has been working on a Debian-based distro (as opposed to Ubuntu-based) and it’s out for your testing pleasure. If Linux Mint’s standard approach has you yearning for more adventure, the Debian edition might be what you’re looking for.

• Devices/Embedded

  • TI tip multi-platform ARM Cortex A15 “Eagle” mobile devices

    As Carlson points out, that sort of virtualization isn’t particularly new; earlier this week, VirtualLogix demonstrated Android 2.2, Chrome OS and Ubuntu Linux all running simultaneously on a Texas Instruments OMAP Blaze developer device (pictured above).

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Spam Trends and Android

      • Dell Streak Gets Android 2.1 Update

        Dell’s just released monster of a phone (it’s also a tablet) Streak was famous for running an ancient version of Android OS (1.6). Dell had promised an update to Froyo soon after the launch.

      • Early Android 2.2 Build for Acer Liquid Leaked

      • Best Buy Offering G2 Pre-Sales NOW

      • Froyo on 28% of Android Devices; 2.x Over 70%

        The Android Platform Versions page has been updated yet again, only this time, Froyo (Android 2.2) is holding a large 28.7% slice of the pie. Granted, Eclair (Android 2.1) still clings to a decent lead with 41.7%, but Froyo is creeping up there. Following Froyo is Donut (1.6), with 17.5%, as Cupcake (1.5) rounds out the pack with a mere 12%. This is a huge change compared to a month ago, when Froyo only had 4.5% and Eclair led the pack with a commanding 59.7%.

      • T-Mobile’s Android 2.2 phone launches on 4G-like HSPA+ network

        T-Mobile USA announced an HTC-manufactured heir to its original G1 Android phone, touted as the first handset to support the company’s new 4G-like HSPA+ network. The T-Mobile G2 runs Android 2.2 on a new 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 processor, and offers 4GB internal and 8GB external flash, dual cameras, and a 3.7-inch screen with a hinge-slider QWERTY keyboard.

  • Tablets

    • Motorola MZ600 Tablet Appears in Verizon Inventory

      It’s almost a certainty that the Moto tablet will end up with some sort of Droid branding as well. Whether it be DroidPad or DroidTab or something entirely different, we can’t see VZW missing out on the built-in marketing for the Droid line giving a big boost for a new tablet. In fact, even though leaks suggest the Galaxy Tab from Samsung will hit the carrier, I wouldn’t be surprised if that tablet is delayed until after the launch of this Motorola device in the same way the Fascinate was held off until after the release of the Droid X and Droid 2.

Free Software/Open Source

• An algorithm for automated closure during assembly

  Conclusions: The algorithm is useful for small-genome automated finishing projects. Our implementation is available as open-source from http://wgs-assembler.sourceforge.net under the GNU Public License.

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome’s and Firefox’s Plans to Unseat IE

    Mozilla, on the other hand, has limited itself to reaching “near or even to” Chrome 5 with respect to JavaScript performance for its next version of Firefox. Still in beta, Firefox 4 is within the 20 percent target performance of Chrome 5, which would make it much more than 20 percent slower than Chrome 6.

• Oracle

  • Is VirtualBox on the same path as other Sun software?

    OK, truth be told, Sun didn’t always commit to a consistent release cycle either. What frustrates me though is that the latest version of 3.2.8 has brought with it numerous bugs for Linux. One of which involves the corruption of saved states and the other involves general usability in the main application window. None of which I had seen when Sun directed the application’s development.

• Education

  • Free Software in Education

• Licensing

  • Two Thank-Yous

    Secondly, I need to thank my colleague Chris DiBona. Two years ago, I gave him quite a hard time that Google prohibited hosting of AGPLv3′d projects on its FLOSS Project Hosting site. The interesting part of our debate was that Chris argued that license proliferation was the reason to prohibit AGPLv3. I argued at the time that Google simply opposed AGPLv3 because many parts of Google’s business model rely on the fact that the GPL behaves in practice somewhat like permissive licenses when deployed in a web services environment.

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open Hardware

    • RepRap repraps RepRap electronics

      Several people are starting to work on having RepRap make electronics. This includes, of course, making its own circuitry. For example, I’m pleased to say that this blog post itself is rather eclipsed by Johnny Russell’s beautifully neat Arduino Mega Shield made in a RepRap here.

    • Robotic Software Platform Behind Projects Like Segway RMP, Lego Mindstorm Going Open Source

      Yet another important project is going open source. This time, it is the popular robotic software platform called Urbi. Widely popular robotic projects like Segway RMP, Lego Mindstorm, Aldebaran Nao etc. runs on Urbi robotic software platform.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Digitally signed documents an ODF1..2 Feature in Freoffice

    This work was done by Sugnan Prabhu with a helping hand from Jos Vandenoever in a very time frame of 2.5 weeks this work was completely flawlessly !! Great Job Sugnan and Jos !!

Leftovers

• Yahoo claims invention of a Google feature?

  Most people by now will have experienced the live search feature Google is debuting. That aside (and we can look forward to the new ”innovation” Bing offers as a response), its being reported that Google instant was invented in 2005 by an ex-Yahoo product manager.

• GoDaddy.com Goes on the Auction Block

  GoDaddy.com, the closely held website that registers Internet domain names, has put itself up for sale in an auction that could fetch more than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

  [...]

  In addition to registering domain names, GoDaddy.com sells e-commerce, security and other services to people and businesses looking to manage their online presence. The company posted revenue between $750 million and $800 million in 2009, according to people familiar with the matter.

• Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

  Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

  [..]

  Sarah Palin’s connection with her audience is complete. People who admire her believe she is just like them, and this conviction seems to satisfy their curiosity about the objective facts of her life. Those whose curiosity has not been satisfied have their work cut out for them. Palin has been a national figure for barely two years—John McCain selected her as his running mate in August 2008. Her on-the-record statements about herself amount to a litany of untruths and half-truths. With few exceptions—mostly Palin antagonists in journalism and politics whose beefs with her have long been out in the open—virtually no one who knows Palin well is willing to talk about her on the record, whether because they are loyal and want to protect her (a small and shrinking number), or because they expect her prominence to grow and intend to keep their options open, or because they fear she will exact revenge, as she has been known to do.

• To The Governor and President: Fulfill The Purpose (Part I)

  But until we understand that college is not and never has been about job-training (except for certain fields, such as medicine and law), we’ll never be able to help college or their students to cope with the changing society and economy. In particular, we won’t be able to help students and prospective students avoid excessive debt in the pursuit of higher incomes that they will probably never experience.

• To The Governor and President: Fulfill The Purpose (Part II)

  Now we need to discuss the K-12 education system. It makes sense that fixing the collegiate system cannot be completed until we are ready to tackle the compulsory Kindergarten through twelfth grade system’s problems.

• Security/Aggression

  • US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

    Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

  • Deported Iraqi asylum seekers say they were beaten and forced off plane

  • Paris crèche to monitor children by putting tracking chips in clothing

    With its generous benefits and subsidised facilities, France’s childcare system is one of the most admired in the world. But psychologists and unions were up in arms today over proposals they believe would turn crèches into “Big Brother-style” surveillance zones.

    From next year, a crèche in Paris is planning to introduce a system to monitor children’s movements using tracking chips in their clothing. The centre, understood to be the first in Europe to use the technology, hopes the measure will enhance the safety of its children.

  • 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t

    Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

    1. Kidnapping
    2. School snipers
    3. Terrorists
    4. Dangerous strangers
    5. Drugs

    But how do children really get hurt or killed?

    1. Car accidents
    2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
    3. Abuse
    4. Suicide
    5. Drowning

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Gulf oil spill: An industry at war with itself

    It is not often we are given a very public – and highly critical – insight into an industry as private as oil. This is a sector that is used to secrecy, and one before which many governments, never mind members of the public, are forced to bend the knee.

    Big Oil is used to waving away questions about the way it operates with the assuring mantra that “safety always comes first”, but the blowout on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last April blew away some of the mystique.

  • Gulf oil spill to blame for oily blobs in vital Gulf sea life?

    Researchers found orange blobs in blue crab larvae in May. The discovery is part of a push to understand what effect the Gulf oil spill is having on the foundations of the Gulf food chain.

  • BP internal investigation into Gulf oil spill mostly points finger at others

  • EXCLUSIVE: Tests find sickened family has 50.3 ppm of Corexit’s 2-butoxyethanol in swimming pool — JUST ONE HOUR NORTH OF TAMPA (lab report included)

    “Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

  • How Has It Come to This?

    Just after leaving the boat launch, we pass a shrimper coming back in.

    “How did you do out there?” Craig asks him. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” the despondent fisherman replies. “How much do you usually catch?” Craig asks. “Hundreds of pounds, sometimes a thousand pounds,” comes the reply.

  • Wind power’s growth is blowing Europe toward green goals

    Europe is installing more wind power capacity than any other form of energy, and wind is leading the way to making the continent’s electricity generation 100% renewable by 2050

• Finance

  • Revenue and Customs boss says he need not apologise

    The UK’s top tax man has refused to apologise after taking the wrong amount of tax from six million people.

    Dave Hartnett, Permanent Secretary at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), claimed media stories of blunders and IT failures were wrong.

  • Everyone May Hate Goldman Sachs, But Goldman Still Loves Itself

    In an online survey of employees at 80 financial companies, conducted by consulting site Vault.com, Goldman Sachs came in as the No. 1 best place to work. Blackstone came in second, and rival JPMorgan came in third. “Employees at the firm noted that — the media attacks aside — Goldman is still a great place to work, and that’s reflected in its No. 1 ranking,” Derek Loosvelt, the finance editor for Vault, told the Post.

  • Goldman’s still got it, at least on Wall Street

    That had an obvious effect on public perception of the company – with opinion surveys showing that Goldman had a worse reputation even than scandal-plagued BP and Toyota.

  • Michael Lewis: World would be better ‘without Goldman Sachs’

  • Goldman’s hedge fund factory winding down

    As Goldman Sachs Group winds down its Principal Strategies group, the firm will be shutting a business that’s produced some of the most successful hedge fund managers in the world.

  • Goldman Sachs Said to Be Fined by U.K. Financial Regulator

    The U.K. regulator found that Goldman Sachs failed to notify it about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of the New York-based firm’s Abacus transaction and of employee Fabrice Tourre’s role in it, according to the person, who spoke anonymously because the penalty hasn’t yet been made public.

  • Goldman Sachs Hit With U.K. Fine

  • Goldman Sachs fined £20m by FSA

  • Goldman Sachs Shifts Majority Of Political Contributions To Republicans

    In the latest example of former Obama supporters on Wall Street turning against the administration, Goldman Sachs has pledged more money to Republicans than to Democrats in this year’s election cycle. It’s the first time the firm has leaned Republican in at least 20 years. (Hat tip to The Street)

    Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in every election since 1990 (when the group started keeping records), Goldman has given most of its money to Democrats. This year, though, Republicans got 54 percent of its campaign money, up from 26 percent in 2006. With about $1.7 million in total funds (to Republicans and Democrats combined) donated so far, Goldman is, as usual, leading the Wall Street pack. Morgan

  • Goldman Leans Republican

    Data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) shows Goldman giving more money to Republicans than Democrats for the first time since it began keeping records back in 1990.

    During that 20-year time period covering 11 election cycles, Goldman has donated nearly $21 million to Democrats, nearly double the $12 million it has handed out to Republicans.

  • Politico: Is a Goldman Sachs consultant likely to replace Rahm?

    Now that the rumor of Rahm Emanuel leaving the White House has reached full flower, come the buds of the follow-on rumor — who will replace him as Obama’s chief of staff?

    Politico suggest that Thomas Donilon is the “most likely candidate” and Huff Post agrees sufficiently to write a story with that as the lead.

    Are they sniffing each other’s fumes, or does somebody know something? I guess we’ll find out.

  • Glaxo Nabs Goldman’s Half-Trillion-Pound Deal Maker

  • Goldman Sachs M&A chief to join GSK as CFO

  • Goldman Sachs Economist O’Neill Named Asset Management Chairman

    O’Neill, 53, will remain in London and report to Ed Forst and Tim O’Neill, global co-heads of Goldman Sachs’s investment management division, the New York-based firm said today in an e- mailed statement. The appointment to Goldman Sachs Asset Management, or GSAM, is subject to U.K. regulatory approval, the firm said.

  • The privateers of education – How banks collude with the government to inflate college costs. Student loan debt now surpasses total credit card debt.

    One of the more ominous statistics coming from this recession is that student loan debt has now surpassed total credit card debt in the United States. The reason for this is based on the deep impact of the recession. Credit card debt peak at $975 billion back in September of 2008 and is now down to $826 billion.

    [...]

    The student loan market has enriched a few while pushing on the inflated cost of education to the working and middle class of the country. Clearly people can’t afford the cost of education as it stands and thus go into massive debt (just like housing). As usual, this is part of a bigger theme of squeezing out the middle class from an elite and increasingly desperate banking class. The banking class is bent on making money through usury rates and basically skimming money off people via non-productive means. Plus, they are lending taxpayer backed money. There is a specific reason why college costs have gone up (and are still going up) even though the working and middle class are getting poorer.

    [...]

    Banks have dumped trillions of dollars of bad housing debt onto the taxpayers and have been pushing student loan debt onto the taxpayer as well for years. Al Lord and Tim Fitzpatrick, both Sallie Mae big names have pulled in over $400 million over the last decade. Glad that the new mission of education is now paving the way for subsidizing the salaries of big financial lenders.

  • Fidel Castro says his economic system is failing

    It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us any more.”

  • Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents

    One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • The US has a way to shut down Wikileaks, the infamous SDN list

    You may not know what the SDN list (Specially Designated Nationals) is but we´ll explain. It’s the US version of Iran and Chinas state censorship machine. Initially created with good intent to inform the world (and US entities, persons) of Terrorists, Rogue regimes and other wrongdoers. It slowly converted into a censorship list to block free speech on the Internet. You see, by adding a website to the list the U.S authorities could then evoke a closure order on the registrar where the domain is registered. Of course, if it’s a .com or .org then the US can evoke the said closure order anywhere in the world via ICANN.

  • Judge: Movie Studios Can Subpoena Internet Users’ Names, Data In File-Sharing Cases

    A federal judge on Friday allowed the holder of a movie copyright to subpoena the names of people accused of illegally downloading and distributing a film over the Internet.

    Courts have held that Internet subscribers do not have an expectation of privacy once they convey subscriber information to their Internet service providers, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled.

  • Bahrain: Ali Abdulemam, blogger and Global Voices contributor arrested

    Ali Abdulemam, a leading Bahraini blogger and Global Voices Advocacy author, was arrested earlier today by the Bahraini authorities for allegedly spreading “false news” on BahrainOnline.org portal, one of the most popular pro-democracy outlets in Bahrain, amidst the worst sectarian crackdown by the government in years, and accusations of a supposed “terror network” involving several political and human rights activists.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

    The availability of digital channels for media distribution has raised several important questions for marketers, notably whether digital distribution channels will cannibalize physical sales and whether legitimate digital distribution channels will dissuade consumers from using (illegitimate) digital piracy channels. We address these two questions using the removal of NBC content from Apple’s iTunes store in December 2007, and its restoration in September 2008, as natural shocks to the supply of legitimate digital content, and analyzing its impact on demand through BitTorrent piracy channels and the Amazon.com DVD store.

  • Evidence Shows You Can, In Fact, ‘Compete’ With ‘Free’