Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 8/11/2010: Userful Becomes Free Software, Vandalism Suspected Amid Postponed LSE Move to GNU/Linux



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • Multiseat for Schools
      Userful has just become FLOSS… For years Userful, a company from Alberta, Canada, has pushed a multiseat (multiple simultaneous keyboard/mouse/monitor/users on one PC) solution that is great for schools, libraries and offices. anywhere you have a lot of users in one place. It uses the multiseat capability of X windows, the networked display of GNU/Linux. Now they offer free downloads and an easy installation. All you need are USB keyboards and mice and multiple video cards.


    • The So-Called Death Of Desktop Linux
      And that’s why the article is called ‘The So-Called Death Of Desktop Linux’. Yes, desktop Linux adoption has appeared for years to have been stalled, due to Microsoft’s monopolistic manipulations. But Microsoft is limited. Sure, it’s one of the richest companies in the world. But even it has only so much money to spend.

      Add to that it’s inability to produce an answer to Apple’s media campaign, and people who didn’t know they had an option, now know that they do. Mobile Phones and Tablet Computers are now defined in most people’s minds as ‘Not Made By Microsoft’, just as MP3 players are. About the only success that Microsoft has had outside of it’s traditional markets is the Ford Sync, and Ford acted pretty quickly to make the Microsoft name just about totally invisible.

      It appears that we are approaching a tipping point. I wonder if Microsoft isn’t shortly going to feel like Terry Pratchett’s non-hero Rincewind.




  • Server

    • London Stock Exchange traders concerned over network capacity around new Linux system
      The exchange declined to comment on reports that a contractor was suspended over a “suspicious” network incident.


    • Research, Research, And More Research
      No where in the IDC Press Release did it mention that Windows was installed on 75.3 percent of servers sold worldwide. So where did Mary Jane get this number? So far, no one knows, probably because it’s the weekend. But others picked up on her numbers without confirming them.

      Wikipedia quotes Mary Jane’s numbers as gospel in the OS Market Share/Servers entry. I noticed this when I was doing some research for another article, and since I have a horse in this race so to speak, I didn’t make any changes, instead I left a message on their discussion board...

      [...]

      Conclusions? Well, you can’t trust anything you find in any media. You need to do some research yourself, because no matter how careful some of us are, others just repeat whatever they’ve heard, and all too often it’s wrong. Even those of us who try to be accurate make mistakes.






  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA have ‘no plans to support Wayland’
        With the current flurry of excitement over the announced aim of Ubuntu the current X server with the promising ‘Wayland’ display server in the near future, NVidia have decided to join in the jamboree by stating their intentions on delivering support for it.






  • Applications

    • Download Compress PDF 1.2 (Nautilus Script)
      Compress PDF is a Nautilus script which uses ghostscript to compress PDF files and comes in 8 languages (English, Portuguese (pt-PT), Spanish (es-AR), Czech, French, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Malayalam). The script lets you choose between 5 different compression levels: Screen-view only, Low Quality, Hight Quality, High Quality (Color Preserving) and Default.


    • Avant Window Navigator Gets Per Dock Intellihide
      An update to the Avant Window Navigator trunk PPA from a few days ago brought per dock/panel Intellihide to AWN (taskmanager).


    • apt-offline - 1.0
      I am very pleased to announce apt-offline, version 1.0.

      This release adds a Graphical User Interace to apt-offline.




  • Distributions



    • Debian Family



      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • More on Shuttleworth v X
          Because RedHat and Ubuntu may not see desktop GNU/Linux as a hotspot will not make it go away. It is easier to make money in hot areas like smart-thingies but Ubuntu would be very foolish to abandon the desktop. I think Linton is wrong about that. Mark Shuttleworth may be somewhat bold but he is no fool. If Ubuntu does go –>Unity–>Wayland they will make sure the desktop is well maintained. Wayland is quite compatible for the desktop especially for video/high-end graphics. For that purpose it does not need to work on every piece of hardware out there, just the ones most likely used for such work. The market will sort that out but I can envisage each hardware maker of graphics interfaces producing a product line with a driver for Wayland. The rest of the desktop world can run X, perhaps in a virtual machine running on top of Wayland somehow. The details will be sorted out.


        • Battery Status PPA, Finally Updated With Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Packages
          Battery Status is a GNOME panel applet that shows information about laptop battery state - but has a lot of extra features compared to GNOME's Power Manager icon. Battery Status applet features a battery status dialog, power statistics, CPU frequency scaling and power management preferences.


        • Compiz to be Rewritten for Ubuntu Wayland
          A few days ago I theorized that Mark Shuttleworth's move to Unity on Wayland was an effort to focus his operating system more on mobile devices and, ultimately, cloud-based services. Unity's hardware compatibility is limited in range, at least for now, and Wayland is even moreso, again at least for now. But there's one part of the equation I failed to consider. What about the X11-dependent Compiz?

          One of the more intriguing aspects of Wayland is that it does away with window managers. Instead it pushes all of the work of managing windows to the application. X11 and application developers have been resisting Ubuntu's push in that direction for a while. But with Wayland, it's built-in. This opens the door for one misbehaving application to bring down the whole graphical display - as seen in Windows.


        • Flavours and Variants









  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • Android Code Walk-through
          Despite misinformation that has appeared in comments here and on the web that somehow Android is not GNU/Linux, this chart clearly shows that Android is a layer running on top of GNU/Linux. Android is basically GNU/Linux with a virtual machine (Dalvik) running byte-code translated from Java. There’s no Java code in there, Larry.

          [...]

          [comments:]

          Well, GNU/Linux means running the GNU userland toolchain on top of the Linux kernel. Android is essentially DalvikVM (not a GNU project) as the userland layer on top of the Linux kernel. Therefore Android is DalvikVM/Linux. I may stand corrected if you can run the GNU utilities on Android.

          [...]

          libc is BSD. Likely Dalvik depends on libc.

          Development depends on GNU: GCC

          They use GNU bison for something:

          bison

          and GRUB

          and glib

          So, you could be right. There is not much GNU in there. There is a lot of BSD stuff but it’s not BSD either. Folks do hack in and run Debian GNU/Linux on their Android devices. It’s a personal computer, just not x86.



        • In the USA, Android Continues to Climb
          Because Android does not lean to anti-competition, it likely will not end with 90%+ share but we shall have to see how far it will go. I look forward to the future when users of Android in mobile will be accepting of GNU/Linux on the desktop/notebook.


        • Replicant- Android For Linux Purists
          Developed by LibrePlanet Italia and Software Freedom Centre, Replicant seeks to be the 100% free software compliant mobile operating system that is built on Android.










Free Software/Open Source



  • Saving Identica and StatusNet?
    There is a significant spam problem on Identi.ca, and it looks like some fresh ideas are needed to crush it. Here are mine, and a few ideas that I like from other people.

    Identi.ca is the open microblogging site based on the StatusNet software. It’s a fantastic service, with features that leave Twitter in the dust. But spammers are not being caught and banned quickly. Users are becoming frustrated.


  • Web Browsers

    • Top 10 Must-Have Browser Extensions
      Your browser of choice may have changed a lot in the past year, but luckily the best extensions for making your browser better have kept up with all the most popular browsers. Here are our cross-platform, must-have favorites.




  • Oracle

    • The Legacy of OpenOffice.org
      If one just read the headlines over the past month one would get the mistaken notion that LibreOffice was the first attempt to take the OpenOffice.org open source code and make a different product from it, or even a separate open source project. This is far from true. There have been many spin-off products/projects, including:

      * StarOffice * Symphony * EuroOffice * RedOffice * NeoOffice * PlusOffice * OxygenOffice * PlusOffice * Go-OO * Portable OpenOffice

      and, of course, LibreOffice. I’ve tracked down some dates of various releases of these projects and placed them on a time line above. You can click to see a larger version.

      So before we ring the death knell for OpenOffice, let’s recognized the potency of this code base, in terms of its ability to spawn new projects. LibreOffice is the latest, but likely not the last example we will see. This is a market where “one size fits all” does not ring true. I’d expect to see different variations on these editors, just as there are different kinds of users, and different markets which use these kinds of tools. Whether you call it a “distribution” or a “fork”, I really don’t care. But I do believe that the only kind of open source project that does not spawn off additional projects like this is a dead project.


    • Oracle To Monetize Java VM




  • Project Releases

    • Lightspark 0.4.5 Is Bringing The New Graphics Engine
      Lightspark's advanced graphics engine will soon be released with the forthcoming Lightspark 0.4.5 version. We first talked about this advanced graphics engine in August that uses Cairo and OpenGL for rendering, but finally, after making a lot of progress, it's ready to be released.




  • Licensing

    • British author faces prison sentence in Singapore
      The British author Alan Shadrake is today facing a possible prison sentence after a court in Singapore convicted him of challenging the integrity of the city state's judiciary in a book criticising its use of the death penalty.

      Shadrake faces a custodial sentence or a fine – or both – for contempt of court when Singapore's high court sentences him next week.






Leftovers



  • Goodbye PC
    The last bas€­tion of the com€­puter will be the office. At this time, it is dif€­fi€­cult to imag€­ine peo€­ple ges€­tur€­ing in front of their com€­put€­ers as a way to inter€­act with them. More likely, tilted touch dis€­plays will become the new norm in offices (and by tilted, I mean that the screen would be on the desk at an angle of no more than 20–25 degrees). Those types of changes will take some time to make their ways into cubi€­cles and may force busi€­ness to even rethink the con€­cept of the cubi€­cle. The ones that have already will get a head start on their competitor.


  • Why Did TechCrunch Scrub a Post About an Alleged Tech Sexual Assault? (Updated)
    On Thursday, Google technical writer Noirin Shirley accused Twitter software engineer Florian Leibert of sexual assault on her personal blog. TechCrunch staffer Alexia Tsotsis picked up the story, writing the post, "Googler Accuses Twitter Engineer Of Sexual Assault, Trial By Twitter Commences," late on Friday. By Saturday morning, however, the link was dead.


  • Web browser pioneer backs new way to surf Internet
    Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen is betting people are ready to try a different way of surfing the Internet.

    That's why he is backing a new browser call RockMelt, which will be available for the first time Monday after nearly two years in development.


  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Obama environment agenda under threat from incoming Republicans


      Republican leaders have begun gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of Barack Obama's environmental agenda, from climate science to the BP oil spill, if as expected, they take control of the House of Representatives in the 2 November mid-term elections, the Guardian has learned.


    • Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?
      Disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily – if not criminally – irresponsible, because the consensus scientific view is based upon strong evidence that climate change:

      ● Is already being experienced by tens of thousands in the world;

      ● Will be experienced in the future by millions of people from greenhouse gas emissions that have already been emitted but not yet felt due to lags in the climate system; and,

      ● Will increase dramatically in the future unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced from existing global emissions levels.

      Threats from climate change include deaths and danger from droughts, floods, heat, storm-related damages, rising oceans, heat impacts on agriculture, loss of animals that are dependent upon for substance purposes, social disputes caused by diminishing resources, sickness from a variety of diseases, the inability to rely upon traditional sources of food, the inability to use property that people depend upon to conduct their life including houses or sleds in cold places, the destruction of water supplies, and the inability to live where has lived to sustain life. The very existence of some small island nations is threatened by climate change.


    • Barack Obama's green agenda crushed at the ballot box
      Californians decisively rejected a measure to roll back the state's landmark climate change law yesterday, the sole win for environmentalists on a night that crushed Barack Obama's green agenda.


    • We've been conned. The deal to save the natural world never happened






  • Finance

    • Jamming neoclassical economics
      Students at the University of California-Berkeley have launched the first salvo in an international movement to challenge neoclassical economics. They printed the Kick It Over Manifesto [pdf] on bright pink paper and pinned it to the door of Daniel McFadden, a Nobel Prize winner in economics [pdf], and to bulletin boards throughout the department.


    • Is What's Good for Corporate America Still Good For America?
      "Of course," you answer, since you're reading this blog on HBR. And "of course," I answer, since I ran the editorial page at BusinessWeek for a decade and covered everything from currencies to innovation. But the anti-Big Business chorus is getting louder and louder, with the Tea Party radicals on the right singing a tune CEOs and B-School profs would be foolish to ignore. They should be worried. I sure am.

      The CEOs I have talked to in recent years over drinks, overseas, and in private, are worried too. I have heard this comment at Davos far too many times to ignore: "I am as patriotic as anyone, but when I see where my corporation is investing, where it is doing R&D and especially where it is hiring, I worry about my country. It's all going outside America. But what can I do?"

      In vino veritas perhaps. Not ALL of his global company's R&D, investing and hiring is happening in China or India, but so much is that he and his fellow US CEO-buddies talk about it a lot — to themselves. When they do go public, they frame the Big Business issue in terms of complaints — too much regulation, high taxes, government debt to invest in America. The Tea Party old folks, the union people, the millions of white and blue collar Americans laid off — and my Gen Y students — frame the Big Business issue differently — in terms of obligation. They wonder, what, if any, obligations do corporations still feel to the nation, to democracy, to employees, especially after taxpayers bailed out Wall Street, Detroit, and the "system" in general. They wonder about CEOs making so much when employees lose jobs to outsourcing and hedge fund managers pay half the federal tax rate than their secretaries.


    • President Obama: offshoring fears are outdated, unwarranted
      The perception that Indian call centers and back office operations cost U.S. jobs is an old stereotype that ignores today’s reality that two-way trade between the U.S. and India is helping create jobs and raise the standard of living in both countries, U.S. President Barack Obama told a gathering of business executives in Mumbai on Saturday.

      President Obama’s remarks come after some moves in the U.S. that had Indian outsourcers worried that the U.S. may get protectionist in the wake of job losses in the country. The state of Ohio, for example, banned earlier this year the expenditure of public funds for offshore purposes.


    • Unicredit Debt Collection Scam "Serves" Fake Court Papers by Fake Cops and Fake Judges
      This story is so outrageous that I cannot figure out why it has not gone viral on the internet. Unicredit America Inc, a debt collection firm, had people dress up (pretending to be police), serve fake papers to people requiring them to show up in court.




  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights



  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Updated: ABC, NBC, CBS Block Website Access from Google TV


      Google TV was designed to allow users to easily search for their favorite television shows across local television listings and Web sites offering streaming. Google TV can also run Android apps such as Netflix streaming, Pandora Internet radio and Amazon Video on Demand.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Lamebook Sues Facebook Over Trademark Infringement. Wait, What?
      Here’s a head scratcher, at first glance at least: Lamebook, a hilarious advertising-supported site that lets Facebook users submit funny status updates, pictures and “other gems” originating from the social network, is apparently suing Facebook over trademark infringement.

      Lamebook was launched in April of 2009 by two Austin, Texas based graphic designers (Jonathan Standefer and Matthew Genitempo), and was obviously ‘inspired’ by Facebook’s branding when it comes to its name, logo and color scheme.


    • Copyrights

      • [Canada] Bill C-32: Mr. Ricci is wrong about Fair Dealing
        The Globe and Mail published a Bill C-32 Opinion piece by Governor General Award Winning fiction writer Nico Ricci, This updated copyright bill guts Canadian culture.

        The very title of this opinion piece is both inflammatory and misleading. Although Mr. Ricci mayt be qualified to comment on the state of culture, the article is actually exclusively devoted to one small piece of Bill C-32, the expansion of the fair dealing section of Bill C-32 to include educational uses.










Clip of the Day



Gnome Panel



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

PCLinuxOS is Raising Money to Support Development After Fire Incident at the Host
PCLinuxOS has not had announcements lately
Over 3 Months Later Brett Wilson LLP Still Unable to Recruit a Media Lawyer?
"Immediate start", but not found... still unfilled
Microsoft is Trying to "Pull a Nokia" on GNU/Linux as Desktop/Laptop Platform
We all remember that rather well, don't we?
Our Three Lawsuits Against Microsofters Are About to Become a Lot More Relevant to GNU/Linux
The Master will easily understand why Garrett has been attacking me since 2012
 
Microsoft Hiring European Politicians is Another Form of Bribery; There Should be a European Investigation
When Microsoft bribed people in Europe for OOXML (there's no denying this!) a European government delegate said that Microsoft operated like a cult
Reda Demanded That FSF Removes Its Founder, Now Reda Works Directly for Microsoft
A sellout and a traitor, first working for GAFAM, now Microsoft
Speed of the Site Should be Better Now
The "bot attacks" impact the speed of the sister site too
Getting More From AnalogNowhere
Recently we used many images from AnalogNowhere
Microsoft, Microsofters and 'Secure' Boot Shills Already Storming the LWN Report About Expiring Certificate, Shooting the Messenger
LWN has clearly stuck a nerve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Disable "Secure" Boot Today (the Only Better Time to Do So Was Yesterday)
Don't trust anything Red Hat tells you about security
Links 23/07/2025: Windows Killed Company After 150+ Years, US Government Mimics Russia's Attacks on the Media
Links for the day
Freedom Generally Wins at the End, History Shows (But It's Constantly Attacked, Too)
At the moment people realise "Linux" (e.g. Android) isn't enough to guarantee any freedoms
“Inhumane” and “Disgusting” Mass Layoff Execution, According to Microsoft Staff
The workers are looking for other places to work
Misinformation is Not Intelligence
It's low-grade plagiarism and it fails to show any signs of intelligence
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Slogan for Its 40th Anniversary
The freedoms are what's most important
LLM Slopfarms gbhackers.com, "Cyber Press" and CyberSecurityNews Are Drowning Google News (and Shame on Google for Feeding and Facilitating Them)
All are run by the same people
Links 23/07/2025: Droplets GUI Patent Monopoly Challenge, Nokia Leverages Illegal Patent Court Against Rivals
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Community in Geminispace and Challenges With Old Computers
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Slop Patents Tackled, Slop Copyright Misuses Tackled by Politicians
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2025: Retreating From Transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, We No Longer Have Press Freedom
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/07/2025: Piano and Food
Links for the day
New and Old
On Ageism in Tech
Slop Is Not Intelligence and It Does Not Enhance Productivity
Like voice dictation, which cannot tell the difference between "sheet" and "shit"
EPO Crimes Are Spreading to the British Court System
Society is now paying the price for failing to tackle crimes at the EPO
It's Time to Dump SharePoint and Here's What to Use Instead
Nextcloud, ownCloud, Bookstack, MediaWiki, and MediaGoblin
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 22, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Brett Wilson LLP Has Gone Silent
Sometimes silence says more than nothing at all
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Planet Ubuntu, and LinuxTechLab
some slopfarms show no remorse and they don't value their reputation at all
Links 23/07/2025: Book Bans, Storms, and Kangaroo Court for Patents Commits More Unlawful Acts of Overreach
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: Thinkpad and Pinephone
Links for the day
Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
Links for the day
Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
Examples of white-collar trolls
Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
Make No Assumptions (or Demands) About the Screen Resolution Used by Other People
There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
They Don't Tell Us that 'Digitalisation' (Now Sold as "Hey Hi") Just Means Customers Become Unpaid Staff and Are Made Accountable
People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
FSF "Raised Almost $139,000 During This Summer Campaign"
"Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
Links for the day