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Links 22/12/2010: Kno is Out, Tiny Core Linux 3.4 is Released



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • The Kno Starts Shipping Tomorrow
    The monster 14.1″ screens set it apart from every other tablet on the market, and the customized Ubuntu OS makes it potentially more versatile as well.


  • Server

    • ARM makes its attack on the server market official
      ARM Holdings has officially acknowledged its plans to take on Intel in the server market. However, CEO Warren East is quoted as adding that ARM licensees won't begin to erode Intel's market share until 2014.






  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack

      • Oh Hey, X.Org 7.6 Is Finally Released For Christmas!
        The past few days I've been wondering whether or not X.Org 7.6 would make it out in 2010 or not. After all, this X.Org katamari update was supposed to be here in August after X.Org 7.5 was released in October of 2009 and the 7.6 release was delayed to November. The release of X.Org 7.6 didn't come in November, but there was one release candidate but not much information since. This afternoon, however, Alan Coopersmith has announced the final release.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Introducing K16 and the Future of KDE
        Where will KDE be in five years? To answer this question, we plan to bring together visionaries, strategists, planners, out-of-the-box-thinkers, realists, dreamers, doers, creators, leaders, coders from the KDE community and everybody else who is interested in discussing the future of KDE and picturing what it will be.




    • GNOME Desktop

      • Ailurus - the Gnome pimp
        Tweaking your desktop into a semblance of beauty and style has always been the ultimate goal of any self-proclaimed geek, be they Windows users or Linuxoids. However, in general, Windows people had it easier; they just downloaded this or that tweaking program and had their desktop transition from a beast into a beauty within seconds. Linux users always had it much harder, especially Gnome people. KDE shows pretty much any setting there is, but Gnome hides them. Either you're handy with gconf on the command line or you use gconf-editor, which feels somewhat like a registry editor, but it was never really trivial. Well, now you have Ailurus.

        [...]

        Ailurus is definitely a welcome addition in the arsenal of average users who do not fancy taming their system via the command line. It offers convenience and ease of use, with a relatively high degree of safety. However, as always, you need to be careful when changing the behavior of programs and system utilities, lest they bite your hiny, and hard.

        If you're looking for improving your Gnome desktop in a simple, quick way, without too much fuss, if you're looking for extra comfort and new programs, then Ailurus seems like the program you want. That would be all, ladies and gentlefolks!






  • Distributions



    • New Releases



      • Tiny Core Linux 3.4 arrives
        Tiny Core lead developer Robert Shingledecker has released version 3.4 of Tiny Core Linux. Based on the 2.6.33.3 Linux kernel, Tiny Core Linux 3.4 features a variety of updates, including additional options in the mount tool (mnttool).




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family



      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu Myopia Continues Among Users
          Notice a pattern yet? For some reason that seems to escape most people, Ubuntu "owns" the Linux headlines with very few exceptions. Obviously Chrome OS and Android are in the top news headlines as well, however generally it's Ubuntu that shows up as most popular in open source news these days.


        • Review: ZaReason Strata Pro 15 Laptop
          So, will I buy one (well, the 13″ version) for myself? My daily computing life is spent between my super powerful desktop and my little netbook. My desktop is used for work, virtualized installs, major image manipulation with inkscape and photo editing with the gimp. My netbook works well as a “sit on the couch and IRC + internet + email + minimal hacking” machine, which is much of what I do in my off-work hours. That said, I do have a hole in my computing world which influenced borrowing this laptop in the first place – nothing to really show off Ubuntu on for customers or at Ubuntu events, nothing to burn CDs on at events, and I have to admit that it would be nice to have a second machine with virtualized hardware so my development machines were more portable. We’ll see where my needs and budget lead me.


        • Unity Bitesize Progress Report for 20 December








  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



    • Sub-notebooks

      • Jolicloud: Cloud enabled and not just for netbooks
        There’s a Linux distribution for every occasion and the main purpose of Jolicloud is to present a web enabled GUI for netbooks and similar devices. I’m going to take a look at a preview release of the forthcoming 1.1 version. Under the hood, it’s based on the Ubuntu long term service release (10.04), and the front end is handled by a combination of the Chromium web browser and a full screen user interface that eschews overlapping windows.

        Netbooks are the obvious target of this distribution, and by default, it’s setup as a browser for website and cloud based applications. However, it’s easy to expand, and I think this could be a distribution with a lot of uses. It’s possible to add applications, and it can also be installed on any hardware that standard Ubuntu can including desktop PCs. Even better, as well as focussing on convenience, it’s easy to use, meaning that it might be a good platform for people who aren’t very good at using computers.


      • Cloud Livin’ – A JoliCloud Chrome Experiment
        A review off the cuff? It feels more distraction free than normal. Since the browser is the heart of the OS, I’m only focused on my tabs and nothing else. No dock, no start button, no nagging updates, no clutter on the screen. It’s actually refreshing.








Free Software/Open Source



  • AirPlay running on XBMC Linux box
    AirPlay. It's not just for Apple products anymore. The video you see on the next page shows an XBMC install on a Ubuntu Linux box running an AirPlay client service. As with the AirPlayer solution I wrote for the Mac, the XBMC application advertises on Bonjour and can be played to directly from the built-in iOS video menus.


  • Events

    • Linux shows name dates, ask for papers
      O'Reilly has opened up a call for participation for its Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2011, to be held on July 25-29 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile, the Linux Foundation's Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) announced that its Embedded Linux Conference (ELC) will be held April 11-13 in San Francisco.




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Firefox Backs Up the “Do Not Track” Feature
        Day by day, concern about internet related privacy is growing. We’re all aware of it, which is why; a lot of companies are moving around to let people bear a better experience in the online world. In this context, Mozilla has made promises to let people cloak their internet activities on the basis of their new feature: Do Not Track.


      • Mozilla CEO: ‘Do Not Track’ Option Will Be In Firefox 4
        When Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz called for better online privacy protection earlier this month, he acknowledged that browser companies have an important role to play, especially in order to implement a “Do Not Track” browser setting. “We’ll give them some time,” said Leibowitz. “But we’d like to see them work a lot faster.”






  • SaaS

    • Stallman's Cloudburst: Prudence or Paranoia?
      On the other hand: "It is not easy to tell if RMS is putting on a show or if he really believes his own words," suggested amicus_curious. "The Google cloud and Chrome OS have little to fear from Stallman's disdain."

      Then again: "He's absolutely right," wrote blossiekins among more than 100 comments on The Guardian. "'Cloud' computing ... encourages people to be lazy and uninformed about their data and what happens to it.

      "Google isn't a big cuddly bunny that wants to look after all your data for you cos it's nice; it wants to look after your data for you because it gives them more metrics," blossiekins added. "And as the piece spells out, the risks of that are quite chilling."




  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 8.2-BETA1 Released
      The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has released FreeBSD 8.2 Beta 1 and 7.4 Beta 1of its popular free UNIX derivative. The first betas will be followed by two release candidates. The final versions of FreeBSD 7.4 and FreeBSD 8.2 are scheduled for the 24th of January.




  • Project Releases



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Last minute open giving ideas
      Whether or not you're among the throngs hurriedly trying to get everything wrapped before the end of the week, it's a good time to consider some end-of-the-year giving. So why not send some money towards open projects?




  • Programming

    • The Importance of Being Tested
      When I began work on Upstart, one of the earliest decisions I made was to make sure the code was very-well covered by a comprehensive test suite. I’d been working with Robert Collins a lot in the previous couple of years and he is very much an advocate of practices such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile Development; especially the discipline of Test Driven Development.






Leftovers

  • 5 Biggest Tech Winners for 2010
    By name, they are ARM Holdings (130.58% growth), Salesforce (127.47%), VMware (113.98%), Informatica (86.9%) and Red Hat (71.95%).


  • Stephen Harper treats Canadians like imbeciles
    What Canadians are now demanding is a leader that inspires hope and optimism. Who challenges us to bridge divides. Who believes that leadership at home and abroad can appeal to our aspirations, not stokes our fears. Who brings us together to accomplish great things. Who will strive to achieve the true promise and potential we know in our hearts is Canada’s destiny.


  • Do-Not-Call List Undermined By Loopholes in the Law


  • CRTC announces that Bell Canada has paid a $1.3 million penalty for violating the National Do Not Call List Rules


  • Science

    • Team prototypes instant genome test
      Scientists from Imperial College London have prototyped a tool that they say could ultimately sequence a person’s genome in minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current techniques.




  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression



    • Student fees protests: who started the violence?
      Protesters and student groups, on the other hand, insisted the policing had been heavy-handed and disproportionate, arguing that the kettling for hours of thousands of people within a freezing Parliament Square was certain to cause frustration that would boil into anger.


    • New Orleans police officers convicted over Katrina killing
      A former New Orleans police officer has been convicted of fatally shooting a man in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and another officer was convicted of burning the man's body in a case that exposed one of the ugliest chapters in the police department's troubled history.


    • Israel faces tougher line from EU after former heads call for Palestinian state
      Twenty-six European grandees have urged the EU to adopt a tougher stance towards Israel including taking "concrete measures" and exacting "consequences" over continued settlement building on occupied land, which they say is illegal under international law.


    • 50 municipal rabbis: Don't rent flats to Arabs
      The statement quotes a variety of halachic passages referring to the issue and notes that in some cases persons renting apartments to non-Jews could be ostracized.


    • Rummy's Ruminations
      The Unknown As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know.

      —Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing




  • Cablegate

    • Watch How WikiLeaks' Mirrors Spread Around the World [Google Earth]
      When WikiLeaks began its release of more than 250,00 classified diplomatic cables late last month, its domain name - wikileaks.org - was the first thing to go. In the week that followed, however, a slew of mirror sites popped up, and Harvard-based developer Laurence Muller gave us a look at the global effort to keep WikiLeaks standing. Muller took the list of WikiLeaks mirrors, determined their locations, and plotted the points on Google Earth.


    • Apple attacks WikiLeaks, yanks iPhone app from app store
      Only a few days after its release, the unofficial WikiLeaks iPhone application has been removed from Apple's App Store.

      For $1.99, the app offered access to documents on the WikiLeaks website and the @wikileaks twitter feed.

      When clicking on the app's link, the app store returns with the message, "Your request could not be completed. The item you requested is not available in the US store."

      Details for the WikiLeaks app can still be seen in Google's cache.

      Tech Crunch noted that while the secrets website and founder Julian Assange are controversial, the app didn't seem to violate Apple's terms of service (TOS).

      Developer Igor Barinov confirmed that the app had been removed from the store.


    • WikiLeaks cables: China 'fed up' with Burma's footdragging on reforms


    • WikiLeaks cables: You ask, we search
      French presidential hopeful, Ségolène Royal, told US diplomats French arrogance was partly to blame for Paris's lost bid to host the 2012 Olympic games. The games were awarded to London after a closely contested vote that saw both Tony Blair then French president Jacques Chirac fly to Singapore in July 2005 to make their case to delegates.

      A confidential cable dated 17 February 2006 from the US ambassador to Paris concerning a recent meeting with Royal said she had suggested, he wrote, a need "to find France's place in the world" with the French government showing less arrogance in how it speaks to the world. The latter factor, she suggested, had played a role in the defeat of France's 2012 Olympics candidacy, he wrote.


    • The Implications of Charging Assange for Conspiracy to Leak [Updated]
      I’m not so sure this path avoids awkward questions. Charging Assange as a conspirator to Manning’s leak might distinguish the Times in the wikileaks case. But it would not distinguish the Times and scores of other media outlets in the many cases in which reporters successfully solicit and arrange to receive classified information and documents directly from government officials. Prosecution of Assange on this theory would therefore raise awkward questions about why DOJ does not bring charges against the American media for soliciting classified information on a regular basis. It would be a fateful step for traditional press freedoms in the United States. Indeed, unless I am missing something, it seems that a successful prosecution of Assange for conspiracy to leak would have broader and more corrosive implications for press freedoms than a successful prosecution under the ambiguity-riddled Espionage Act. In any event, I do not see how going the “conspiracy to leak” route is a press-protecting move.


    • House Judiciary chairman: WikiLeaks did not commit a crime
      There was an interesting development in the WikiLeaks saga on Thursday. You probably didn’t hear about it over the weekend because the fawning corporate media was too busy comparing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

      The chairman of the House judiciary committee, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) stuck up for WikiLeaks on Thursday according to The Raw Story. Conyers made the argument that the controversial and unpopular actions of the whistleblower website are protected under free speech.


    • Reporter, Greg Palast describes BP abuses in Azerbaijan
      What I didn’t know was that WikiLeaks was about to release a State Department memo which referred to a small piece of this BP game. Rather than go to Azerbaijan to check the facts, the Wiki newspapers called BP in London for comment.


    • Czech version of Wikileaks will turn to The Pirate Bay for help
      It appears that the Czech Pirate Party's attempt to set up its own Wikileaks site isn't going as smoothly as the group hoped. The CPP (Ceska piratska strana) announced the inauguration of its "PirateLeaks" information service earlier this month, to be officially launched on Tuesday. But now the organization says that there will be some delays due to security issues.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance



  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • NAB still using misinformation to defeat low-power radio expansion
      The National Association of Broadcasters has never been a friend to low-power community radio. Back in 2000, when the FCC first created the service, the NAB did everything it could to try and keep it from becoming a reality. While the broadcast lobby failed to stop it outright, the NAB did succeed in getting Congress to significantly curtail LPFM with a last-minute attachment to an omnibus budget bill passed in December of that year. One of the weapons the NAB used was a bogus CD that purported to demonstrate harmful interference caused by low-power stations, that was later disproved by an independent report ordered by Congress.




  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights



    • North Bergen Internet shock jock Hal Turner sentenced to 33 months in prison
      At his trials the government confirmed that Turner did work for and with federal agencies, but that he went too far with his hate-filled remarks.


    • Anti-porn plan threatens sites like WikiLeaks
      Supporters of the open internet have reacted angrily to Government plans to block pornography on the web, claiming it is the first step towards online censorship. Taken to its extreme, they warn that it could lead to sites like WikiLeaks being blocked for political reasons.


    • Hungarian parliament passes controversial law to oversee media
      Lawmakers in Hungary have given a controversial new body powers to oversee public news production and levy high fines on private media that break rules on political reporting.

      The Hungarian parliament passed the law establishing the National Media and Communications Authority (NMHH) on Monday evening, according to the Hungarian national news agency MTI.


    • Viviane Reding takes on US over data privacy rights in anti-terror campaign
      The EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, has confronted Washington over data protection rights in the fight against terror, accusing the US of being interested only in accessing European citizens' bank records and flight schedules but not in protecting their rights while doing so.


    • Venezuela tightens Internet regulation
      Venezuela's parliament approved tighter regulation of the Internet on Monday in the latest of a package of laws to entrench President Hugo Chavez's socialist "revolution" before a new Assembly is sworn-in next month.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Vint Cerf, US Congresswoman Oppose Net Regulation


    • Net Neutrality as Diplomacy
      Citizens and their digital packets deserve much the same treatment as they traverse the global Internet. Just as states expect to conduct their official business on foreign soil without interference, so citizens should be able to lead digitally mediated—and increasingly distributed—lives without fear that their links to their online selves can be arbitrarily abridged or surveilled by their Internet Service Providers or any other party. Just as the sanctity of the embassy and la valise diplomatique is vital to the practice of international diplomacy, the ability of our personal bits to travel about the net unhindered is central to the lives we increasingly live online.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • US Ambassador To The UN: Protecting Patents & Copyrights More Important Than Development
      The US's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Betty E. King, recently gave a press conference in Geneva to talk about a variety of issues. What caught our attention, not surprisingly, was the discussion on intellectual property issues, which seemed to raise a lot more questions than it answered. Towards the end of her talk, she basically complained about WIPO, and how various developing countries are hijacking WIPO to focus on "development," at the expense of things like patents and copyright. She says that she, and the US government, are pro development, but not if it comes at the expense of patents and copyrights.


    • Copyrights

      • Sorting Through The Spin: The Liberals and the iTax
        The issue of Liberal support for an "iTax" hit a fever pitch this week with competing releases - the Liberals stating they are against it and the Conservatives releasing a radio ad that says the Liberals support such reforms. That led some to ask for evidence to sort out the competing claims. This post is an attempt to do that.


      • "Anything you can do, we can do better?" Ireland joins the copyright review queue
        It's not just the Brits who have decided to reassess their IP rules in the not-quite-so-new-any-more internet age: the Irish are doing it too. In "Firms hampered by failure to keep law up to date with internet age", eminent scholar and lawyer TJ McIntyre argues in the Irish Times that much of the Irish law governing the internet is archaic, restrictive and hampers growth, which explains why the Taoiseach (Irish for 'prime minister' or, the Kat understands, an old Erse term for 'man who graciously accepts the credit when things work out but gets first choice at blaming someone else when things don't') has announced his support for a review of European and Irish copyright law, stating [and does this sound familiar, anyone?] “it is time to review our copyright legislation, and examine the balance between the rights holder and the consumer, to ensure that our innovative companies operating in the digital environment are not disadvantaged against competitors”.


      • Ok Go Explains There Are Lots Of Ways To Make Money If You Can Get Fans
        Over the last few years, we've covered many of the moves by the band Ok Go -- to build up a fanbase often with the help of amazingly viral videos, ditch their major record label (EMI), and explore new business model opportunities. In the last few days, two different members of Ok Go explained a bit more of the band's thinking in two separate places, and both are worth reading.


      • Cultural Heritage rights in the age of digital copyright
        On December, 10th the COMMUNIA WG3 gathered in Istanbul for the final workshop, with the aim of producing a set of recommendations about cultural heritage and the public domain.

        I am not a lawyer, so I took a chance to learn about the marked differences between access rights and property rights. More than that, it became soon clear that Cultural Heritage rights (CHR) only exist in certain EU member states (e.g. Italy, Greece) while in others there are no such rights.


      • ACTA











Clip of the Day



Pandora - One vid per day 27: GINGE - Playing WIZ and gp2x Games



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Credit: TinyOgg

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