10.25.10

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Mac OS X Lion Features Are Ubuntu Rip-Off

  Let’s look at Mac OS X Lion’s first “innovation” they introduced: multitouch gestures. This is curious because while Mac trackpads and “magical” mice support multitouch, not much work had been done with multitouch at the OS level. With Lion, Apple’s introducing system-wide gestures that command both applications and the OS. But wait, where have we seen this before? That’s right, Ubuntu.

• Kernel Space

  • Clang builds a working 2.6.36 Kernel

    Clang can now compile a functional Linux Kernel (version 2.6.36, SMP).

  • Graphics Stack

    • Intel, Radeon DRM Get Precise VBlank Timestamps

      Mario Kleiner has published patches over the weekend that introduce precise vblank time-stamping support within the Linux kernel’s DRM core and has implemented this support already within the Radeon and Intel kernel drivers too. The precise vblank timestamps and counting is needed by the DRI2 sync and swap extensions and in particular to conform with the OML_sync_control extension.

    • Holy Crap! You Can Use XvMC With ATI Gallium3D!

      It was just over the weekend that we reported XvMC and VDPAU may come to the ATI R600 Gallium3D driver that would allow those with Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000/5000 series graphics cards (what’s supported by R600g) to enjoy accelerated video playback using GPU shaders beyond just the limited X-Video extension. This work was being done by Christian König and today he has one hell of a surprise: it’s to the point that today you can try out the code and it should work for XvMC! Yes, that’s the case, I just read the email twice and am now scurrying to test out the appropriate ATI DDX and Gallium3D driver.

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME Desktop

    • There’s Little Love For Ubuntu’s Unity Desktop

      The announcement of Ubuntu dropping the GNOME shell in favor of their own Unity interface that came during Mark Shuttleworth’s keynote to kick off their Ubuntu 11.04 development summit has not been welcomed by many Linux users.

      Of the three pages of comments (and it continues to grow) within our forums, there isn’t anyone that’s actually happy to see Unity coming to the Ubuntu Desktop rather than the GNOME 3.0 Shell. Many users have already tried the current Unity desktop used by Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition and there’s just lots of complaints.

    • Ubuntu moves away from GNOME

    • Ubuntu to move to Unity as default desktop for 11.04

      First things first: what Canonical is doing here is not new, by any means. Novell developed the slab on their own, based on their user testing and to their own design, before proposing it for inclusion in GNOME once it was released in Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop. Nokia have developed custom user interfaces on top of the standard Linux desktop shell for the past 5 years, built with GNOME technologies, and have actively participated in the development of core components through the GNOME project – they are now developing a custom interface based on Qt, for smartphones, using the same standard desktop stack. OpenMoko did the same thing with the Freerunner. Intel built a custom shell for netbooks in the Moblin project, which is now the netbook interface for MeeGo. OLPC built a custom designed user interface for educational computing devices. GNOME allows and enables this kind of work, because of the great platform and infrastructure we have provided over the years to all Linux software developers.

      In such illustrious company, forgive me if I think that Canonical’s management has seriously underestimated the difficulty of the task in front of them.

    • Ubuntu changes its desktop from GNOME to Unity

      Unity is Ubuntu’s new netbook interface. While based on GNOME, it is own take on what an interface should look and act like. Shuttleworth explained that Canonical was doing this because “users want Unity as their primary desktop.”

    • Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

    • Zeitgeist wants you

• Distributions

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 15: Lovelock, Pushcart, Sturgis, Asturias?

        Earlier this month the Fedora community began proposing names for Fedora 15 with the proposals ranging from names like Malmstrom to Fortaleza and Gutzwiller. The list, however, has now been narrowed down to five potential candidates for the Fedora 15 codename.

        The potential names for Fedora 15 include Asturias, Lovelock, Pushcart, Sturgis, and perhaps the most normal name is Blarney. Personally I’d pick Blarney or Pushcart.

  • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • UDS Natty 11.04 – Mark Shuttleworth keynote – Part 1

        Mark Shuttleworth delivers the keynote speech kicking off the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida. Note: This is an ‘unofficial’ rip of the video stream from the event which cut part way through.

      • Day 1 – Report from Ubuntu Developer Summit

        And so it begins. For anyone unfamiliar with the Ubuntu Developer Summit, it’s a biannual get together for the great minds of the wider Ubuntu community to figure out what’s going to happen in the next release. It’s pretty unique; almost all of the sessions are entirely open and broadcast online for remote participation.

        My day began, like everyone else’s, with the keynote by Mark Shuttleworth.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Nokia/MeeGo

      • Nokia N900 PR 1.3 Firmware Now Available

        Simply grab the vanilla version for PR 1.3 for your region and get flashing using this guide. If you are on a Mac, this is the guide to follow. The new firmware brings bug fixes, stability improvements and support for Nokia’s Ovi Suite.

    • Android

      • Will Android Market Beat Apple’s App Store?

        Apple fan-boys might be eating crow when they heard that Android has passed a major milestone. The Android Marketplace now has more than 100,000 apps for download.

Free Software/Open Source

• Events

  • PGDay Europe 2010 schedule announced

    I’m pleased to be able to say that the schedule for this year’s PGDay Europe conference in Stuttgart, Germany on the 6th – 8th December 2010 is now available.

• Openness/Sharing

  • No base station required: peer-to-peer WiFi Direct is go

    The Wi-Fi Alliance on Monday announced that its direct peer-to-peer networking version of WiFi, called WiFi Direct, is now available on several new WiFi devices. The Alliance is also announcing that it has begun the process of certifying devices for WiFi Direct compatibility.

  • Open Data

    • To Save Students Money, Colleges May Force a Switch to E-Textbooks

      You’ve heard it before: Digital technologies blew up the music industry’s moneymaking model, and the textbook business is next.

      For years observers have predicted a coming wave of e-textbooks. But so far it just hasn’t happened. One explanation for the delay is that while music fans were eager to try a new, more portable form of entertainment, students tend to be more conservative when choosing required materials for their studies. For a real disruption in the textbook market, students may have to be forced to change.

• Standards/Consortia

  • HTML5 Audio and Video: What you Must Know

    In promotion of what I consider to be the best HTML5 book currently available on the market, Remy Sharp and Bruce Lawson agreed to donate a chapter of Introducing HTML5 to our readers, which details the ins and outs of working with HTML5 video and audio.

Leftovers

• Interface Message Processor (IMP) – The First Internet Router

  Steve Jurvetson shot this photo of a Interface Message Processor (IMP) made by BBN, which was as used as a router by APRANET to create one of the first nodes Internet in 1969. It is part of an upcoming exhibition at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Humiliate, strip, threaten: UK military interrogation manuals discovered

    The British military has been training interrogators in techniques that include threats, sensory deprivation and enforced nakedness in an apparent breach of the Geneva conventions, the Guardian has discovered.

  • CCTV aimed at Muslim areas in Birmingham to be dismantled

    More than 200 cameras targeted at Muslim suburbs of Birmingham as part of a secret counter-terrorism initiative are to be dismantled, it emerged today.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • End of the Exmoor Emperor: sadness after giant red stag shot dead

    After 12 summers, the sun has finally set on the Exmoor Emperor, the magnificent red stag whose epic proportions were his making – and also, it seems, his downfall.

  • Prehistoric creatures discovered in huge Indian amber haul

    Hundreds of prehistoric insects and other creatures have been discovered in a large haul of amber excavated from a coalmine in western India. An international team of fossil hunters recovered 150kg of the dirty brown resin from Cambay Shale in Gujarat province, making it one of the largest amber collections on record. The tiny animals became entombed in the fossilised tree resin some 52m years ago, before the Indian subcontinent crunched into Asia to produce the Himalayan mountain range.

  • Days left to stop mass extinction

    A third of all animals and plants on earth face extinction — endangered blue whales, coral reefs, and a vast array of other species. The wave of human-driven extinction has reached a rate not seen since the fall of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • NHS ‘suspended whistle-blowers’ in London

    Three senior NHS staff in London claim they have been suspended for whistle-blowing after raising concerns about the hospitals they work in, but have been given other reasons for keeping them off work.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Jailbreaking Your iPhone? Legal! Jailbreaking Your Xbox? 3 Years In Jail!

    Bunnie Huang is no stranger to absolutely ridiculous legal claims concerning trying to hack an Xbox. After doing so, he had trouble publishing a book on the subject, over fears that telling people how to modify a piece of electronics they had legally purchased might somehow violate copyright law (anyone else see a problem with that?). Now, techflaws.org points us to the news that Huang is scheduled to testify on behalf of a guy facing jailtime for modifying Xboxes. But US officials are trying to bar his testimony, claiming it’s “not legally relevant.” Technically, they’re probably right. But, from a common sense standpoint, Huang is trying to make a bunch of important points.

  • Mark Cuban: It’s Okay For Broadcasters To Block Access Based On Browsers, Because They’re Making Billions

    Like many tech sites, we recently wrote about the fact that the various TV networks were discriminating based on the browser, blocking access to Google TV’s browser, because they don’t want people to watch the shows they’re already giving away for free online on their TV (even though it’s easy enough to just hook up a computer to a TV and watch via your preferred browser of choice). Marshall Kirkpatrick pointed us to the fact that Mark Cuban decided to respond to Newteevee’s article on the subject, in which the author of the original article reasonably pointed out that this was a braindead strategy by the networks, who were shooting themselves in the foot.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Universal Claiming Dancing Baby Video Not An Obvious Case Of Fair Use

      The latest part of the case is that both sides have filed for summary judgment, with Lenz arguing that the takedown violated the law, since Universal did not believe in good faith that the video was infringing (as required by the law). Universal’s motion, on the other hand, makes the argument that the 29-second video is not an obvious case of fair use. It still argues that there’s no requirement to check for fair use first, but says that even if it’s supposed to, this video was not obviously fair use.

    • Mom Asks Court to Declare Universal Violated Law in “Dancing Baby” Case

      Back in 2007, Stephanie Lenz posted a video to YouTube of her children dancing and running around in her kitchen. Stephanie wanted to share the moment with her family and friends. But they weren’t the only ones watching: a few months later, Universal Music Corp. had the video removed from YouTube, claiming that the video infringed its copyright.

    • Secret Anti-Piracy Negotiations, 3 Strikes, And a Taxpayer Funded Campaign

      As authorities, rightsholders and ISPs in Denmark negotiate behind an agreed press blackout over the possible introduction of a 3 strikes-style file-sharing regime, the government is set to commit tax payers’ money to the overall plan. The Ministry of Culture says it will help fund a public anti-piracy campaign and will match any financial contributions made by the entertainment industries and ISPs.

    • Porn pros hope to squelch online piracy by 2012

      The film and music businesses couldn’t stop file-sharing, but the porn industry has a plan to drive piracy into the shadows in 15 months or less. Can DogFart, Lords of Porn, and Naughty Bank succeed where others have failed?

    • ACTA

      • KEI’s ACTA timeline

      • Urgent EP written question: Is ACTA voluntary? Only binding for countries of South?

        Article 1.2 in the proposed ACTA agreement states:

        “Each Party shall be free to determine the appropriate method of implementing the provisions of this Agreement within its own legal system and practice.”

        At recent meetings in Washington the US Trade representative has told other US agencies, NGOs and US legislators that ACTA is not binding and that its Article 1. 2 allows for a general flexibility for any element that might contradict ACTA in US law.