• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Server

• Supercomputing Top500 brews discontent

  Like Hollywood’s Academy Awards, the Top500 list of supercomputers is dutifully watched by high-performance computing (HPC) participants and observers, even as they vocally doubt its fidelity to excellence.

  “The Top 500 [uses] an artificial problem — it doesn’t measure about 80 percent of the workloads” that are usually run on supercomputers, said John Hengeveld, director of technical compute marketing for Intel’s Data Center Group, speaking on the sidelines of the Supercomputer 2010 conference this week. “It is not a representative benchmark for the industry.”

Kernel Space

• Alternative To The “200 Lines Kernel Patch That Does Wonders” Which You Can Use Right Away

  if [ "$PS1" ] ; then
  mkdir -m 0700 /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/user/$$
  echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/user/$$/tasks
  fi

  And run the following commands as super user:

  mount -t cgroup cgroup /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu -o cpu
  mkdir -m 0777 /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/user

• Graphics Stack

  • Pixman 0.22 Is Getting More Performance Optimizations

    It was less than one month ago that Pixman 0.20 was released with faster image scaling, faster affine transformations, ARM NEON improvements, and SSE2 back-end optimizations, among other new features. The first development release towards Pixman 0.22 has now been released and it too brings more performance optimizations.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Nepomuk is not fast, is instant!

    Everybody that has been a KDE user for the last 2 years knows Nepomuk and its bad reputation, maybe it was desired in the past, but no more. This morning I decided to get my Nepomuk up and running again, and I have to say that it is impresive! just take a look at this video…

• GNOME Desktop

  • Gnome 2.32.1 released – Here’s looking to 3.x!

    I’ve always loved the Gnome Desktop Environment – and it’s certainly loved by many others.

    After its first release in 1999 it’s certainly come a long way. I have flirted over the years with a few other DE’s (mostly light weight ones) though I always came back to the Gnome, maybe it’s because what I have chalked up the most time with it and therefore feel most at home. One thing is for certain, I never liked KDE and the specs of my PC really never required me to look at a lighter DE out of a necessity.

  • GNOME Outreach Program for Women plans

    This is my first post after I was added to Planet GNOME (although some of my very old posts have already been displayed on the planet), so, hello planet readers!

    I will be part of GNOME Outreach Program for Women working on Cheese and I will have Thiago Souza Santos as a mentor. I’m really happy about this opportunity. I would like to thank GNOME Foundation, Google and Collabora for sponsoring this, Marina for organizing it and Daniel Siegel for helping me through application and giving me the great ideas to work on.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • How to efficiently publish 88 guides in 42 languages

      Eighty-eight (88) guides in forty-two (42) languages comes out to be six hundred and thirty (630) guides that have been published, so far, to the Fedora Docs website. That includes everything from Fedora Core 1 to today. With the release of Fedora 14, earlier this month, we introduced twelve new guides to the system that were translated into a number of languages.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • MintMenu With Ubuntu Software Center Patch Available In the WebUpd8 MintMenu PPA

    • So let there be Windows…

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • Meego 1.1 Multitasking Demo On An Aava Handset

      This video was recorded at the MeeGo conference 2010 in Dublin. This video showcases Aava Mobile Device For MeeGo with MeeGo 1.1.

  • Android

    • Woz: Android will eventually beat the iPhone [Update]

    • Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform

    • Did Google Arm Its Own Enemies With Android?

      Google was surely celebrating recently when Gartner reported that Android handsets outshipped Apple’s iPhone by close to a 2:1 margin. Given Apple’s head start in the market, it certainly is an impressive feat. But Google may regret the strategic choices that have led to this victory over Apple. To achieve the “win,” Google may have unwittingly created and trained a mercenary army of hardware manufacturers, willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder—whether that be Google, Baidu or Bing.

      There is no doubt that Google understands the importance of the mobile web. A large part of Google’s future will rely on advertising revenue driven by mobile devices, which is likely a key reason why Google decided to go into competition with its one-time ally, Apple.

    • It’s Gonna Be an Android World and We’ll Just Live in It

      While it’s been dawning on us for some time that Android is a beast, each day seems to bring new confirmation that the monster shows no signs of letting up. Android mobile ad impressions drew even with iOS for the first time, according to Millennial Media (PDF). The largest independent ad network said Android OS is tied with iOS with a 37 percent share of ad impressions. That’s a big change from last month, when iOS represented 46 percent of impressions while Android grabbed 29 percent.

    • Did Google Arm Its Own Enemies With Android?

      Google was surely celebrating recently when Gartner reported that Android handsets outshipped Apple’s iPhone by close to a 2:1 margin. Given Apple’s head start in the market, it certainly is an impressive feat. But Google may regret the strategic choices that have led to this victory over Apple. To achieve the “win,” Google may have unwittingly created and trained a mercenary army of hardware manufacturers, willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder—whether that be Google, Baidu or Bing.

      There is no doubt that Google understands the importance of the mobile web. A large part of Google’s future will rely on advertising revenue driven by mobile devices, which is likely a key reason why Google decided to go into competition with its one-time ally, Apple.

Free Software Parable

“What’s in this food?”

“You’ll like it. Just eat it.”

“I want to know what’s in it.”

“That is none of your business. It’s healthy. Eat it.”

“Healthy? By whose standards?”

“Our standards. Trust us.”

“I trust my judgement, not yours. I demand to know what I’m putting in my body. I paid for the food. It belongs to me. I will analyze it myself.”

“We have patents on the chemicals, machines, and processes that made the food. We have copyrights on the formulas and algorithms needed to make the food. You cannot examine it without our consent, which we do not give.”

Open source ‘community’ doesn’t exist

Unfortunately, this is a sub-culture that won’t go away. The result is that there’s no real community, and this is because ‘community’ is too loose a term to describe the many different kinds of people who use open source software.

It’s a word that may help the open source propaganda machine, but it doesn’t help the sustainability and growth of free software. There is no such thing as a single, homogeneous Linux group.

It’s a term that implies a shared goal and some kind of kinship, when there is none. It’s a term that implies cooperation and cohesion, when there’s just too much conflict and disagreement for this to happen.

Instead, there are disparate groups of individuals, businesses and enterprises, as with any other operating system.

Each group may contain those noble elements of kindness that have helped to make Linux such a success, but to describe the entire collection as a community is wrong.

Open thread: How do you describe open source to the uninitiated?

It happens all the time. You’re at a party, someone asks about your work, and yet again, you have about 45 seconds to describe one of the greatest innovations in human history.

There’s the public utility metaphor. The shared infrastructure “like a bridge or a road” idea. Waterworks. Rural electric co-op’s.The car with the hood welded shut. The Wikipedia analogy. The scholarly tradition. Libraries. The scientific method. Bucket brigades, quilting bees, and barn raisings. Seed banks and sustainable agriculture.

First user test data synchronization between CiviCRM and Oracle transaction system at De Goede Woning

For our project at De Goede Woning we have been developing a data synchronization process between CiviCRM and their main transaction system in Oracle (comparable with an ERP). Some data for a contact (first name, middle name, last name, gender and birth date), phones, emails and addresses will be common between the two, so a change, create or delete in CiviCRM will have to be synchronized with the main transaction system and vice versa.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Rainbow 0.2 is here!

    In the spirit of releasing early and releasing often – we are proud to bring you version 0.2 of Rainbow – an experimental Firefox add-on from Mozilla Labs that exposes audio and video recording capabilities to web pages.

  • Mozilla Open Data Visualization Contest – Data is Now Available!

    Two weeks ago the Mozilla Metrics Team, together with Mozilla Labs and the growing Mozilla Research Initiative, announced our first Open Data Visualization Competition. Today, we are excited to release the data sets for this competition!

  • Mozilla Open Data Visualization Competition – Data is Now Live!

    Two weeks ago Mozilla Labs, together with Mozilla Metrics team and the growing Mozilla Research Initiative, announced our first Open Data Visualization Competition. Today, we are excited to release the data sets for this competition!

    These data sets come from Mozilla’s own open data program, Test Pilot. Test Pilot is a user research platform that collects structured user data through Firefox. Currently, over 1 million Firefox users from all over the world participate in Test Pilot studies, which aim to explore how people use their web browser and the Internet in general

  • Mozilla Open Data Visualization Contest – Data is Now Available!

    Two weeks ago the Mozilla Metrics Team, together with Mozilla Labs and the growing Mozilla Research Initiative, announced our first Open Data Visualization Competition. Today, we are excited to release the data sets for this competition!

  • Community interviews: Tom Ellins (TMZ)

    At Mozilla we have an amazingly strong community that really makes up the core of the project. However, the incredible work of our core contributors is often not visible to the rest of our community. At SUMO we want to change that. Inspired by Matthew Helmke’s great interview series, we started to interview different members of our SUMO community to give you a glimpse into their life and work. In this installment we will hear from Tom Ellins, also known as tmz on IRC. Tom is a long time contributor, helping countless of Firefox users in live chat sessions.

  • The State of Mozilla

    Total assets as of December 31, 2009 were $143 million compared with $116 million at the end of 2008, an increase of 23 percent. Unrestricted net assets at the end of 2009 were $120 million compared with $94 million in 2008, a 28 percent increase. The restricted assets remain the same as last year: a “tax reserve fund” established in 2005 for a portion of the revenue the Mozilla Foundation received that year from the search engine providers. As noted last year, the IRS has opened an audit of the Mozilla Foundation. We do not yet have a good feel for how long this process will take or the overall scope of what will be involved.

  • State of Mozilla and 2009 Financial Statements

  • Mozilla Labs Night “Gaming Special” – Agent 008 Ball Presentation

    October’s Mozilla Labs Night “Gaming Special meetup was a fun and informative evening to learn more about how to build games with Open Web technologies. One of the speakers at the event was Kevin Moore from Pixel Lab. Here is the video we captured of him talking about Agent 008 Ball, an HTML5-based game.

SaaS

• Cloud Computing 101, p2

  A different categorization of clouds is private vs public. Private simply means that the cloud infrastructure is built in-house behind the firewall. For example you could turn your corporate datacenter into a private cloud. The benefits being, you gain better efficiency and datacenter utilization across different departments as well as being able to provide an elastic and fast response to your enterprise’s departmental IT needs. Should you want to start playing with a private cloud solution, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is a good start.

Databases

• Comparing MySQL and Postgres 9.0 Replication

  Replication is one of the most popular features used in RDBMS’s today.

  [...]

  As was previously stated, for many application use cases, both Oracle’s MySQL and PostgreSQL replication will be an equally good choice. The best way to determine which is right for you is to download both and put each through a comprehensive evaluation.

Education

• Frontiers in Education: A recap

  A number of folks from the Teaching Open Source community had a panel at the Frontiers in Education 2010 conference, which is attended by college and university professors interested in improving engineering education. The panel’s main thesis was that participating in FOSS communities was one way to give students a better educational experience.

Licensing

• Contributor Agreements Say Your Contribution Is Unwelcome

  The conversation around LWN’s coverage of Michael Meeks’ talk at the Linux Plumbers Conference (sadly paywalled until now but available today and worth reading all the way through) provoked interesting comments. The subject of the discussion is LibreOffice and the code ownership issues which provoked the fork.

Openness/Sharing

• Law, the internet and society

  Changes in law and technology, largely invisible to the general public and widely misunderstood by policymakers in the public and private sectors, are having a fundamental impact on our society. The aim of this unit is to provide an appreciation of how the internet paved the way for an explosion of innovation. You will explore some of the changes in the law and internet technology that have resulted from the reaction to that innovation. You will also consider the implications of these changes for society.

• Open Data

  • Developers

    The blockers are:

    * closed public data
    * procurement
    * change

    Developers are indeed talented, and worthy of enormous academic respect – such as people reserve for scientists or those people on CSI. And yes, there are some developers who are so excited and driven by their talent that they will more than happily talk for hours, or work for a while – for free – explaining why they love their subject and how they could revolutionise the way the world works. Just as there are those who know how to code and do that as a day job, are brilliant and talented but it is a job and no more, and those who push and grow their talent to become super-developers, world-renowned futurologists and/or billionaires.

  • The British Library’s National Bibliography is Open! Join in the party.

    Open Streetmap has 250,000 volunteers. There are already lots of volunteers creating openly accessible bibliographic entries [1].

    How many books do YOU have on your shelves? Are they in the catalogue? Let us know if this excites you.

Standards/Consortia

• Tippr Proposes “Open Deal Format”, A Standard For The Group Buying Industry

  Tippr, which provides white-label services for group buying, is proposing a new potential technology standard for the group buying industry today, dubbed the “Open Deal Format” or ODF. The company is inviting interested parties, which include group buying service providers, publishers and social networks, to a meeting in Seattle next month.

Twitter’s @Ev: Ad Money Good, Facebook Blocking Bad

Twitter’s Evan Williams reminded the Valley Wednesday that Google isn’t the only company being stymied by Facebook’s stranglehold on user identity.

Journalist John Battelle publicly asked Williams if Facebook would ever import Twitter’s firehose of data.

Williams shot back, “You’ll have to ask Mark that. You missed your opportunity,” referring to Batelle’s interview with Zuckerberg just 24 hours earlier on the same stage in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 Summit conference.

Twitter Calculates Reputation Scores for Each User

Twitter Has A (Secret) Reputation Score For Every User

Whoah. Onstage at Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter founder Evan Williams revealed, when asked by interviewer John Battelle “How do you pick ‘Who to Follow’?,” that Twitter has a private reputation score for every user.

According to Williams, Twitter’s “science and math people” have systems which gauge who you follow and who the people you follow follow and try to find ‘Who to Follow’ relevance in that overlap. He didn’t make it clear how individual user reputation score was measured.

A Look at the Kind Heart of One of the Most Influential Communities on the Internet

Reddit.com, the popular news aggregator and social media site owned by Condé Nast Digital, has become quite a powerhouse of social and cultural clout in recent years. Founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, the site was originally intended to be much like other social news forums. Contributors submit links to stories, or they can post original content. Other users then comment on the stories, and discussion ensues.

O’Brien: A dark trend runs through this year’s Web 2.0 tech summit

The names of the culprits are familiar, and include Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.com. Each has assumed a dominant position in their respective markets — mobile, search, social networking, e-commerce — and are focused on how to defend their turf while infiltrating their rivals’ territory.

We, the consumers, are caught in the crossfire. We’re likely to see fewer new products (like Twitter) and more services aimed mainly at locking us into the new Internet titans (I’d count Facebook’s new message service in this category).

Have we lost common sense over social networking sites?

When Bill NyeBill Nye popularly know as Science Guy collapsed, witnesses tweets. Bill Nye, collapsed on stage before reaching the podium at a presentation at the University of Southern California, witnesses instead of coming to his aid pulls out their electronics and tweets it.

Have we became so infatuated with electronics and the social networks until we forget common sense, helping someone in trouble?

Reports show Twitter revealed a virtual play-by-play account of the incident. One student wrote, “Bill Nye tripped on his computer cord while speaking at USC, was out for abt 5 secs, got back up, spoke w/ slurred speech and fainted.”

Fox News outs Beatles as ‘Manchester’s favorite mopheads’

FoxNews.com has got its knickers in a twist about the birthplace of some pop band called the Beatles.

Top Trends of 2010: Content Farms

The Web has always rewarded quantity more than quality, but over 2010 this truism became even more pronounced with the growth of Content Farms. These are companies which create thousands of pieces of content per day. Much of it is in the form of how-to articles and is often referred to as “evergreen” informational content, because it’s relevant for much longer than news.

Will China’s 1999 Moment Bail-Out Some Valley VCs?

Yes, China is taking over the world. Or at least the Internet.

How China swallowed 15% of ‘Net traffic for 18 minutes

In a 300+ page report (PDF) today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what’s been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination.

China denies ‘hijacking’ internet traffic

US report claims Chinese telecoms company had access to 15% of global traffic, including military emails, for 18 minutes

Some numbers from the Sita Distribution Project

Some Stats on Sina Weibo

Sina’s popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo (Weibo means microblogging in Chinese) is becoming one of the most exciting product to Sina, and also to China’s app developers. In first China Weibo Developer Conference held in this Tuesday, over 2000 people attended it.

Science

• Squealing on My Bacteria and Virus Overlords

  I hope I don’t get into trouble squealing on my bacteria and virus overlords. For reasons I will show later, I think that bacteria and viruses control our bodies even more than our brains do.

  Consider first that bacteria make up between 2 and 9 pounds of our body weight. This number doesn’t fluctuate that much.

  Viruses fluctuate more. When you have a cold, obviously there are more viruses than when you don’t. So we can’t say exactly how many pounds viruses add to this equation.

Security

• Thursday’s security updates

Defence/Police/Aggression

• How to Fly Without Airport Security!

  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have recently imposed new methods of inspecting travelers. These new methods include full body scans and intrusive pat-downs that some liken to being molested or groped. If a traveler refuses to have high resolution nude images taken of their body, their second option is to be inappropriately touched. This new groping technique includes children, the elderly, the injured, and even pilots. These rules and the TSA’s methods have made air travel a painful reminder that George Orwell’s 1984 was only off by 26 years or so.

• TSA plans modest changes to ‘virtual strip searches’

  An Internet-fueled backlash against air traveler screening is growing amid signs that the Transportation Security Agency will consider slight changes to its controversial new procedures.

  TSA administrator John Pistole said today that the agency will be “announcing some new policies” in the “near future” that will change the screening process for pilots, who have protested being forced to choose between a “virtual strip search” or an invasive pat-down a few minutes before they’re handed the controls of a 975,000-pound kerosene-fueled missile in the form of a jumbo jet. (See our previous coverage.)

• The TSA: Stupid, Owned, or Complicit?

  I have long been in Bruce Schneier’s camp, thinking that the TSA is a joke: nothing but security theater.

• White House Says Child Soldiers Are Ok, If They Fight Terrorists

  The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.

  [...]

  A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.

• Lawsuit: Airport search indecent

  An Amarillo woman is suing the federal government for intentional infliction of emotional distress after Transportation Security Administration agents allegedly humiliated the woman when her breasts were publicly exposed during an “extended search” two years ago at a Corpus Christi airport.

• Another TSA Outrage

  It’s probably important to mention that we were ALL carrying weapons. Everyone was carrying an M4 Carbine (rifle) and some, like me, were also carrying an M9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren’t loaded. And we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs.

  The TSA personnel at the airport seriously considered making us unload all of the baggage from the SECURE cargo hold to have it reinspected. Keep in mind, this cargo had been unpacked, inspected piece by piece by U.S. Customs officials, resealed and had bomb-sniffing dogs give it a one-hour run through. After two hours of sitting in this holding area, the TSA decided not to reinspect our Cargo–just to inspect us again: Soldiers on the way home from war, who had already been inspected, reinspected and kept in a SECURE holding area for 2 hours. Ok, whatever. So we lined up to go through security AGAIN.

  This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.

  So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.

• ‘Naked’ scanners fooled by creased clothing

  Controversial “naked” body scanners currently being tested at Hamburg’s airport are constantly malfunctioning due to folds in passengers’ clothing, broadcaster NDR reported on Tuesday.

• Jimmy Wales: “If I Had Some Information, The Last Thing I Would Do Is Send It To Wikileaks”

  There is definitely some bad blood between Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikileaks, the controversial organization which posted thousands of pages of classified Iraqi War documents. On the Charlie Rose last night, towards the end of his interview, Wales says, “If I had some information, the last thing I would ever do with it is send it to Wiikileaks.”

  He prefaced that remark by noting that he has “mixed feelings about Wikileaks.” People with information about wrongdoing in open societies should have the opportunity to make that information public. His concern is the way that Wikileaks chose to do that without regard for the safety of people “who are not the wrongdoers.” ” I think they should be slower in releasing things,” he says.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Oil shock warning to government from UK business

  An industry taskforce has called on the government to act to protect the UK economy against a new threat of rising oil prices.

  A consortium of British business, including retailers Kingfisher and transport group, Stagecoach, say the UK must prepare for the next oil shock.

• New Zealand Orcas Captured Surfing in Gigantic Waves

  The newest Giant Swell that arrived to the shores of New Zealand Brought unlikely visitors.

  The Orca Whales came into the waves along the coast and rode them like a veteran surfer.

• Feds’ Transgenic-Salmon Review Ignores Big Picture

  When the Food and Drug Administration announces the fate of the AquAdvantage salmon, the first genetically modified (GM) animal ever considered for commercial consumption, they may have considered only a fraction of their decision’s consequences.

  So far the FDA has focused on whether or not the salmon are safe to eat or might escape and breed with wild fish. They haven’t yet considered how GM salmon could affect, for better or worse, public dietary habits or the fallout of a boom in fish farming.

Finance

• Dublin tells EU and IMF that lowest rate in any major European economy is ‘non-negotiable’

  Ireland takes hardline stance on corporation tax as bailout talks begin

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• MPAA Dismisses COICA Free Speech Concerns

  MPAA chief Bob Pisano wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in today’s TheHill.com, evangelizing the highly suspect legislation “The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act”. Slyck has covered the potential perils of the COICA, as have many other pro-democracy organizations (such as the EFF), as the details of a potential Internet and free speech filter come to the United States.

  The big problem with COICA is that it gives tremendous amounts of power to the US Attorney General to shut websites down with little more than filing a complaint with the local district court that has jurisdiction over the registrar’s address. Sure, there’s some judicial review, but how often will the courts disagree with the Department of Justice when they wave the banner of copyright infringement? We just don’t know, which makes this bill all the more frightening.

• Judiciary Committee Approves Internet Censorship Bill

• MPAA Boss Defends Censorships With Blatantly False Claims

  What the First Amendment does protect is speech. The law does already allow takedowns of infringing content. But COICA goes beyond that. Rather than — as the First Amendment requires — narrowly tailoring any takedown or injunction to the actual infringing content, it orders the entire site taken down prior to any trial. That’s a classic situation of prior restraint, where the specifically infringing content is not specified and narrowly taken down. Instead, it’s using a shotgun to try to remove a bandaid.

• Wyden Threatens To Block Online IP Bill

  Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday threatened to block legislation aimed at curbing piracy and counterfeiting on foreign Web sites, saying the bill is a heavy-handed solution to the problem.

  “It seems to me the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act as written today, is the wrong medicine,” Wyden, the chairman of the Finance International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness Subcommittee, said during a hearing on international trade and the digital economy. “Deploying this statute to combat online copyright and infringement seems almost like a bunker buster cluster bomb when really what you need is a precision-guided missile.”

• Giving Every Person A Voice

  When I started blogging back in 2003, I would tell everyone how awesome it was. A common refrain back then was “not everyone should have a printing press.” I didn’t agree then and I don’t agree now. Everyone should have a printing press and should use it as often as they see fit. Through things like RSS and Twitter’s follow model, we can subscribe to the voices we want to hear regularly. And through things like reblog and retweet, the voices we don’t subscribe to can get into our readers, dashboards, and timelines.

• Long Live the Web

  The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending

• Guest post: Clegg re-affirms his commitment to Civil Liberties

  In a keynote speech at the Political Studies Association/Hansard Society Annual Lecture on Tuesday evening, Nick Clegg spoke of the protection of civil liberties as being one of the core elements of the modern British Constitution.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• UK regulator Ofcom lobbies Brussels against net neutrality

  Lobbyists from the UK regulator Ofcom have been active in the European Parliament, against net neutrality. How can this be consistent with their role as regulator, and their duty to promote the ability of citizens to access and distribute content, applications and services?

  According to sources in the European Parliament, lobbyists from Ofcom have been calling in person on MEPs recently to discuss the issue of net neutrality. In particular, it is understood that Ofcom opposes a principle of net neutrality being built into EU law.

• Internet Neutrality Principle

• The Next Front: Net Neutrality

  There was good news for Digital Britain last week when the High Court agreed to review the Digital Economy Act following a petition by BT and TalkTalk. After the legislation was rushed through Parliament in the wash-up this spring and seemed to be moving inexorably toward enforcement, this was an encouraging development for those of us who believe that the Act’s copyright infringement provisions are both disproportionate and detrimental to technological innovation in the UK. Enforcement of the Act will now be delayed for at least a few months (rumour has it that Ofcom will even delay publication of its Initial Obligations Code, which was expected in the last few weeks, until after the judicial review process has taken place), and depending on the outcome of the review it’s very possible that the whole Act will have to go back to Parliament and, with our and others’ pressure, receive due consideration this time around.

• Peter Gabriel joins voices backing net neutrality in UK

  The UK government’s plans to abandon net neutrality threaten British business startups and if taken up elsewhere could undermine democracy, says Peter Gabriel, the influential musician and technology entrepreneur who has backed a number of successful internet companies.

  “I feel very strongly about it,” said Gabriel, who has invested in a number of companies, including Bath-based The Filter and On Demand Distribution (OD2). “Freedom of access [to information online] is going to be an important battleground. It’s vital to a free and open democracy: [net neutrality] serves everybody.”

Intellectual Monopolies

• James Murdoch: Hoping All Media Businesses Act Like Pay TV

  The more the interview went on, the more I realized that Murdoch appears to view much of the media world through that lens, and seems to saying that, in the end, the media world will end up like a giant pay TV system, with a big subscription. I think this is more wishful thinking, rather than where the internet is actually heading, and treating the internet that way will almost certainly result in failure — such as with his paywall experiments.

• Copyrights

  • Legal Attack on Internet Music Storage Threatens ‘Safe Harbor’ Rules for Online Businesses

    New York – In a legal battle over Internet music storage that could impact innovation and free expression on the Internet, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and other public interest groups asked a federal judge in an amicus brief Tuesday to protect the “safe harbor” rules for online content in EMI v. MP3Tunes.

  • p2pnet talks with Operation Payback

    In a world where there’s no honour or pride, where lies, bribes and deceit are the normal tools of daily business and politics, an assembly of Anonymous netizens is saying We’ve had enough.

    Under the Operation Payback banner, they launched a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the the US Copyright Office, Hollywood’s MPAA, Big Music’s RIAA and BPI and other ‘trade’ groups, and the jackal-like lawyers using copyright to extort ordinary people.

  • Anti-Piracy Lawyers Knew They Targeted Innocent Victims

    Davenport Lyons, the law firm which pioneered the lucrative file-sharing pay-up-or-else scheme in the UK, will head off to Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal proceedings next year. According to details just made available, among other things Davenport Lyons partners were responsible for knowingly targeting the innocent and relied on unreliable evidence in doing so.

  • Canadian Heritage Minister inadvertently damns his own copyright bill

    Michael Geist sez, “Canadian Heritage James Moore appeared on public television yesterday to defend his copyright bill and to oppose a new levy system. In doing so, he made the case for why the digital lock provisions in the bill are so problematic. According to Moore: ‘When I buy a movie, I’ve paid for the movie. To ask me to pay for it a second time through another device – and to assume that I’m doing illegal copying, to assume that I’m being a pirate, to assume that I’m thieving from people because I happen to own an MP3 player or a BluRay player or a laptop, I think treats consumers unfairly.’

    “While Moore was thinking of the prospect of additional payments through a levy, the words apply equally to the digital lock provisions that make it an infringement for consumers to circumvent locks in order to watch the movie they’ve purchased on a second device. In fact, in some instances – for example, DVDs with non-North American region codes – it involves infringement for merely trying to access the content for the first time.”

  • Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore on How Copyright Can Treat Consumers Unfairly

    According to Moore:

    When I buy a movie, I’ve paid for the movie. To ask me to pay for it a second time through another device – and to assume that I’m doing illegal copying, to assume that I’m being a pirate, to assume that I’m thieving from people because I happen to own an MP3 player or a BluRay player or a laptop, I think treats consumers unfairly.

  • ACTA

    • A Peek Inside the EU’s Digital Inner Circle

      Another area I explored with Whelan was ACTA. Although this didn’t come under the Digital Agenda umbrella directly, it obviously has major implications for it. Not surprisingly, he offered the standard EC line that ACTA won’t require any changes in EU laws, and it’s true that some of the more peremptory language in the drafts has been replaced by phrases that give more leeway to the signatories. But he did point out that there are several copyright initiatives underway or imminent whose thinking may well be influenced by ACTA, so we will need to make sure plenty of input is provided when these are announced.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Could the Windows Comparison Game Hurt Linux?

  Competition is good, blogger Robert Pogson told Linux Girl.

  “If we cannot out-perform that sad imitation of an OS that M$ produces, GNU/Linux should be shut down,” Pogson asserted. “In my experience, GNU/Linux has out-performed M$ since 2000 because GNU/Linux did not crash and was much easier to manage and cost less.”

  Of course, “we should check our rear-view mirrors occasionally to see what the competition is doing,” he added. “I don’t see MacOS as much competition since it does not run on the same hardware by decree, so there is no proper way to compare.”

• French Gendarmerie switch 85,000 PC’s to Ubuntu and save €€€

  The police force has been able to tailor Ubuntu Desktop to meet its exact requirements. Gendarmerie Commandant Jean-Pascal Chateau says: “We have a lot of personnel who work in the field. The fact that Ubuntu Desktop is so easy to use is a huge benefit. Agents can personalize their desktops to fit their needs. That means that they can access the same desktop environment no matter which workstation they log in from.” He adds: “Now staff are more motivated and we’ve reduced costs and introduced solutions that better match our needs.”

Server

• The Linux Box Goes Live With Community Edition of its Innovative Email Archiving, Retrieval and Reporting Software System

  The Linux Box Corporation’s (www.linuxbox.com) first commercial software product, an advanced email archiving, retrieval and reporting system, has gone live in a community edition and is available for free download at www.enkive.org.

• Linux servers for Windows folk: go on, give it a bash

  But Linux makes a great server OS, and all the guff about GNOME versus KDE and so on becomes completely irrelevant. The vast majority of Linux boxes have no graphical interface at all – they’re headless servers, silently slaving away in corners of computer rooms or in racks in datacentres. In fact, there’s a very good chance that the router connecting you to the Internet right now is a Linux box, and pretty much anyone can configure one of those these days. You point a web browser at its IP address, fill in a few boxes, and you’re good to go.

• London Stock Exchange hires 81 C++ developers for delayed Linux system

  The London Stock Exchange has hired 81 open source software staff for the development of the delayed Linux-based system being implemented on its cash markets.

Ballnux

• Samsung Galaxy Tab source code released

  Samsung has released the open source portions of the Galaxy Tab operating system and made them available for download. Of course, much of their software isn’t open source, so don’t expect to see everything in the code. It is very refreshing to see manufacturers quick to comply with the license agreements, and my hat’s off to Samsung for this.

• Video Face-Off: Android Galaxy Tab vs. the iPad

• Everything you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy Tab

  Next to the Apple iPad, it may be the most anticipated tech product of 2010. You could even claim that a big part of its anticipation is actually due to the iPad. Of course, I’m talking about the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the first major Android slate to give the iPad a run for its money in the touchscreen tablet market.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab review

  Although the Tab’s diagonal screen size is only 2.7 inches smaller than that of the iPad’s, the device itself is nearly half the size and weight – in short, it’s a much tidier little package. Though not as slim as perhaps we’d have liked, the ability to operate the Tab single-handed and drop it in our back pocket is a massive advantage in terms of overall usability.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Linux 2.6.37-rc2 Kernel Released; So Far Looks Painless

    Now the Linux 2.6.37-rc2 kernel is available as regressions are addressed in time for the final Linux 2.6.37 kernel release several weeks down the road.

Applications

• Clam AntiVirus management tools

  We’re seeing Linux platforms implementing anti-virus software mainly to scan email messages going in and out for viruses. Claim AntiVirus is one of them that is free and is widely used.

• Weirdest Undreamt Use Case

• I Hate Thunderbird 3.x

• Back In Time, a Free and Simple Backup Software for Linux

  Back In Time, a Free and Simple Backup Software for Linux: I’ve already tried and tested a good number of backup software for Linux, but I know there are still plenty of excellent backup tools that I missed so I always take time to search for more. Hence, I bumped into Back In Time, a simple backup utility for Linux that is inspired by Flyback and Timevault. One of the main goals of the project is to get and combine the best features of Flyback and Timevault and put them all on Back In Time.

• Proprietary

  • How To Easily Install Microsoft Office 2007 On Linux

    “Play On Linux” may sound like a toy, but if you want Microsoft Office working on your Linux machine it’s a seriously useful program to have around. User generated scripts make light work of the usually complicated process of installing Office in Linux: there’s no manually installing DLLs, no figuring out which version of Wine will work and no manually installing Internet Explorer to get everything working.

  • Meet your new address field, mouse gestures, and updated mail panel and extensions

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Apache, Authentication and MySQL

  • How to change network card speed and duplex settings in ubuntu

  • Change Bootsplash in Fedora 14

  • BTTB: looping for shell script under embedded linux

  • How to Choose a Partition Scheme for Your Linux PC

  • Easy Samba Sharing Setup with KDE

  • The mystery behind LUN(Logical Unit Number)

  • Which Linux or UNIX Version Am I Running?

  • Using Variables With awk

  • Resize, Rename and Convert Images on Linux – EasyImageSizer

  • Install Galaxy Live Wallpaper Compiz Plugin On Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat”

  • Install Galaxy Live Wallpaper Compiz Plugin On Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat”

  • How to Convert DEB to RPM (RPM to DEB) Package Using Alien Command

• Wine

  • Test-driving Bordeaux 2.0.8

    We, as computer users, run applications — all sorts of them. We browse the web with an program, send e-mail via another, write up reports, crunch numbers, listen to music, transfer files and store contacts using a long list of different applications. There are thousands upon thousands of programs floating around the digital world and there’s one problem: they don’t all run on your operating system. Almost all of us, at one time or another, will come to a point where we have an operating system and matching programs that do almost everything we want and, on the other hand, a program which doesn’t run natively on our OS of choice.

  • CodeWeavers Crossover Come To The Light Sale

    Codeweavers offers downloads of its Crossover Games for $39.95 and Crossover Professional for $69.95 If you apply coupon code “ComeToTheLight” this will drop CrossOver Games to $29.96 And Crossover Professional to $52.46 That’s 25% off and the lowest total price we have seen since a 1-day sale in October 2009. CrossOver enables you to install Windows applications and games on Intel-based Macs and Linux.

• Games

  • Catan Online World

    Catan Online World is a Java-based game where you can play different versions of “The Settlers of Catan” board game as well as other games by Klaus Teuber against other players via the Internet.

  • Desctruction Derby – 1995 Wreckin Car Games

    Destruction Derby is a 1995 video game developed by Reflections and published by Psygnosis, the former of which would later develop the successful Driver series. It was released for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS (PC).

  • Smokin’ Guns – FPS – Spaghetti Western genre

    Smokin’ Guns (SG) is a first-person shooter video game. Smokin’ Guns is intended to be a semi-realistic simulation of the “Old West’s” atmosphere and was developed on id Software’s Quake III Arena Engine. Gameplay as well as locations are inspired by Western movies, particularly from the Italowestern respectively Spaghetti Western genre.

  • Kristanix Games Ported To GNU/Linux !

    Kristanix Games announces the release of Linux versions of its most popular games.

  • Pacmanic – Pacman Clone in 3D

    The object of the game is to eat all of the dots in the maze while avoiding the ghosts. At the maze you can find large shiny dots. These are called Power Dots. When the hero eats one of these, he becomes more powerful for short time. During this time the ghosts turn blue and you can eat them.

    Every level a bonus will appear near the ghost house. You have ten seconds to eat this bonus. Sometimes you can find the red teleporters. When you enter through one, you will come out on the opposite side.

  • LGP Has Been Down For A Month And A Half

    This summer on Phoronix there was an article entitled Is LGP Going The Way Of Loki Software? The situation of Linux Game Publishing was looked at where this company over nearly a decade has ported around two dozen games to Linux, but as of late there’s been little activity. In fact, for the past month and a half they haven’t even been online due to a complete failure of their only server.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KMyMoney 4.5.1 stable version is out

    The KMyMoney Team is pleased to announce the release of KMyMoney version 4.5.1.

    This version contains several fixes for bugs found in 4.5.0 since it was released almost three months ago as the stable release for the KDE Platform 4.

  • Polishing

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Shell – Then And Now (Or How Unity Has Influenced It)

    I the past I have commented on how GNOME Shell’s redesign is heading towards what Canonical’s Unity looks like currently. Well, today a reader, Frederico Araújo, left a very interesting side-by-side comparison of GNOME Shell during its initial stage and now. He also added comparison with Unity. It is a very interesting comparison and we thought we’d share it. Do leave your thoughts in the comments.

  • 7 Brilliant GNOME GTK Themes

    GNOME Shell is the future of GNOME desktop and its already evolving quite beautifully. You might want to check out our collection of breathtaking GNOME Shell themes too.

  • GNOME 2.32.1 released

    The first update to GNOME 2.32 (and my own first release) is now available. It provides bug fixes, translation updates and the usual care and kindness that our brave GNOME developers and contributors deserves to details.

  • GNOME 2.32.1 released

    The GNOME Release Team have issued version 2.32.1 of the GNOME desktop for GNU / Linux and Unix, the first maintenance update to the GNOME 2.32 series. According to GNOME developer Luca Ferretti, the latest stable release includes a variety of bug fixes, translation improvements and minor updates to the included GNOME packages, such as the Empathy instant messaging app and the Evolution mail client.

  • OpenRespect: It’s About Time

    I will admit that, despite Bacon’s arguments to the contrary, OpenRespect is coming across as a defensive move on behalf of Bacon’s employer, Canonical. Canonical has been the target for a lot of frustration from the broader community lately, some of it perhaps deserved, and some perhaps not, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the Ubuntu Community Manager might want to deflect.

  • Make the GNOME panel font bold, italic, bigger, smaller etc

  • 10 Incredible Icon Sets for Ubuntu/GNOME

    Elementary project is one of the most talked about and actively developed open source project meant to provide much needed finesse to Linux desktop. Download Elementary Icon Theme. Also, check out beautiful Elementary theme for Ubuntu as well.

  • Beautify Ubuntu Desktop Window Border with Emerald Themes

    If you want to decorate your window border, you can try following installation and setup.

Distributions

• Pardus

  I think I will stick with Pardus on this laptop, for a while, and see how it goes. If I ever get around to my long term plan of upgrading my parents’ computer from Windows XP then Pardus could be a strong candidate for that too. It’s impressive.

• Announcing Bodhi Linux

  You may have noticed the blog has been rather quiet the last couple of weeks, this is because I have been working on a project. Last month I posted details about an E17 LiveDVD I was working on that was modeled after PinguyOS. It weighed in at a 1.4 gig download that was jam packed with every application you might ever use. It was also slightly crude in some aspects (such as the Enlightenment desktop it contained was compiled and installed from source).

  [...]

  The Bodhi is built from an Ubuntu 10.04 minimal disc, but you will notice it does contain some Ubuntu 10.10 features. Backported via the Bodhi Repository, are the 2.6.35 kernel and the newer Ubiquity installer. Also enabled by default are the Ubuntu partner repository, Medibuntu, and GetDeb.

• Reviews

  • A Linux server OS that’s had 11 years to improve

    Review: SME Server is pretty much the original ready-rolled server distribution. Although it has changed hands – and names – a few times, it’s been around since 1999, when it was known as e-Smith, a name you’ll still see in a few places.

• Red Hat Family

  • RHN Satellite 5.4, the second analysis

    My first analysis and the first experiances of RHN Satellite 5.4 have been very good, I was quite excited.

    I also was very happy to be able to sync the rhel-x86_64-server-6 channel on the newly upgraded master satellite. First tests on test systems registered to the master (=staging) Satellite have all been successful.

  • Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Is Ready for Heavy-Duty Computing

  • Red Hat Educates Professors About Open Source

    Provider of open source solutions, Red Hat, expanded its outreach to introduce open source into the computer science curriculum at leading colleges and universities. The company is a member of Teaching OpenSource ( News – Alert) community and acts as its catalyst. It sponsors Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE) workshops.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Trickle-Up Effect

    The announcement of a royal wedding is a cause for excitement among loyal subjects, but it’s also an opportunity for assorted tea-towel vendors, commemorative plate makers and many other people to make a great deal of money off the back of it.

    And so it is with enterprise server operating systems. Last week’s release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 generated much excitement from its loyal customers. Many of Red Hat’s partners are hoping the release will provide them with an opportunity to make a great deal of money off the back of it, too. Although the RHEL 6.0 server OS includes numerous significant new features — a new hybrid 2.6.32 kernel; support for more cores and memory; better reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) capabilities; the ext4 file system by default; and so more — it was hard to discern that from the clamor of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) hardware partners preparing to make money by selling more of their lovely server boxes and associated services.

  • Red Hat sizes up NZ for 2011 growth

    Channel growth is encouraging open source vendor Red Hat to consider establishing a local office next year. Sydney-based Max McLaren, Red Hat’s ANZ general manager, says growth in its business here would justify the investment but it’s too early to treat it as definite. “We’ve always had aspirations to open an office in New Zealand. It’s just a question of when.”

    In September Red Hat posted global revenue and operating income increases of more than 20 percent over the previous year, and McLaren says local growth echoes that of the company overall.

  • FLOSS Weekly 142: CentOS

    Hosts: Randal Schwartz and Dan Lynch

    CentOS is an enterprise-class Linux distro derived from sources freely provided to the public.

    Guest: Karanbir Singh for CentOS

  • Fedora

    • Quality journalism

      At the end of the last week the FOSS news exploded with titles about Fedora and Wayland, in many cases going as aggressive as “Fedora to ditch X.org for Wayland” and “May bring Wayland Fedora 15″, all of them based on an insightful post made by ajax, the X.org maintainer in Fedora, but most of the time letting out relevant details as “eventually”, “not usable default”, “something you can play with” or “don’t have a timeframe”.

      The result was a flood of posts, comments, dents, twitts and so, many of them based only on partial titles and raving about how awesome Wayland is going to be, now that Red Hat will put resources behind it (that’s really jumping to a conclusion!). Net effect: the community moved focus from singling out Canonical for they anti-community perceived Wayland announcement from a couple of weeks ago. That’s good relations with the press! And that’s spinning!

    • Quick update on my upgrade to Fedora 14

      This is why, folks, everyone always recommends just going for a fresh install. Upgrades always require a bit more work.

    • Spotlight on Linux: Fedora 14

      So, if you’re in the market for a new or additional Linux distribution, Fedora can most assuredly fill the bill. Many think of Fedora as a distribution for more advanced users, but it can fit into just about any routine.

• Debian Family

  • Debian GNU/Linux 5 “lenny” [Review]

    Debian GNU/Linux 5 is highly recommended to people who want a robust system which simply works. If you are running a server, or otherwise need a platform which doesn’t keep changing, Debian 5 is a brilliant choice. If however you want a more up-to-date system, it is preferable to use one of the many Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu, or use Debian testing.

  • Debian Trying to Recruit More Women

    The Debian Women project is beginning training sessions to encourage more women to participate in the nuts and bolts of Debian development. Alexander Reichle-Schmehl (Debian spokesman, event organizer, and developer) said in a recent press release that “the main goal of this initiative is to encourage more people, and specifically women, to contribute to Debian while introducing them to different aspects of the Debian Project.”

  • Benchmarks Of Debian Etch, Lenny & Squeeze

    With Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” set to be released in the coming months, we have decided to run a set of benchmarks looking at the performance of Debian 6.0 across different sub-systems relative to the performance of Debian 5.0 “Lenny” and Debian 4.0 “Etch” to see how this new release may stack up.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Respect Freedom, Not Pragmatism

      Having just discovered this “openrespect” thing, I have to say I find the whole idea rather sinister. It seems to me that Jono Bacon is endorsing a sort of moderation, or more bluntly, censorship of criticism, in order to silence those who oppose pragmatic concessions that undermine our ideals.

      [...]
      Here’s one thing he can start doing right away: spend a little less time respecting corporate thugs like Microsoft, and a little more time respecting our Freedom.

    • Ubuntu’s Feature Friction

    • Ubuntu: Innovative or reckless?

      Ubuntu chief Mark Shuttleworth is making some bold and potentially risky decisions about the future of Ubuntu Linux.

      It’s been almost a year since Mark Shuttleworth relinquished the reins at Canonical, stepping down as CEO to take a more hands-on approach in the company that is the backer of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Judging by the various sharp turns Ubuntu has taken in the past year his steerage is starting to have an effect.

    • The monospace is coming

      In contrast to a proportionally spaced font a the characters in a monospace occupy all exactly the same width. In the past monospace type was used on typewriters, and more recently in some specialised printing environments such as Credit Card embossing, or ticketing. Today, monospace fonts are primarily used within a programming environment working on terminal windows. The monospace font answers the need for clear code structuring and predictable line lengths. Using monospace fonts allows the programmer to immediately spot a mis-typed character or double space, any of which would prevent the code from compiling as expected.

    • Living with Linux: installing and using Ubuntu Netbook Edition

      There’s no way I’d revert to XP now, because Ubuntu does everything I need my netbook to do in roughly half the time.

    • No Maverick PPA For Unity

      There was consensus in the porting team around this. Of course, if anyone in the community wants to take the time to make a Maverick PPA, run with it, but it is felt that the resources are better spent focusing on Natty right now. I agree with this too.

    • Slew of New Business Tools Coming to Ubuntu

      If you use Ubuntu in your company, you’re already familiar with its many advantages for businesses. But guess what? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, as they say.

      Particularly in the wake of the release last month of Canonical’s user-friendly Ubuntu 10.10, or Maverick Meerkat, partners have been virtually lining up outside the company’s door to help deliver business tools with high-level commercial support.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • The Perfect Desktop – Linux Mint 10 (Julia)

        This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint 10 (Julia) desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Linux Mint 10 is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 10.10 that has lots of packages in its repositories (like multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, Google Earth, etc.) that are relatively hard to install on other distributions; it therefore provides a user-friendly desktop experience even for Linux newbies.

Devices/Embedded

• Multi-touch in Ubuntu using Kinect [video, ppa]

  I’m not quite sure how this incredibly slick proof-of concept (i.e. hacky first version) video showing off multi-touch in Ubuntu using Microsoft’s recently launched Kinect hardware passed us by, so props to yo2boy for sending it in.

• Linux distros advance on the networking front

  Wind River announced that Arkoon Network Security will use Wind River Linux to develop its FAST 360 family of network security devices. Meanwhile, Wind River rival MontaVista Software announced it has joined the OpenSAF Foundation, which promotes the high availability middleware integrated into recent releases of MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • AniWeather, Display Weather Conditions In Firefox

    What’s the weather like today? If you want to answer that question you will have to either find it out by yourself, for instance by stepping outside, by asking other people or with the help of weather reports. AniWeather displays weather conditions in the Firefox web browser, unobtrusively. I did not see the weather conditions directly in the browser after installation. That’s usually caused if the add-on places them in a toolbar that is hidden by default. In this case the icons were displayed in the Navigation Toolbar which is hidden in my Firefox installation.

  • Mozilla millions still 86% Google cash

    Google still provides 86 per cent of Mozilla’s revenue, according to the open source outfit’s latest financial statement.

    On Thursday, Mozilla released its audited financial statement for 2009, and as in previous years, an unnamed search company is listed under “concentrations of risk.” In 2008, Google accounted for 91 per cent of Mozilla’s revenues, so the risk has dropped. But 86 is still a very large number.

  • The State of Mozilla

    Mozilla has filed its audited financial statements for 2009. This is the perfect time to look at the state of the Mozilla mission, our successes, our opportunities and our challenges.

Oracle

• New: OOo-DEV 3.x Developer Snapshot (build DEV300m93) available

  Developer Snapshot OOo-Dev DEV300m93 is available for download.

  DEV300 is the development codeline for upcoming OOo 3.x releases.

• New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 5 (build OOO330m15) available

CMS

• LCDTV.net – New Online Magazine Using Drupal 6

  LCDTV.net is an online magazine dedicated to LCD TV information and LCD TV Reviews. It employs several journalists to stay up to date with the latest technology news related to LCD televisions, has a large database of the latest TV specifications, and offers enthusiasts the opportunity to write in-depth TV reviews receiving full byline credit getting paid for their efforts.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Robbo 0.66

  GNU Robbo is a free open source reimplementation of Janusz Pelc’s Robbo for the Atari XE/XL which was distributed by LK Avalon in 1989.

• Cateia Games Are Coming To GNU/Linux !

  But since then Cateia Games developed a new engine which games can be easily ported to GNU/Linux.

Programming

• Hard Lessons Learned: Malicious Ads on SourceForge

11 OSes that Tried (and failed) to Take Down Windows

Dirty PCs: How much filth can you take?

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Now Hotpot? Google Probes Have Got to Stop

  Sometimes you can deconstruct what Google is trying to do, and it’s always off-base. The company should be concentrating on getting the results you actually want not some artificial results it thinks you want.

• The rise of Google – should we be worried?

• FBI brass ask Google, Facebook to expand wiretaps

  FBI Director Robert Mueller III and General Counsel Valerie Caproni were scheduled to meet with “managers of several major companies” including Facebook and Google, according to The New York Times. It wasn’t clear how the companies responded.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • English High Court decides that “making available” over the internet occurs only in jurisdiction where servers are based

    In a Judgment handed down on 17 November 2010, Mr Justice Floyd in Football Dataco Limited, The Scottish Premier League Limited, The Scottish Football League Limited and PA Sport UK Limited v Sportradar GmbH and Sportradar AG held that the act of making available to the public by online transmission is committed and committed only where the transmission takes place.

  • Canada

    • How the new copyright bill will affect Canadian culture

      However, those who developed the new bill know they are legislating technologies that may not even exist in a few years’ time. That’s why the new copyright law, should it pass, would go through a mandatory review after five years.

    • Responding to ACTRA: Group Calls C-32 a “Disaster” and Proposes Six Part Fix

      ACTRA completed a two-day lobbying blitz in Ottawa yesterday, bringing some Canadian television stars to convince MPs that Bill C-32 is a disaster that is bad for consumers and creators. While ACTRA isn’t proposing anything to solve the consumer problems, it is promoting six changes to Bill C-32. I review each proposal below, but it is first worth watching an interview on CTV with ACTRA’s Ferne Downey and Corner Gas’ Eric Peterson. Downey makes the startling comment that she is not a proponent of free market theory that users will pay for the content they like. Meanwhile, Peterson, who starred on a show that aired on free, over-the-air television without any levy but supported through commercials, now claims that “free” will eliminate the creation of new Canadian content.

    • How should Canada protect its culture (or should it)?