Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• From stability comes stagnation.

  In summary, the pond is a stable and stagnant ecosystem. It doesn’t change or renew and if you were to drink from it you would become ill. If you were to bathe in it you would end up dirtier than before. The waterfall is a dynamic and constantly changing system. It is continuously renewing itself and as a consequence, it and anything in that system is cleaned and the dirt washed away.

  [...]

  This is one of the reasons I like Linux so much. Linux is a dynamic, constantly changing operating system ecosystem. Flotsam and jetsam does not have a chance to hang around for very long and is eventually washed away by better solutions. I think this is the reason why Linux has evolved far faster than any proprietary operating system I know of.

• Desktop

  • Reasons Why I Love My Desktop

    Gwibber is an awesome micro-blogging tool. It provides simple and quick access to see all of my accounts together, helps me see a standard set of searches that I care about, and lets me tweet once and have the message go to all of my accounts.

  • Web 0.1 (or, How to Stop Worrying and Keep All Your Data)

    I just wish setting things up this way wasn’t so arcane; I gradually threw all these bits together over several years and I’m sure many of you reading this have similar stuff with your own personal twists set up for your systems, but it is something you need a bit of enthusiasm and technical knowledge to do. It may be inevitable that for most people the only way to get this effect is to rely on some company to do the server end in exchange for access to all your data, but it’s a bit of a shame, really. It’d be nice if we’d somehow managed to make these kinds of setup more accessible. I think it might be interesting if Firefox Sync really takes off, and the Weave protocols prove to be robust enough to handle other types of data from non-Mozilla applications; that could be a really interesting space for app developers to play around in, with a really big potential user base. And it’s a system that’s done right, with privacy built in right from the start and a good commitment to interoperability and the ability to run entirely independent from Mozilla’s own implementation.

  • Minimalist computing – thinning the herd (having nothing whatsoever to do with the Hurd)

    I’ve gotten rid of a great deal of hardware over the past year and then some. I don’t have any desktop systems left in my computer herd.

    We’ve just set up our home office in the home-office space we built more than 7 years ago (another topic, another time, another blog), and I elected to bring my Compaq Armada 7700dmt — circa 1999 — back here for the time being.

    Even though my long-gone white box known as This Old PC was more powerful (333 MHz Pentium II, 256 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive) than the Compaq, known as The $15 Laptop (233 MHz Pentium II, 144 MB RAM, 3 GB hard drive), I really like the Compaq, a marvel of laptop design and engineering for its technologically ancient time.

• Server

  • The Economics of Servers Could Soon Change

    Marvell said today that it has built a chip designed for servers that uses the same architecture as chips inside cell phones. The chip’s four 1.6 GHz processors aren’t notable for their performance compared to today’s server chips, which use the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD. However, the power savings will likely be significant compared with an x86-based chip.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • FLOSS Weekly 141: Membase

    Membase is a distributed key-value database management system, optimized for storing data behind interactive web applications.

    Guest: James Phillips for Membase.

  • the_source Episode 12 “Mini” Released

    This is a mini episode from East Bay Mini Maker Faire. I take a look at a couple of exhibits from this years rainy event in Oakland, CA. I talk to a few guys who went all out to build the ultimate gaming chair. Then I learn how to decorate eggs the geeky way.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux open source drivers for Xbox Kinect released

    It didn’t take long for the hacking community to come up with open source drivers for the Kinect … no Xbox required!

    Adafruit offered a $3,000 bounty for open source Kinect drivers, and it’s been won by a clever hacker called Hector Martin (@marcan42). The open source driver supports the RGB camera output and depth camera.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Two Features Wayland Will Have That X Doesn’t

      So Wayland ultimately will be able to switch between GPUs and drivers without requiring a restart of the display server.

      The other feature brought up is concerning full-screen applications on Wayland and how that will be handled in an attempt to make this display server better for handling games than an X.Org Server.

    • Is Linux really free software?

      Oliva believes Linux is following the same model. He told iTWire that though he had known for a long time that Linux was non-free because it contains blobs (sourceless software), it was only a couple of months back that he decided to go public.

    • Open-Source ATI R300 Compiler Optimizations

    • NVIDIA Puts Out New Fence Sync Patches

• Applications

  • Sharpen your Karaoke skills with Performous

    I am far from being a music genius. In fact, if there’s one facet of my personality that lacks perfection, it would be my music skills. Nevertheless, I do believe I’m qualified enough to say that Performous is a very useful and fun program. It’s simple, elegant, designed with style, powerful, challenging, and addictive.

    If you have a tough team of buyers or investors coming over for an icy corporate dinner, you now have the perfect tool to spice up the mood. Performous is the tool you need. Grab some 80s classic and you have no reason to leave your home, ever.

  • 10 things you can do when the drive on your Linux box is full

    Do you remember the days when keeping a hard disk from getting full was essential to keep your machine running well? That was then, this is now, right? Well, not quite. The truth is, “The more you have, the more you need.” Today, people are saving more on their drives, and that “more” consists of files that are far larger than what hard drives were once filled with. I see people filling up even terabyte drives faster than they can name the videos they just saved.

    So… What do you do when that drive is full and your operating system is Linux? Do you have to do some special incantation or magical programming trick? Or do you just need a bit of common sense to help you through? Although common sense will be a great aid in this task, it also helps to know a few things about the operating system in general and how to use it properly. Let’s take a look at some things you can do when your Linux box begins running out of space.

  • General Open Source NLE Round-Up

    It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted any open source NLE updates, and there have been new releases across the board. Here’s a quick round-up of a few noticeable updates.

  • Two New Tools in Snort

  • Burster – An Open Source Web Browser Plugin for Playing Games, Powered by Blender Project

    Burster is an initiative by iTechnologie and Blender Project to bring 3D gaming to the web browser. Burster web browser 3D plugin uses the Blender Game Engine to integrate the fascinating world of 3D into a web page.

    The plugin is free, lightweight and powerful and uses blender player. Excerpts from the official website…

  • Zik – Audio player based on gstreamer

  • Proprietary

    • 10+ handy Opera 11 extensions

    • Hands-on Opera Mobile beta browser for Android

      Opera Software just unveiled Opera Mobile 10.1 beta for Android tonight, but we’ve had a chance to play around with a prerelease version for several days.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • The Perfect Desktop – Fedora 14 i686 (GNOME)

    • Help Add missing screenshots to the Ubuntu Software Centre

    • Ubuntu Linux – Short command list

    • Data Replication Using rsync

    • How To Upgrade Ubuntu 9.10 To 10.04 with NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 Graphic Card

    • HOWTO: Manually set GDM Background and GTK Theme

    • Finetune digiKam by Tweaking Its Settings

    • Creating an Ubuntu Live USB from CD

    • Structure of a Command

    • TARPIT iptables target

    • Easy Organization with KDE’s Plasma Shelf Widget

    • Can’t Play Full-screen YouTube Video In Ubuntu Maverick 10.10? Try This Fix!

    • How to Create PDF Files from Web page in Ubuntu with Html2Pdf

    • Start programs at specific times with this handy app

    • Detach a process from the current shell

    • Introduction to Web Runtime on MeeGo

    • Set Chrome to Run Flash and Other Plug-Ins On-Demand Only

    • Chrome (Dev Channel) Allows You To Load Flash On-Demand

    • Do Away with PowerPoint with S5 on Linux

      S5 is the opposite of Impress or PowerPoint. No GUI, all text. You use HTML to create your slides and use a pre-written system of CSS and JavaScript to use your browser to display your presentation. If you have a computer with Firefox, Chrome, or another standards-based browser that has good CSS/JavaScript support. (So, you might want to give IE a miss.) S5 is all about HTML. Well, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. But really — you only need to know HTML. And only a tiny bit at that. Let’s take a look at what you need to know.

    • system call abuse.

    • PAM, logging in and changing passwords

    • Getting my new Sandisk Sansa Fuze to work with gPodder

      So, a while back I caved and got an iPod shuffle. While it worked well at first, over the last year it has been a constant pain in my butt. All I want to do is use gPodder to get my podcasts and listen to them on the way to work and at the gym. I went with the iPod shuffle because it was sub $100 and I didn’t really need to spend the money for the screen in the Nano. Not having a screen meant just listening in order and having to check gtkPod to make sure I’d listened to all the podcasts before clearing the iPod. Let me get into my workflow and why the shuffle became a real pain.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Good old habits: notifications again

      Chani recently blogged about the last progress of the activities management: in the Plasma Desktop workspace 4.6 finally the advantages are starting to be exposed to the user. In brief: can virtual desktops stop and start applications on demand when they switch? can an application be on 2 out of 5 vd? can a vd be stopped and when recreated be restored exactly as it was? (wallpaper, desktop widgets, running applications etc) can the user remove a non empty, non last virtual desktop? Can an application behave in a way that is specific for a certain desktop, like showing only work related contacts?

    • KSnapshot gets social

      When I blogged about the freehand region capture feature I added to KSnapshot a couple of weeks ago, it caught me by surprise that post quickly turned into a wishlist for KSnapshot. I didn’t expect people missed anything in our good old KSnapshot after so many years of development.

    • Open Ballot: should KDE and Qt libraries merge?

      TuxRadar

      “Let’s merge Qt and the KDE development platform. Let’s put all KDE libraries, support libraries, and platform modules into Qt.” So says Cornelius Schumacher, long-time KDE coder and the current president of KDE e.V. Such a bold move would be a “massive effort and require huge changes”, he says – and the community would have plenty to talk about as well. See here for the full story, and then let us know what you think for our next podcast. Is this a good move to simplify the Linux desktop stack and eliminate redundancy, or are the projects simply far too separate and distinct?

    • Kubuntu Todo

      UDS in Florida is over, we flew home and left the sun behind. The main outcome from the conference is a long Kubuntu Todo list.

      In the packaging section we naturally want the latest bits of KDE and Qt. We’d like to try raster in Qt. We’re going to try gtk-oxygen theme. Scott is going to look at automatic bulids on his ARM machines. GStreamer will be investigated. We’ll be looking at whether it makes sense to packaging Owncloud and Plasma Media Centre. Then there’s Project Neon, a top secret relaunch of the project to make daily builds of Qt and KDE.

    • Reviewed: Chakra 0.3 beta 3 (Ashoc) KDE 4.5.3 Preview

      There are many “unknown” linux derivatives nowadays, most of which are not original creations, but rather are unofficial customizations of existing base distributions like ARCH, Slackware, etc. Chakra GNU/Linux is one of these, quoted from their site, “Chakra is a free, user-friendly and extremely powerful GNU/Linux distribution born from Arch Linux, based on a half-rolling release model focused on KDE software, and so targeted at any KDE lover. Its repositories are full of binary packages for KDE, Qt and CLI applications, and there is also a bundle system for other applications.”

      [...]

      Pros:

      * Beautiful and easy-to-use Tribe installer
      * Exquisite and full-featured KDE 4.5.3 Desktop
      * Stable even for a beta
      * Half-rolling-release philosophy translates into a pretty stable system
      * “Bundle” apps are a cool concept and reinforce Chakra’s commitment to a pure KDE experience (gtkfree)

      Cons:

      * It’s unfinished in some areas (Shaman)
      * Some problems with some video drivers (ATI/nVidia 96xx)

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Nautilus Flickr Uploader – Incredibly Useful and Simple Nautilus Extension

      If you didn’t even knew about Nautilus extensions before, you might want to check out our collection of 6 useful Nautilus extensions and scripts first. Nautilus Flickr Uploader is a nice and simple application that will allow you to easily upload pictures directly from Nautilus into Flickr.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Clonezilla 1.2.6-40 Is Available for Download

      Steven Shiau announced earlier today, November 9th, the immediate availability of a new stable release of his system-cloning Linux distribution, Clonezilla 1.2.6-40. The new version is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.32-27, and it introduces a couple of important bugfixes, as well as many enhancements and changes.

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • PCLinuxOS Releases a Slew of Quarterly Updates

      PCLinuxOS is a rolling release distribution, which means users can usually update through the package management rather than perform a fresh install every six months. But a few times a year developers release Quarterly Updates for new users or machines. Recently it was that time again when several varieties of PCLOS saw new releases.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Introducing the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) Certification

      Following yesterday’s release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, we are pleased to announce a new certification, Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA). The RHCSA certification allows system administrators to validate their ability to perform the key tasks required of Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators in today’s IT environments. The new RHCSA credential will replace the Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) certification. Coverage of the RHCSA exam will be similar to RHCT, but with the addition of some key skills identified in an in-depth survey of Red Hat certified professionals. RHCSA certifications will be issued retroactively to individuals who have earned RHCT on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. With the launch of Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), Red Hat will be offering a certification with a title that is more aligned to usage in the marketplace and reflective of system administration skills.

    • Linux Curriculum Redesigned to Better Align with Today’s IT Needs

      With the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 yesterday, Red Hat Training has made exciting changes to its Linux curriculum. First, we restructured our Linux curriculum to provide four clear, role-based learning paths to align with our evolving customers’ profiles. Second, following a deep technical survey of Red Hat credential holders, we worked with the Red Hat Certification team to restructure our Linux administration courses and certifications. The sequence of administration tasks we teach map to the contemporary job roles of Linux administrators and senior Linux administrators. Third, we substantially changed our teaching approach by instilling a facilitative and interactive learning methodology designed to actively engage course participants in the learning process. We believe that less lecture and more participation equals better understanding and retention. With these changes to Red Hat Training, our curriculum is better aligned with today’s IT roles and responsibilities, and offers a much more interactive learning experience.

    • For Red Hat’s Matthew Szulik a ‘very humbling honor’

      The honors have come in droves to Matthew Szulik for more than a decade. Perhaps the most precious came Wednesday night as the North Carolina Technology Association presented him with its Outstanding Achievement award.

      “It was very surprising – and very humbling,” said Szulik, who retired as chairman of Raleigh-based Red Hat earlier this year at the age of 53.

      “To be honored with an award given to other leaders such as former Gov. Jim Hunt and Jim Goodmon [CEO of Capitol Broadcasting] is hard to imagine.”

    • Red Hat’s Fedora 14 Boasts Updated Development Tools, New Virtualization Technology

      Fedora 14, the latest release of Red Hat’s fast-moving, community-supported Linux distribution, hit the Internet earlier this month bearing its typical crop of updated open-source software applications, with a particular focus on updated developer tools, such as the latest versions of the Eclipse and Netbeans Integrated Development Environments.

    • Fedora

      • Wacom Bamboo on Fedora 14

        Just a quick update to my earlier article on getting the Wacom Bamboo CTL-460 working in Fedora: I have tested the tablet with F14 now and while it’s still not automatically detected, at least the udev rules part of the procedure I detailed earlier is now obsolete.

      • #fedora-design Meeting

  • Debian Family

    • SimplyMepis 11.0 on Its Way!

      It looks as though 11.0 is going to break the 700 MB CD barrier, propelling it into the DVD-zone. Current alphas are 801 MB, but rumors are floating around that SimplyMepis will now include lots more software goodies since that barrier is down. On the other hand, further speculation is that “lite” for CDROM and USB versions may also be released. We’ll have to wait and see.

      It’s been said that “Warren’s alpha’s are like other folk’s betas, betas like RCs, etc, etc” but several posts to the MepisLovers forum indicate there are hardware issues. Several people, like yours truly, are experiencing boot showstoppers while a others are having graphic issues.

      While 11.0 is definitely on its way, it appears many users will have to wait until the next release to see what’s new. Stay tuned.

    • Security Scanner for Debian and Ubuntu Linux Servers – Buck-security

      Buck-Security is a security scanner for Debian and Ubuntu Linux. It runs a couple of important checks and helps you to harden your Linux system. This enables you to quickly overview the security status of your Linux system.

    • Debian activities

      Most of my recent Debian work has been the usual pkg-telepathy stuff (mainly in experimental while we’re frozen), and hacking on the Quake III engine.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Why should I ever bother filing another bug?

        I was in a serious state of anxiety. Here I was, pouring my heart into this damn thing. And not just coworkers at Canonical, but our immense community contributors, pouring our heart and souls into this release, and to be slapped in the face with failure, ouch! What was he upset about? Some stupid work around he applied 2 years ago to get his stupid Broadcom wireless card working. And on an upgrade it broke.

        As it ends up we’ve reached a new level of what people expect.

        My “linux geek correct” answer would have been “Hey bro, you have a broadcom card, it’s a saving throw; each distro release has different set of variables”. If you’re lucky you roll a natural 20 on a certain release of a distro — and if you’re lucky an upgrade is totally easy. I don’t even know what to say to the people to who own these realtek cards. People are still recommending “ndiswrapper” for these cards. That’s basically “Hey, I can’t fix your problem, so here’s a work around”. That’s not sustainable.

      • Help Improve Ubuntu on ‘Bug Day’ Tomorrow

        Tomorrow, there’s a global online event planned in which anyone can donate a little bit of their time to improving Ubuntu. It’s called Ubuntu Bug Day, and it’s a great opportunity for users and fans to get involved and contribute to the operating system–no training or experience required.

      • Spread Ubuntu site gets slick new look, domain

        The site is a firm favourite of mine – not only does it offer up CD wallets, posters, presentations and other Ubuntu-orientated goodies (many of which we’ve featured here on OMG! Ubuntu!) but it also allows you to submit your marketing materials too.

      • Compiz-based Unity coming to PPA tomorrow

        And so it begins! The Compiz-backed version of Unity – to be the default Ubuntu 11.04 desktop – has arrived on Launchpad.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Lubuntu: Light(er)weight Ubuntu-based Distro

          If you don’t need a standardised, easy to install solution, you could build something similar to what Lubuntu offers, and lighter still, by beginning with a Debian netinstall and then adding LXDE and any other components that you need.

          In many ways, Lubuntu is a example of what’s so great about Linux as it offers yet another balance of options and compromises by positioning itself between the genuinely light weight distributions and the full, mainstream solutions based on KDE and Gnome.

          If you’ve ever wanted to install Ubuntu but wished that it was a bit less resource heavy, Lubuntu might be for you. Although the website claims that it is usable on machines with 256MB and sub 1 GHz processors, it’s clearly going to work best on machines with a CPU that’s a little bit above that level and closer to 512MB of RAM. However, this is an important niche as there are many machines of that speed lying around and in need of a well featured, secure operating system.

          The other target is netbooks. Here too, Lubuntu may well be a valid choice for people who could just about run a more standard distribution but want to get out from underneath the escalating memory footprint and CPU drag of KDE and Gnome and enjoy some extra speed and battery life.

          In both usage cases, Lubuntu could well see some of these machines saying a final farewell to Windows XP.

        • Linux Mint: No to Unity, no to Gnome-Shell

          When Mark Shuttleworth announced that future versions of Ubuntu will use Unity by default on the desktop many users of Linux Mint, a highly polished Ubuntu-derived distribution, were left wondering what it would use.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Nokia/MeeGo

      • Qt Mobility 1.1.0 Released

        We are very pleased to announce the release of Qt Mobility 1.1.0. We are especially proud of this release because of the latest announcement on Nokia’s strategy with Qt and Qt Quick as a primary development framework. QML bindings included in this Qt Mobility release is very well aligned with this strategy and will give you a competitive edge in developing stunning applications.

      • Qt 4.7.1 Released

        You can download source and binary packages for this release from the Qt Download Page. Alternatively, you can grab the source directly from the public git repository, where the “v4.7.1″ tag matches the content of the released packages. The Qt 4.7 documentation has also been updated.

    • Android

      • Five features Google needs to deliver in Android 2.3

        Android 2.3, codenamed Gingerbread, is expected to materialize this month. Little is known about Gingerbread’s features, however, because Google develops the operating system behind closed doors and doesn’t publish a roadmap. This has fueled a lot of speculation among Android enthusiasts.

        Google has hinted that 2.3 could bring a user interface refresh that will reduce the need for handset makers to broadly deviate from the standard user experience. Various leaks have suggested that the platform is being overhauled to boost its suitability for tablet devices. Google’s new WebM multimedia format, which uses the VP8 codec, will likely be supported out of the box. It’s also possible that Gingerbread will include some of the music library streaming and synchronization features that the search giant demonstrated this year at the Google I/O conference.

      • Android Update Latest – Edition 365

  • Tablets

    • Kno, a Linux-based Tablet Computer/Digital Textbook for Students

      We have already featured here several tablet computers. Some are designed for the enterprise such as the Cisco Cius and the Avaya, while others are made as multi-purpose tablets like the Shogo. A unique tablet computer that is especially created for students has been recently introduced. Its name is Kno.

      The Kno is a Linux-based tablet PC that can function as an electronic textbook, eBook reader, notebook, and web browser among others. It will be available in two form factors: the cheaper single-screen model with 14-inch touchscreen; the more expensive clamshell dual-screen model with two 14-inch touch-sensitive screens.

Free Software/Open Source

• Which came first, the customer or the community?

  Sounds like a simple chicken versus egg problem, isn’t it? But in fact, this is a very deep question. How you answer reveals the “soul” of your business.

• Aerodynamic Elephants and Free Software Without Freedom

  Whether the writers are newcomers with a keep grasp of the obvious or more experienced users with particular grievances, the tone of these articles always seem to resemble a manifesto’s. They demand that free software add support immediately for certain types of hardware, such as smart phones or wireless cards. They insist that the community create — apparently in a process resembling immaculate conception — software such as an exact PhotoShop or MS Exchange. They call on the community to make things just work, to become less geeky and less political, and to develop a more relaxed attitude about using proprietary software

• Events

  • Open Source Ohio: Bringing FOSS and Business Together

    What happens when you bring together open source projects with businesses and non-profits? A whole lotta awesome, that’s what. One man is making it his mission to do just that. Meet Mark Wyatt of Ardent Technologies. As a former coder, turned software architect, turned executive, Mark has spent the last 20 years bridging the gap between t-shirts and suits (and not in the Don Johnson way). He’s one of the rare people that can translate geekspeak to execspeak and vice versa.

  • PyPy Joins the Software Freedom Conservancy

    Today, the Software Freedom Conservancy welcomes PyPy as its newest member. PyPy joins twenty-two other Conservancy members, who receive the benefit of aggregated non-profit status available to all Conservancy member projects.

  • FOSS.IN/2010: Final List of Selected Talks & Mini-Confs

    This is the second list of selected main session talks for FOSS.IN/2010. Unless there are cancellations, this will be the final list.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Fasten Your Seatbelts – Firefox 4 Beta adds new JavaScript power and faster graphics

      A new release of Firefox 4 Beta is now ready for you to download and test! This release boosts performance in some important ways: it adds the JägerMonkey just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler; adds more support for hardware-accelerated graphics, as well as hardware acceleration for Windows XP and Mac OS X; and enables 3D capabilities, without the need for plug-ins, with WebGL.

    • Mozilla Firefox: a look at six years of better browsing

      Today marks the 6th birthday of the popular Mozilla Firefox internet browser. Taken up from the source code of the Netscape browser, Firefox powers on through today to serve more than 400 million (and 45% of The PC Report’s readers) in performing just what it’s built for.

    • Firefox 4 – Mozilla versus the world

      When you think of a giant lizard-monster stomping through a major metropolitan area, you tend to think of Godzilla. Or maybe Rodan. What you probably don’t think about is a non-profit corporation that helps millions around the world gain access to the information they need in their day-to-day lives…

    • Firefox 4 Beta 7 Released, Feature Complete

      The Mozilla team seems to be back on track with the release of the seventh beta of the upcoming web browser Firefox 4. The release marks a milestone in the development as this is the first feature complete release of version 4 of the Internet browser. What does it mean? That the developers won’t add new features to the browser. All they do from this point in development on is test, test and test to fix bugs and get the browser ready for a prime time release in the beginning of 2011.

    • Firefox 4 gets much, much faster

      One of the major components essential for the future of Firefox just landed in the beta build of the browser, and it gives the open-source browser the page-rendering speed boost that it had been lacking.

• Oracle

  • New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 4 (build OOO330m14) available

    OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 4 is now available on the download website.

  • What If You Threw a Proprietary Software Party and Nobody Came?

    Let’s not forget that Java, like the Linux kernel, has moved along over the years thanks to contributions and community participation from many deep-pocketed organizations, including Google and the Apache Software Foundation. Now, Oracle is suing Google over aspects of Java, which we’ve already dubbed “the anti-open move of the year.” Under Oracle, questions swirl around the future of Java in ways that they never did under Sun, and, because of the many open source projects that Oracle acquired along with Sun, Oracle’s ability to shake openness in general goes well beyond Java.

    We’ve also noted that as Oracle has taken over stewardship of OpenOffice, many developers have resigned and the project is forking. How many lawsuits, threats and adjustments of major financial contributions is it going to take before Oracle adjusts its policies toward openness?

  • JCP is Salvageable

    In the wake of Doug Lea leaving the JCP, I just want to say that I think the JCP is salvageable. This idea the JCP is an unworkable entity is plain and utter myth. A myth propagated by those that want to see it fail (i.e. SpringSource) or those that want to create their own, and controlled, specification efforts (IBM), or those that are more interested in doing their own thing than collaborating with others (i.e. Google and SpringSource). Don’t believe me? Well, let’s discuss it a little more.

• Education

  • Open source in higher education – why not?

    There are a few holes in this idea, and it certainly would not be easy to orchestrate. Nonetheless, if University X teamed with RedHat or IBM to finance a few project liaisons to act as go betweens for a single CS elective course that was basically Open Source participation 301, imagine what the press could be like for the involved parties. What percentage of CS students who participate in that course would land desirable positions? How many bugs could the University’s elective course-taking CS body claim to have resolved? How much time/money would those students effectively end up putting toward the projects in which they participate? Letters for your CS major home page detailing, “Open Source participation 301 really put me above my competition, I had a choice of jobs after only a handful of interviews…”. Higher profile businesses start recruiting more from University X, because they know the students who took OSP 301 are intimately familiar with an open source technology on which they rely. Tech businesses recruit because they know that students who worked on open source project Q during their OSP 301 course are experienced with a particular bug tracker, wiki, vcs, etc. that the business uses in their workflow. RedHat/IBM offer press releases, “Just donated $80,000 to open source project Q and University X to support collaborative education/open source learning and programming efforts.”

    Who loses here? I realize that the projects/companies I relayed might be out of reach, but the I would think the right pitch could spark interest from a Mozilla project, PostgreSQL, LibreOffice, and countless others.

    Opensource, Colleges/Universities, CS majors – Can we make something like this happen? Why not?

• Business

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Open core licensing is free software’s evil twin

      Or, why free software advocates love to hate open core

      I’ve been trying to figure out why it is that free software advocates are so fixated on the open core licensing strategy and recently came to the conclusion that there is only one explanation: open core is free software’s evil twin.

    • Comparing open source and proprietary software markets

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Digital Mars Is Wanting To Merge D Into GCC

    Walter Bright of Digital Mars has brought up with the GCC list what steps need to be traveled so that GDC, the GNU D Compiler, can be merged into GCC. Right now the GNU Compiler Collection doesn’t have support for the D programming language, but that may soon change if this merge by Digital Mars is successful.

• Standards/Consortia

  • It’s the Document, stupid!

    Today the Document Foundation has issued a press release that marks the beginning of something exciting; but it’s likely that not a lot of people will understand what’s being explained through the multiple layers of buzz and general statements that were made. Here’s the statement:

    “”The Document Foundation is about documents and the associated software is pivotal to create, exchange, modify, share and print documents”, says Thorsten Behrens, a software developer and a member of TDF Steering Committee. “LibreOffice 3.3 is the first flavour of this long term strategy, but the journey has just begun, and the enormous advantages of our developer-embracing environment are not yet fully reflected in the upcoming software release”.

    LibreOffice 3.3 is based on OOo 3.3, with code optimisations and many new features, which are going to offer a first preview of the new development directions for 2011 and beyond. TDF founders foresee a completely different future for the office suite paradigm, which – in the actual format – is over 20 years old, to be based on the document (where the software is a layer for the creation or the presentation of the contents).

Leftovers

• Google News spammer has new site, same trick

  Last week, after CNET pointed out that a company called 70 Holdings Inc. was spamming Google News under the moniker of Red Label News, Google pulled that content from its site. However, over the weekend 70 Holdings popped back up using one of the 44 domains it owns to once again flood Google News with the same type of nearly empty stories tied to search-friendly keywords and advertising.

• Job killing you? Anxious mob bosses seek psychotherapy

  The mafia boss was having a dreadful time dealing with loss. But he wasn’t struggling with the loss of lives, or even the loss of his freedom.

  “Doc, it’s my hair,” the mobster from the ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate confessed to his psychiatrist in jail. “I’m afraid of losing my hair.

  [...]

  “If you’re a mafioso, and you’re anxious, you’re not trustworthy and you have to be eliminated,” said Lo Verso. “A mafioso is paranoid about everything” — trusting the mafia code of silence (“omerta”) more than the medical code of patient confidentiality.

• BBC iPlayer to charge users following international rollout

  Although the BBC Trust has yet to release any official statement on the move, BBC Worldwide head Smith declared the plans in an interview with the Telegraph stating: “Not only will that mean international fans of, for example, Doctor Who can get their fix legitimately, but it has the potential of opening up a new revenue stream for the entire UK production industry.”

• Strange ICANN times ahead: commercial interests seek to infiltrate non-commercial ones.

  Democracy is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially when dealing with bodies that, in its name, seek to infiltrate and distort egalitarian processes. This is exactly the case with the Not-for-Profit Organisations Constituency (NPOC), which recently submitted to the ICANN Board a Notice of Intent to form a new constituency existing within the scope, mandate and mission of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG). According to NPOC’s statement “membership is open to any not-for-profit organization/NGO with missions such as: philanthropic, humanitarian, educations, academic and professional development, religious, community associations, promotion of the arts, public interest policy advocacy, health-related services and social inclusion”. This new constituency does not require that such organizations are commercial or non-commercial in nature or whether they are meant to serve commercial or non-commercial interests. So, what does a constituency that fails to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial interests want within a purely non-commercial group?

• Hardware

  • AMD teases Bobcat Fusion APUs again, delivers Atom-busting performance (video)

    A quick refresher: Bobcat is AMD’s low-power Accelerated Processing Unit that can handle both computational and graphical duties, Ontario and Zacate are the chips built upon that core, and Brazos is the overall platform that they’ll be doing their work on. Clear enough? We hope so. AMD has finally allowed a few tech pubs to get their hands on Brazos-based systems and, along with feedback about their experience, the guys have come back with some added spec notes. There’ll be two initial Zacate options, the dual-core E-350 running at 1.6GHz or the single-core E-240 clocked at 1.5GHz, while Ontario will offer 1GHz dual-core and 1.2GHz single-core variants.

• Security

  • Tuesday’s security updates

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • TSA agents singled Meg McLain out for special treatment. They yelled at her, cuffed her to a chair, ripped up her ticket and cal…

  • When ‘kiddie porn’ charges go wrong

    The grim-looking mugshots on the right are of Sergio Diaz-Palomino and Alma Vasquez whose family photos “morphed into an immigration nightmare” when a Walgreens worker “flagged pictures of their naked son”, said ABC News.

    Sergio was consequently accused of sexual exploitation, the mildest of the horrifying charges later laid against him.

    The accusations were dropped but the two were found to have entered the US illegally, enmeshing them in the “nightmare” cited in the intro.

  • Waterboarding is torture, Downing Street confirms

    Waterboarding, which was banned by President Barack Obama, helped foil attacks on Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and a number of US targets around the world, according to Bush.

    In Decision Points, published today, Bush insists the practice – which simulates drowning – is not torture, describing it instead as one of a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

    But Downing Street confirmed the British government still shared Obama’s opinion that waterboarding constitutes torture. “It comes under that definition in our view,” a No 10 spokeswoman said.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • French export drive threatens to crush Europe’s eels

    Tiny, slimy – and pricey. This is the glass eel, the baby of the critically endangered European eel. As market prices hit a record $2800 per kilogramme, France has blocked an agreement to stop European exports, crippling efforts to restock Europe’s increasingly eel-less rivers.

  • Alaskan Bird Deformities Are Puzzling, Creepy

    About one in 16 crows and black-capped chickadees suffer from a condition called avian keratin disorder, which causes their beaks to become morbidly elongated and crossed.

    Rates of the debilitating disorder are 10 times higher than usual. That’s higher than has ever been recorded in any wild-bird population, and most of this rise happened over the last decade. Dozens of other bird species are afflicted. Nobody knows why, but it’s probably not a good sign.

  • Energy Committee Chairman Candidate Says God Promised no More Catastrophic Climate Change after Noah

    Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who will seek the Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship maintains that we do not have to worry about climate change because God promised in the Bible not to destroy the world again after Noah’s flood.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Who’s Lobbying launch reveals who’s meeting UK ministers

    We are excited to announce the Who’s Lobbying site launches today! The site opens with an analysis of ministerial meetings with outside interests, based on the reports released by UK government departments in October.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • There Are Ever More Ways to Browse With No Name

    There are countless reasons why many people around the globe want to be able to use the web and messaging systems anonymously. In many parts of the world, opressive government regulations threaten free speech, and worse, which has produced an extensive list of technologies that people around the world use to beat the Internet censors. Browsing anonymously is a moving target, with ever more easy-to-use software available that can erase your tracks. Of course, especially if you live in a society where violating Internet usage policies can land you in jail or worse, any attempt to stay anonymous should be approached with extreme caution. Here is an updated collection of resources on some of the tools that are available from the open source community for this purpose.

  • YouTube caught in the middle of China-Japan dispute

    YouTube has found itself in the middle of a heated controversy between Japan and China thanks to a leaked video that shows a Chinese fishing boat crashing into a Japanese coast guard vessel. Google has now apparently turned over its records pertaining to the user who uploaded the video to Japanese prosecutors, who cited breaches of local laws by the anonymous video uploader.

  • How China turns its enemies into heroes

    The media are abuzz today with stories on how China is trying to create an international boycott of the Nobel Prize awards in Oslo. Not surprisingly, it’s blocking Chinese activists who it believes may be leaving to attend the ceremonies, and it’s trying to strong-arm other countries from participating.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Responses to the Consultation on net neutrality, September 2010

    The following public and private bodies and individuals submitted comments in response to the Consultation on the open internet and net neutrality. The corresponding contributions can be accessed by using the links.

    Omitted from the list are those who requested confidentiality. Furthermore, the name of the respondent has been omitted when requested or not provided.

  • Why don’t Americans want broadband?

    Hard as it might be for Webheads to believe, a significant fraction of the US population doesn’t use the Internet at home. In fact, 23 percent of all US households report that no one in the home uses the Internet anywhere. Why not? A detailed new study (PDF) from the Department of Commerce reminds us: many people don’t see the need for this “Internet” thing at all.

    Commerce parsed a big batch of US Census Data, most recently from late 2009, on US Internet use, and found that in general, it has exploded. Between 2001 and 2009, broadband usage in the US increased sevenfold, but a significant number of people just don’t see the need.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • WIPO Keynote

  • Economics and the limits to growth

    The first and second laws of thermodynamics should also be called the first and second laws of economics. Why? Because without them there would be no scarcity, and without scarcity, no economics. Consider the first law: if we could create useful energy and matter as we needed it, as well as destroy waste matter and energy as it got in our way, we would have superabundant sources and sinks, no depletion, no pollution, more of everything we want without having to find a place for stuff we don’t want. The first law rules out this direct abolition of scarcity. But consider the second law: even without creation and destruction of matter-energy, we might indirectly abolish scarcity if only we could use the same matter-energy over and over again for the same purposes — perfect recycling. But the second law rules that out. And if one thinks that time is the ultimate scarce resource, well, the entropy law is time’s irreversible arrow in the physical world. So it is that scarcity and economics have deep roots in the physical world, as well as deep psychic roots in our wants and desires.

  • Monsanto’s Fall: The End of GMO Seed Industry?

    As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.

    On Tuesday, Forbes publicly lamented its decision to deem Monsanto “company of the year.” The headline was cutting: “Forbes was wrong about Monsanto. Really wrong.” How did Monsanto go from Wall Street hero to Wall Street doormat?

    According to The Times’ Pollack, Monsanto’s troubles are two-fold: 1) the patent on Roundup, Monsanto’s market-dominating herbicide, has run out, exposing the company to competition from cheap Chinese imports; and 2) its target audience — large-scale commodity farmers in the south and Midwest– are turning against its core offerings in genetically modified corn, soy, and cotton seed traits.

  • Copyrights

    • In Search of A Compromise on Copyright

      Last week marked the return of the copyright debate to the House of Commons as Bill C-32 entered second reading. Six months after its introduction, it became immediately apparent that all three opposition parties will be seeking changes to the bill in return for their support.

    • 3D printing becomes the new copyright battleground

      The Public Knowledge think tank has issued a white paper warning that the open source community faces new intellectual property challenges with the growth of 3D printing.

      3D printing uses technology based around thermal inkjet printers to build 3D objects, laying down a strip of molecules at a time. It is likely to be vital to future motherboard manufacturing, and could have much wider uses.

    • Q&A: Dr Adrian Bowyer and open source 3D printing

      Just as computer inkjet printing revolutionised colour document production in the office and home, 3D printing is set to revolutionise how we create and use everyday objects.

      Applying printing technology to the manufacture of actual 3D objects has been possible for some years, but only on large industrial machinery which was expensive to purchase and run.

    • I’m Going To Forecast The Death Of The American Recording And Video Industries

      Their next door neighbors, Britain, have now decided to take the same course. Curiously as has been noted in many places, all of the spending cuts affect the poor and the middle class. The Toffs make out just fine, thank you very much.

      And now the Americans want to do the same thing. And will do the same thing. And will suffer the same fallout. Massive unemployment, massive underemployment. The entire audience that the RIAA/MPAA companies depend upon for their sales will be in the poorhouse, and unable to afford to buy entertainment. After all, food and housing come first. You can survive without entertainment. Life is more fun with it, but life is impossible without eating.

      Possibly this is the reason that the Entertainment Distributors have been so interested in pushing ACTA, in the hope that they’ll be able to increase their sales outside of the United States. Of course the other countries are interested in pushing their creative industries too, so that may not work.

    • Barcelona Events Wrap-up

      Since we last blogged about CC in Barcelona, we’ve been very productive. Two weeks worth of open events have yielded several talks around open educational resources (OER) search, discovery, and policy at Open Ed, recommendations and tools for greater open content reuse at the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival, and a 12 month plan for the future of the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU).

    • Meet our board members: Jimmy Wales

      Meet Creative Commons board member Jimmy Wales. You probably know him best as the founder of Wikipedia. Here, he talks to us about the importance of Creative Commons, why fundraising is hard, and his crazy travel schedule.

    • Creative Commons Communities Shine in Middle East

      CC communities throughout the Arab World displayed their rich culture and commitment to openness this past week in Lebanon and Qatar, showcasing creative works, inter-regional collaboration, and a focused dedication on legal and copyright issues in the region. Following the Digitally Open conference in Doha and a regional meeting including members of CC’s communities in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and UAE, Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig and CC CEO Joichi Ito visited Beirut for the official launch of the Creative Commons Lebanon project.

    • WordPress Blocks Blog Following DMCA Takedown ‘Comment’

      A non-commercial blog which specializes in reporting on Amazon Kindle related news was taken down by WordPress after it linked to site hosting an unauthorized copy of a book. Although this is a legal act under Spanish law, WordPress blocked the site following a complaint from an anti-piracy group who said the blog owner had ignored them, but when one learns how they made that complaint, it’s no surprise he did.

    • 4chan Attack Brings Down MPAA Website

      4chan and movie piracy are closely linked: Many of the anarchic message board’s users frequent sites like the Pirate Bay to download movies they can watch alone in their parents’ basement. Now, 4chan is attacking the champions of anti-piracy efforts.

      The Motion Picture Association of America’s website has been down since this morning, felled by a malicious flood of traffic co-ordinated by 4chan. (A similar attack brought down Gawker briefly this summer.) The assault appears to be in retaliation for the CEO of an Indian tech firm boasting that his company launches similar attacks on movie pirating websites like The Pirate Bay at the behest of film studios. That company’s website was quickly brought down, as the panicked CEO tried to backtrack from his comments.

    • Handicapping the horse-race for Canada’s new copyright bill

      In a fascinating interview with TVOntario’s Search Engine podcast, Michael Geist describes and predicts the likely outcome of the years and years of wrangling over Canada’s new copyright bill, C-61 C-32, which includes a sweeping DRM clause that makes it illegal to modify your own equipment, even if you’re not otherwise breaking copyright law, making it one of the most radical DRM laws in the world. Michael sees reason to hope for a more moderate C-32 in its final form — I hope he’s right.

    • Audio Podcast #66: The End of the Copyfight?

      Bill C-32 will be our new copyright law – Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, explains what that means for our digital rights.

    • Belgian Court Rules That Violating Creative Commons License Subjects You To Copyright Infringement Charge

      There hasn’t been too much case law around the legitimacy of Creative Commons licenses, and some have questioned whether or not they’re really legitimate. I’ll admit that I do have some questions about certain aspects of CC licenses, but over in Belgium a court has pretty clearly claimed that Creative Commons licenses are perfectly legitimate. The case involved a band that had released its music under a CC attribution-non-commercial-no derivatives license. However, a theater apparently used the music (in a modified form) as part of an ad for its upcoming season, and the ad played on national radio.

    • Belgian Court recognises CC licences

      This is an extremely interesting ruling for various reasons. Firstly, it helps to eliminate the typical FUD that tries to undermine Creative Commons as licences that are not valid because they lack case law.

    • ACTA

      • Act on ACTA

        GUE/NGL and I are preparing a draft resolution along with MEPs from other political groups. You are most welcome to comment on the content of the draft here: https://actamotion.co-ment.com/text/GEyBvVpfwDj/view/

      • Latest ACTA leaks: EU boasts of ‘innovative’ Internet enforcement

        How close were we to getting an ISP liability regime in ACTA? New leaked documents reveal more about what went on and how the EU and US are trying to sort out their differences.

        A raft of EU documents discussing changes to the ACTA (Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement) emerged unexpectedly in the public domain yesterday. The documents, which appear to originate from within the ACTA team in DG Trade, signal that the the US and EU are close to sorting out their differences, with the EU ‘winning’ on some matters.