Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 2/7/2011: Cisco to Shop Android, Ubuntu One Comes to Android





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Hope and Change Inside My Computer - Part II
    In retrospect, I have recently read a large amount of comments and articles on how Linux is not ready for prime time. Honestly, if I had read even a fraction of these articles, I doubt I would have installed it, even with Mark's endorsement. In the past two months or so, I can honestly say I can not understand how these writers came to such a conclusion. Linux works extremely well for me.


  • Linux IT to underwrite open-source adoption
    Linux IT is aiming to kick-start community-based open-source software adoption among UK enterprises with the launch of an indemnification scheme.

    In what it claims is a world first, the integrator is offering to underwrite any community-based open-source software that meets the requirements of its verification process.

    The soon-to-be-launched programme, which is backed by an unnamed insurance firm, enables Linux IT to fix or replace the software if it does not work as expected. Cover to the value of €£5m is provided.


  • Desktop



  • Server

    • MCSE or RHCE - Which certifications should you be the most proud of?
      The issue with the MCSE is that the tests are glorified word association exams. To pass, all you need to do is learn all the technology names and keywords created by Microsoft, the contexts in which these words are used, and the contexts in which they aren't used. Obviously an understanding of the technologies behind the buzzwords is helpful, but not essential.




  • Applications

    • 7 of the Best Free Linux Bioinformatics Tools
      Bioinformatics has been defined in many different ways, but it is common ground to regard this discipline as the application of mathematics, computing and statistics to the analysis of biological information. The objective of bioinformatics is to enable the finding of new biological insights, and to create a broader, more critical view from which unifying principles in biology can be perceived.

      Bioinformatics is very important in the field of human genome research. It has become crucial for large-scale measurement technologies such as DNA sequencing, microarrays, and metabolomics. The field of bioinformatics has been aided significantly by Linux-based hardware and software. There are a number of Linux distributions which offer an integrated bioinformatics workstation. The popular distribution Bio-Linux packages hundreds of bioinformatics programs spanning a number of different fields.


    • Instructionals/Technical





    • Games





  • Distributions



    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family





  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-based networked DVR can record from 64 cameras
      IndigoVision announced a doubling of capacity to 2TB disks on its NVR-AS 3000 of Linux-based, surveillance-oriented network video recorders (NVRs). The NVR-AS 3000 systems are now available with up to 6TB of usable RAID 5 storage, as well as RAID 0/1 options, and can record full framerate video and audio from 64 cameras, and play back 20 streams simultaneously, says the company.


    • Phones



      • Android

        • Canonical releases Ubuntu One for Android devices
          LINUX VENDOR Canonical has brought its cloud storage that it calls Ubuntu One to Android devices, saying that in order to stream files, it stores them as plain text.

          Canonical's Ubuntu One cloud storage service had previously been available from the outfit's Ubuntu Linux distribution, however with the arrival of Ubuntu One Files on Android, users can access the service on both PCs running Ubuntu and Android devices. The free service offers 2GB of storage space and does not need a PC to operate.






    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • TouchPad ships to hurrahs for WebOS, but hoots at the hardware
        The Wi-Fi version of the 9.7-inch HP TouchPad tablet went on sale today for $499 (16GB) and $599 (32GB). Early reviews follow the same general pattern as those of the original Palm Pre two years ago: praise for the promise of WebOS, but disappointment over bugs, performance, lack of apps, and limited battery life.


      • Why HP Is Negotiating WebOS License Deals?
        Because WebOS won't survive if its runs only on HP devices, its as simple as it goes. HP doesn't command the smartphone market as much as Samsung or Motorola do. In addition HP also needs what matters the most 'apps' for WebOS to be successful. Not many developers will be interested in porting their apps for a platform which has a non-existent market.

        Most HP smartphone users are corporate users and they may not want Angry Birds on their devices. If there are no takers, Rovio won't port Angry Birds to WebOS and if there is no Angry Birds there, many regular users won't buy WebOS phones. Simple.

        So, HP needs vendors which can take WebOS to consumer segment.


      • Media-oriented Android tablet sports IR remote
        Vizio announced the VTAB1008, an eight-inch tablet that includes infrared "universal remote" capabilities and runs Android 2.3. The company added that it will employ Android and its own Vizio Internet Apps Plus (V.I.A. Plus) additions in forthcoming TVs, Blu-ray players, smartphones, "and more."


      • Cisco Cius Tablet Set For Release
        In June of 2010, Cisco CEO John Chambers announced the Cius, an Android based tablet that was supposed to be the first enterprise grade tablet. Fast forward to 2011 and the Cius still is not yet generally available, but that's about to change.

        Cisco today announced that the Cius will become generally available in July and will include a new enterprise AppHQ component for the delivery of mobile applications. Cisco is trying to differentiate the Cius from consumer tablets like the Apple iPad as well as other Android tablets by providing enterprise grade collaboration, security and applications. The device isn't just a tablet, it can also be docked with a phone and a keyboard as well.








Free Software/Open Source



  • DHS, Georgia Tech seek to improve security with open-source tools
    The Georgia Tech Research Institute has been designated the lead organization in a government project to develop open-source cybersecurity capabilities.


  • Events

    • Calls for papers issued for ELC Europe, Linux.conf.au
      Calls for papers were announced for CELF's Embedded Linux Conference Europe, co-located with LinuxCon Europe in Prague on October 26-28, as well as the Australian Linux.conf.au, planned for Jan 16-20, 2012 in Ballarat, Australia. Meanwhile, the Linux Foundation announced Kim Blanche's "Flying Penguins" as the winner of the 20th Anniversary of Linux T-shirt contest, earning her a trip to next month's LinuxCon Gala in Vancouver.




  • Web Browsers



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice 3.4.1 Is Now Available for Download
      A few minutes ago, July 1st, The Document Foundation company announced the first maintenance release of the LibreOfficeb 3.4 open source office suite software for Linux, Windows and Macintosh platforms, bringing several bugfixes.

      LibreOffice 3.4.1 is available now (see download links at the end of the article), for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The new release fixes some important bugs and updates several translations. Overall it is much stable than the previous release and everyone is encourage to update.


    • Major gaps of Open Office Impress versus Microsoft Power Point: what do you think?
      Yesterday Sergio, a user of OpenOffice Impress, sent to the OpenOffice.org discussion list his list of the “Major Gaps of OpenOffice Impress 3.3 vs. Microsoft Office PowerPoint”.

      Sergio compiled the list because, as much as he likes OpenOffice, “after struggling for over 1 year, sadly he had to stop using Open Office Impress and go back to Microsoft Power Point”.


    • PPAs and LibreOffice
      First I would like to thank everyone for their interest in LibreOffice! Second, I think it’s very important to understand that there’s a difference between PPAs and the default version shipped by Ubuntu. Just like any other distribution, Ubuntu releases a full GNU/Linux system that comes with a set of fully defined and qualified packages. Unless Ubuntu chooses to upgrade these packages themselves, they won’t move or change until the next version of the distribution is released. PPAs are a community based and convenient way to use more up-to-date version of software packages, but do not expect the same quality or to have a fault-proof software running; it’s an upgrade for the users who wish to enjoy their system with more spice and n


    • Ready for Paris? See you there in October!
      It seems I’m continuing my pattern of posting less here, which I find to be a disappointing yet apparently an unescapable trend. If you haven’t seen my “dents” and “tweets” on the side of this page, feel free to follow me on identi.ca (charlesschulz) and on Twitter (ch_s). Note that I’m much more often on identi.ca than on Twitter. Today, I would like to send everyone reading this blog a very special invitation. The first LibreOffice Conference will take place in Paris, from the 12th to the 15th of October. These will be great days to meet face to face and to exchange though conferences and informal, quick talks about several topics related to LibreOffice development, distribution and design. Also, and this is important: our call for papers is open but it will close by the end of July, so feel free to submit your proposal now. I would like to unveil somewhat what we have in store for this event.




  • Education

    • How to teach the next generation of open source with Scratch
      Do you ever wish your kids would do something besides play video games on the computer? What if you could get a head start teaching them to be the next generation of open source developers?

      Computers are increasingly easy to use, but programming is far more complex--and less accessible. For many of us who now have small children, programming began with BASIC programs on computers that forced you to make them do something by offering nothing but a command line.




  • Business



      Semi-Open Source

      • EnterpriseDB Extends PostgreSQL for Itanium
        Enterprise giant Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) has been warning its users this year that it plans to abandon the Intel Itanium architecture that powers HP's (NYSE: HPQ) Unix operating system. While Oracle isn't interested in supporting Itanium, others are.

        EnterpriseDB today announced Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.0, which provides Oracle compatibility and now supportS HP-UX on Itanium.








Leftovers

  • Facebook, Google+, and Centralized Proprietary Monocultures
    This week, Google released Google+, which is basically a social network that's a lot like Facebook, but run by Google instead of Facebook. The big deal here is that it's a lot easier to modify privacy settings and configure what information to post to which group(s) ("Circle(s)" in Google+-speak) of contacts. This shows that Google, at least on the surface, takes privacy a lot more seriously than Facebook. I say this because whenever a controversial privacy settings change occurs on Facebook, it's usually in the direction of less privacy, and only when the users get outraged does Facebook do anything at all (and it's usually insignificant), because the truth is that Facebook's business is built upon selling users' data to companies for marketing, advertising, etc. I've also gotten annoyed with Facebook's chat and constant UI changes that occur for no good reason, so I'm a little more drawn in that sense to Google+ because it integrates Google Chat (which I know works), and all of Google's applications have kept pretty much constant, simple UIs over the years. Please note that I haven't actually used Google+, though I have an invitation (it seems like Google can't process that invitation right now); any statements that make it seem like I've used it are actually just my hopes and expectations.


  • Texas Gov. Rick Perry's National Day of Divisiveness
    Texas Governor Rick Perry plans to host a "National Day of Prayer and Fasting" on Saturday, August 6 at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, in an event is billed as a "non-denominational, apolitical Christian prayer meeting." Despite the "apolitical" label, the event has some political undertones, particularly since Perry has been flirting with a run for the Republican presidential nomination and currently serves as chair of the Republican Governors Association. Perry has invited the other 49 U.S. state governors to the event. The portrayal of the event as a "nondenominational" ceremony is a misnomer, too, since the event will be exclusively Christian, and no other belief systems will be represented.


  • Walker Plans to Celebrate Budget Bill with Felon Until Union Broadcasts Rendezvous
    Governor Scott Walker will sign the controversial state budget bill into law June 26. He was originally scheduled to sign his budget at Badger Sheet Metal Works, a private business operated by a man with six felony tax convictions, in Green Bay, at 2 p.m. on Sunday. However, now that Gregory A. DeCaster's tax troubles have been publicized, the governor's office has announced a new location for the ceremony: Fox Valley Metal Tech, also in Green Bay.

    "While Mr. DeCaster has served his time in jail and paid his debt to society, it is fitting that the governor would choose to sign this budget at a business owned by someone who was once convicted of the felony of tax evasion," said Marc Norberg, a Wisconsin native and assistant to the general president of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association.

    Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch said something quite similar earlier in the day when he told WisPolitics, "Green Bay, and certainly the company that we're going to, reflects really what this budget and what Gov. Walker's first term here is all about."


  • Supreme Court spat got physical


  • Health

    • Insurers' Bait and Switch
      More and more Americans are falling victim to one of the most insidious bait-and-switch schemes in U.S. history. As they do, health insurance executives and company shareholders are getting richer and richer. This industry-wide plot explains how health insurers have been able to reap record profits during the recent recession as the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured continue to swell.

      It also explains why the insurance industry and its allies are pulling out all the stops to kill a measure in the California legislature that could protect state residents from losing their homes and being forced into bankruptcy if they get seriously sick or injured.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Largely Symbolic: New Jersey Senate Bans Fracking
      While the ban is cause for celebration for those truly in favor of a "clean energy future," it is largely symbolic because only a tiny sliver of the Marcellus Shale actually touches the state. There is actually some truth to the statement made by Energy in Depth's Chris Tucker, who stated that the ban, by-and-large, is "irrelevant."


    • What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?
      Fukushima has been a wake up call about the dangers of nuclear power, and some countries are heeding the information. But it seems the U.S. is still sleeping when it comes to this issue. Light-to-absent coverage of TEPCO's struggles to bring Fukushima under control, legislators who insist on acting favorably towards the nuclear power industry despite the deteriorated state of our current reactor fleet and an ineffective Nuclear Regulatory Commission have all contributed to a bad combination of a dangerous situation and a complacent American public on this issue.






  • Finance

    • Insurers Spend Big Fighting Regulations, Paying CEOs Huge Salaries
      Nowhere are health insurers working harder to thwart reforms that could save consumers billions of dollars than in California. One measure they are especially determined to kill is a bill that would give state regulators the authority to reject rate increases that are excessive or discriminatory.

      The California Assembly passed a bill to do just that earlier this month over the intense opposition of insurers, including the state's biggest supposedly nonprofit health plans: Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente.


    • Darrell Issa's fishy dealings should (but won't) be investigated by his own House committee
      Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), one of the richest members of Congress and the chairman of the House Oversight Committee who promised a hearing a day after the November 2010 elections, has always been slimy little creature who refuses to accept responsibility for his own misbehavior, everything from car theft to lying about his military history.


    • Goldman Sachs’s Connections With Central Banks Reach Deeper After Hiring
      The fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets said yesterday it hired Bank of England economist Andrew Benito after recruiting Huw Pill from the European Central Bank in May and Naohiko Baba from the Bank of Japan in January. Moving in the other direction, Ben Broadbent, Goldman Sachs’s ex-chief U.K. economist, started at the Bank of England last month. Former vice chairman Mario Draghi will take up the presidency of the ECB in November.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • RIAA: LulzSec & Anonymous Show Why We Need PROTECT IP
        Ah, the RIAA will apparently stoop to pretty much any old ridiculous argument to get PROTECT IP passed, I guess. The RIAA's Mitch Glazier has written a typically ridiculous blog post defending PROTECT IP. Most of it tries (and fails) to counter the very credible claims of folks like Paul Vixie (who knows this stuff) that PROTECT IP (1) won't work and (2) will break the internet and cause tremendous collateral damage. The arguments against Vixie pretty much amount to quoting people, who have known associations with those backing PROTECT IP, saying that "eh, things won't be that bad, and we can minimize unintended consequences."








Reader's Picks





Clip of the Day



Greenpeace - The Darkside.mp4



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part III - Women Failing Women to Help Violent Americans From Microsoft
Summed up, SRA will gladly prioritise the "legal industry" over women strangled, raped etc
The World Gets Smaller, as Does Its Real Economy ('Human Resources') and So-called 'Natural Resources' (What Humans Call the Planet)
Don't talk about "AI"
Converting FOSDEM Talk on Software Patents in Europe Into Formats That Work for "FOS" and Don't Have Software Patent Traps
transcoded version of the video
Biggest "AI Companies" (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft) Borrowed (Additional Debt) About $100,000,000,000 in a Year
Who will be held accountable for all this?
In 2009 Microsoft Was Valued at ~150 Billion Dollars, Now They Tell Us Microsoft Lost ~1,000 Billion Dollars in Value. Does That Make Sense?
Or Microsoft lost 700 billion dollars in "value" in less than two weeks
Microsoft Stock Crashed When Alleged Vista 11 Numbers Disclosed
And last summer Microsoft indicated that it had lost 400 million Windows users
It's Not About Speed, It's About the Message (or Its Depth)
Better to write news than to just link to news if there's commentary that the news may merit
 
Reddit as a Hive of Trolls, Social Control Media Curated (Many Voices Censored and Banned) by Marketing Firm of GAFAM
Typical Reddit
Links 07/02/2026: More White House Racism, "Europe Accuses TikTok of Addictive Design"
Links for the day
Silent Mass Layoffs: It's Not the Revolution, It's the Loophole and the Hack ("Low Performers" or "Underperformers")
Layoffs by another approach
Mark Shuttleworth (MS) Pays Salaries to Microsoft (MS) Employees
Canonical selling Microsoft
Links 07/02/2026: Windows TCO Rising, Lousy Patents Invalided
Links for the day
Microsoft Leadership: Stop Taxing Us, Tax Only Poor People
Does Microsoft create jobs?
In Case You've Missed It (ICYMI), Google's Debt More Than Doubled in a Year
Wait till it "monetises" billions of GMail users with slop
PIPs and Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Still Going on, It's "Forever Layoffs" (to Skirt the WARN Act)
American workers out
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 06, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 06, 2026
Stressful Times for Team Campinos ("Alicante Mafia") at Europe's Second-Largest Institution
Keep pushing
Growing Discrimination in the European Patent Office (EPO)
it's a race to the bottom, basically
Google News Drowning in (or Actively Promoting) Slopfarms Again
LLM slop is a nuisance
Gemini Links 07/02/2026: "Choosing a License for Literary Work" and "Social Media Is Not Social Networking (Anymore)"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Git and Email Patches; MNT Pocket Reform
Links for the day
Geminispace Net Growth in 2026 About a Capsule a Day
A pace like this means net gain of ~300 per year, i.e. about the same as last year
Benjamin Henrion Warned About the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Court (UPC) in FOSDEM 2026
Listen to Benjamin Henrion
Economies Crashing Not Because of Slop Improving 'Efficiency' (That's a False Excuse) and 'Expensive' (Read: Qualified) Workers Discarded in Race to the Bottom
Actual cocaine addicts are pushing out moral people
IBM's CEO Speaks of Layoffs, Resorts to Mythical (False) Excuses
This has nothing to do with slop
Links 06/02/2026: Voter Intimidation and Press Shutdowns in US, Web Traffic Warped by LLM Sludge
Links for the day
Does Linux Torvalds Regret Having Dinners With Bill 'Russian Girls' Gates?
See, the rules that govern the Linux Foundation and its big sponsors aren't the same rules that apply to all of us
IBM: Cheapening Code, Cheapening Staff, Cheapening Everything
IBM's management runs IBM like it's a local branch of McDonald's. IBM is a junk company with morbid innards.
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in One of the World's Largest Nations
Democratic Republic Of The Congo
Linux Foundation Operative Says We and Our Software All "Owe an Enormous Debt of Gratitude" to a Software Patents Reinforcer
The only true solution is to entirely get rid of all software patents
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part IV - EPO Can Get Away With Murders, Suicide Clusters, and Systematic and Prolonged Bullying by 'Team Campinos' ("Alicante Mafia" as Insiders Call It)
Nobody in the Council or the EU/EC/EP gives a damn as long as laws are broken to fabricate 'growth'
Jeff Bezos Isn't Just Killing the Washington Post, He's Killing Thousands of News Sites/Newsrooms (in Dozens of Languages) That Rely on It for Many Decades Already
Not just slopfarms; even the Ukraine-based reporters are culled by Bezos, who's looking to please the dictators of the world
Central Staff Committee Confronted António Campinos for Giving His Cocaine-Addicted Friend Over 100,000 Euros to Do Nothing, Just Pretend to be Ill, While Cutting the Salaries of Everybody Else
"On the agenda: Amicale framework & Financial assistance for courses"
How to Win Lawsuits in 5 Simple Steps
Keep issuing threats every week and send 60 kilograms of legal papers to the target
More Than 99% of "AI" Companies Aren't AI, They're Pure BS
We need to discard those stupid debates about "AI" and reject media that gets paid to participate in such overt narrative control (manipulation like The Register MS)
AI Used to Save Lives, Now "AI" is a Grifting Scheme That Burns the Planet and Will Crash the Economy
What the media calls "AI" (it gets paid to call it that) is the same stuff that could instead be dubbed "algorithms"
Living in Freedom When 'False Flag Operations' Like EFF Get Captured by Billionaires to Take Freedom Away
There are many ways to think of Software Freedom
Amutable is a Microsoft Siege Against Freedom in GNU/Linux, Just Like the People Who Brought You 'Secure Boot' Controlled by Microsoft
Do whatever is possible to avoid Amutable and its "products"
Growing Focus on Publication
Over the past ~10 days we always served more than a million Web hits per day
"Going to be a large number of Microsoft layoffs announced soon"
Everybody knows a giant wave of layoffs is coming Microsoft's way
End of the 'GPU Bubble' and NVIDIA Finally Admits It Won't Bail Out Microsoft OpenAI Anymore
circular financing (financial/accounting fraud)
Corrupt Media Won't Hold Accountable Rich People for Role in Pedophilia
Journalistic misconduct or malpractice is a real thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 05, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, February 05, 2026
EPO Management ("Alicante Mafia") Not Properly Sharing Information on Scale of Strikes by EPO Staff
disproportionate (double) deductions in salaries against people who participate in strikes, which are protected by law
Gemini Links 06/02/2026: Slop/Microslop, Home Assistant, and Valid Ex Commands
Links for the day
Blackmail evidence: Debian social engineering exposed in ClueCon 2024 talk on politics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bitcoin crash: opportunity or the end game?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Changes at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
SRA is basically a waste of money
Claims That IBM Will Lay Off 20% (or 15%) of Its Workforce This Year Unless It Finds a Way to Push Them All Out by Threats, Shame, Guilt
Where are the articles about IBM layoffs?
IBM Isn't a Serious Company Anymore, It's a Ponzi Scheme Operated by a Clique and It Misuses Companies It Acquires to Prop Up or Legitimise the Scheme
IBM seems like it's nothing but a "Scheme"
Google News Drowning in Slop About "Linux" (Slopfarms Galore)
Google should know better than to link to any of these slopfarms, but today's Google is itself a pusher of slop
Links 05/02/2026: EU Commission Gutting Net Neutrality
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/02/2026: NixOS Books and Monochrome Emojis
Links for the day
Links 05/02/2026: Canadian Government Uses US LLMs to Override Expert Opinions, NVIDIA Troubles Due to Enablement of Mass Plagiarism ('Piracy') Misleadingly Obscured as "Hey Hi"
Links for the day
Explaining the Letter From JUDGE SYKES FRIXOU, Threatening Me Around the Time GNOME's Nat Friedman Lost His CEO Job at Microsoft GitHub and His Best Friend Got Arrested for Strangulation
this letter (with annotation) is critical
Linuxiac Not Rehabilitated, It's Still Full of LLM Slop (Part of a Trend)
The Web as a resource/source of information is perishing
"Sponsored by Azul" to Write Fake 'Article' About Azul, Quoting Azul Itself
The "journalism" industry [sic] became so utterly corrupt
JuristGate is for sale: three billion Swiss francs for a domain name
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Like Microsoft and IBM, the 'Alicante Mafia'-Governed EPO Does PIPs Nowadays (at the EPO, It's "Professional Incompetence Procedure")
So "PIPs" are definitely in the EPO and we saw letters sent to staff
Time for Change, More New Articles, Less Curation
The oligarchy wants to gut the real press and replace media with slop and social control media (or social control media with slop in it, i.e. their own voices, mechanised)
Gemini Links 05/02/2026: Coercion, Antibiotics, and LVDT Project
Links for the day
Almost 1,600 EPO Employees Went on Strike Last Week
There is another strike coming 2.5 weeks from now
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 04, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 04, 2026