Summary: Michael Glasser, Tim, and Roy have a discussion about GNU/Linux and Mac OS X
TODAY’s show touches on a few bits of news but mostly focuses on comparisons between Apple’s operating systems and Linux-based operating systems. The guest in this episode is the Prescott Computer Guy, Michael Glasser, who advocates Apple products. Update: the show notes are now out.
Except for the theme song at the end, the show includes the self-named track by Takashi Kamide and “When You Are Near” by Warren Hood. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date. █
For six months I longed for the Motorola Atrix Android smartphone first announced in January. That was, until I got one and reality fell short of my utopian vision. Now I must beseech Motorola, telcos and Linux hackers alike to bring my dream to fruition.
Linux users who were invited to the Google Music Beta program back when it first launched quickly realized that the service offered little value to them. Why? Because, at the time, there was no native way to upload music. Today, after two-and-a-half-months, Google finally released an uploader designed just for Linux.
The uploader essentially works just like the Windows version, with one small tweak: OGG support. OGG files will automatically be transcoded to 320kbps MP3 files, which will inevitably make the already painfully slow uploading process last even longer — but hey, at least you can finally use that beta invite, right?
So you’ve gotten started with Linux, but you’re looking for a new flavour besides Ubuntu to try out. Instead of installing a bunch of them from scratch, web site Virtualboxes provides a bunch of free Virtualbox images for you to test out, no installation required.
Slackware Linux is one of the most powerful distributions available. But its power comes at a price. It’s far less user-friendly than many other distributions. In fact, only Gentoo tops Slackware for difficulty. But if you avoid Slackware for those reasons, you’ll miss out in a number of ways. Here are 10 of them.
This page of screenshots accompanies DeviceGuru’s initial review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. The list below provides a handy index of the tour’s 200+ screenshots, which are grouped by function or application. Watch for the publication of our detailed Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Review in the next week or so, for the complete story behind these pictures.
The toolbar offers a variety of services, including a search box, a way to use bookmarks stored on a server, and a measurement of a Web site’s PageRank–a score Google gives that measures its influence in Google search results. But Google has chosen to do in the Firefox version.
It’s curious how the recent OpenOffice saga has been downplayed by much of the media covering technology, but it seems pretty important to me. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are the two primary office suites available today that are both free and complete. There are others, too, but OpenOffice is the dominant suite, and LibreOffice is a fork of the OpenOffice code.
The fork, which is a common phenomenon in open-source projects, was expected by many to supersede OpenOffice, but two things happened. First Oracle, who owned OpenOffice as part of the Sun takeover, wasn’t interested in maintaining what is essentially a labor of love, so it gave the whole thing to the Apache Foundation. Then this week IBM decided it wanted OpenOffice to stick around, so it handed over its entire Lotus Symphony Suite to the group and told them to use whatever they wanted.
Bernhard is founder and Executive Director of Intevation GmbH, a company with exclusively Free Software products and services since 1999. He played a crucial role in the establishment of FSFE as one of its founders, and architect of the original German team. Beside that he participated in setting up three important Free Software organisations: FreeGIS.org, FFII, and FossGIS.
Since the first pilot in 2009, the FTA programme [5] has expanded from 3 to 13 course modules, including subjects such as “The concepts of Free Software and Open Standards”, “GNU/Linux systems”, “Economic Aspects of Free Software”, “Software Architecture” and many others. According to the spirit of the Free Software movement, all FTA learning materials [6] are released under copyleft licenses.
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz said there should be a national data breach notification standard Thursday but declined to take a position on the SAFE Data Act that passed a House subcommittee Wednesday.
Currently, 47 states have laws that require companies to notify consumers if their private data is breached, but there is no national standard.
“You don’t want a crazy quilt patchwork of statutes even if most of them, or the vast majority of them, are reasonable,” Leibowitz said at a forum on privacy at the Brookings Institution on Thursday.
Google is clearly making some execution mistakes in implementing this policy, such as deleting the accounts of people with single-word legal names that merely look like handles. I agree these mistakes need correction and that Google needs to have a more responsive appeals process, but I think over-focusing on mistakes and edge cases obscures the most interesting question: is Google right? Will a no-handles policy produce a social network with higher value to more users than a network with handles?
The CRTC’s usage based billing oral hearing concluded yesterday with a final decision expected some time in the fall. This long post focuses on the shift in CRTC thinking on the state of broadband competition in Canada but wonders whether it comes too late to make a difference. For many years, the CRTC has steadfastly maintained that the Canadian ISP market is competitive. For example, in the net neutrality decision from October 2009 it stated:
Consistent with the current regulatory approach, under which the Commission has granted forbearance for retail Internet services, primary ISPs may continue to apply ITMPs to retail Internet services as they consider appropriate, with no requirement for prior Commission approval. This approach remains valid due in part to the large number of existing ISPs. A change in the approach would amount to interference with market forces and would result in inefficient regulation, which is contrary to the Policy Direction.
Over the past few weeks, a growing number of Canadian universities have announced plans to opt-out of the Access Copyright interim tariff effective September 1, 2011 (the University of Calgary’s Gauntlet has an excellent article on the issue). Those universities join many others that opted-out from the start of the year. While many universities are moving on to alternative licensing approaches, the universities and Access Copyright continue to battle over the prospect of transactional (or pay-per-use) licensing which the universities want and Access Copyright refuses to grant. The AUCC filed its response on the issue earlier this week, which included some notable correspondence between Access Copyright and academic publishers.
Act on ACTA refers to a European Parliament Trade Committee commissioned study on ACTA (pdf). The study highlights problematic aspects of ACTA and makes recommendations (see below). According to the study, “unconditional consent would be an inappropriate response”, and “There does not therefore appear to be any immediate benefit from ACTA for EU citizens”. The study confirms ACTA goes beyond current EU legislation. It recommends asking the European Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA.
Resumen: El cartel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel] formando en contra de Linux y otros nuevos actores perturbadores está siendo notado y muchas más patentes de software están muriendo en los EE.UU.
“Buen punto de partida para evitar que las cosas del diablo”, nos dice un lector que se enteró de la caída de las patentes de software, al menos la manera como son percibidas. Para aquellos que no han seguido las noticias en este sector, Charles de The Guardian escribió un artículo muy influyente que ayudó a cambiar la actitud del público hacia las patentes de software (más sobre esto más adelante cuando la situación empeora en los EE.UU. [1[http://www.hardwarezone.com/tech-news/view/194982], 2[http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/36677/Mobile-developers-shunning-US-market-in-fear-of-lawsuits]]). Se trata de los daños de las patentes de software a la economía de los EE.UU.. Lodsys ataques adicionales (ahora en contra de Best Buy y Adidas[http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20070645-264/lodsys-patent-attack-now-targets-best-buy-adidas/]) más motivan a este sentimiento y “Las Patentes de Software: La Muerte del Sueño Americano[http://www.muktware.com/hacksheet/1909]” es un título que se explica por sí mismo.
“Los desarrolladores remueven sus aplicaciones de las tiendas de EE.UU., por temor a demandas por patentes[http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/07/18/developers-remove-apps-from-us-store-fearing-patent-lawsuits/]“, dice otro titular e incluso la terminología se ha vuelto loca cuando el grupo de O’Reilly dice que “La propiedad intelectual se ha vuelto loca[http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/intellectual-property-patent-trolls.html]“. Se trata de las patentes:
Las patentes y los derechos de autor en los EE.UU. se derivan de la Constitución, y es para un propósito específico: “Promover el progreso de la ciencia y las artes útiles” (artículo I, sección 8). Si los desarrolladores de aplicaciones están siendo expulsados del mercado de los EE.UU. por el control de las patentes, la ley de patentes no está cumpliendo con su objetivo constitucional, de hecho, se está obligando a “la ciencia y las artes útiles” tengán lugar en otra parte. Ese es un problema que debe abordarse, sobre todo en un momento en la industria del software es una de las pocas áreas prósperas de la economía de los EE.UU., y cuando nuevas empresas (y en mi libro, que incluye a los desarrolladores independientes) en coche la mayor parte de las posibilidades de empleo crecimiento de la economía.
No veo ningún alivio proveniente del sistema de patentes tal como existe actualmente. La gran pregunta es si el software debe ser patentable en absoluto. Como Nat Torkington (@mosquito) ha informado, el Parlamento de Nueva Zelanda tiene un proyecto de ley de que prohibirá de las patentes de software, a pesar de la presión de los gigantes del software en los EE.UU. y en otros lugares. Sin embargo, en este punto, cambios significativos en EE.UU. la ley de patentes pertenecen al reino de la agradable fantasía. Por mucho que me gustaría ver que suceda, no me puedo imaginar el Congreso de pie a una avalancha de grupos de presión pagado por algunas de las corporaciones más grandes en los EE.UU.
Sin duda, se hace evidente que los EE.UU. se está perjudicando a sí mismo por estar de acuerdo con leyes tan absurdas.
“El mercado de las patentes de software no está muerto. En efecto, como se muestra en transacciones recientes, incluyendo la principesca suma ($ 4,5 millones) la oferta de la cartera de Nortel por parte de Microsoft, Apple, y otros, es actuando de manera muy saludable. Pero podría ser viniendo abajo con algo serio. “Manténgase en sintonía”, escribe Rob Tiller en relación con otras noticias [http://opensource.com/law/11/7/bilskis-growing-and-smacking-down-some-bad-software-patents]. Para citar a:
Cuando la Corte Suprema se negó a hablar de las patentes de software en el caso Bilski, hubo llanto y crujir de dientes en el mundo del software libre. La nueva prueba de Bilski de la materia patentable parecía en un principio como el status quo de la patentabilidad del software. Pero, siendo el tipo de persona que intenta proteger a las nubes un rayo de luz posible, señaló la posibilidad de que los tribunales y la Junta de Apelaciones e Interferencias de Patentes sería leer la prueba de invalidar algunas patentes de software. Luego note que había una serie de decisiones tempranas encontrando software unpatentable.
Esta tendencia continúa en la dirección correcta. Un nuevo estudio del primer año completo de las decisiones de aplicación de software Bilski confirma que la dirección de la jurisprudencia es hacia la búsqueda de que el software no es materia patentable. El estudio realizado por Robert Greene estrellas y Michelle K. Holoubek se titula El lado práctico de la § 101: Un año después de Bilski: ¿Cómo se toma la decisión de ser interpretado por el BPAI, Juzgados de Distrito y de Circuito Federal. [PDF] que contiene un breve resumen de las decisiones 182 de la BPAI, 6 decisiones corte del distrito federal, y 3 del Circuito Federal. La mayoría de los software y el distrito judicial BPAI preocupación las decisiones. Y muchas de esas decisiones software se aplican Bilski al ver que el tema es demasiado abstracto para ser patentado.
Ya hemos cubierto que las patentes de software pierden la vida por fallos Bilski (a varios niveles), incluso hace años [http://techrights.org/2009/07/11/in-re-bilski-vs-software-patent/]. Es bueno saber que esto está todavía en curso. Desde Tiller mencionó el cártel formado en torno a la cartera de Nortel vale la pena tomar nota de lo que el profesor Webbink tenía que decir:
Hace dos semanas, preguntamos por qué la venta de patentes de Nortel con Microsoft, Apple, y otros no estaba recibiendo el escrutinio de la Comisión Federal de Comercio y/o el Departamento de Justicia (véase, Nortel Venta de Patentes – ¿Por qué no lo tiene el esscrutinio de la FTC/DOJ) . Bueno, no tenemos que hacer esa pregunta nunca más. Y la preocupación del gobierno no es sólo en los EE.UU., Canadá también está investigando la venta.
Como hemos señalado este mes, los canadienses [http://techrights.org/2011/07/07/christian-paradis-on-nortel-sale/] y los reguladores de EE.UU. [http://techrights.org/2011/07/07/christian-paradis-on-nortel-sale/] analizaron la oferta y los informes acerca de que sea aprobado [http://techrights.org/2011/07/15/liaising-vs-all-software-patents_es/] no es del todo buena. Tal vez la oposición a la oferta proviene de múltiples niveles. Los reguladores están todavía al acecho [http://www.mobiledia.com/news/97774.html]. “Tiene que haber informado al Federal CIO que debe haber investigaciones en el sistema de patentes y deben ser informados acerca de los problemas de las empresas que está demandando sobre las patentes y las patentes de software tan pronto como sea posible debe ser detenido y este tipo puede ayudar”, dice una persona. Un saliente CIO Federal por su parte advierte de “un cartel de TI[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218466/Outgoing_federal_CIO_warns_of_an_IT_cartel_?taxonomyId=13]“, sobre la base de este artículo en relación con un problema similar:
En un amplio debate del viernes con asesores científico del presidente Barack Obama, Vivek Kundra CIO Federal advirtió de los peligros del acceso de datos abierta y se quejó de “un cartel de TI” de los vendedores.
También cree que los EE.UU. puede operar con un solo pocos centros de datos.
Kundra, quien deja su puesto de trabajo a mediados de agosto, ofrece una visión caleidoscópica de sus preocupaciones sobre los programas federales de TI en una comparecencia ante el Presidente del Consejo de Asesores en Ciencia y Tecnología.
En particular, Kundra está preocupado por el “efecto de mosaico,” la consecuencia involuntaria de gobierno el intercambio de datos, donde los conjuntos de datos se combinan en forma de capas que pueden eliminar la privacidad y plantean amenazas a la seguridad.
¿Por qué no ir primero tras los cárteles de patentes? Estos sin duda existen. ¿Y por qué el gobernantes, mientras que esta en él gobierno, parece que no puede perseguir a Microsoft por su evasión de impuestos? Incluso el gobierno indio ha hecho algo al respecto y un lector nos dio algunos enlaces sobre el tema [1[http://www.taxindiaonline.com/RC2/inside2.php3?filename=bnews_detail.php3&newsid=7095], 2[http://www.nishithdesai.com/New_Hotline/Tax/TAX%20HOTLINE_Nov1210.htm]], y agregó: “¿Cómo se evita Microsoft India a través de los impuestos” Gracemac “: Tribunal goo.gl/upsbD y lo toma nota de que: goo.gl/NRn3t ”
Hemos escrito sobre la evasión de impuestos por Microsoft muchas veces antes[http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_-_Tax].
Echa un vistazo a este nuevo artículo[http://kluwercopyrightblog.com/2011/07/12/an-american-perspective-on-the-sas-v-wpl-case/], que dice: Los idiomas son la programación, la funcionalidad del programa, y las interfaces de los datos objeto de protección merecen el derecho de autor o no? Estas preguntas fueron muy polémicos en los Estados Unidos durante la década de 1980 a mediados de 1990. Los demandantes en varios casos, argumentarón que debido a que estos eran parte de la “estructura, secuencia y la organización” (SSO) de los programas, deben estar dentro del alcance de la protección de los derechos de autor otorga a los programas como “obras literarias.” La UE está ahora frente a estos mismas preguntas en el caso de SAS Institute v. Mundo de Programación Ltd., que está pendiente ante el Tribunal de Justicia Europeo (TJE). ”
Gracias a Carlo Piana [http://twitter.com/carlopiana/status/92953248205516800] por detectar esto y señalando: “Pensar que #swpats son una pesadilla? Si SAS/World Progr. se vuelve peor, tendremos SWpats sin a pre-examen. http://ur1.ca/4qarq ACT NOW: RT “!
La amenaza no sólo se va, ¿verdad? Pero poco a poco vamos ganando esta lucha. Más sobre este tema en el próximo post … █
The – we suppose we have to say “smartbook”, the moniker once given to ARM-based netbooks but sadly much out of favour in these tablet-centric times – will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, according to company chairman JT Wang, speaking this week in Asia, Digitimes reports.
It’s rather obvious that GNU/Linux is not that other OS but people seem to feel an OS that is not that other OS is somehow faulty. He wrote that it took him a year to get his system working as he wanted. It took me installation time. I think I installed five machines from scratch in two evenings. It was my first installation and the machines were ancient Pentium Pros. In 2000, they were slow, but I did not notice any of the problems the authour felt were important:
* NO CRASHES – Amen. We both loved that. That’s what drove me to GNU/Linux and it was like entering the Garden of Eden. This feature alone justified the bit of adjustment required and returned blessing many-fold.
* graphics – mine worked immediately with two lines changed in X11F86.conf (or something like that). His was faulty on a newer motherboard.
* fonts – that other OS was using 800×600. GNU/Linux could do 1024×768 if I recall. He thought the fonts were “ugly”. I have no idea what he meant. Mine were fine.
It will be very interesting to see the Chrome browser and the Lion OS march forward together, partly because Lion incorporates a number of ideas built into Google’s Chrome OS, which features the Chrome browser as its desktop interface. We covered this mimicry effort from Apple, where Lion allows for Chrome OS-like cloud-based treatment of data and applications here.
As Google officials noted when announcing Chrome OS: “In Chrome OS, every application is a web application. Users don’t have to install applications. All data in Chrome OS is in the cloud.”
IBM to contribute Symphony, we look at changes in Ubuntu 11.10, Zuckerberg closes off Google+ account so he can’t be tracked and Fab reviews the Motorola Xoom tablet.
As part of the HID (Human Interface Device) pull for the mainline 3.1 kernel is a Nintendo Wii Remote driver that makes it possible to use the Wiimote as an input device “out of the box” on future versions of Linux. There’s also been additions to the sysfs interface for setting and reading the four LED states of the Wiimote, which can be used for other purposes.
After not being updated for a few mainline kernel release cycles, the real-time (RT) Linux kernel has been updated against the Linux 3.0 kernel release.
Thomas Gleixner announced the Linux 3.0-rt1 kernel on the kernel mailing list yesterday, which integrates the RT patch-set atop the vanilla kernel.
One thing I like about these open source program is that they don’t try to do everything. For example nowadays with Photoshop you can actually do pretty much all your design and illustration in there. But why is that? I personally prefer tools that does one thing, and one thing well. I guess that was the idea behind all the tools of the Adobe creative suite but the goal got lost in translation and now every tools try to do everything.
The gimp is a great example of a tool that does what it does, and well! It’s a really solid image retouching and photo editing software. It a really mature open source project with a huge community of users and developer. It’s intelligently built and can be extended with Scheme or python script!
The game features 54 tracks in 8 sceneries, 7 cars and a Track Editor.
It focuses on closed rally tracks with possible stunt elements (jumps, loops, pipes).
The game and editor both run on Windows and Linux. The Windows installer has all tracks included.
Ahead of the Berlin Desktop Summit, several GNOME and KDE developers have begun a mailing list battle…over a name. In particular, that with GNOME 3.0 their control panel areas is called “System Settings”, which is precisely what the KDE developers call their system control area too.
Breakin is a distribution to run diagnostics on systems to find hardware issues or component failures. Put together by Advanced Clustering Technologies, Breakin is a Linux-based live CD that tests memory, the CPU, hard drives, (supported) temperature sensors, and looks for any Machine Check Exception (MCE) errors generated during the tests.
Last week I found out some interesting information when I took an initial look at two of the most popular RHEL-based Linux distributions, CentOS and Scientific Linux (SL). The next obvious step is to install the two, side by side, and continue this comparison. To be clear, I’m not running benchmarks of any sort on the two operating systems. I have no doubt that they will perform consistently enough to make that exercise un-interesting. What I’m looking for is what makes these distributions different, and anything that would make me particularly like or dislike one of these distributions.
Sergey “Shnatsel” Davidoff posted today that Alpha testing has just been revolutionized. Sounds exciting, huh? It really is. Glimpse allows users to test new or unstable updates without risk of breaking their current installs.
I believe that if we want an open society based around principles of equality of opportunity, social justice and free expression, we need to build it on technologies which are themselves ‘open’, and that this is the only way to encourage a diverse online culture that allows all voices to be heard.
But even if you agree with me, deciding what we mean by ‘open’ is far from straightforward:
Does it mean an internet built around the end-to-end principle, where any connected computer can exchange data with any other computer and the network itself is unaware of the ‘meaning’ of the bits exchanged?
I’m happy to announce the succesful GNU Health Academia at the United Nations University, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during the last week of June. Digg this article
A steady stream of almost identical bills — bills to defund unions, require Photo ID’s make it harder for democratic constituencies to vote, bills to privatize schools and public assets, bills to enshrine corporate tax loopholes while crippling the government’s ability to raise revenue, bills to round up immigrants — were introduced and passed. An almost identical set of corporations benefited from these measures.
These corrupt state governments typically favor Microsoft and unregulated telco monopolies.
This [Eisenhower and Kennedy administration] “Keynesian Consensus” never questioned the fairness of the initial capital/labor split, but it at least offered workers a share of the fruits of future economic growth. … The upward redistribution has remained as hidden as possible. The forms it has taken [bonuses, bloated salaries, stock options, consulting fees, sumptuous conferences, palatial offices, original artwork, retinues of superfluous support staff, hunting lodges, private corporate dining rooms, golden parachute retirements] – defy exact categorization. Some would appear as profit, some as interest, some as dividends, realized capital gains, gigantic pension programs, retained earnings, or owners’ income, with the remainder deeply buried as “costs of doing business.”
[IV] and the other patent trolls (and burnt-out companies like Microsoft that are becoming a new kind of patent troll by default) have realised that it is not actual, on-the-ground, expensive innovation that counts, but the piece of paper from the USPTO assigning nominal “ownership” of that innovation. He and his company have learned how to game the system
There’s good evidence that Microsoft has used patents in the past to keep others out of markets.
“Aaron Swartz has been charged with many federal crimes for downloading many articles from JSTOR. The only wrongdoers here are JSTOR and the journals it hosts. They ought to make the articles available to the general public, with freedom to redistribute. And if they don’t do this voluntarily, society should impose it.”
[Aaron's intentions are unclear] Some folks, including the FBI, have made the claim he was planning to redistribute the data. Others have pointed to his past research analyzing influence in academic writing. … There are many, many research applications, including mine, that are still not possible with approved means of accessing data. This essentially means that if you want to understand the collaborative nature of a specific field or follow the trajectory of and idea across disciplines, a reference librarian can’t help you. Instead, you have to become a felon.
It is because of a wave of severe copyright enforcement legislation like ACTA, HADOPI, the Digital Economy Act, La Ley Sinde and the US PROTECT IP legislation that hackers are angry. Not just because the proposals are in themselves unjust and unfair, but because of the way that they are being brought in. … drawn up at secret meetings of key politicians and representatives of powerful industries.
That’s funny but the Aaron Swartz case and various attacks on network and software freedom show that real publishers are willing to eliminate freedom of speech and put opponents in jail to maintain their position. Scientists should only do peer review for strictly open access journals which allow free redistribution of articles by the public.
Passionate Linux advocate and local IT pioneer Manny Amador was found dead by authorities on Friday in his rented house in Cebu where he had relocated to work for open-source firm InfoWeapons.
The operating system used is Linux (exact distro is unknown) and the kit includes a 74W solar panel with charge controller, SMF battery and AC inverter.
The latest version of the Linux kernel, Linux 3.0, was pushed out last night, marking the end of the 2.6 kernel series.
As most people in the know understand, this does not represent a big sea change, since the new version numbering was really just a way to discontinue the 2.6 numbering, which would have been 2.6.40 for the kernel today, had not Linus Torvalds announced in late May that the time had come for a new numbering scheme.
There have also been improvements with how the kernel works with the still experimental Btrfs (B-tree file system) and the now standard ext4 file system. This, in turn, should lead to faster and, in the case of Btrfs, more reliable, file systems.
Think back to the last time you wanted to look at a newer, unstable release of some app. Was it easy to do? Or was it a compilation from source full of mystical errors, booting a newer OS release from a live CD while fighting black-screen-on-boot bugs, or a terribly slow and awkward virtual machine installation (which still didn’t make much sense because you couldn’t try it with your real data)? I’ll guess it was closer to the latter.
ufw, the Uncomplicated FireWall, is Ubuntu’s user-friendly, command line frontend to IPTables, the command line utility for managing Netfilter, the firewall application built into the Linux kernel. It is installed not just on Ubuntu, but also on all Ubuntu-based distributions. As simple to use as ufw is, a graphical interface is even better, especially for new users.
Recently at, we’ve been setting up several new instances of OpenERP for customers. Our server operating system of choice is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Installing OpenERP isn’t really that hard, but having seen several other “How Tos” online describing various methods where none seemed to do the whole thing in what I consider to be “the right way”, I thought I’d explain how we do it. There are a few forum posts that I’ve come across where the advice is just plain wrong too, so do be careful.
I really like the ability to quickly see route information with times and associated alerts for my home station, and with multiple instances of the Plasmoid I can keep track of several stations quite easily at a glance. The journey features are also indispensible.
Using it with Contour, which is getting support for random Plasmoids in addition to the Nepomuk-derived resources that are associated with an activity, is going to be very, very nice for someone like me who travels a fair amount: I’ll end up with one Activity on my tablet per trip with all my files, contacts and even transit information agregated in one place that I can switch to with a simple thumb swipe. Oh, yeah!
Plasma uses a lot of files from disk, particularly when using QML and scripted Plasmoids, but also whenever something requests an image from the theme. The Package class is responsible for the former functionality and the Theme class for the latter. We already cache the results of the Theme rendering, but not the results of looking around on disk for the requested image. There is essentially no caching at all for Package: every request for a file sends it looking on disk for it.
Due to KDE’s Plasma extensive use of the hard disk for Plasmoids and other activities, and thinking about KDE’s performance on mobile device, Aaron Seigo has been working to make the library consume less memory. He has achieved at least partial success in this effort.
It must have been my curiosity that drove me to exploring Arch Linux a few weeks ago. Its coming on a Linux Format DVD and a few kind words about its being a cutting edge distribution were enough to set me installing it into a VirtualBox virtual machine for a spot of investigation. In spite of warnings to the contrary, I took the path of least resistance with the installation even though I did look among the packages to see if I could select a desktop environment to be added as well. Not finding anything like GNOME in there, I left everything as defaulted and ended up with a command line interface as I suspected. The next job was to use the pacman command to add the extras that were needed to set in place a fully functioning desktop.
A while ago I received an invitation to view a video presentation giving 10 good reasons to review VectorLinux, and it’s true that I cannot recall to have read a review of it in years. This venerable distribution has been around for a long time but has also garnered some controversy around offering a paid for Deluxe version, introducing a paid for members club, and has been accused of not making source code freely available and thereby infringing on the GPL. It seems the club did not take off as I cannot find any mention of it anymore on the web site.
All that aside, VectorLinux 5.0.1 was my distribution of choice when returning to Linux in 2005, and a nice experience it was. Basically what I had been looking for was something like Mandrake Linux back in the late 90′s but based on Slackware, and Vector did just fit the bill.
It had and probably still has a very enthusiastic, helpful and polite community, and the forums were a great resource. I still remember the names and the fact that all these people are still actively involved as you can see in the credits during installation speaks volumes.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has released a unique Linux distribution designed to be a secure option for people, such as telecommuters, who need remote access to internal government and corporate networks from potentially insecure desktops.
Created by a collaboration between the DOD and the Air Force Research Laboratory, Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) can be booted from a CD or flash drive onto nearly any Intel-based PC or Mac, according to information posted on the project’s website.
In my last article, ArchBang: A small review I was a bit unfair to the distro. I did not want to see these distros (ArchBang and Arch Linux) for what they really are and I consider that to be very wrong. Therefore, I bring you a few thoughts on Arch Linux after playing around with it for about 2-3 days.
Arch is not your average, over-dressed, underpowered and over-popular Linux… as I so wrongly tried to see at as. Arch has the ability… no, gives you the power…
In a week peppered with massive exposure for Apple’s new OS X release Lion, open source converts will hopefully be more interested to read that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7 is now here.
Key “extra toppings” in this iteration centre on features that enhance the flexibility, security and stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 environments.
Red Hat has updated Enterprise Linux 5.7, which now includes several features from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.
The operating system processors supports deployments on Intel, AMD, POWER and IBM System z architectures.
Red Hat also offers a security framework based on the OpenSCAP Security Content Automation Protocol, including a library and set of utilities, giving a standardised approach to validating Red Hat Enterprise Linux security.
Oracle is dropping support for the leading open source operating systems — Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Suse Linux. The company made this announcement post its acquisition of Ksplice, the creator of innovative zero downtime update technology for Linux.
The main improvements to the latest release of RHEL series 5 are optimised virtualisation with KVM and Xen, as well as new and revised drivers. Slowly but surely, the series is nearing the end of the first and most active phase its lifecycle.
Shortly said, it’s not very impressive. But what are the options we have? Can we improve it? Well, there are some font settings that are available. See e.g. this blogpost about making fedora fonts look Ubuntu-like. Although I personally see that as making things worse, there are people who think otherwise. What I decided to do was to skim through most of the hinting options we have and decide for myself what looks best. And of course, provide my readers with some images so that they could decide for themselves.
Android Market now lets developers mount multiple Android Package (APK) files optimized for different devices and releases, instead of selling the optimized versions separately, says Google. Meanwhile, security firm Dasient reports that eight percent of Android apps are transmitting personal user data to unauthorized computers, and some Android malware is specializing in “drive-by downloads,” leaving users unaware of what’s being installed.
Toshiba’s Thrive is a decent, if unspectacular, entry to the trundling Android “Honeycomb” tablet market, according to this eWEEK review. However, the availability of multiple ports will please enterprise users, who might also like the removable battery better than did author Clint Boulton.
Torry Harris Business Solutions (P) Ltd., (THBS) is one among them who are actively embracing open source solutions and contributing to open source community.
“Being a player in the software services space, Torry Harris considers the open source software as a key enabler to cost-effective software solutions,” says Karthik T S, head of CoE SOA, Cloud and OSS, Torry Harris Business Solutions (P) Ltd. in an interaction with CIOL.
The technology industry in India has developed significantly in the last few years and India has evolved relatively well to the idea of open source software and adoption rates are remarkably good.
With many companies embracing for open-source technologies, the role of open source in IT has been changed in many companies.
During the first meeting of the Open Source Focus Group 2011, held in May at the ForumPA, I have been interviewed by the organizers to take stock of how Linux and Open Source are doing in the Italian public administrations.
The Eclipse Foundation has announced that, in collaboration with Oracle, it will be presenting a Java 7 Summit at this year’s European EclipseCon conference. EclipseCon Europe 2011 will take place from 2 to 4 November at the Forum am Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Mozilla has announced the release of version 6.0 of Thunderbird – its open source news and email client – into the Beta Channel. While a final release date for Thunderbird 6.0 has yet to be confirmed, a production version will likely follow shortly after Firefox 6.0, which is scheduled for 16 August.
Google has decided to drop support for Firefox for the Google Toolbar.
No, that’s not a bad thing at all. The toolbar is a relic of any older era. An era when Firefox Sync didn’t exist, an era when the awesomebar wasn’t truly aweseome.
Apparently however, Mozilla is seeing the Google Toolbar issue as being a potential barrier to adoption for Firefox 5.
Open source platform as a service (PaaS) platforms are one of the most exciting topics in the software industry nowadays. Following the $212M acquisition of Heroku by Salesforce.com, we’ve seen how in a matter of months, platforms like dotCloud of VMWare’s Cloud Foundry have emerged with complete PaaS suites based on popular open source technologies.
The value proposition behind this type of PaaS offer is very simple. These platforms will enable the foundation to host, manage, provision and scale solutions based on some of the most renowned open source technologies such as Ruby on Rails, Hadoop, MySQL among dozens of others.
As my colleague Derrick Harris suggests, the open-source cloud-computing project OpenStack has come a long way in just a year. But it’s only one of a growing number of open-source projects challenging expensive and proprietary incumbents across the IT industry. From storage to networking, open-source projects are emerging that offer viable alternatives.
Middleware servers used to be locked down to on-premise deployments, but that has now changed in the modern world of the cloud and Platform-as-a-Service.
Middleware servers used to be locked down to on-premise deployments, but that has now changed in the modern world of the cloud and Platform-as-a-Service.
EnterpriseDB is proud to introduce Postgres Enterprise Manager, the first enterprise-wide architected management tool for database professionals who are looking to efficiently manage and monitor Postgres servers throughout their organizations.
Oracle released VirtualBox 4.1 on July 19 with a slew of improvements ranging from usability improvements to rasing the ceiling for RAM to 1TB for 64-bit hosts. With 4.1, we decided to take VirtualBox out for a spin and see how it handles.
I’ve been using desktop virtualization since the early days, when VMware was a scrappy little company shipping a nearly unheard-of product — a desktop virtualization tool that would let you run Windows in VM in Linux. No more dual-booting for those folks who had to have access to Microsoft Word or QuickBooks but wanted to enjoy Linux as their desktop of choice.
The community has created the Zenoss Community Alliance (ZCA) which is a group of senior community members who are working to evolve Zenoss core and the community to better serve the needs of the community and the entire Zenoss ecosystem. To this end, the board of ZCA has provided the following agenda…
Business intelligence software maker, Jaspersoft, announced yesterday that it raised $11 million dollars in funding. The round was lead by existing investors Red Hat and SAP Ventures in addition to including newcomer Quest Software.
Jaspersoft caters to the enterprise with business intelligence products. It aims to centralize the way data is secured, delivered and analyzed.
We are fast approaching the seven-year anniversary of the release of Asterisk 1.0.0, which occurred at the first AstriCon in September, 2004. If you look back a little further, there were various “0.x” releases made as early as December of 1999… my, how time has flown!
We’ve had quite a few ‘major’ releases of Asterisk since then, including 1.2, 1.4, and most recently, 1.8. Each of these releases has included significant changes, and sometimes architecture-improving changes. Each of them has also included substantial new functionality for Asterisk users. Along the way, we’ve been asked by many people in the community when we are going to start working on (or release) “Asterisk 2.0.” Typically, we’ve responded by saying that will not happen until we can really justify such a significant change in the version number. Many open source projects have gone through similar progressions, and quite a number of them have in fact undergone complete (or nearly complete) rewrites resulting in new ‘major’ versions.
The Linux Foundation strives to provide relevant, useful guidance to organizations setting up their free and open source software (FOSS) compliance programs. Last month, we released a white paper titled “A Five Step Compliance Process for FOSS Identification and Review.”
A user called Greg Maxwell just uploaded a torrent with 18,592 scientific publications to the Pirate Bay, in what appears to be a protest directed both at the recent indictment of programmer Aaron Swartz for data theft as well as the scientific publishing model in general. All the documents of the 32-gigabyte torrent were taken from JSTOR, the academic database that’s at the center of the case against Swartz.
Google has published “a few more interesting statistics” from this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) event; in May, a statistical breakdown of accepted students was published. According to a post by Stephanie Taylor on the Google Open Source Blog, 202 (18.1%) of this year’s 1,115 student participants took part in last year’s programme. Of those students, 35 were also part of the 2009 programme, meaning that 3.1% are three year students.
The last four Java Specification Requests (JSRs) required for Java 7 have received the blessing of the Java Community Process (JCP). JSR 292, support for dynamically typed languages, JSR 334, small enhancements to Java language and JSR 203, more new I/O APIs (NIO.2), all passed with unanimous support in the final approval ballot. The only note of dissent was from Google in the final approval vote for JSR 336, the umbrella JSR which incorporates all the JSRs required for Java 7.
Earlier this month the United States Department of Justice admitted what many of us have suspected: we will not be seeing web accessibility regulations in the United States for commercial and public entities any time soon. Some time in 2013 at the earliest.
In July, 2010, the Department issued what is called an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making indicating that it was planning to issue regulations about web accessibility. The step after an “Advanced Notice” is a “Notice of Proposed Rule Making” (NPRM). After that is the rule itself. In its semi-annual regulatory agenda for Spring 2011, however, the DOJ called the NPRM for Web Accessibility a “Long Term Item” not expected until December, 2012. That’s well over a year from now. And it is close to two years after the public comment period on the Advanced Notice closed, and almost two and one half years after the DOJ announced the possible regulations in July, 2010.
But now, it seems that what we are doing is obsolete. In May 2010, Google set free the WebM format which was quickly adopted by major web browsers in addition to the largest online video provider, YouTube. 99% of what people watch on YouTube is now available in WebM and thus playable without Flash or any other unfree technologies. (Well, in addition to the fact that I have not posted any entry in many months, which meant that there was no itch anymore!)
Now is the time to move on to other projects (or to college life, who knows? ). By July 15th, TinyOgg entries URLs will be automatically redirected to the original video page and I will run the service for at least eighteen months more.
The U.S. government is aiming to pull the plug on hundreds of unneeded data centers over the next few years in an attempt to save taxpayers some hard-earned cash.
Recently I’ve had some discussion with colleagues about Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux in comparison to each other. Generally, I’ve found that most people agree that Mac OS X is more stable than Windows, and those that are familiar with Linux feel that it too is more stable than Windows. But after that being said, they come back with an apology for Microsoft stating that they (Microsoft) have to get Windows to run on fragmented hardware, whereas Apple standardizes the hardware and can therefore provide a more stable operating system for it, because there aren’t nearly as many variations in hardware configurations.
Julian Assange, John Pilger and Noam Chomsky have added their names to a new online petition in support of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks.
They join scores of other signatories, including Greens MP Adam Bandt, human rights lawyer Julian Burnside, Liberty Victoria President Spencer Zifcak and Overland Journal editor Jeff Sparrow. Overland released the online petition on July 21.
In Murdoch’s empire, talking points from above dictate the news delivered to the masses. Yet Rupert’s writers need only scan the front pages to discern how best to please their boss and get prominently featured. It’s a culture of corruption, as countless recent articles have documented, designed to maximise profits and political power.
But the media landscape is changing. Why should we ordinary citizens of the world keep paying for news, when we can get it online for free? But then, if media organisations are not making a profit, how can they afford to keep supplying news for free? This remains the great unresolved Catch-22 of the C21st Fourth Estate.
News Corporation is planning more firewalls to protect media content, despite the previous failure of such models at organisations like the New York Times. The UK Independent newspaper is now running an online survey asking readers to tell them how the paper can deal with the shifting media paradigm. The Economist prominently features an on-going debate on the subject.
Meanwhile, I suspect The Guardian’s apparent anti-WikiLeaks crusade may be motivated by a desire to “own the space” that WikiLeaks has staked out (namely, the safest place to publish leaks in this new globalized, digital world). Yes, all the big media organisations are scared, even Murdoch’s dreaded nemeses at The Guardian.
The Library of Congress says it was not responsible for categorizing a WikiLeaks-related book as “extremist” and that it has decided to removed that label.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street and the financial services lobby spent an eye-popping $1,400,000,000 between 2008 and 2010 to kill financial reform. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a whole unit dedicated to killing it. This year, the those same forces spent $156 million on lobbying in the first quarter. The big banks are fighting the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill with a stable of willing Congressmen and an army of lobbyists fanned out across a dozen federal agencies where Dodd-Frank rulemaking is underway.
Virginia’s governor is livid that his famously tight-fisted state could face higher borrowing costs to build roads and schools. Maryland has put off a $718 million bond sale for three days because of the current financial uncertainty. And California plans to borrow about $5 billion from private investors next week to ensure it can cover day-to-day operating expenses should the federal government default on its debt.
The House greeted the official opening Thursday of the new agency to protect consumers from financial abuse by voting to change its structure and reach.
Republican sponsors said they were trying to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau more transparent and accountable. Democrats said Republicans wanted to cripple the agency before it gets on its feet.
Although the financial firm reported a second-quarter loss of $558 million on Thursday, three crucial divisions posted significant gains, a promising sign that the turnaround plan Morgan Stanley embarked on after the financial crisis was taking hold.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formally opened for business on Thursday, much to the consternation of Congressional Republicans.
But as conservative lawmakers step up their attacks on the new regulator, aiming to undermine its structure and authority, champions of the bureau are pushing back.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia have charged four more bankers with Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group with conspiracy in what they say was a long-running scheme to help U.S. taxpayers hide as much as $4 billion in assets.
Prosecutors originally charged four people in the scheme in February, so the charges announced Thursday bring the total number of people charged up to eight. Charging documents filed in the case do not specify what bank the group worked for, but The Associated Press previously reported its identity.
Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate will vote Friday on the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, a bill backed by conservatives that he called “weak and senseless” and “perhaps some of the worst legislation in the history of this country.”
The Senate had been expected to vote Saturday on the House-passed bill, which has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled upper chamber. But Reid expedited the vote so the Senate can quickly move to a backup plan he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are hatching to raise the debt ceiling and avert a financial default by the Aug. 2 deadline, a Democratic aide said.
The economy could lapse even further if Congress and the Obama administration fail to reach an agreement on raising the nation’s borrowing limit in the coming week.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc won the dismissal of a lawsuit accusing it of causing an investor to become insolvent by fraudulently misleading it about risky debt it expected would tumble in value.
In a decision made public on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones in Manhattan said the plaintiff, Basis Yield Alpha Fund, failed to sufficiently show that its investment in the Timberwolf 2007-1 collateralized debt obligation was a “domestic” transaction, entitling it to sue in a U.S. court.
The window shades were lowered to block out the sunlight soaking lower Manhattan on a Friday afternoon in June as 14 students in Eric H. Kessler’s executive MBA class gathered in a conference room to present their analyses of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s leadership.
The firm’s management shows “resistance to change” and is “doing business in a bubble,” one of the three student teams explained in a PowerPoint presentation. Another recommended creating an “ethics role” within Goldman Sachs’s securities division. Kessler, who teaches management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, peppered the students with questions. Could cohesive culture be a weakness as well as a strength?
Hundreds of ALEC’s model bills and resolutions bear traces of Koch DNA: raw ideas that were once at the fringes but that have been carved into “mainstream” policy through the wealth and will of Charles and David Koch. Of all the Kochs’ investments in right-wing organizations, ALEC provides some of the best returns: it gives the Kochs a way to make their brand of free-market fundamentalism legally binding.
In 2004, I created Outfoxed to expose Rupert Murdoch’s war on journalism. Focusing on Fox News, we examined how NewsCorp has long blurred the line between corporate interests and journalistic integrity. The film presented an in-depth look at the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public’s right to know. Those dangers were shown to include ethic-less journalism, as well as the role of public relations spin in replacing the honest presentation of facts.
On Tuesday, as Rupert and James Murdoch appeared before parliament, this theme was repeated. Their testimony was less about true and honest answers and more about the script of a public relations firm, and an attempt to spin the public debate on issues of corporate disgrace.
If their testimonies presented any information at all, it would be how much the Murdochs want to promote the spin of willful ignorance. For two incredibly involved businessmen, their testimonies would lead you to believe that they have long had absolutely no idea about what happens within their company.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television channel had a “black ops” department that may have illegally hacked private telephone records, a former executive for the station has alleged.
109 MPs have now signed Julian Huppert MP’s EDM 1913, which called for the Government to reconsider policies such as website blocking, in light of the recent UN Special Rapporteur Report that was expressly critical of blocking on freedom of expression grounds. More recently, the Organisation for Security an Cooperation in Europe released a report that reached similar conclusions about disconnection and website blocking jeopardising rights to freedom of expression. Over 8,600 people have written to their MPs about this issue.
While politicians are convinced that Murdoch’s press has over-stepped the mark by routine hacking of citizen’s phones, let’s remember that plans for mass, pervasive hacking of our phones and emails is still sat waiting for revival by the Home Office.
