05.30.11

Links 30/5/2011: Linux 3.0 is Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 7:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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

GNU/Linux

GNU/Linux in USA

The fact is, GNU/Linux works everywhere for everyone and the whiners’ claim that GNU/Linux is flawed is only based on lack of appearance on retail shelves. What are they going to do next year when more machines running Linux are on the shelves than that other obsolete OS? Even the USA, the strongest user of that other OS can see the benefits of using FLOSS and .
Kernel Space
- Just what is Linux mascot Tux doing in a TV cereal commercial? [Video]
  
  Reader Dexter S. was watching TV when a commercial for ‘Fruit Loops’ cereal flashed up on his screen with a rather familiar face in tow…
  
  Although fleeting, the gaudy animated commercial for an overly-sugared cereal appears to show Tux, the official Linux mascot, displayed rather prominently for a split second or so.
- Linux 3.0-rc1
  
  Yay! Let the bikeshed painting discussions about version numbering begin (or at least re-start).
- Graphics Stack
  - X.Org Server 1.10.2 Brings A Bunch Of Bug-Fixes
    
    Apple’s Jeremy Huddleston has just released X.Org Server 1.10.2. This second point release was set to be released yesterday, but then there was fear of a regression causing a delay (turns out it’s no longer reproducible), so now we have a holiday weekend release of xorg-server 1.10.2.
  - How To Install The Nvidia Driver on Fedora 15
Applications
- Finally the File Manager of your dreams-spotlights on the Sunflower
- Proprietary
  - GIMP vs. Photoshop? Ask a Better Question for a Better Answer
    
    One of the most successful people that I’ve ever known cracked the problem of achieving success in an unusual way. He didn’t rise to the top of a given corporation, nor did he found a wildly successful startup company. Instead, starting from a young age, he pursued multiple jobs that he could do concurrently. At various times, he worked as many as four separate jobs at the same time, going to work during the day, writing on the side, and much more. It just goes to show you that there isn’t necessarily just one yellow brick road leading to success.
- Instructionals/Technical
Desktop Environments
- K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)
  - My KDE Experience
    
    A few weeks ago I wrote a review of Gnome 3 (With stuff I hated and stuff I liked separated). Since the ‘hated’ one was viewed many times more, I decided to write about the good, the bad, and the ugly about KDE 4.6.3 in a single post.
    
    As a hardcore GNOME user, switching over to KDE felt weird. Not in a bad way, but I kept on bumping into things that GNOME did different (Not better, different) and kept missing some of GNOME’s defaults.
Distributions
- New Releases
  - Zenwalk GNOME 7.0 is released! | Screenshots Tour
  - Release Notes for Grml 2011.05 – codename Just Mari
- Gentoo Family
  - Music made with Gentoo, and some modding
    
    Tonight’s experiment, this time with mlr + the smyth rhodes samples from another track I created. Performed on a monome 128, in Gentoo Linux.
    
    [...]
    
    The picture is a screenshot of my working environment: mlr + JACK Timemachine + QJackCtl + JACKrack + monomeserial. Linux is amazing.
- Red Hat Family
  - Fedora
    - Fedora 15 Xfce review
      
      Final Thoughts: There are lots more about Fedora 15 that I have not covered in this review. Because those are the same across the Fedora editions, I will save them for a review of the main edition, which should be published some time next week. Specific to this Spin, I think the developers should have spent more time in customizing the default Xfce desktop. On a modern desktop operating system, somethings are expected to work out of the box. Unfortunately, on the Xfce Spin of Fedora 15, the most basic of those do not. I hope, Fedora 16 Xfce will provide a better, out-of-the-box user-experience.
    - Fedora (KDE) System Spotted Running Maya 3D on ‘Doctor Who Confidential’
      
      Maya is shown running with a bunch of terminals open. But Maya? May be remotely. Is Maya is available for Linux? (Just Found, It is indeed available.)
    - My Green Fedora
      
      I’m not a Fedora user at all. I grew up (so to speak) in the Ubuntu camp, and while I’ve never really embraced the Red Hat sphere, it certainly never lost points for me.
- Debian Family
  - Derivatives
    - Canonical/Ubuntu
      - The bzr-beta-ppa Ubuntu PPA for Beta Users has moved
        
        As the final step of consolidating all of the official Bazaar PPAs on Launchpad under one Launchpad team, the Bazaar Beta PPA formerly found at https://launchpad.net/~bzr-beta-ppa/+archive/ppa has moved to live under the main ~bzr team at https://launchpad.net/~bzr/+archive/beta. If you are a user and tester of Bazaar beta releases via this PPA, you will need to update your APT sources.list lines – you can see the new sources.list lines under the “Technical details about this PPA” section at the above link.
      - The Five Pillars Of Ubuntu Server 11.10
        
        - Ubuntu Orchestra
        - Ubuntu Ensemble
        - Ubuntu Server for ARM
        - Making Ubuntu Server the Best Cloud Infrastructure OS
        - Making Ubuntu Server the Best Cloud Guest OS
      - Canonical Chief Designer Hits the Road
        
        Ubuntu’s head designer, Ivanka Majic, is leaving for an extended motorcycle trip through America, and whether she will return to Canonical remains unclear.
        
        In a blog post, Majic says that she plans a three month honeymoon with her husband, traveling via motorcycle from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. “I am taking what I believe is officially called ‘a career break’,” she writes.
      - Flavours and Variants
        
        Bodhi Linux 1.1.0 Review
        
        Bodh Linux, is a Ubuntu-based distribution, that uses enlightenment as its window manager. Bodhi 1.1.0 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 and is aimed at being relatively easy to use and easy on hardware resources, while at the same time, allowing the system to be very customisable.
Devices/Embedded
- Phones
  - Android
    - Magazine publishers eye Android, finally
      
      Android may rule the smartphone market but when it comes to magazines Android users are sorely neglected
      
      Android may well be the most dominant smartphone operating system available. It may also be the OS with the coolest apps. However, there is one area in which Android users are sorely neglected: magazines.
      
      Take a look around the web. Most of the best magazines already offer an iPad-based subscription to their publications. Apple has been quick to try and lock publishers and readers into its iTunes platform.
    - 50 Paid Android Apps Worth the Price
    - Learn Android online … Free training

Free Software/Open Source

Events
- Upcoming Open Source Webinars: DuraSpace, Nuxeo, SMART
- Preparing for LinuxCon Japan: Tsunami Relief, Comic Relief
Web Browsers
- Future Of 3D Is Free: WebM, HTML5 And Firefox
  
  YouTube has announced that users will be able to watch WebM encoded 3D videos using HTML 5 on Firefox 4. It’s yet another milestone in making the web free of non-free technologies such as Adode Flash and H.264.
  
  3D is becoming immensely popular. When you walk inside any electronics store here in Europe, you see the TV section dominated by 3D TV sets. In addition to TV sets 3D ready devices are also increasing their foot prints. Desktop and notebook users can also enjoy the power of 3D with Nvidia’s cards.
- Mozilla
  - Mozilla And Google Going After Browser Memory
    
    Both Mozilla and Google have recently highlighted a more visible and detailed view of the memory that is consumed by a browser as well as content.
    
    As we are moving more and more to an Internet that is featuring applications in your browser, it will also be more important to make effective use of available memory on a client system. Mozilla and Google are leading an awareness campaign directed at developers to highlight a problem that could reveal a performance bottleneck.
Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
- Updates on the Foundation
  
  Some time has passed since we announced that we reached the goal of our 50.000 € fundraising challenge. In the meantime, we’ve updated you on our legal process via this blog, and so I’d like to post another update on where we stand and what our roadmap is.
Business
- Cutting into open source business models with a sharp knife and a squeeze
- Univa Unifies Grid Engine and Eucalyptus Clouds
  
  Univa (www.univa.com) the Data Center Optimization Company, today announced it has partnered with Eucalyptus Systems to enable organizations to seamlessly integrate Eucalyptus on-premise cloud management software into their Grid Engine compute environments. This enables organizations using Grid Engine to fully exploit the benefits of dynamic, scalable and self-serve cloud systems within the backbone of their production compute and data analysis infrastructures.
- Semi-Open Source
  - Public Beta!
    
    We are making an open source release of the Acunu Storage Core under GPL v2 at the same time as this beta release. If you want to look at the source code, learn, explore, critique or extend what we have done, please go right ahead. You can find our more about the open source distribution here.
FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC
- Free software campaigner Richard Stallman cancels Israel lectures due to Palestinian pressure
  
  The American software freedom activist Richard Stallman has cancelled a lecture that he was scheduled to give at Tel Aviv University due to pressure from the Palestinian Authority.
  
  The funding for his trip came from the Palestinians who invited him to lecture for them, Stallman wrote in a letter explaining the cancellation.
- Palestinian pressure causes Linux founder to cancel Israel visit
  
  “I am sorry for the disappointment that I have caused,” wrote Stallman.
- Richard Stallman at the Senate
- Behind the scenes of the new GNU mailing list server
  
  The GNU list server is a monster machine serving lists.gnu.org, lists.nongnu.org and a few other domains. Every day, it spools out over 1 million messages for 2700 mailing lists. Until April 11, our venerable list server was an 8-year old Fedora Core 2 (!) box equipped with 6 high-speed SCSI drives organized in two RAID packs to maximize I/O bandwidth. These drives were incessantly cranking every day, as Mailman forwarded incoming posts to thousands of subscribers over a saturated T1 uplink at the FSF headquarters.
  
  [...]
  
  …with well-tuned EXT4 file systems running on a RAID-1 array of solid-state drives and a second array of fast hard-drives.
Project Releases
- Gnumeric 1.10.15 aka “TBD” is now available.
  
  The Gnumeric Team is pleased to announce the availability of Gnumeric version 1.10.15. This version requires the concurrently released Goffice 0.8.15. We also recommend the recently released Libgsf 1.14.21.
Public Services/Government
- Poland’s Prime Minister Goes For Open Government
Licensing
- Starting A FOSS Project? Then Know Your Licenses
Programming
- SourceForge Global Traffic Distribution: France Up, Germany Down
  
  The only real change in the top 5 is that France overtaken Germany, a sign that the French approach is paying off. BRIC countries collectively keeps holding over 18%.

Leftovers

Apple
- Samsung Bites Apple: Wants To See iPad3, iPhone 5 Design
  
  It’s not even the secret design of the upcoming products which Apple builds with the help of communist China in their sweatshops where suicides are common due to controversial working conditions. We are talking about the ‘old’ Apple products which are already obsolete.
- Apple Wants Access To Samsung’s Android Devices
  
  The same Apple that sent a SWAT team to a journalist’s house confiscating his IT equipments just because he published details about an upcoming iPhone. Instead of going after the one who stole the phone Apple went after a journalist.
  
  Apple is known for arm-twisting. The draconian, secretive Apple which displayed such aggressiveness in that prototype case now seeks that Samsung should hand-over product samples, packaging, and package inserts to the Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab 8.9, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, and 4G LTE or “Droid Charge.”
- Italy Thinks Apple Is Ripping Off Customers On Their Warranties [AppleCare]
  
  #
  Piana, who was directly involved in what he calls the “first wave” of disputes from the Italian Antitrust Authority over paid extended warranties, says they see it as making the consumer pay for something they are already guaranteed by law.
Security
- Sony Chief Stringer Blindsided by Hackers Who Promised Revenge
- Allied Telesis divulges secret backdoor
  
  Allied Telesis accidentally put information about the backdoors present in all of its products into the support area on its web site.
Defence/Police/Aggression
- Russia’s occupation of Georgian territory must end
  
  t is a little under three years since the Russian Federation’s invasion of the Republic of Georgia which claimed the lives of more than 400 innocent civilians.
  
  While the conflict has received little international attention of late, the ongoing Russian occupation of Georgian sovereign territory remains one of Europe’s bloodiest running sores. As I write, 20 percent of Georgia’s territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia remains under the control of the Russian army.
  
  Standing on the line of occupation between the area under the control of the Georgian central government and the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the view is much the same as any other picture-postcard scene from the Caucasus.
- Patriot Act surveillance provisions extended in nick of time
  
  The US Congress, racing the clock and rejecting demands for additional safeguards of civil liberties, passed a bill on Thursday to renew three expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.
  
  Barack Obama, who is in Europe, signed it into law shortly before the provisions were set to expire at midnight. A White House aide said he used an “auto pen”, which replicates his signature.
  
  Obama acted shortly after the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-led Senate approved the bill overwhelmingly. It passed the House, 250-153, hours after it cleared the Senate, 72-23.
Environment/Energy/Wildlife
- Phantom Efficiencies: US Economy Still Running Very Slow
  
  The problem remains, however, that in order to carry debt loads both public and private the US is still very dependent on strong industrial growth to generate revenues, and support wages. Accordingly, in the near term less energy inputs into the US economy more immediately aligns with less output. In other words, a more efficient economy is slowly being born. But until then, we will struggle with the transition. | see: US Average Annual Total Energy Consumption 1975-2010.
- Speculator Ghosts in the Oil Machine
Finance
- Fed Gave Banks Crisis Gains on Secretive Loans Low as 0.01%
  
  Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren’t revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public.
  
  The $80 billion initiative, called single-tranche open- market operations, or ST OMO, made 28-day loans from March through December 2008, a period in which confidence in global credit markets collapsed after the Sept. 15 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
  
  Units of 20 banks were required to bid at auctions for the cash. They paid interest rates as low as 0.01 percent that December, when the Fed’s main lending facility charged 0.5 percent.
- Former Senator Judd Gregg to Join Goldman Sachs
  
  It’s been a good month for government regulators going to join the companies they regulate. On May 11, Comcast announced Meredith Baker would leave the FCC to join its board, after she approved its merger with NBC Universal a few months earlier. Today, the news is about Judd Gregg, the former three-term Republican senator from New Hampshire, who is going to work for Goldman Sachs.
- William Black on Wall Street fraud
  
  Former banking regulator William Black speaks about rackets and fraud in the financial sector. He says Wall Street’s fraudulent CEOs looted with impunity, were left in power, and were granted their fondest wish when Congress, at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce, Fed Chairman Bernanke, and the bankers’ trade associations, successfully extorted the professional Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to turn the accounting rules into a farce.
- Oppenheimer Analyst Fadel Gheit Thinks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Are Market Manipulators, Need The Government To Open A Can On Their Asses
- Lock ‘em up
  
  Former Tory peer and leader of Essex County Council Lord Hanningfield has been found guilty of expenses fraud. Jail’s too good for him, says Shane Greer
PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying
- Wealthy Families, Corporate-Backed Foundations Behind Push for School Vouchers
  
  The Alliance for School Choice is another DeVos-funded group that promotes vouchers. The Walton Family Foundation (of Wal-Mart fame) has also given millions to push school voucher programs. These are just a small sample of the private, corporate-backed forces working to undermine public schools.
Censorship
- Oregon Senator Wyden freezes second Internet censorship bill
  
  A U.S. Senator from Oregon has once again taken a stand against his own party to defend what he sees as the inherent right to free speech on the Internet, placing a hold on a bill that could force search engines and Internet service providers to block websites deemed to be “infringing” on copyrights.
  
  The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act — or “PROTECT IP” for short was part of a second attempt to pass provisions of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to clear Congress during its last session thanks to a parliamentary maneuver by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
Privacy
- How To Keep Your Data Safe? Keep It With You
  
  Free Software advocates have been warning users about depending too much on Cloud. While proprietary companies take away control from your computing by denying you the right to see what their product does to your information, they also find ways to lock you out of your own data by using DRM technologies.
  
  Apple is a champion when it comes to putting chains and locks around its users. If you choose to quit Apple you will not be able to access your own music that you bought via iTunes to use with non-Apple products.
- ICO delay enforcement of EU Privacy Directive
- Orwell 2.0? De Montfort proposes wi-fi surveillance
  
  With students expected to become increasingly consumerist after the hike in tuition fees, universities may start to view campus wi-fi as a strong selling point.
- Fife police defend use of CCTV after high ‘Big Brother’ ranking
  
  With 1350 cameras, Fife has more CCTV than anywhere else in Scotland and ranks third in Britain, with only Portsmouth and Nottinghamshire councils controlling more.
  
  A report by civil liberties group Big Brother Watch revealed that the number of local authority-owned CCTV cameras across the country has trebled in the last decade, with 59,753 devices in total keeping tabs on the public.
- Thieves paint over CCTV cameras to steal eight tonnes of clothing from Fenland compound
  
  Offenders painted over the CCTV cameras after breaking into the compound in Kings Dyke. The clothes were taken from a container some time between 12.20am and 12.40am.
- Devizes’ CCTV cameras face funding shortfall
  
  CCTV cameras in Devizes might have to be switched off, the company which runs them has warned.
  
  Wiltshire Council supplies half the £22,000 funding for the town’s CCTV, but this is due to end in September.
- Hednesford CCTV failing to catch criminals
- US to hold details of British air passengers for 15 years
  
  Details of millions of travellers from Europe, including addresses, phone numbers and credit card information, would be kept for the extended period by the US Department of Homeland Security, which also wants airlines to furnish the data up to 96 hours ahead of scheduled flight departures.
  
  Airlines must currently provide passenger name record (PNR) information 72 hours before departure, allowing US Customs to match the data against existing terrorist watch lists and criminal and immigration databases.
- Cookie law set to shake up UK websites, but won’t be enforced for a year
- Dominique Lazanski: How the EU ‘cookie’ directive is impacting the UK
- Kenneth Clarke data protection speech
- Ken Clarke raises data protection fears
  
  Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has warned the European Union not to sacrifice individual freedoms in the battle to boost security.
  
  He said the UK had experience of the “authoritarian extremes” of the previous Labour government on the issue of data protection, with more than one million unconvicted citizens on the national DNA database and attempts to introduce compulsory ID cards.
- UK banks breaching data protection rules – Which?
  
  The UK’s biggest banks and building societies are regularly breaching data protection rules, according to figures obtained by consumer group Which? under the Freedom of Information Act.
- Co-op error as 82,000 clients’ data published online
  
  Information Commissioner says Co-operative Life Planning breached data protection act after 82,000 customers’ details were erroneously published.
- ICO announces that the details of 82,000 customers of Co-operative Life Planning were released online following hack
Internet/Net Neutrality
- A Hippocratic oath for the internet
  
  That is the message I would like to bring to the e-G8 summit on the internet gathered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week in Paris.
  
  I am apprehensive about a meeting of government and industry that begins with the presumption that they wield authority over the internet, the people’s internet. Cory Doctorow decided not to attend, declaring it a “whitewash” for regimes that are at “war with the free, open net.” Perhaps that’s the right decision. Given the chance to go, I decided to witness it up close and say what I have to say so at least I can say I said it. And that is this:
  
  The internet was born open, free, and distributed. As conceived and built, all bits are created equal. It must stay that way. Sarkozy called this meeting to discuss the growth of the internet. It will grow only if it is open and free.
- At the eG8, 20th century ideas clashed with the 21st century economy
  
  Sarkozy drew an explicit line between countries that keep the Internet up and those that closed it down, as Egypt did during the critical moments of its revolution this winter. “The free Internet today marks the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy,” said Sarkozy, noting “those who have tried to close the network have sided with the dictatorship.”
  
  To portray Sarkozy’s speech as a glowing endorsement of the Internet’s promise for humanity would be misleading. He asserted a strong role for government, given the power that our connectedness now brings. Sarkozy has referred to the Internet as “a territory to conquer” in the past, a position that Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Perry Barlow made clear he opposed.
  
  “Now that the Internet is an integral part of most people’s live, it would be contradictory to exclude governments from this huge forum,” said Sarkozy. “Nobody could nor should forget that these governments are the only legitimate representatives of the will of the people in our democracies. To forget this is to take the risk of democratic chaos and hence anarchy.”
- Telco missteps, overreach leading to Dutch net neutrality law
  
  Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services.
- Mubarak’s $90M ‘phone bill’
  
  A CAIRO court has fined Hosni Mubarak and two ex-ministers $90 million for “damaging the economy”.
DRM
- Highlights from the 2011 Day Against DRM
  
  This year’s Day Against DRM on May 4th was an overall success.
Intellectual Monopolies
- PayPal Sues Google Over Mobile Payment Secrets
  
  Google Inc. was sued by PayPal Inc., the fastest-growing unit at online marketplace EBay Inc. (EBAY), over claims it misappropriated trade secrets from PayPal’s mobile- payment business.
  
  Osama Bedier, a former PayPal executive now at Google, stole PayPal’s confidential information, the company said in the lawsuit filed yesterday in state court in San Jose, California. Stephanie Tilenius, another ex-PayPal executive now at Google, violated contractual obligations by recruiting Bedier, PayPal said.
- Trademarks
  - Trademark Squatters 0001 – OutbackZack
    
    Trademark Squatters have become a huge problem in the last couple of years. The value of a mark in commerce is immense, but often marks are not registered, with the owner depending upon common law recognition of rights.
    
    Trademark Squatters take advantage of inability of government agencies to check the truthfulness of statements made when a mark is registered, and the lack of sanctions for lying under oath. Most especially the lack of sanctions means that there is no effective action taken against Trademark Squatters.
    
    The Government Agency which supposedly exists to protect the Mark Owner instead protects the Mark Squatter against the Mark Owner. When ownership is finally settled at great cost to the Mark Owner, the Mark Squatter walks away unscathed, with the profits that he or she has accrued from his or her actions, ready to do it all again, against some other unsuspecting Mark Owner.
- Copyrights
  - Senate panel approves controversial copyright bill
    
    A U.S. Senate committee has unanimously approved a controversial bill that would allow the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders requiring search engines and Internet service providers to stop sending traffic to websites accused of infringing copyright.
    
    The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PROTECT IP Act, which would also allow copyright holders to seek court orders requiring payment processors and online ad networks to stop doing business with allegedly infringing websites.
  - The Access Copyright Backlash: Writers Union of Canada Calls for Collective Licensing Reform
    
    Last week’s series of posts on Access Copyright (transactional licensing, economics of the collective, future reforms, all three posts in single PDF), which examined the astonishing lack of transparency behind the copyright collective and the small percentage of revenues that are ultimately distributed to Canadian authors, resulted in a large number of private emails from authors expressing gratitude for the posts and venting enormous frustration. The concerns with Access Copyright broke out into the open this weekend at the Writers’ Union of Canada annual general meeting as the TWUC passed a motion recognizing the lack of control over how licensing revenue is managed and the inability of Access Copyright to represent creator interests. As a result, the TWUC plans to investigate operational separation of creators’ and publishers’ interests in collective licensing.
  - The Major Labels Think That They Own The Independent Artists – Do They?
  - It’s the law
    
    Not content with that, we then make it perfectly legal for the accuser to hand in false claims and allegations.
    
    How could we make that law better? Easy: by making it impossible for you to challenge or to defend yourself against the accusations.
    
    The above refers of course to that hobby horse of mine, the new Copyright Act that kicks in this September.