• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Member of largest supermarket chain in Italy hosts Linux presentation

This is just what will happen next Saturday in Bologna, Italy.

The Linux Day is the largest Italian event for the promotion of Linux and Free Software in General (as you may read in my reports on the 2005 and 2006 editions). This year it will consists of more than 130 simultaneous events all across the country. Coop is “a system of Italian consumers’ cooperatives which operates the largest supermarket chain in Italy” (from Wikipedia).

Desktop

• Linux Community Strikes Back Against Thuggery

  We couldn’t have done this without the help of the Linux and FOSS communities, and the money was presented to Joe and his family in your name, not ours.

Server

• Joyent adds Windows, Linux support

  The move may put Joyent in direct competition with market leaders like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, which also support applications built on Windows and Linux. But customers that are primarily looking for a service that hosts Web applications will find that Joyent is less expensive because of its SmartOS, Ludwig said. Also, Joyent has optimized its offering for Web applications so can better serve customers looking to host Web apps, he said.

Kernel Space

• The VMFS-3 Virtual Blockade

  Filesystem block size rarely enters the sparkling dialog at your noontime geekfest where movie one-liners and song lyrics replace actual conversation but today is different. The ticking of thumbs halts in mid-text when someone at the table opens up an intellectual volley with, “Have you ever seen the error that there isn’t enough space on the filesystem for the selected operation in Virtual Center?” The puzzled faces stare back as if someone had just announced that iPads are on sale for half price. But, before you, or they, have a chance to react to this obviously simple problem of insufficient disk space, the problem isn’t insufficient disk space.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to fix the crackling sound problem in Ubuntu 10.10 startup

  • Xmodmap – on the way to writing hieroglyphs quicकly

  • Checking OpenStreetMap Data for Problems

  • XenLinux kernel 2.6.34.7 aka Suse under Xen 4.0.1 on top of Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop

  • The Perfect Server – Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10) [ISPConfig 2]

  • How to transform (almost) plain ASCII text to Lulu-ready PDF files, part 1

  • Server Configuration Tuning in PostgreSQL

  • UFW application profiles

  • Nginx Catch-All Host As Front End To Apache For ISPConfig 2 On CentOS 5

  • How to install and configure a graphical firewall client in Ubuntu 10.10

• Wine

  • Bordeaux 2.0.10 for OpenIndiana Released

    The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.10 for OpenIndiana today. Bordeaux 2.0.10 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have bundled Wine 1.2.1, 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.

  • CodeWeavers Releases CrossOver and CrossOver Games 9.2

    Less than a month after Firaxis released its highly anticipated and acclaimed Civilization 5, CodeWeavers, Inc. today announced the release of CrossOver Games 9.2, enabling gamers to play the game on Linux and Mac operating systems.

• Games

  • Secret Maryo Chronicles- An opensource Super Mario Bross clone for Linux

    Stern praised the speed of the game and its puzzle solving. The game was named one of the most promising open source games of 2008 by El Heraldo and praised as a well-made non-violent game for children by heute.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Looks like Clementine might just win the MVP on my Desktop

    For as long as I can remember my number one music player on Linux (or in fact anywhere) has been amarok. Although, I took a little break from it during its shaky transition from 1.4 to 2.x. I came back when things got stable enough and I have not looked back ever since. Well, until recently when rave of a certain fork of Amarok 1.4 called Clementine started to proof too much to ignore. Couple of times I previously tried Clementine I went back to amarok like 5 minutes later. I found it (then) very unstable, and lacked many of amarok features like lyrics fetching etc.

Distributions

• Applying for Use of the Open Xtreemos Test Bed and Requirements

  The XtreemOS partners are pleased to provide access to their open test bed for interested developers and users. It is a distributed test bed spread across several participating institutions.

• New Releases

  • Tinycore 3.2 is released !

• Debian Family

  • Trying Debian for ARM on QEMU

    Many Linux developers in these years are working on porting Linux software on ARM architectures. Debian in particular offers the full distribution to be installed on supported devices, and I wanted to try it out. There are already images prepared for the Versatile platform (thanks to Aurélien Jarno), and with them it is possible to try Debian for ARM without owning an ARM platform, using QEMU.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Maverick Meerkat, aka Ubuntu 10.10 Review

      I consider the latest version of Ubuntu to be the best version ever. The new font makes it cooler than any other operating system. It is extremely secure, resource and cost effective. It is updated every six months thus keeping my machine updated with latest technologies. What else should I ask for?

    • Ubuntu One adds audio streaming

      Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu Linux operating system is quickly moving from being a niche player in the market to an environment which caters for a broad range of users.

Devices/Embedded

• Fourth-gen Wind River Linux adds multi-team tools

  Wind River announced the fourth-generation of its commercial embedded Linux distribution, adding 95 packages. Based on Linux 2.6.34+ kernel, Wind River Linux 4 offers GCC 4.4, EGLIBC 2.11, and GDB 7 cross-compiling toolchains, and provides multiple virtualization options, PREEMPT RT real-time Linux, multi-team collaboration features, a new native x86 build environment, and support for the upcoming CGL 5.0, says the company.

• Wind River Advances Embedded Linux

  Intel’s Wind River software division is out this week with a new embedded Linux release that adds new carrier grade and workflow capabilities to the platform.

  Wind River entered the Linux space in 2004 as an optional alternative embedded operating system to its own VxWorks embedded system. With Wind River Linux 4.0, the company is building on some of its past systems by extending real-time Linux capabilities. One such real-time capability comes in the form of the preempt_rt Linux kernel.

• Phones

  • HP Palm officially announces webOS 2.0

    HP has officially announced the launch of version 2.0 of its webOS mobile operating system, considered to be Palm’s response to Apple’s iOS 4 and Google’s Android 2.2. The latest version of the proprietary-but-Linux-based mobile OS features built-in support for Adobe Flash 10.1 for viewing web content in the included browser and improved multi-tasking support, which the company calls “true multitasking”. Users can easily switch between open applications without needing to close current apps by viewing running programs using a “card stacks” view that displays open apps in the order they were last used.

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • MeeGo devices in 2011

      There was a lot of excitement when Intel and Nokia joined forces earlier this year to create MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. The blending of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin operating systems had all the signs of being a big player in the mobile market, not only because of the backing of two industry heavyweights but also because the open nature of the OS opened up opportunities.

  • Android

    • Rock-a-droid

      Your editor’s iRiver H340 music player attracts stares in the crowded confines of the economy class cabin; it is rather larger than many newer, more capable devices, contains a rotating disk drive, and looks like it should have a smokestack as well. But your editor has continued to nurse this gadget for a simple reason: it is no longer possible to buy anything else like it. The device is open, has a reasonable storage capacity, and is able to run Rockbox. It is, thus, not just running free software; it is far more functional and usable than any other music player your editor has ever encountered. These are not advantages to be given up lightly.

    • Android 3.0 said to offer video chat, Google TV support

      Android 3.0 (“Gingerbread”) will feature video chat support, SIP support for Google Voice on Android devices, and a major graphical redesign, says an industry report. Due this fall, Gingerbread will also provide support for Google TV and its “Youtube Leanback” feature, says the story.

Web Browsers

• Clouds for Google Chrome 8

  Google this week rolled out the first development versions of Chrome 8, the latest vein of its development browser. The primary focus for Chrome 8 is on cloud-based services, probably with Google’s Chrome OS imminent release in mind.

• New Google Chrome For Ubuntu

  Google has released the latest version of its web browser Google Chrome. The version 7.0.517.41 has been released to the stable and beta channels for Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuse, Windows and Mac.

  The version mainly fixes hundreds of bugs and inlcudes an updated HTML5 parser. Google releases a new stable version of Google Chrome approximately every six weeks to get bug fixes, improvements, and new features.

• Mozilla

  • Use Mozilla Prism to add web apps to your desktop

    Mozilla Prism lets you run web apps in their own desktop window allowing a certain degree of freedom compared to running the app in a web browser, while restricting crashes to the app’s window. Follow Sukrit’s step-by-step guide to find out just how easy it is…

Databases

• Ingres Announces Database 10

  Ingres has announced the availability of Ingres Database 10, the latest version of the company’s flagship open source database product.

Oracle

• OpenOffice.org: Where From Here?

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• 2286 public websites advertise non-free software

  During Free Software Foundation Europe’s pdfreaders.org campaign, Free Software activists from 41 countries have reported 2286 public sector institutions which advertise non-free PDF readers on their websites. FSFE will now contact these institutions, trying to get as many advertisements for non-free PDF readers as possible removed before the end of the year. Progress will be documented on the list of reported institutions.

Project Releases

• [DeaDBeeF - Ultimate Music Player For GNU/Linux] release 0.4.2 is out

Programming

• “Split the JCP” proposal

  Stephen Colebourne has proposed that Oracle split the Java Community Process into core and ecosystem organisations with Oracle retaining control of the core parts of Java while the surrounding JSR (Java Specification Requests) are handled by a newly independent body.

Inside ThinkGeek, Where Mythical Meat Can Make Millions

It’s a weighty question for such a silly product, but it illustrates perfectly why ThinkGeek has become so popular. The company makes toys for adults, novelties designed to appeal to both your inner child and your inner grad student. These dorks have been retrofitting classic novelty items with a veneer of obsessive dorkiness for more than a decade, lavishing so much care and imagination and wit on their products that they sometimes seem more like conceptual art than cubicle kitsch.

State CIOs Head For The Exits

Science

• China’s Rare-Earth Monopoly

  For three weeks, China has blocked shipments of rare-earth minerals to Japan, a move that has boosted the urgency of efforts to break Beijing’s control of these minerals. China now produces nearly all of the world’s supply of rare earths, which are crucial for a wide range of technologies, including hard drives, solar panels, and motors for hybrid vehicles.

Health/Nutrition

• UnitedHealth’s Big Announcement: Just What the Doctor Ordered?

  United’s announcement is cause for joy because maybe, just maybe, the nation’s state insurance commissioners — whom Congress gave the responsibility of determining how major parts of the new law will be implemented — will finally realize that they don’t need to give the big insurers the truck-sized loopholes they have been lobbying so hard for over the past several weeks.

Security

• Top 10 Worst Captchas

• Root privileges through vulnerability in GNU C loader

• Chertoff advocates cyber Cold War

  Governments should formulate a doctrine to stave off cyberattacks similar to the Cold War-era principle of nuclear deterrence, according to former US Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff.

  ‘Rules of the road’ for dealing with cyberattacks should include agreed principles on how to react to sustained cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure, Chertoff told a press conference at RSA Conference Europe on Thursday. “[President Eisenhower's workshopping exercise] Project Solarium gave us the theory of deterrence, where rules of the road were clearly understood,” he said. “An attack on the US or its allies with a nuclear weapon would be responded to with overwhelming force.”

Defence/Police/Aggression

• US pilot refused permission to board plane after he declines to be body scanned

  We reproduce here in full the account of Michael Roberts, an American pilot whose life and career has seemingly been ruined by his principled opposition to body scanners.

• Genital prints?

  Speaking in a live interview on France’s LCI television channel, Hortefeux confused the terms for fingerprints (“empreintes digitales”) with that for “genital prints” (“empreintes genitales”).

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Automakers push ahead on plug-ins despite unknowns

  People in the auto industry are opening up a new chapter in its history by transitioning to electric vehicles but they’re writing the book as they go along.

  The technology to make fun-to-drive, well connected plug-in vehicles is already here. Now, auto and utility companies are grappling with how to make these electric vehicles a commercial success, speakers at the Business of Plugging In conference said here today.

Finance

• Ask Your Bank to Produce the Note!

  Every day the financial crisis continues to hit home for families being foreclosed upon. Last month, there were 347,420 foreclosure filings across America, and the rate shows no signs of slowing. The unemployment rate is now driving these tragic foreclosures and 11 million Americans are at risk of losing their homes.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Glenn Beck Not A Fan Of Fair Use; Claims US Gov’t Paying Remixers To Create Anti-Beck Propaganda

  One of the good things about intellectual property issues is that it’s really a non-partisan debate. While, in practicality, this seems to mean that both of the major political parties support bad copyright and patent law, at the very least, it leaves ridiculous political rhetoric out of the debates on things like copyright. But, sometimes, weird things happen. Such as when Glenn Beck seems to think that “fair use” is a choice of some sort. Apparently, in political circles, there was a lot of attention paid recently to a video mashup showing Donald Duck being influenced by Glenn Beck — created by Jonathan McIntosh, who I saw speak earlier this year at the first Fair Use Day in DC. The video, which I had not seen until this, apparently made the rounds in political circles.

• A Lot of Corporate Money, and Very Little Honesty

  The latest demonstration of the impact that Citizens United is having on this election season is a $50 million corporate-funded ad blitz to support Republican House congressional candidates. While some Republican leaders are finally acknowledging the role of anonymous corporate money in buying influence, the ads funded by those dollars remain misleading.

• Chamber Ads Distort Truth, Contain Falsehoods

  Ads being run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contain demonstrably false distortions of truth and statements that fact-checkers have repeatedly exposed as false. The Chamber’s “cookie-cutter” ads running across the U.S. target numerous Democratic representatives and candidates and claim the Democrats in question supported “gutting Medicare by $500 billion,” a reference to their support for the health reform bill.

• Many Chamber ads attacking House Dems contain debunked falsehoods, distortions

• Fox News’ Five-Minute Terrorist Attack (VIDEO)

  In the space of about five minutes this morning, Fox News turned a shutdown of the Brooklyn Bridge over a suspicious flashlight into an international terrorist threat before dismissing the whole thing like it never happened. It’s a classic example of Fox News fear-mongering — in this case, based on Fox’s own fear-mongery “scoop” that’s been a central narrative of the network’s broadcast day.

• Fox News’ Fear Mongering

  Fox News Channel turned a brief investigation of a flashlight found on the Brooklyn Bridge into a potential terrorist attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and then later dismissed the whole affair as though it didn’t happen.

• Ad Urging Latinos Not to Vote Angers Democrats

  The Nevada Democratic Party is lashing out at a conservative Hispanic group over an ad the group is launching that urges Latinos — a critical Democratic voting bloc in the state — to stay home on Election Day.

• Anonymous Funds and The Founding Fathers

  The 2010 midterm elections have been marked not only by unprecedented amounts of anonymous corporate spending, but also piously patriotic defenses of these potentially corrupting expenditures. What would the Constitution’s framers have really thought about unlimited amounts of anonymous corporate dollars influencing American elections?

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• More Questions for Facebook

  Two House members asked Facebook Inc. for more details about the way applications on the social network handle user information, following revelations of new privacy concerns.

• Facebook Takes App Privacy Breaches in Stride

  Facebook doesn’t seem very disconcerted that its top 10 apps are among those reportedly sharing user IDs with advertisers in clear violation of its privacy policies. The sharing was inadvertent, suggested engineer Mike Vernal, and the press reports exaggerated its importance. Users may be steamed about the breaches and the company’s yawning response, but they’re not likely to do anything other than complain.

• New Facebook privacy breach involves apps leaking user data

  Results of a Wall Street Journal investigation published today show that many of the most popular Facebook applications have been transmitting personally identifying information—in some cases, even your friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.

• In resurrecting the Intercept Modernisation Programme, the Government breaks a clear, basic and fundamental promise

• Applying for Citizenship? U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Wants to Be Your “Friend”

  EFF recently received new documents as a result of our FOIA lawsuit on social network surveillance, filed with the help of UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Clinic, that reveal two ways the government has been tracking people online: surveillance of social networks to investigate citizenship petitions and the Department of Homeland Security’s use of a “Social Networking Monitoring Center” to collect and analyze online public communication during President Obama’s inauguration. This is the first of two posts describing these documents and some of their implications. (Read part one.)

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Net neutrality legislation in the US stalls – for now

  So, what does this all mean for the Net Neutrality debate in the US? No matter how you view each and every stakeholder and their issue, negotiations are stalled and nothing will be happening before the November 2nd elections. Chances are that the FCC will make a declaration or ruling during either their November or December meeting, but with a new Congress coming in January it is likely that nothing will be done in great detail on this issue over the next several years. All of this means that we here in the UK will have a little more breathing room on this issue before our American cousins make a definitive decision. Hopefully, the UK can lead its own debate before the US has any impact on the issue.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • NY Times Sends Cease & Desist Letter To Kachingle For Trying To Show Them Alternatives To Paywalls

    Back in August, we wrote about two companies Flattr and Kachingle that were trying to create a very easy to use form of micropayments, that do away with the mental transaction costs, as a method of getting people to voluntarily support content they enjoy monetarily. Since then we’ve been experimenting with Flattr (you can see the widget to the left) and it’s been quite interesting, especially since Flattr finally opened its doors to anyone, rather than being invite only, as it was when we first started. We’ll have a more complete report about our Flattr experiment sometime soon…

    That said, Flattr’s competitor, Kachingle (which is similar, but with a few key differences) recently put together an amusing publicity stunt. Knowing that the NY Times paywall is fast approaching, it put together a “Stop the Paywall!” campaign for Kachingle uses, letting them designate which NY Times’ columnists they want a piece of their monthly contributions to go to.

  • French ISP Relents, Will Send “Three-Strikes” After All

    Free bows to govt decree, and will begin sending out “three-strikes” email warnings to its customers on the govt’s behalf sometime later today.

    Last week I first mentioned how the French ISP Free was refusing to submit electronic “three-strikes” warning letters to its customers on the govt’s behalf as part of the “Creation and Internet” law, the controversial “three-strikes” measure to fight P2P that was formally passed last September. It cited Article L331-25 of the Code of Intellectual Property which says that warning letters shall be submitted by the Commission for the Protection of Rights “under its seal and on its behalf, electronically and “through” ISPs.

  • Should Copyright be Treated Like Property?

    Many critics of current copyright doctrine believe its problems stem largely from an infusion of “property talk” into policy discussions. William Patry writes in Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, “By describing copyright as a private property right, proponents of the description hope to get policy makers and courts to believe that only private, and not public rights are implicated.”1 Later, he adds, “The effort to describe copyright as property is intended to invoke ancient entitlement to powerful rights of exclusion, rights granted automatically as a member of the oldest families.”2

  • Victory Records Provides Worst Argument For Anti-Piracy

    Victory Records hired Gilbert Gottfried of all people to star in an anti-piracy PSA, which you can see above. I think Gilbert Gottfried is hilarious, and he did make me chuckle a bit in this video. The problem that I have with this video is that old Gilby’s argument is that you shouldn’t steal because you are taking money from the artists.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Desktop Linux: The Presstitutes Strike Again!

  Well let me tell you something, desktop Linux is alive and well; and it’s getting better and better.

Server

• London Stock Exchange moves to Linux

  The LSE has moved to Linux for the same reason the vast majority of supercomputers run Linux — it’s faster and better.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 170 – Ask Jez

  In this very special episode we interview LO community member, hacker, tinkerer and GIMP-master Jezra Lickter about the projects he does, facial hair and all kinds of random shit. It’s an epic interview!

Kernel Space

• How Linux Benchmarking Will Change With Iveland & OpenBenchmarking.org

  Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 (codenamed “Iveland”) has been under heavy development for more than a month and there is still at least three more months left of work before this major release will be christened. Today though it is time to publicly share the first details (aside from those that learned about it in the Augustiner tent at Oktoberfest) for one of the new components to be making up a critical piece of the Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 platform: OpenBenchmarking.org.

• The Linux 2.6.36 Kernel Is Now Out There

  The Linux 2.6.36 kernel is now out there on the Internet. After an unexpected delay and some other slowdowns in the 2.6.36 development cycle, Linus tagged the 2.6.36 kernel this afternoon.

  The Linux 2.6.36 kernel features Fanotiy (a new file notification interface), kernel debuging with KMS support, improved Intel power management for Core i3/i5 CPUs, AppArmor integration, and many other features. A more exhaustive list can be found at KernelNewbies.org.

• The 2.6.36 kernel is out

  Linus has released the 2.6.36 kernel with only a small number of changes since the 2.6.36-rc8 prepatch. Headline features in this release include the AppArmor security module, the LIRC infrared controller driver subsystem, and the new Tile architecture. The fanotify notification mechanism for anti-malware applications was disabled at the last minute due to ABI concerns. See the KernelNewbies 2.6.36 page for lots of information.

• At last a cheap Negative film scanner which works with Linux

  I’ve done the research and finally I found a negative film scanner which works with gnu/Linux (ubuntu). Its the Maplins Film and Slide Digital Scanner. It works exactly how I would expect it to. You scan the slides into the memory of the machine or even on to a SD card then you connect the whole device to a pc via usb port to transfer the images out of the device.

  [...]

  The device is great…

• Graphics Stack

  • Here’s Another Intel Poulsbo Linux Driver…

    Even with MeeGo, Intel’s mobile Linux OS formed out of marrying Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo, the Poulsbo support still sucks with Intel not even being allowed to ship their own driver and they even admitting there are too many Poulsbo drivers with none of them being that good. The situation with Intel’s newer Moorestown GMA 600 graphics is the same. While there’s already enough incomplete Poulsbo Linux drivers out there, another one is available today.

  • [ANNOUNCE] pixman release candidate 0.19.6 is now available

    A new pixman release 0.19.6 is now available. This is a release candidate for a stable 0.20.0 release.

Applications

• Gwibber, facebook and You

  To many of us applications are like cars: you get it, turn them on and they run. The running, fine-tuning and servicing of the app/car is left to a professional – in this case developers.

• The Three Levels of Package Management

  In today’s Linux distributions, there are usually two to three levels of package management. In this blog post, I will explain the three levels of package management.

• Slackers Unite! GTD-Free is Here

  You may be familiar with the concept of Getting Things Done, a method of organizing tasks and information to increase personal productivity. While there are many tools available for implementing this technique, one of the better ones I’ve seen is GTD-Free. One of the great things about GTD-Free is that you don’t need to be an expert in the GTD methodology to use it. Simple and efficient, it gets out of your way and lets you focus on the task at hand instead of the tool.

• PDF Reader for Linux

  Many people associate pdf to adobe reader, but is this the best reader of this type of documents that we have on Linux?.

  But in the while le’ts say that Portable Document Format (PDF) is an open standard for document exchange. The file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Configure Wine With Vineyard [Version 0.1.5 Beta, Released]

  • One of the most easiest way to create-compile-run C++ files.

  • Level Up to IPv6 with Ubuntu 10.10 on Comcast

  • Exporting QML from Photoshop and GIMP

  • Install Teamviewer in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

  • Microsoft’s new spooky Windows 7 themes: use them in Ubuntu

  • Checking Your arp Entries

  • Sharing entropy with the Entropy Key on Gentoo Hardened

  • How to: Install fast web server Nginx + Slackware – reverse proxy

  • how to hot plug SATA / SCSI drives on Linux

  • How to install HP 1020n printer in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick

  • How To Add Applications To Your Sources List And Install Applications Using Ubuntu Tweak

  • solve , key problem of vim in screen

  • Reconfigure rkhunter to avoid false positive warninngs on Debian 5.0

  • How to Download Rapidshare and Megaupload files from the Linux Terminal

  • Wget Password: How to use passwords securely with wget

  • Yum centos behind a proxy | Tip

  • HOWTO – Play Uplink in Ubuntu

  • Errors? I Never Maek Errors

• Games

  • Steel Storm Episode I v1.00.01723

    Revision 1723 of Steel Storm Episode I, a 3D top down arcade shooter, has been released. New features include four camera modes, gamepad support, and a difficulty selector.

Desktop Environments

• Will KPresenter and Gnumeric Please Come Forward?

  So what does KPresenter have to do with all this? Well, it’s just that in my experience, KPresenter does a whole lot better in terms of usability and ability to create high-quality presentations than either OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft Office Powerpoint. That’s because the whole KOffice suite is geared towards desktop publishing as opposed to traditional document creation.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Use KDE Activities to Create Different Desktops for Work and Personal Use

    Short of fully creating a new profile, there is no easy way to create a completely different desktop experience using most desktop environments. If you use KDE, you can easily create one setup for work, and one setup for personal use.

    This is how I setup two desktop environments on my Ubuntu 10.10 computer (with KDE 4.5.1), using Activities.

  • Advanced KDE Administration

    For general use, it is sufficient to configure KDE using the options provided in System Settings and in individual application settings. Nevertheless, to unlock the full power of KDE, you should learn some of the system administration tools that it provides.

Distributions

• SELinux, De-mystified

  Are you in a habit of disabling SELinux, because it seems to break things? That seems to be the first reaction, as the first impression of SELinux is that it’s just a troublemaker that stops tasks and causes access denied errors. However, recently I had the pleasure of digging in to SELinux to see just what it is all about. After figuring out how it works, I am making sure it’s enabled on systems in the future. Why? Because it’s an extra layer of security, and when you look at it, SELinux is actually a very smart way to prohibit attacks on a Linux system, mainly servers. If a system is compromised, SELinux greatly limits the damage that can be done.

• Extinct Linux Distros…Is GNU/Linux Headed to Extinction?

  As I was checking about 10 Linux Distros that are now gone, I noticed a pattern (at least on the ones I checked…there are many more that have been discontinued): Most of them had price tags attached. With the exception of Feather Linux (United Kingdom), Arabbix (United Arab Emirates), and Linux Loco (Argentina), the other discontinued Linux distros I happened to check had prices that went from $14 (Spanish Aslinux) to $100 (Canadian Xandros).

• Donate Your Bandwidth to Support Ubuntu Downloads

  To tap into BitTorrent’s magic, first download a BitTorrent client program to your computer. The one I recommend is called Transmission, available as a free download for Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. You’ll need a broadband connection to proceed.

• Reviews

  • Parted Magic review

    Parted Magic is one of the best standalone partition management Linux solutions out there. Sukrit explains why…

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva makes the headline!

    Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring is the most advanced Linux operating system to date, a genuine concentration of technologies and innovations. Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring combines simplicity with conviviality in an intuitive, high performing environment. It is the ideal distribution for all users, from the beginner to the most advanced.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat CEO: Software Vendor Model is Broken

    The current model of selling commercial enterprise software is broken, charged the CEO for Red Hat. It is too expensive, doesn’t address user needs and, worst of all, it leaves chief information officers holding all the risk of implementing new systems.

    “The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken,” said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. “Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for.”

  • Interop: Red Hat CEO Says Software Industry Broken

  • Red Hat Launches New Certification

    Red Hat has launched a new certification for virtualization called the Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator (RHCVA).

  • Fedora

    • Spotlight Feature: Get Mobile with Fedora 14

      The release of Fedora 14 is just around the corner, and one of the areas of active development for this release is mobile devices, such as netbooks. Fedora community members have integrated several different mobile development platforms for use with Fedora, including Sugar on a Stick and software from the MeeGo project. Fedora members also work to bring Fedora to new hardware platforms.

      “Fedora Mobility is a group of Fedora contributors that are interested in Fedora on small devices,” said Peter Robinson, leader of the Fedora Mobility team. “Our initial aim is to ensure that the hardware used in devices such as Netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) work out of the box with Fedora.”

• Debian Family

  • Debian to officially welcome non-packaging contributors

    Today, the Debian Project has overwhelmingly decided in a General Resolution to formally acknowlege the contribution made by many people who help Debian in ways other than maintaining packages – by opening up the process of becoming an officially recognised Debian Developer.

  • Manhattan OS Rebranded As Jupiter OS; Ditches Ubuntu For Debian

    Manhattan OS was a great Ubuntu remaster you might remember reading about on WebUpd8. I say “was” because it doesn’t exist anymore – you can’t download it and there won’t be any new versions, not under the “Manhattan OS” name. That’s because Kevin wanted to go with Debian instead of Ubuntu and as a result, he is currently working on a new Linux distribution called Jupiter OS.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu and Qt

      It is in this spirit that I have been thinking about Qt recently. We want to make it fast, easy and painless to develop applications for Ubuntu, and Qt is an option worth exploring for application developers. In thinking about this, I’ve realized that there is quite a bit of commonality between the strengths of Qt and some of the new directions in Ubuntu:

      * Qt has a long history of use on ARM as well as x86, by virtue of being popular on embedded devices. Consumer products have been built using Qt on ARM for over 10 years. We’ve been making Ubuntu products available for ARM for nearly two years now, and 10.10 supports more ARM boards than ever, including reference boards from Freescale, Marvell and TI. Qt is adding ARMv7 optimizations to benefit the latest ARM chips. We do this in order to offer OEMs a choice of hardware, without sacrificing software choice. Qt preserves this same choice for application developers.
      * Qt is a cross-platform application framework, with official ports for Windows, MacOS and more, and experimental community ports to Android, the iPhone and WebOS. Strong cross-platform support was one of the original principles of Qt, and it shows in the maturity of the official ports. With Ubuntu Light being installed on computers with Windows, and Ubuntu One landing on Android and the iPhone, we need interoperability with other platforms. There is also a large population of developers who already know how to target Windows, who can reach Ubuntu users as well by choosing Qt.
      * Qt has a fairly mature touch input system, which now has support for multi-touch and gestures (including QML), though it’s only complete on Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. Meanwhile, Canonical has been working with the community to develop a low-level multi-touch framework for Linux and X11, for the benefit of Qt and other toolkits. These efforts will eventually meet in the middle.

    • Open Letter: Adopt RMS’ CAA/CLA Suggested Texts

      I was glad to read today that Sam Varghese is reporting that Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t want Canonical, Ltd. to engage in business models that abuse proprietary relicensing powers in a negative way. I wrote below a brief open letter to Mark for him to read when he returns from UDS (since the article said he would handle this in detail upon his return from there). It’s fortunate that there is a simple test to see if Mark’s words are a genuine commitment for change by Canonical, Ltd.

    • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat – Makes daddy proud

      Overall, I’m extremely pleased with Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. It fixes some of the old ill, but does not introduce any new ones. This is good. Now, the installation procedure is the big star of the autumn release. It is smarter and smoother than ever before, plus it lets the user have updates and popular stuff. For anyone who’s ever installed Ubuntu in the past, the changes will be refreshing and encouraging. For new users, it’s instant usability out of the box. Compare this to a typical Windows setup, please.

    • Unity Coming to the Desktop in 11.04!

      Next week, Ubuntu developers will be discussing the possibility of adding a desktop focused version of the new Unity interface to the normal build of Ubuntu. This edition would have these changes among other possible improvements:

      -Would be movable to any edge of the screen per user preference.

      -Normal style floating windows, with window controls in the windows.

      -Home screen turned into a drop down menu with search and program access.

    • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: One Hit, One Miss

      Finally, this release is sloooow compared to 10.04. I’ve been reading other reviews of UNE 10.10, and they all pretty much agree that this one is not completely baked yet. Unless you have some compelling reason to change, you should stay with UNE 10.04 until this one cooks a bit more.

    • Ubuntu 10.10: Ten Days In

      Other than these relatively negligible annoyances, I can’t say there’s anything I’d change about Ubuntu 10.10. I won’t go so far as to call it “perfect,” because experience has shown that to be a word which usually leads to regret later on. But I would describe it as pretty great, and definitely worth trying out. After all, with the installation process so quick and easy, what excuse is there not to?

    • Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10

      I feel pretty comfortable using Ubuntu, considering it’s my OS of choice on my main laptop. I realize most people aren’t like that, but the netbook market has sold people on the idea of devices that are just a little bit different from your usual portable computer, so maybe more folks will be willing to give it a shot.

      It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing with that random dependency error, but once that was taken care of I didn’t have any other hiccups to speak of. Overall I think I enjoy the interface of UNR more than Starter, if for no other reason than it’s something different.

      I intend to continue playing with both Ubuntu Netbook Remix and the included Windows 7 Starter for a while before I decide which one I prefer. The relative freedom and spiffy interface of UNR is certainly poised to win me over at this point. I also like the idea of having a full-featured (and free-of-charge) office suite at my disposal rather than just WordPad to do my writing. Only time will tell. I’ll post back if anything particularly monumental happens over the next month or so.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Kubuntu 10.10 review

        Kubuntu is the community developed, KDE-based version of Ubuntu. The latest edition, Kubuntu 10.10, was released on 10.10.2010, the same day that Ubuntu 10.10 was released. This article offers a detailed review of this KDE-based distribution, and also marks its first listing on this website.

        [...]

        Final Thoughts and Suggestions: Writing this review gave me the opportunity to use Kubuntu for the very first time. And I like it. Though KPackageKit’s interface is not as slick as the Software Center in Ubuntu, I found it a lot easier to use. The only suggestion I have for the Kubuntu team is about rekonq, the default browser. It is a decent browser, but it is not fully production ready. Until rekonq is fully ready for prime time, I think it is best to install Firefox as the default and have rekonq as the alternate.

      • Quick Look: Lubuntu 10.10

        Lubuntu 10.10 will certainly be appreciated by most current Lubuntu users. It’s worth considering as an upgrade.

        However, its minimalistic appeal is rivaled by Xubuntu 10.10 and Xubuntu has the advantage of offering the Ubuntu Software Center as part of its desktop. Which one would I recommend? I’d have to lean slightly toward Xubuntu right now; it seems every bit as fast as Lubuntu and it offers better software management.

        On the other hand, Lubuntu does ship with Chromium as its browser. I prefer Chromium to Firefox; it’s performed faster and more reliably for me. So bear that in mind if Chromium matters to you.

        Don’t be afraid to give both distros a spin though; both of them are Live CD distros so you can simply boot off the CD and try them out without having to install them. I’m definitely curious to hear from those who have tried both distros; please tell me which one you prefer and why in the comments below.

      • LinuxMint 10 Julia screenshots Tour

        Few days ago LinuxMint 10 Julia RC1 was released, this release comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your linux-mintdesktop even more comfortable to use.

      • UberStudent: Custom Operating System For Students [Linux]

        Bringing together the best the open source world has to offer to students, Linux distribution UberStudent is a great starting point for the college-attending geek wanting to give Linux a try. It may not be as straight-forward as Ubuntu, but it does aim to bring together a number of needs students have: links to cheap textbooks, simple citation and various media editing tools.

Devices/Embedded

• New Member Spotlight: Aava Mobile Goes All Open

  Nygard: Aava Mobile was founded in 2009 by a team of engineering wizards with a strong background in mobile phone development who wanted to build an open source mobile device platform for the OEM/ODM market. Aava Mobile’s open devices harness the creativity of developer communities and provide the flexibility to OEMs/ODMs and mobile operators to incorporate their own user interface, content and services to differentiate their devices from competitors.

• We can have Help from Always Innovating !

  Tada ! Everythnig is now open to find a way to mix Openmoko V4 project
  with the base of the A.I.’s MID.

• Phones

  • Android

    • [Exclusive] First Android Gingerbread Details

      We’ve heard countless reports that it’s out there. We know it’s still in development and we know some Googlers have it loaded onto their Nexus Ones. I’m talking about the Android Gingerbread update, of course, and we can finally bring you the first details regarding the next iteration courtesy of our trusted source close to Google. The biggest change – outside of built-in video chat support (more on that later) – that many have been wondering about has been a possible graphical overhaul. The acquisition of ex-Palm user interface expert Matias Duarte – the guy that designed the still-pretty webOS – implied that Google would be looking to pretty Android up against criticism that it was noticably “uglier” than the competition (they may have an argument up against iOS, but I don’t think Symbian, Windows Mobile (6.5) and Blackberry OS are any prettier. No offense to those respective design teams.)

    • Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “Open”

      In Silicon Valley, there are few developers more respected than Joe Hewitt — he helped create Firefox, he built the indispensible development tool FireBug, and he was also responsible for both Facebook’s ‘Touch’ mobile website and the first few versions of its incredibly popular native iPhone application (which he’s rumored to have built singlehandedly). And Hewitt, who is still a prominent Facebook employee, isn’t shy about voicing his opinions when it comes to technology.

      This evening Hewitt has tweeted an hour-long stream of criticism directed at Google’s definition of “Open” when it comes to Android — a topic that was brought up by Steve Jobs during his tirade against Google during Apple’s earnings call yesterday. Android chief Andy Rubin responded to Jobs with his first tweet, which contained his definition of open: a terminal command that can be used to download the source code of the current version of Android. But Hewitt obviously isn’t satisfied.

      Hewitt kicked off his series of tweets with a question: “How does Android get away with the “open” claim when the source isn’t public until major releases, and no one outside Google can check in?”

    • Engineer samples of Android 3.0 tablets to be ready in December

      Digitimes is reporting that Google has notified its partners that the next version of Android is nearing completion, and that tablet PC engineer samples are set to show up in December.

    • HTC Desire Z available via Bell Canada

      Great news for Canadians people! Bell Mobility, one of the top wireless carrier announced the release of the HTC Desire Z for November 3. Known on T-Mobile USA as the HTC G2, the device will be the first smartphone in Canada to operate on Bell’s HSPA+network and support incredible speeds.

    • Does open matter?

      Much has been made of Steve Jobs’ presence on the earnings call yesterday. In particular, there’s a little nerd slapfight going on between Apple and Google around the “openness” of their platforms. As Steve said yesterday, “open doesn’t always win.” Andy Rubin, the father of Android at Google, later reportedly tweeted the code needed to compile Android, thus jabbing at Apple by illustrating that anyone could freely download and compile the Android OS. Yeah, and how many “average” people do you know that’ll do that? Exactly none.

    • Apple, Google, and the open vs. closed positioning war

      Think back to 2009 and the state of the smartphone industry. The iPhone had completely redefined the entire market, while Google was just beginning to see traction with Android and looking at a long struggle to catch up with Apple.

Apache Maven now backs parallelism

The Apache Software Foundation on Wednesday is officially announcing its open source Maven 3.0 software build system for Java projects, which supports multicore processors.

Funambol Launches Open Source Framework for Smartphones

The company will make the system available to all people. For more information, visit its project page on the Funambol Forge website. Funambol is working with the developer community to enhance CAPRI and invites interested parties to participate in the project.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Prototype of an Open Web App Ecosystem

    The open Web is a great platform for rich applications. It would be even better if it had additional capabilities to ease discovery, acquisition, installation and use of apps, while also enabling monetization for developers. We designed and built a prototype of a system for open Web apps: Apps built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript that work both on computers and mobile phones, have many of the characteristics that users find compelling about native apps and provide developers with open and flexible distribution options.

  • Mozilla announces prototype of web app store

    Having announced its plans for a “open web app ecosystem” in late May, Mozilla has now released a prototype. This may be an attempt by Mozilla to pre-empt Google’s announcement of the Chrome Web Store.

    In the May post on the Mozilla blog, Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Products, writes “Supporting the needs of Web developers in their efforts to develop web sites and apps that aren’t bound to a specific browser and work across the Web is core to Mozilla’s public benefit mission.”

  • A Bushel of Resources for Mozilla Firefox

    The resources collected range from free documentation and tutorials that you may not be aware of, to guides to working with open source tools for multimedia and graphics. Our collections of resources for the Firefox browser have been among our most popular, and in this post, you’ll find the latest updated collection for Firefox.

Oracle

• OpenOffice Compatibility

  Ninthchamber asked the Office & Business Software forum why OpenOffice files don’t always open in Microsoft Office.

  The free OpenOffice suite is relatively compatible with Microsoft Office, but not perfectly. It’s best to understand what will work with what.

  For simplicity’s sake, I’m sticking to word processing files here. But the basic rules apply to other office formats, as well.

CMS

• WordPress Founder on the Key to Open Source Success [INTERVIEW]

  We love the freedom afforded by being an independent company and plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future. In that scenario, being publicly held is one of the obvious liquidity options for shareholders, but in an environment where even companies with massive revenues like Zynga and Facebook aren’t public, I think for Automattic it’s many years off and not something that influences our decisions day-to-day.

  4. How do you balance your commitment to open source with your capitalistic ambitions?

  I don’t balance them — they’re both out in full force. The more money Automattic makes, the more we invest into Free and Open Source software that belongs to everybody and services to make that software sing. The more I make, the more I donate to non-profits spreading Open Source to the world.

Business

• What is open core licensing (and what isn’t) UPDATED

  This is an updated version of a post that was originally published in July 2009. It has been updated in response to ongoing confusion about open core licensing.

Project Releases

• Latest Open-Xchange Groupware Improves Usability and Extends Mobility Support

  Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source collaboration software, today announced the latest update for Open-Xchange Server providing users with significant usability enhancement and mobility support for HTC, Android 2.1 and 2.2.

  Open-Xchange provides users with a more intuitive layout of the AJAX-based web interface. A new folder tree design and additional features make the interface of the Open-Xchange web client easier to use and more appealing. Users can switch between e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, document management and settings with a single click.

• Lotus Symphony 3 to be released tomorrow!

• ReactOS 0.3.12 Released

• Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 – developer version available

  Finally, we have a development version of Qt 4.7 that can be installed to Symbian^3 devices like N8 and C7. It’s meant explicitly for development purposes only and cannot be used deploy Qt 4.7 based applications to Symbian^3 devices. This is the real Qt version and it will actually replace Qt libraries on your device (don’t worry, we will provide also a package so that you can revert to Qt 4.6.3 which actually ships on N8 and friends).

• Maps and Semantic Maps 0.7.1 released

  Maps 0.7.1 and Semantic Maps 0.7.1 are now available for download. The main new feature in this release is the long awaited images as layers.

• Lotus Symphony 3 to be released tomorrow!

  We have just had word that the GA release of Lotus Symphony 3 will be available tomorrow, that’s 21st October 2010, from the Symphony website.

Government

• EU: Legal experts to discuss laws and procurements on open source

  A group of European lawyers interested in open source and open standards will discuss if countries can pass laws that favour open source software, at their annual meeting next month. The group will also look at how to write calls for tenders in order to not discriminate against this type of software.

  The European Open Source & Free Software Law Event (EOLE) recently posted the draft programme for the conference.

• Angus Tables Motion in Support of Open Source Software

  NDP MP Charlie Angus has tabled a motion before the House of Commons focusing on the need for the government to support open source software, particularly through public tendering processes.

• Opening up council accounts… and open procurement

  The thing is, such a thing does exist, and it’s sent by councils to central Government (the Department for Communities and Local Government to be precise) for them to use in their own figures. It’s a fairly hellishly complex spreadsheet called the Revenue Outturn form that must be filled in by the council (to get an idea have a look at the template here).

• The EU’s digital agenda (part I): What is at stake?

  This article is the first of a two-part report on the Digital Agenda Stakeholders Day, an event held by the European Commission in Brussels on 25 October 2010.

  Part one of The EU’s digital agenda: What is at stake? looks at some of the overarching issues that most areas of information and communication technology (ICT) have in common.

  Part two (published Wednesday 27 October, 2010) will put the EU’s Digital Agenda into its political context, and will include a review of the actual Stakeholders Day event.

• NYC Pays to Go To Jail

  If they have something like 90000 PCs, they could be getting stuff for free. We don’t know the details of the deal but they could get stuff for free using GNU/Linux. I wonder if they considered that.

• Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.

  On the other side, the Federal government is putting its toe deeper in the Open Source waters, recently making agreements with SourceForge and other web-based developer services. The GSA has announced its intention to launch “forge.gov”, inspired by forge.mil. The VA is exploring how to open source their VistA electronic health record system. The list goes on.

Licensing

• License Compliance: Not An Open Source Issue

  License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the license involved in that case is an End User License Agreement (EULA), not a source license delivering extensive liberties. When we compare like-for-like, we discover open source software has no such issues. End-users do not need to have a license management server, do not need to hold audits, do not need to fear BSA raids. Open source is so much easier!

Openness/Sharing

• Profitable digital content: It’s all about the value

  In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should tell you straight away that I don’t own a television. I sold mine seven years ago, after the year 2003 saw the debut of Nashville Star, The O.C., Fame, and some train-wreck reality show starring Jessica Simpson and her then-husband Nick Lachey.

  These days, my knowledge of television programming comes from disparate half-hours spent on the treadmill at the gym. I catch bits and pieces of shows like Law & Order, Hannah Montana, The Dr. Oz Show, One Tree Hill, The Doctors, and The Dr. Phil Show. (Who hired all the doctors, and am I the only one who wonders how many drinks the talent scout had when he signed Miley Cyrus?)

• Micki Krimmel: NeighborGoods, community building, and open source dating

  A few years ago, I experimented with what I called The Open Source Dating Project.

• Open Access/Content

  • Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies

    Implementing open access is a tough job. Legitimate authority, sufficient resources and the right timing are crucial. Pioneers, role models and flagship institutions all have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving a recognized success. Professionals charged with implementing policy typically need several years to accomplish significant progress. Many institutions adopting open access policies probably need to do more, much more, if the commitment to open access is to be meaningful.

  • How much bibliography can we liberate in a month? Please help. Yes, you!

    The goal is fairly simple. We now have 3 million records from the British Library catalogue. We are grateful to them for not only making them available but also making them CC0. Only CC0 or PDDL is really useful for Open Bibliography. CC-NC creates enormous downstream problems. Avoid it like the plague.

  • Improving Access to the Public Domain: the Public Domain Mark

    Today, Creative Commons announces the release of its Public Domain Mark, a tool that enables works free of known copyright restrictions to be labeled in a way that allows them to be easily discovered over the Internet. The Public Domain Mark, to be used for marking works already free of copyright, complements Creative Commons’ CC0 public domain dedication, which enables authors to relinquish their rights prior to the expiration of copyright.

  • Ask GYST: Public Domain Images Get a Mark

    Creative Commons has announced the release of the Public Domain Mark. Artists and others are using multiple images from the web for just about every conceivable purpose including making artwork. Now, the new mark can be attached to images that are free of copyright and are a part of the public domain.

  • Greg Pak Talks About Giving Away His ‘Vision Machine’ Comic for Free in Digital AND Print [Exclusive Interview]

    When a fan on Twitter who enjoyed it asked where he could purchase the print version, Pak responded by saying “Digital only at the moment. We’re printing a trade later in the year and distributing for FREE at fests/conventions.”

Programming

• Coder’s Great Moments

Standards/Consortia

• Public Review of The State of ODF Interoperability Version 1.0 – 15 day review

  This is an open invitation to comment. We strongly encourage feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, for the sake of improving the interoperability and quality of OASIS work.

I Want to Publish My Book. Now What?

This post is for all those people out there who don’t know ANYTHING about the publishing industry.

Construction On Walkie-Talkie Tower To Begin

Why I Got Fired From Teaching American History

My students were most troubled by the evidence that the “good” enemies of “bad” freedoms were not just traditional icons like presidents and business leaders, but that many of the most revered abolitionists, progressives, and leaders of the feminist, labor, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the cultures of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the flamboyant gays who brought homosexuality out of the closet.

5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.

Something stinks in the province of BC

Two criminals, Dave Basi (right) and Bob Virk, “wasted millions in public money by clinging for years to their claims of innocence” says the Vancouver Sun.

But yesterday, they abruptly changed their tunes, finally admitting they’d in effect sold confidential government information centering on the BC Rail bidding process in 2003.

eBay Pulls The Plug On Retro Thing

Retro Thing has been a member of the eBay Partner Network for years. It’s a program that helps websites earn money by linking to eBay auctions, and we’ve used the income to pay some of the costs of running the site.

We got an email from eBay last week telling us that our account was under review. They demanded a “detailed explanation of how you are driving traffic to eBay, or you risk the termination of your account and 100% reversal of commissions.” They even wanted server logs.

Why Facebook Apps Story Is Problem For Entire Web

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal, in its continuing series of excellent articles about online privacy, released a controversial story about Facebook apps transmitting identification information to outside advertisers — in clear violation of Facebook policies. In response, a number of other media outfits have collectively shrugged their shoulders, maintaining that sending this information happens all the time and no one should be particularly concerned. Did the Journal overreact? Or are others missing the point?

Security

• Wednesday’s security updates

Defence/Police/Aggression

• “Identity fraud costs UK £2.7billion every year” – unsubstantiated propaganda from the “National Fraud Authority” quango

  We have always been, rightly, sceptical about the various propaganda claims about the annual figures for the financial value of alleged “identity theft / fraud” in the UK.

  These were abused by the previous Labour government in their farcical attempts to “justify” their repressive, mandatory, centralised biometric database National Identity Register scheme (which, as planned, would have been useless against online web or phone based frauds).

• Green light for spooks’ net snoop plan

  The coalition government has approved a multibillion-pound plan by the intelligence agencies to store details of every online conversation.

  The reemerging Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) means internet providers will be forced to install interception equipment in their networks to capture details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via services such as Facebook, Skype, webmail, and online games.

• Silencing Online Activism: From “Officer Bubbles” to “Free Byron”

  Will the courts allow citizens to be stripped of the right to comment anonymously? If you make an anonymous comment expressing your disagreement with a situation like this, can you be sued? Is an opinion slander? Or since it’s published online libel?

  Anonymity can be a powerful tool for good. Whistleblowers can leak information that their consciences dictate ought to be public which often serves the public good.

• Free Byron

• Are you a Social Network Freak? US “Homeland Security” may be watching you.

  EFF recently received new documents as a result of our FOIA lawsuit on social network surveillance, filed with the help of UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Clinic, that reveal two ways the government has been tracking people online: surveillance of social networks to investigate citizenship petitions and the Department of Homeland Security’s use of a “Social Networking Monitoring Center” to collect and analyze online public communication during President Obama’s inauguration. This is the first of two posts describing these documents and some of their implications.

• Answers…

  7. What are Ben’s views on prison charities or other organisations supposed to represent those in custody? Which ones does he think have their interests at heart and which are just a cash cow for the employees? In other words, who is worth donating to from a prisoners perspective? (Anon)

  A: Oh, come on, that question is just an invitation to upset a lot of organisations!! That I have reservations about the aims and operations of many prison reform groups is something I have written about for many years. Each has their strengths and weaknesses.

  Almost universally, though, they have no impact at all on the lives of prisoners. As originators of researcher or as policy campaigners they may have some influence on a political-policy level, but their connections with prisoners and our interests are pretty tangential.

• Feds forced to admit that it’s legal to take pictures of federal buildings

  The New York Civil Liberties Union and Libertarian activist Antonio Musumeci just won a court case that affirms the right of photographers to take pictures and record video out front of federal courthouses. The US federal government settled the case by apologizing to Musumeci for his arrest, acknowledging that it is legal to record at courthouses, and promising to issue guidelines to federal officers explaining this fact to them.

• Fight terror, defend freedom

  Based on the compelling evidence that Dominic has put together, the result of all the liberty-infringing anti-terrorism legislation that has been pushed through in the UK is that we are now, as he put it, “less free and no safer”. This benefits no-one: indeed, it runs the danger of producing the opposite outcome of that intended by alienating the very elements in society that we need to ensure feel an integral and welcome part of our community.

• Book launch this evening: ‘Fight Terror, Defend Freedom’ by Dominic Raab MP

• Guest post: My ill-fated evening in Southampton – Britain’s big brother capital

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Beware the fierce climate hawk!

  Keep your eyes peeled: There’s a bold new raptor in the sky, eager to pounce on weaselly warming skeptics

Finance

• Florida foreclosure mill owner who chucked out 70,000 families in 2009 is unspeakably rich

  David J. Stern is a Florida lawyer who operates a foreclosure mill, a firm that foreclosed on more than 70,000 homes last year. According to a deposition from Tammie Mae Kapusta, a former employee, Stern’s firm cut many corners, foreclosing on homes without serving notice, ignoring mortgage payments that would have prevented foreclosure, and “yelling at” employees who talked to homeowners on the phone, because that was “giving them too much time.”

• U.S. Tries to Ease Wider Worries Over Foreclosures

  Mr. Donovan, speaking at a White House news conference, also sought to shift the focus of public concerns about the foreclosure process. He said the administration was more interested in making sure that mortgage companies helped homeowners avoid foreclosure by modifying or replacing unaffordable loans.

• Dean Baker: Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens

  As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics.

• Republican Rep. Ryan’s Social Security plan would cut benefits for high earners

  A Republican plan to rein in the rising cost of Social Security would dramatically reduce retirement benefits for middle- and upper-income Americans, especially those now younger than 25, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the program’s chief actuary.

• NY to hold lawyers accountable on foreclosures

  The chief judge of New York’s courts on Wednesday imposed a new rule requiring lawyers handling foreclosures to verify that all paperwork is accurate.

• Fed survey points to uneven growth across US

  The U.S. economy grew unevenly in early fall, with more than half the regions of the country expanding modestly while others struggled to grow.

  A survey by the Federal Reserve released Wednesday found that seven of the Fed’s 12 regions reported moderate improvements in business activity. Three regions – Philadelphia, Richmond and Cleveland – described economic activity as mixed or steady. Only two regions – Atlanta and Dallas – suggested economic growth was slow.

• Global bank rules expected to be ‘minimum’ standard, Basel group says

  Investors around the world are likely to regard new banking rules proposed by an international group of central bankers as a “minimum” standard and will probably force banks to set aside even more capital than required as a buffer against losses, according to one of the regulations’ main authors.

• Three options for the mortgage mess

  The news that the largest bond fund in the world, the largest money manager in the world and the New York Federal Reserve are demanding that Bank of America repurchase $47 billion in mortgage bonds is scary stuff. As Daniel Indiviglio says, “these investors aren’t exactly Moe, Larry, and Curly. This is serious.”

• Rioters rampage, protesters block French airports

  Workers opposed to a higher retirement age blocked roads to airports around France on Wednesday, leaving passengers in Paris dragging suitcases on foot along an emergency breakdown lane.

  Outside the capital, hooded youths smashed store windows amid clouds of tear gas.

• Wells Fargo dismisses foreclosure problems as analysts warn of paperwork issues

  Banking giant Wells Fargo said Wednesday that its business shows no signs of the looming crisis some analysts fear the industry faces from shoddy lending and foreclosure practices.

  “We are confident that our practices, procedures and documentation for both foreclosures and mortgage securitizations are sound and accurate,” chairman and chief executive John Stumpf said in a news release as the bank announced a third-quarter profit of $3.3 billion.

• Seeking loan modifications shouldn’t make homeowners target of scorn

  And yet to hear many people tell it, Radosta – whose home in metro Atlanta is scheduled for foreclosure by Bank of America – is making out like a bandit because there’s a possibility he might get a loan modification.

• “It’s massive, it’s criminal, it’s wrong…” says Ticktin Law Group

  The fraud I wrote about then and have continued to write about in this blog will take the banking system and those we bailed out to their knees albeit by the back door. Yes, they committed fraud when originating the loans, they committed fraud when they securitized those loans and committed fraud when they sold those securities to the public. In other words they have been operating what I have consistently called an “organized crime” which should have been – and I hoep will be prosecuted under RICO – The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

• Janet Tavakoli & Dave Fry on Financial Reform & Goldman Sachs Lawsuit

• With enough government help, I’ m really good at this game

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• ‘Officer Bubbles’ Sues YouTube Commenters Over Mockery

• Transparency Activist, Public Domain Scholar, Legal Blogger, and Imprisoned E-Voting Researcher Win Pioneer Awards

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pleased to announce four winners of its 2010 Pioneer Awards: transparency activist Steven Aftergood; public domain scholar James Boyle; legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw; and e-voting researcher Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after being imprisoned for his security work in India.

• Geotag, You’re It! What Your Smartphone Might Be Saying Behind Your Back

  Snap a photo of a sunset with your iPhone and you can upload it to Twitter with a few clicks. But your smartphone might be transmitting more than a pretty photograph. It could be collecting and storing data about your real-time location – and then broadcasting that information when you upload photos onto the Internet.

• Guidelines for more rigorous respect of the Fundamental Rights Charter

  The European Commission has adopted a strategy which is aimed at ensuring that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is respected at every stage of the EU legislative process. At the initiative of Commissioner Reding, the intention is to create a template to make it easier for the Commission to measure its own respect for the Charter and, by extension, to give the public a clearer yardstick by which to measure the actions of the Commission.

• Information Commissioner rules against healthcare firm

  The case of Healthcare Locums is sadly not alone with many firms sharing the company’s apparently slap-dash attitude to ensuring the safety of data relating to their customers and employees. While the company has, on this occasion, escaped a large fine for their infrigement of the Data Protection Act this case should serve as an example to all firms of the absolute need for solid data protection policies.

• Digital photos can reveal your location, raise privacy fears

  Skim through the photos on Flickr or Photobucket, and you’ll find pictures of cats pawing at living-room sofas, children playing in backyards and mothers gardening at home.

  Dig a little deeper, and you can unearth the exact locations of many of those homes, embedded in data within the pictures.

• Privacy and 192.com

• Trial and error: online comments court attention

  The UK Attorney General has said that operators of websites should be responsible for comments made by visitors to their sites that prejudice trials. Dominic Grieve said that he wants “further discussions” on site owners’ liability.

  Speaking to the Criminal Bar Association, Grieve, a Conservative MP, said that protecting the fairness of trials was growing increasingly difficult as news outlets proliferated.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• New ACLU Report Calls On FCC To Take Action To Protect Openness On The Internet

  Protecting the Internet against content discrimination by broadband carriers is crucial to protecting First Amendment rights in the age of modern technology, the American Civil Liberties Union said today in a new report on network neutrality. In the report, “Net Neutrality 101,” the ACLU urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create strong policies that prevent Internet gatekeepers from exploiting their role for private gain. The report characterizes the need for “net neutrality” as a leading free speech issue of our time.

• European Law and Regulation of Mobile Net Neutrality

  Mobile is a rapidly growing and potentially major element of the future Internet, and its environment cannot be sensibly considered in isolation from fixed networks [2]. A note on terminology: Europe uses the term Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) while the United States uses ‘wireless’ Internet Service Providers (ISPs) [3]. ‘Wireless’ is somewhat more open in the United States. In Europe, mobile has always made special pleading for forms of self-regulation, as we will see. The article introduces mobile broadband, then considers net neutrality in the fixed environment including the new laws passed in November 2009 in the European Parliament, before considering the mobile net neutrality debate, the degree of price control regulation exerted on European mobiles and the MNOs’ vigorous rear-guard anti-regulation defence. Finally, I look at the effects of this regulatory asymmetry and whether MNO calls for mobile to be treated differently from other ISPs can be justified. I conclude by examining what the effect of price and content control on mobile is likely to be for incentives for fixed ISPs and produce a result that I describe as the ‘fixed’ strategy.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Minister: India Anticipates European Fix To Law Delaying Generics Shipment

  Europe has promised at the “highest levels” to fix laws that caused generic medicine seizures in the Netherlands, the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry said today. The minister is in Geneva for meetings on the ongoing Doha Round trade liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organization.

  “The actions that were taken were not only TRIPS plus but TRIPS illegal,” Minister Anand Sharma told journalists at the WTO, referring to the 1994 WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, as well as to delays in generic drug shipments in 2008 (IPW, WHO, 5 June 2009)

• The Case for Flexibility in Implementing the WIPO Internet Treaties

  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be placing the spotlight on the many contributions in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda. My substantive contribution focuses on the legal requirements to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. With the treaties dating back to the 1990s the issue may seem dated, yet it still resonates today. Within a domestic context, the government has identified ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties as one of Bill C-32’s chief goals. Internationally, the 1990s WIPO debate was re-enacted this year during the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations, with the U.S. again failing to convince its negotiating partners to adopt its implementation approach for anti-circumvention.

  My article examines the issue from four perspectives: the plain language of the statutory requirements, the legislative history behind the inclusion of anti-circumvention provisions within the treaty, state practice in implementing those requirements, and scholarly analysis of the treaty obligations.

• Copyrights

  • Pirate Parties International Mulling Airborne P2P Site

    Pirate Parties International reportedly discussing plans for a high-altitude balloon that would host an airborne file-sharing site, placing it well above the reach of copyright laws and enforcement groups.

    File-sharers have always had a flair for the dramatic, and the latest effort by Pirate Parties International (PPI) lives up to this longtime characterization. For yesterday a group of PPI’s members began discussing plans for a high-altitude balloon that would host an airborne file-sharing site, placing it well above the reach of pesky copyright laws and enforcement groups.

  • Creative Commons’ Branding Confusion

    Anyone introduced to the word “Copyleft” in that film won’t understand what Copyleft actually means in terms of licenses.

  • Irish ISP Praises Defeat of “Three-Strikes for File-Sharers

    Entanet says it thinks disconnecting people from the Internet is not a “proportionate punishment” for illegal file-sharing, and points out that an IP address is not an accurate way of identifying whose responsible.

    Last week Ireland’s High Court sided with Irish ISP UPC in its battle with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), Justice Peter Charleton ruling that Irish law doesn’t require ISPs to identify and disconnect illegal file-sharers from the Internet as the IRMA had demanded.

  • Right Haven v Realty One Group Dismissal

  • Brazilian librarians

    One sign of this: The question of copyright seems to weigh heavily on just about everyone’s mind. (Keep in mind, of course, the self-selection of those with whom I have talked.) Copyright is only perceived as an obstacle if you are intent on maximizing access to the works of human intellect and creativity. If you are afraid of what open access means, then copyright looks like a bulwark. But, if you are confident that we together — with the invaluable aid of librarians, among others — can overall steer ourselves right, then the current copyright regime looks like a fear-based reaction.

  • Righthaven defendant wins first lawsuit dismissal motion

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal online copyright infringement lawsuit campaign sustained a setback Tuesday when a judge granted a real estate agent’s motion for dismissal, ruling his posting of part of a Review-Journal story on his website amounted to fair use under copyright law.

    But in another case involving a Review-Journal story on Wednesday, copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC received a boost when a second judge denied a motion to dismiss and authorized the parties to engage in evidence-gathering through discovery.

  • If Fair Use Protects Free Speech, Shouldn’t It Be Seen As Default Until Proven Otherwise?

    Copyright and fair use expert Peter Friedman has grappled with this in the past as well, saying that there are some cases where fair use is easy to determine… a statement he later had to backtrack on when the example he used in that original article — a case where he insisted the fair use call was an easy one went the other way.

    Michael Scott recently pointed us to the latest draft of a paper by law professor Ned Snow on how fair use should be viewed in the legal system. He’s written similar papers before, but he focuses in on two key points. The first is that until the mid-80s to early-90s, it “fair use” was considered mostly a “matter of fact” rather than a “matter of law.” As such, it was often for juries to decide, rather than judges. However, in the last few decades that’s flipped almost entirely, and it’s exceedingly rare to find a court that views fair use as a matter of fact, rather than a matter of law. That is, the judge will decide, not the jury.

  • Common law vs Statutory law

    John Bennett post links to an interesting article on copyright as a way of infringing upon free speech. While I agree on the substantive conclusion (the power attributed to copyright holders does infringe on free speech nowadays) I am not sure that the issue can be addressed in a satisfactory way by simply advocating a Common Law (CL) approach instead of a Statutory one (SL). At the end, this seems the eternal debate between CL and SL and both evidence and logic leave the issue quite open. Until a judge does not exceed the established boundaries the CL approach tends to leave more to to fair use and less to its opposite. But once a judge rules otherwise … well, we are up the old creek that John Belushi made so famous (did he have a copyright on the joke?)

  • Creative Commons’ Branding Confusion

    About a year and a half ago I released my film Sita Sings the Blues under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. That license allows truly free distribution, including commercial use, as long as the free license remains in place. But my experience is that most people see the words “Creative Commons” and simply assume the license is Non-Commercial – because the majority of Creative Commons licenses they’ve seen elsewhere have been Non-Commercial.

  • Copyright and endogenous market structure: a glimpse from the journal-publishing market

    This article explores the journal publishing industry in order to shed light on the overall economic consequences of copyright in markets. Since the rationale for copyright is among others to promise some market power to the holder of the successful copyrighted item, it also provides incentives to preserve and extend market power. A regular trait of copyright industries is high concentration and the creation of large catalogues of copyrights in the hands of incumbents. This outcome can be observed as the aggregation of rights and is one of the pivotal strategies for obtaining or extending market power, consistently with findings in other cases. Journal publishing is no different in this respect from other copyright industries, and in the last decade has experienced a similar trajectory, leading to a highly concentrated industry in which a handful of large firms increasingly control a substantial part of the market. It also provides a clear example of the effect of copyright dynamics on market structure, suggesting that a different attitude should be taken in lawmaking and law enforcement.

  • ACTA

    • Anti-ACTA rap

      Copyfighting rapper Dan Bull (he of Dear Lily Allen fame) has just released a new track, “Death of ACTA,” about the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a privately negotiated super-copyright treaty.

    • Dan Bull is back – with an anti-ACTA video

      Dan says that the “terrifying implications” of ACTA inspired him to write the song. ACTA has been negotiated behind closed doors, with no involvement of our elected representatives.

    • Death Of ACTA

    • All you want to know about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

      The ACTA negotiations were launched in June 2008, based on a concept introduced by Japan in the preparation of the 2006 G8 Summit and later endorsed by the US. There were 11 rounds of negotiations.

      Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are a key asset of the EU, ensuring its leading role in the “knowledge economy”. The EU can only remain competitive, if it can rely on innovation, creativity, quality, and brand exclusivity. These are some of our main comparative advantages on the world market, and they are all protected by intellectual property rights. Only, the means of adequately enforcing those rights in our main export markets to date are limited.

    • Access to Orphan Works, and ACTA provisions on damages

      Copyright is a term that in the United States describes the laws that regulate the use and distribution of “original works of authorship.” The types of activities and expressions protected by copyright have expanded over the years, particularly due to technology, but also due to the lobbying by various interested parties. The current systems of registration of copyrighted works in the United includes the following catagories:

      1. literary works
      2. musical works, including any accompanying words
      3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
      4. pantomimes and choreographic works
      5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
      6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
      7. sound recordings
      8. architectural works

    • Senators Sanders and Brown write to Kappos at USPTO, ask if ACTA is consistent with US law

      On October 19, 2010, Senators Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have written to David Kappos, the Director of the USPTO, asking for an assessment of conflicts between the October 2010 ACTA text, and U.S. law.

    • Senators Sanders and Brown write to Kappos at USPTO, ask if ACTA is consistent with US law

      On October 19, 2010, Senators Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have written to David Kappos, the Director of the USPTO, asking for an assessment of conflicts between the October 2010 ACTA text, and U.S. law.

    • European Greens/EFA enter the technical voodoo game

      The MEPs from the Green Group in the European Parliament ask crucial technical questions about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as “priority questions”. These questions address the tip of an iceberg concerning technical issues with the ACTA, there is much more that can be raised. Any Member of the European Parliament is entitled to ask written and oral questions to the institutions which have to be answered. MEPs are more restricted towards filing priority questions which have to be answered on short notice by the institutions.

    • 20 October Priority Questions

    • Marietje Schaake’s (D66, NL) plenary intervention

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux’s Brilliant Business Career

Fans of FOSS already know that Linux is one of the best technologies out there for business servers, but it’s always nice to see that point of view validated by good, hard data.

Thanks to a recent survey by the Linux Foundation, that’s just what we got last week. A new report from the group found, in fact, that large businesses have very big plans for our favorite operating system.

Not only will they be buying more Linux servers than Windows servers in the coming years — they’ll also be using Linux for an increasing number of mission-critical tasks in their organizations, the report found. And a full 36 percent are even using Linux on the desktop!

Any of that sound surprising? Not really — but that doesn’t mean Linux bloggers couldn’t find plenty to argue about.

The Social Network: The loneliness of the Linux-based programmer

Many reviewers have generously suggested that the filmmakers are letting the audience decide, that in real life there are no heroes or villains. But so little evidence is offered, and that which is is so clearly labelled ‘possibly fictitious (therefore not libellous)’, any conclusions that might be drawn are so ludicrously pointless as to negate the entire process. That’s not to say that the film is not engaging, the script not well-written and the performances not compelling. But like the website it portrays, after spending two enjoyable hours on this film you get the sneaking suspicion that your time might have been better spent on something else.

Linux users: why you should watch The Wire

What bothers me though is when there are elements of snobbery involved. One of the most pointless debates I’ve seen come up from time to time in all the while I’ve had an interest in Linux is its name. I have absolute respect for GNU, for the work it did in establishing the foundations on which the Linux kernel was built, and for its vision in pushing a free open source operating system when most of the market was heading in the opposite direction. I also appreciate that the proper name for Linux, if you go by the book, is GNU/Linux. Sadly, I can’t recall a point where I’ve called it that in my life.

AsbestOS: Run Linux on your PS3 without OtherOS

Hector Martin aka marcan42 has just posted to his blog the launch of AsbestOS, a way to run Linux on your jailbroken PS3 without OtherOS. Martin has been working on AsbestOS for over a month.

Desktop

• Reports of Linux’s Desktop Death Are Premature

• Sheesh! When Will Folks Acknowledge GNU/Linux Has Arrived?

  Wake up people! GNU/Linux has arrived:

  * many millions of desktop users around the globe, particularly EU, BR, RU, IN, and CN
  * OEMs shipping GNU/Linux widely
  * you can buy PCs with GNU/Linux new or used

Server

• London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade speed with Linux

  The London Stock Exchange has said its new Linux-based system is delivering world record networking speed, with 126 microsecond trading times.

Kernel Space

• Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Honored by NEC C&C Foundation

  Torvalds to receive one of the world’s most prestigious awards for contributions to computer technologies and their social impact

Applications

• Wallpapers Clocks Are Incredible, Install Wallpaper Clocks in Ubuntu Maverick Easily

  Wallpaper Clocks have always been of great fascination for me. Unlike many other desktop eyecandy that we have discussed before, Wallpaper Clocks are quite unique and will work almost like your ordinary wallpaper in terms of memory usage. If Ubuntu 10.10 customization tips are not good enough you, try wallpaper clocks. A big surprise is assured.

• Vim undo tree visualization

  Vim’s undo trees are the best thing since sliced bread, but the interface for browsing through the tree is not pleasant. The Emacs undo-tree library has a way to visualize the tree and move through it with your keyboard, which solves this problem.

• Linux finally gets a great audio tagger

  As someone that loves music, listens constantly and is always adding to my collection by purchasing and then ripping CDs, a decent tag editor is an essential tool. I’ve been using Linux for the past seven years or so and the only drawback that I was constantly faced with was the lack of a great audio tag editor – basically a Linux based equivalent to mp3tag. After trying every Linux tagger I could get my hands on (Ex Falso, EasyTag, Pinkytagger, Jaikoz, Picard, etc. etc.) I finally settled on running mp3tag under Wine. Whilst it works, it’s still a compromise because it cannot handle case sensitivity, cannot rename folders and filenames and path lengths are limited to Windows file system restrictions. In addition, there were a number of functional enhancements and additions I wanted to see in mp3tag, but didn’t seem like they’d see the light of day.

• The exaile Mini mode

  Because of its being light on resources, I prefer to use Exaile over amarok. The tray icon(top-right corner) works great in making it easily accessible on all workspaces with no need to mark the window “always on visible workspace”. Yet, I always wished for a smaller version of the player, as powerful as exaile, but smaller. This is what Exaile’s mini-mode aims to do. It bundles the whole full screen music player into a 1-2cm display.

• Nautilus Elementary Adds Much Needed Enhancements to Nautilus File Manager And Why You Should Install It Now

  Having used Nautilus (the default file manager in Ubuntu) for several years, I have really no complaints about it. It does its jobs well and you can also install scripts and actions to increase its functionality. However, after installing Nautilus Elementary, I am surprised by the simplicity and the enhancements that it adds to the file manager, which makes Nautilus even more user-friendly and useful. If you haven’t install Nautilus Elementary yet, you got to give it a try.

• The Many Ways of Capturing the Moment With Linux

  Three Linux apps have proven very useful to me. I use Shutter, Gnome Screenshot and mtPaint Snapshot almost daily in documenting Linux Picks selections and feature articles about using computers.

• Proprietary

  • Opera Software Continues Crusade for Universal App Standards

    Opera Software recently said that its next major browser release, Opera 11, wil include support for extensions, and the Norwegian company called on browser makers to create a unified standard for add-ons. Showing that it’s willing to lead by example, Opera Software today announced it has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of mobile operators tasked with developing a common mobile application platform.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Unmount busy drives

  • How to Maximize the Battery Life on Your Linux Laptop

  • Howto: Switch to a console lifestyle

  • Configure a web server with PHP, MySQL, and Apache

  • How To: Set Up RVM on Linux

  • How to Add a Background picture to Grub2 on Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick

  • Slackware package manager – how to install applications

  • Install Gnome Shell (From GIT) In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

  • Sudo without password on Fedora

  • Proxy problem with pacman

  • How to transform (almost) plain ASCII text to Lulu-ready PDF files, part 2

  • Gentoo, useradd, and SSH

  • How to use spell check with vim

  • 15 EMC PowerPath Powermt Command Examples – Display, Check, Remove, Config, Restore

  • Intro to Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules

  • C++ STL containers: memory experimentations

  • Saving Yourself with Data Replication

    Recently there has been a transition from physical products being the most critical aspect of many company’s businesses to data being the key driver. This transformation started some time ago and has steadily progressed over time. While one can argue over the subtleties of whether a company actually makes a physical product or not, it is fairly clear that to almost all companies data has become if not the key to their success, then very close to it.

• Games

  • Wildfire’s 0 A.D. Game Progresses With New Alpha

    After being in development as a closed-source game for more than eight years, this past summer the 0 A.D. game was open-sourced by Wildfire Games. A month later, the first alpha release of this real-time strategy came emerged. Now three months after being one of the newest open-source games for Linux / Windows / Mac OS X, a second alpha release is available for testing with many advancements.

  • No DeathSpank for Linux

  • Alien Arena Preview

    The developers of Alien Arena have posted a progress update over at ModDB about the next release of the open-source first-person shooter. Videos of a new map and ODE-based ragdoll physics are featured, and it is mentioned that they’re planning to release Alien Arena 2011 later this fall.

  • 0 A.D. Alpha 2 released with new in-game UI, better gameplay, performance

    Wildfire Games has announced the second alpha release of open-source ‘ancient warfare’ RTS game 0 A.D.

    Improvements over the first alpha released late August include: -

    * New in-game GUI
    * ‘Fog of war’
    * New Unit-following camera mode
    * Improved pathfinder performance
    * Various gameplay additions including health bars, population limits and basic formations
    * New maps
    * New art including remodelled Celtic buildings

  • Escape from Quaoar

Desktop Environments

• Eight Reasons to give E17 a Try

  If you are new to Linux you may never have tried any desktop environments beyond Gnome and KDE. If you have been in the Linux world for awhile odds are you are aware of the fact that several other desktop environments exists.

• E17 Basics – An FAQ

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 10th October 2010

    In this week’s KDE Commit-Digest: Return of the KDE Commit-Digest! Route Guidance mode (with automatic route recalculation based on position) in Marble. A basic UDev backend added in Solid. KFormula “Formula” shape becomes compatible with OpenOffice.org.

Distributions

• Sabayon

  • Why Free Software doesn’t always fly

    To make our philosophy successful, we need to find a good mixture of business and openness.

  • Why do we bump just to bump?

    In my daily maintenance routine I tend to throw an emerge -uav world against the sabayon trees and see what packages can be bumped. I also check http://www.gentoo-portage.com to see what is new. In this routine 90% off all things I bump for Entropy it is done manually writing each emerge -av command by hand.
    Since I trust Gentoo developers for doing a good job within their own little expertise and interest, I kinda trust each package bump makes sense. If it is either some revision bump because there was some LD flags to respect, a fix for –as-needed or simple another minor thing I just bump them. Even though on the binary end this would not make any difference for the user experience I just do it.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Release Candidate Available to Partners

    Back in April, we began talking about the development road toward the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 when we delivered the first beta of the platform, with noteworthy improvements spanning performance enhancements to new security features to expanded virtualization capabilities. With the introduction of the first beta, we began working with our customers, partners and the community to test and further develop the release into an ambitious and robust operating platform. Since then, we have continued the momentum of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 development with the delivery of a second beta in June with additional updates and technologies. We also recently announced an agreement to certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 under Common Criteria at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ in August.

  • Red Hat Launches First Red Hat Academy in the Middle East

    The Red Hat Academy at AASTMT allows the university to train undergraduate or postgraduate engineering students on Red Hat Enterprise Linux courses, and offer certification up to the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) level on successful completion. The Red Hat Academy will support the web-based course curriculum that prepares students with hands-on, performance-based learning and testing. Courses will be immediately available to AASTMT’s 5,500 students through its facilities in Cairo and Alexandria, including the College of Computing and Information Technology (CCIT) and the Academy Company for Communications and Information Technology (ACCIT).

  • American Tobacco plays host to Red Hat visit

    Red Hat’s search for new digs has taken the Raleigh company to the other end of the Triangle. The American Tobacco Campus, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, hosted the company for an event on Monday. Greg Behr, a spokesman for American Tobacco, said Red Hat officials were in Durham to discuss possibly leasing space.

  • GBM earns Red Hat partner status

    Bahrain-based Gulf Business Machines (GBM), the region’s leading IT solutions and service provider, has earned Red Hat premier business partner status in the GCC region.

    GBM already shares a longstanding relationship with Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and offers its full range of products and services.
    The enhanced partnership will allow a fresh focus on developing complex, high-end open source solutions for customers in the region.

  • Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst to Deliver Keynote at Interop New York

  • Fedora

    • The Fedora RPG

      A couple of weeks ago at the weekly meeting of the Fedora Design Team Mo brought an idea floating for a while inside the community: a Fedora RPG, which got a good part of the team hooked. The “game” is supposed to take the form of a badge or banner available for inclusion in web pages and being played by contributing to Fedora: creating tickets, submitting patches, building packages, helping people…

• Debian Family

  • Neuroimaging research in Debian

    “Debian 6.0 “squeeze” will be the first GNU/Linux distribution release ever to offer comprehensive support for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based neuroimaging research. It comes with up-to-date software for structural image analysis (e.g. ants), diffusion imaging and tractography (e.g. mrtrix), stimulus delivery (e.g. psychopy), MRI sequence development (e.g. odin), as well as a number of versatile data processing and analysis suites (e.g. nipype). Moreover, this release will have built-in support for all major neuroimaging data formats.”

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Do the evolution baby, did you remember Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog

      It will be 6 years since the first Ubuntu released in the October 20th.

    • Shuttleworth denies move toward Open Core

      Kuhn later admitted that the headline he had used was something of an exaggeration. “I agree my title was a bit of an exaggeration. I’d change it, but I am not sure that would clarify things, and probably would look strange,” he said.

      “Based on feedback, I did add a note at the bottom of the post making it clear that this reading of these events is my opinion, not fact,” he wrote in a response to readers’ comments on the Linux Weekly News website which had linked to his article.

    • Ubuntu Netbook 10.10: Usability vs. Constraints

      From KDE’s Plasma Netbook to EasyPeasy, every Linux desktop for netbooks that I’ve seen are designed with the same assumptions. Each assumes that, because of the smaller screen, the desktop must be simpler than a workstation’s, and will be used mainly for light computing in general and social networking in particular.

      Released at the same time as the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) general version, the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition does not question these assumptions. This conventionality may be questionable to many: workstation versions of GNOME, KDE, and Xfce work perfectly well on the smaller screens of netbooks for anyone with regular vision, and netbooks — especially the latest generation, with their extra memory — are capable of more than light computing. In addition, though, Ubuntu Netbook also has some design quirks that can make it less than ideal.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Not so Minty fresh

        This sums up my reasons for writing the original post. There are very few genuine flaws I can point to in Mint; it’s just that in the areas where Mint and Ubuntu differ, I mostly prefer Ubuntu. So I’m going back to Ubuntu, not because Mint is bad (it isn’t) but because Ubuntu suits me better.

      • Quick Look: Xubuntu 10.10

        Last week I reviewed Kubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.10 over on Desktop Linux Reviews. This week I wanted to look at Xubuntu 10.10. I decided to do a quick look rather than a full-blown DLR review because less has changed in Xubuntu than in the other two distro releases.

        If you aren’t familiar with Xubuntu, it’s essentially a combination of Ubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment. Xubuntu is designed to provide a lighter-weight desktop experience than GNOME (Ubuntu’s default desktop). Xfce is set up to conserve system resources while still providing a great range of desktop functionality. Xubuntu is a good to Ubuntu alternative for older hardware or underpowered hardware.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • HP announces Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0

    HP announced a faster, 1GHz Palm Pre 2, as well as a major WebOS 2.0 update that features “true multitasking,” improved “Synergy” sync, and a “Just Type” feature that enables text entry before an app fully opens. The Pre 2 debuts on Friday in France on SFR, and will appear on Verizon Wireless in “the coming months,” says HP.

  • Mobile Linux enters world of the app store

    LiMo Foundation has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to encourage the development of mobile applications to run on the mobile Linux operating system.

    The hope will be to match the application developer communities which have grown up around Google’s Android platform and Apple’s app store.

    All future releases of the LiMo mobile Linux platform will support the WAC runtime, which will allow developers to distribute their applications across multiple WAC compliant stores.

  • Android

    • Caveat emptor: Custom Android handsets all the rage in Germany?

      This isn’t the first customizable phone we’ve laid our eyes on, and we’ve always been a fan of the concept — even if the execution sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently there’s a small startup residing in Germany called Synapse that will sell you a custom Android 2.2 handset, complete with 4-inch multitouch touchscreen, with prices starting around €434 ($600).

    • Why ‘Fragmentation’ Isn’t a Problem for Android or Linux

      “Fragmentation,” as I suggest above, is simply a derogatory term for “choice,” something not only valued but expected in most product categories. It’s a well-known fact that one-size-fits-all rarely fits anyone well; multiple competing choices, by contrast, offer consumers a way to get something that’s as close to what they want as possible.

      Of course, specific choices don’t tend to survive if nobody wants them–that, too, is part of a competitive marketplace. If there isn’t demand for them, individual choices will disappear.

      Now, Android phones are not as different as Jobs made out–most of the differences, rather, are fairly superficial. But why would it ever be a problem that there are numerous Android phones available? There’s clearly a small segment of consumers who like Apple’s restrictive “walled garden” approach, but I can’t imagine any kind of majority will ever prefer the iPhone’s one-size-fits-all model in the mobile world any more than they have the Mac on the desktop.

      It’s a similar situation when it comes to Linux. Yes, there are many competing distributions, but again, that can only be a good thing for users because it means they can get what they want. I’ll agree it might be something of a marketing and branding challenge for Linux, but it’s certainly not a problem for users.

• Tablets

  • Awesome Ubuntu Multitouch Demo in Dell Tablet

    Ubuntu uTouch multitouch support was one the most striking inclusion into the just released Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. We had demo videos showcasing Ubuntu’s new found multitouch capabilities before. But following is the best I have seen so far. Watch this beautiful Ubuntu 10.10 multitouch demo in an unknown Dell tablet.

  • The Quiet Rise of Linux Tablets

    And even “traditional” Linux interfaces are getting into the mix. Last Thursday, Canonical’s Gerry Carr was pretty excited about the new multi-touch gesture library the Unity team has developed for Ubuntu Netbook Edition. There’s a nice one-minute video on Carr’s blog entry that highlights these early features of Unity.

    Of course, this is just one Linux distro–and a smaller flavor of that distro to boot, so is that enough to get excited about?

    The pragmatist in me says not really, since Linux interface developers experiment with cool new stuff all of the time.

  • Android 3.0 due to start hitting tablets in December ahead of January launch

    A holiday tradition? Making things out of gingerbread, and Google is doing its part to keep that practice alive according to a report stating Android 3.0 Gingerbread is set to hit some tablets this December.

6 Open Source Social Networking Projects

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn have taken off. They are now among the top sites visited among the entire World Wide Web. As you might have guessed, the open source community has some involvement in the social networking space.

Open source moves into the enterprise at NZ organisations

There was a time when open source software was almost inseparable from the image of altruistic, community-loving developers, coding away in command line interfaces in a darkened room. But those days are long gone. Sleek open source applications have made their way into the enterprise and sometimes give the proprietary giants a run for their money. In this feature, three local organisations share their open source stories.

The choice engine is an Italian job

For any enterprise, the decision to depend on an open source project is a serious commitment of resources. You don’t want to get halfway down the road and find you have taken a wrong turn. I did that on the way to lunch and it took a $14 cab ride to find my way back. For a scaled enterprise, the loss can be millions.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Open Web Applications

    In the architecture we propose, applications are part of the web. Directories and stores can provide ratings, reviews, approval processes, and proof-of-purchase services, but applications can also be self-published by developers.

  • New releases of Firefox and Thunderbird

  • Firefox 3.6.11 and 3.5.14 security updates now available

    Firefox 3.6.11 and Firefox 3.5.14 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11.

  • Mozilla preempts Google with ‘open’ web app store prototype

    Free whitepaper – Trying to keep smartphones off your network?

    Mozilla has released a prototype for what it calls an “open web app ecosystem,” a browser-agnostic answer to Google’s upcoming Chrome Web App Store.

    The open source outfit proposes a store that works with any “modern” desktop or mobile browser, offering both free and for-pay apps based on standard web technologies.

SaaS

• US Government app store in action

  Cloud storage, virtual machines and web hosting should soon be available to US government agencies via the Government Services Agency’s recently opened apps.gov site.

  The US government’s cloud service, officially launched last month, allowed federal agencies to buy cloud computing services direct from the GSA.

  All social media apps, which included WordPress, Yammer, Bing and Google Analytics, were free.

Oracle

• Oracle’s OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 RC1 Makes It Out

  As mentioned in the 3.3.0 RC1 release notes, this development milestone of OpenOffice.org incorporates several fixes and other features. Among the improvements to be found with OpenOffice.org 3.3 include an improved extension manager, spreadsheet improvements, initial integration with the Renaissance Project, printing restructuring, and improved Calc spreadsheet performance.

• New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1 (build OOO330m11) available

  OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available on the download website.

• Oracle issues first OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 release candidate

  Two months after the first beta arrived, the OpenOffice.org developers have issued the first release candidate (RC1) of OpenOffice.org 3.3.0, the next release of the Oracle owned open source office suite. According to the OpenOffice.org Wiki, the RC1 development version will be followed by a second release candidate and a quality assurance (QA) build prior to the final product release. Dates for the RC2, QA and Final version have yet to be confirmed.

Semi-Open Source

• Does “Open Core” Actually Differ from Proprietary Relicensing?

  That practice is one that RMS’ himself began calling “barely legitimate” in the early 2000s. RMS specifically and carefully coined his own term for it: selling exceptions to the GPL. This practice is a form of proprietary relicensing that never permits the seller to create their own proprietary fork of the code and always releases all improvements done by the sole proprietary licensee itself to the general public. If this practice is barely legitimate, it stands to reason that anything that goes even just a little bit further crosses the line into illegitimacy.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support

  The Gnash project is the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with AVM2 flash files.

Openness/Sharing

• Civic Commons Needs an Executive Director

• Open Access/Content

  • Looking for writers for Teaching Open Source textbook

    Do you want to help us write the next version of the first textbook that teaches open source participation?

First-Sale Doctrine Under Fire
Email This Entry

A notice of filing an amicus brief from the EFF reminded me that I had also meant to blog about Vernor v Autodesk, another crucial case that has received far too little mass-media press attention.

Health/Nutrition

• Lawsuits Say Pharma Illegally Paid Doctors to Push Their Drugs

  Drug companies say the millions of dollars they pay physicians for speaking and consulting justly compensates them for the laudable work of educating their colleagues.

  But a series of lawsuits brought by former employees of those companies allege the money often was used for illegal purposes — financially rewarding doctors for prescribing their brand-name medications.

Security

• I’ll come back to it soon though

  A vulnerability in the library loader of the GNU C library can be exploited to obtain root privileges under Linux and other systems. Attackers could exploit the hole, for instance, to gain full control of a system by escalating their privileges after breaking into a web server with restricted access rights. Various distributors are already working on updates.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble… G8/G20

  Over and over again, the peaceful protests against the G8/G20 summit were met with over-reaction and unmerited violence by the authorities. I assume the well paid security forces were operating on the theory that the best defense is a strong offense.

  If you smash opposition mercilessly beneath your jackboots, perhaps protesters can be frightened away.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Stop Republicans from impeaching President Obama

  If Republicans control the House of Representatives after the November elections, writes Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, they will impeach Barack Hussein Obama, as many on the right call our president.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Stop Republicans from impeaching President Obama

  Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

• Popular Facebook apps found to be collecting, selling user info

  If you use Facebook but don’t want your personal information leaked all over the Web, you had better make sure you don’t use any of Facebook’s most popular apps. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, “tens of millions” of apps on Facebook transmit varying amounts of identifying information to their own personal ad servers, even in cases when users’ profiles were set to completely private.

  On the most benign level, many Facebook apps gather a user’s Facebook ID if that user installs the app on his or her profile. The ID itself doesn’t necessarily give anyone access to a user’s protected profile, though if the person in question has a public profile, then all of that information could be (and undoubtedly is being) scraped.

• 4 EFF Pioneer Awards Winners for 2010 Announced – I am one of them

  The Electric Frontier Foundation has announced four winners of their EFF Pioneer Awards for 2010. I am a winner this year.

  When I heard the news, I got goosebumps. Previous winners of the EFF Pioneer Awards include Tim Berners-Lee, Linus and Richard Stallman. This is a day I’ll remember. I never ever thought this was something that would happen. I feel the acknowledgment for me and our body of work here on Groklaw, and it feels very good. Thank you, EFF.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• True to type

  Such protection is complicated, and requires an infrastructure and agreements that often prevent use across systems. It also has precious little effect in deterring piracy. DRM may actually push potential buyers into pirates’ arms because out of a desire for simplicity and portability rather than out of an unwillingness to pay.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Stonewalling Stonehenge

  These are mainly rights managed. Rights managed images are essentially designed for a specific and time limited usage, and they’re more controlled and controllable than RF images.

• Copyrights

  • Filmmaker Schools Pirates On Correct Way To Rip His DVD

    Most days the news surrounding torrent sites, the scene and piracy is dominated by lawsuits, busts and other negative stories. But every now and then there is a ray of light that brightens the day. Today we bring you the story of a filmmaker who didn’t complain when he saw that his film was being pirated. Instead he helped a scene release group to improve the ripped copy of his DVD.

  • Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale

    But why would the average person not pirate eBooks? Like Cory Doctorow says, it’s not going to become any harder to type in ‘Toy Story 3 bittorrent’ in the future – and ‘Twilight ePub’ is even easier to type, and much faster to download to boot.