02.03.11

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Conversion Tales From the Land of Linux

    “I’ve converted my wife to Linux,” asserted Eric Mesa among the 100 or so comments that soon appeared on the topic. “Installed Ubuntu on her computer. She is OK with Linux 90% of the time. But that 10% of the time when she isn’t — she hates it.”

• Kernel Space

  • Finding the Fastest Filesystem, 2011 Edition

    In my previous report about journaling filesystem benchmarking using dbench, I observed that a properly-tuned system using XFS, with the deadline I/O scheduler, beat both Linux’s ext3 and IBM’s JFS. A lot has changed in the three years since I posted that report, so it’s time to do a new round of tests. Many bug fixes, improved kernel lock management, and two new filesystem (btrfs and ext4) bring some new configurations to test.

• Applications

  • The Five Best Open Source Calendar Servers for Linux

    Finding Linux-based calendar clients, like Evolution or Mozilla Lightning, is easy — but what about the server-side software? You’ll find some great calendar servers for Linux, if you know where to look. From light-weight to heavy duty, Cosmo to Darwin, we’ve picked five of the best open source calendar servers for Linux for you to try.

    Calendaring software has come a long way on the client side in recent years; the Linux desktop has a healthy selection of apps to choose from, including Evolution, Mozilla Lightning, and KOrganizer. But, at the same time, much of their usefulness really stems from the popularity of the server-side calendar sharing protocols, iCalendar and CalDAV. Niche sites like Remember The Milk and big online service providers like Yahoo and Google have made shared calendars common place. Anyone can publish a calendar feed, confident that everyone on the Web can subscribe to it on the OS and device of their choosing and stay up-to-date.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Set Up Apache2 With mod_fcgid And PHP5 On Fedora 14

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • February 2011 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine Released

      In the February 2011 issue:
      * e17: System Panel, Part 2
      * e17 Accessories: ePDF & ePhoto
      * Short Story: WWW Collapse
      * Scribus, Part 2: Starting The Project
      * SSH: An Easier-Than-You-Thought Tutorial
      * Calibre: A High Caliber Ebook Tool
      * DVB Streaming In PCLinuxOS
      * Computer Languages A to Z: Vala & Visual Basic
      * Firefox Add-ons: FireFTP
      * Customize Your LXDE Right Click Menu
      * Game Zone: DOD:S & Steam Tips For Dual Booters
      * WindowMaker On PCLinuxOS: Introduction
      * PCLinuxOS Artists Win First, Second Place
      * And much more!

  • Red Hat Family

    • CentOS 6: interview with Karanbir Singh

      Q: Could you summarize the most important new features we have to expect in CentOS 6?

      A: There are quite a few interesting things coming up. A newer base kernel with some enhancements in performance and management tools, a newer virtualisation layer, newer ruby and python stacks with lots of developer oriented features and packages. Overall more modern and much improved desktop experience etc. Stay tuned for the release!”

  • Debian Family

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu and Me, Happy Together.

        All right, this is what I started to write about in the first place. I really enjoyed using Ubuntu on my server. I sat up in the living room SSHed or VNCed into the server, exploring stuff, installing new programs, finding out what I could do. It was great, but VNC is VNC. I set up VirtualBox on my PC and ran it from there as well. After a couple of weeks of doing both, I decided to make the jump to a full dual boot Ubuntu system. That’s what I did over this past weekend. It went very smoothly.

      • Exclusive Interview With Ubuntu Rock Star Jono Bacon

        Swapnil: How and when did you start using GNU/Linux? Which was your first OS?
        Jono: I got started using Slackware 96 when my brother introduced me to it. This then transitioned into me using Red Hat, then Mandrake, then Debian, and finally Ubuntu.

• Devices/Embedded

  • DreamPlug: Tiny Linux Computer That Looks Like A Power Plug

    Wouldn’t you want a teeny tiny computer with no video card? Well if you do, then you can be very happy because the DreamPlug will start shipping later this month. The DreamPlug is a small computer that almost looks like a power plug.

  • Tiny x86 module runs Linux

    Datasound Laboratories (DSL) announced a compact “embedded controller” based on a 300MHz DM&P Vortex86SX CPU. The Icop VSX-6117 is just 3.14 x 1.96 inches, uses only 320mA at 5V, includes 128MB of soldered-on DDR2 memory and 2GB of flash storage, has a 10/100 Ethernet port, and includes EIDE and x-ISA expansion, according to the company.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • Ubuntu Netbook review

      I was using Ubuntu Netbook Remix on my EeePC at last year’s FOSDEM, dual-booting with Mac OS X. Since Ubuntu 10.04 it’s been renamed Ubuntu Netbook Edition, so time for a reinstall and new road test.

      [...]

      The great thing about a swiss army knife is that it has every tool you could possibly need. The problem with a swiss army knife is it has every tool you could possibly need. So, on to the next netbook distribution.

Free Software/Open Source

• Open source game counterfeited in Mac App Store

  The developers at game software house Wolfire have found that the Lugaru HD game, which they open sourced last May, has appeared in what they describe as a counterfeit version on the Mac App Store. The developers have noted the appearance of a £1.19 game named Lugaru on the Mac App Store where Wolfire sells Lugaru HD for £5.99.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Yet another delay hangs over release of Firefox 4

      Mozilla is bracing itself for yet more beta releases and possibly another delay of its Firefox 4 browser.

      The open-source web tool outfit pushed out a 10th test build of Firefox 4 last week. It has now confirmed that two more betas will definitely follow before a Release Candidate version of the browser lands.

• Oracle

  • Oracle writes new OpenJDK rules

    Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform Group at Oracle has announced on his blog that he, with the assistance of John Duimovich and Jason Gartner of IBM, Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse, Prof. Doug Lea of SUNY Oswego, and Adam Messinger of Oracle, has been drafting a set of OpenJDK community rules, or bye-laws, by which the community will operate. He says the draft document will soon be published for public comment.

Leftovers

• FiveFingers Blocks Right Finger — Just Asking For Middle One

  Klein’s analysis is dead on. I just went and checked myself. First, this a really stupid programming decision — blocking all right-clicks on a website for all sorts of legitimate purposes (such as opening in a new tab, as I frequently do) seems like tremendous overkill. But, more importantly, as Klein points out, all this does is serve to piss people off while doing absolutely nothing to stop the action they think they’re trying to stop. Finally, making a statement about the public domain, just because someone right-clicked is also extreme. None of it makes sense, and all it really serves to do is piss off legitimate users.

• Security

  • Researchers Find Cache of Credentials Stolen by Waledac Botnet

  • Facebook Fixes Security Vulnerability

  • Facebook Malware Preys on User Fears of Losing Site Access

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Missing Swedish television reporter hospitalized in Egypt – Summary

    Stockholm – A Swedish television reporter who went missing while on assignment Thursday in Egypt has been taken to hospital after apparently being stabbed, Swedish television news said.

• Cablegate

  • WikiLeaks cables: planned US missile shield blind to nuclear weapons

    A 2007 briefing by General Patrick O’Reilly, director of the US Missile Defence Agency, disclosed that the radar system would be unable to detect long-range missiles in the launch phase because it could only see in a straight line, not over the horizon.

    By the time the radar “saw” the missile, it would be too late to launch an interceptor in time to stop it striking its target.

    The Czech radar system was the lynch-pin of George Bush’s “son of star wars” missile defence plans, ostensibly intended to intercept missiles launched from North Korea and Iran.

  • WikiLeaks cables: British firms made millions from trading with Iranians

    America put enormous pressure on the British government to block deals for aircraft and ships that it feared would be used to transport nuclear materials.

    One of the companies causing most concern was the London-based Balli Group, of which Lord Lamont, the former chancellor, is a non-executive director.

• Civil Rights

  • Consultations begin on new media ethics code

    New guidelines on the duties and responsibilities of old and new media providers are being prepared by the Council of Europe.

    The recommendations would provide “practical guidance” on how Council of Europe standards, developed for traditional forms of mass communication, could apply to new media outlets.

    Governments, faced by a rapidly changing media landscape, will be encouraged to sign up to these recommendations, Jan Kleijssen, the Director of Standard Setting, told a 27 January UNESCO conference on media ethics and self regulation.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • What is a fair price for Internet service?

    For the last month Digital Home has been lit up with readers from across Canada who are venting their anger over the ever increasing cost of Internet service and new charges for usage-based billing (commonly called UBB).

    Clearly, no one wants to pay more for internet service, but at some point the price of just about everything goes up. So recently I decided to investigate whether the spate of price increases were justified and fair.

    [...]

    The fact that Bell is able to sell 40 GB of data to wholesalers for $4.25 and still make a profit demonstrates that the true cost of data transfer is well below the 10.5 cents per gigabyte they are charging wholesalers. One TPIA provider agreed the 3 cents per gigabyte figure is probably close to the true cost.

    So why are Internet service providers charging consumers $1 or more per gigabyte of data used beyond their respective data caps? That’s a good question.

    Bell will charge you an additional $2 per gigabyte to a maximum of $60 a month up to 300GB. After 300 GB, you’ll pay a $1 a gigabyte. Shaw is charging $2.00 per GB on its popular high-speed package while Rogers is charging a whopping $5 per gigabyte on its Ultra Lite plan and $2 per GB on its popular 10 Megabits per second service.

  • Usage-based Internet billing: a global comparison

    Only two out of 30 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) offer their citizens no Internet subscriptions with unlimited downloads.

    Canada is one of them.

    The other is Australia, but that is beside the point. The point, rather, is simply to broaden the context of the usage-based billing (UBB) debate beyond just the Canadian market; to consider just how common it is for every Internet service provider (ISP) in a given country to impose limits on the amount of data their customers can consume each much.

  • CRTC must reverse internet usage ruling: Clement

  • Verizon To Throttle Heavy Users To Maintain Network Quality

    Essentially, if you download a lot, your speed will be cut at various peak times. They’re calling it VZOptimization, a delightfully Orwellian term.

• DRM

  • PS3 Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 slapped with strict DRM

    Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 has no sort of online play at all. None. There is co-op, but only offline. There is no reason for you to be online if you’re playing the game. Unless you want the stupid thing to work, of course. Capcom requires your PlayStation 3 to be online to play Bionic Commando Rearmed 2, the same requirement that everyone hated in Final Fight—a game that at least had online play.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Movie-industry study: Unauthorized video sharing shrinks if viewers have legal options

      The study in question was commissioned by NBC Universal (though that company, as of Saturday a Comcast-controlled operation, makes no mention of it on its site) and conducted by Envisional, a research firm based in Cambridge, England. Envisional surveyed a variety of file-sharing sites and services, from BitTorrent to Usenet streams, and came up with some numbers that can’t make anybody in Hollywood happy.

    • BitTorrent Lawsuits: The Red-Light Cameras of the Internet

      The 1993 sci-fi action movie Demolition Man depicted a future without violence or disorder. They achieved this, in part, by using technology to automate penalties for rule-breaking.

      In one memorable scene, Sylvester Stallone’s character discovers that every time he uses profanity, a nearby machine automatically issues a citation. When he needs paper, he casually leans toward the machine and lets loose a string of salty expletives until he’s got a neat stack of tickets.

    • Where have all the music pirates gone?

      The percentage obviously depends on just where you place your cutoff. The Pirate Bay’s overall top 100, for instance, has 10 recent albums in its list (the rest is almost exclusively video content). Still, the disparity in the numbers are eye-popping; pirates want movies more than music, and by a significant margin.

    • Subscription Porn Site SLAPPed Down After Suing RedTube For Undermining Its Business Model

      We’ve joked in the past about how many of the complaints we see from companies about new, more innovative competitors, is that they somehow represent “felony interference of a business model.” Some companies, it seems, like to believe that if they have a successful business model, any new competitor that changes the market around must be doing so illegally. Eric Goldman points us to just such a lawsuit in California, where the proprietor of a subscription based porn website sued RedTube, one of many, many porn-focused free streaming video sites, and many of RedTube’s advertisers, arguing unfair competition. Basically, the argument was that by setting up a website and offering these porn videos for free, while making money on the advertising, RedTube was effectively “dumping” its product on the market below cost in order to harm the market and make money elsewhere.

    • Feds Blitz Sports Piracy Websites Ahead Of Super Bowl XLV

      Look out, Pittsburgh Steal-ers: The domains of at least five websites notorious for carrying illegal feeds of live sporting events were seized by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement just days before the Super Bowl, the biggest TV event of the year in the United States.

    • Senator: domain name seizures “alarmingly unprecedented”

      Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has 10 tough questions for the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), all of which can be more easily summed up in a single, blunter question: what the hell are you guys doing over there?

      Wyden’s displeasure is over ICE’s Operation In Our Sites, the controversial program that began seizing Internet domain names last year, and just grabbed several more sports-related domains this week. The seizures are all signed off on by a federal judge, but the affected parties get no warning and no chance to first challenge the claim that they are running illegal businesses. In fact, in yesterday’s takedown, ICE grabbed the domain Rojadirecta.org, a site that links to live sports on the Web and has twice been declared legal by Spanish courts.

    • ACTA

      • WikiLeaks Cables Shine Light on ACTA History

        La Quadrature du Net obtained exclusive access to the WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Although they only give a partial account of the history of this secretly-negotiated agreement, these cables shed an interesting light on the coming into being of ACTA. They show the prime role of the US in the advent of this extremist imposition of violent sanctions against citizens and their fundamental rights. The cables expose the stakes and debates surrounding the participation of developing countries, as well as the evolution of the position of European Union during the negotiations.