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08.10.11

Latest Evidence That the USPTO is Morbidly Ill, Costing the Economy; Real Reform Likely

Posted in America, Patents at 4:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Coins

Summary: Patents drive up the prices of products and devalue the workers, especially those outside few monopolistic corporations; more people realise this and as the press gradually shows, there is room for a real reform annulling/voiding certain types of patents

THERE HAS BEEN a lot of backlash against patents recently (Techrights gave many examples), and not just software patents. ZDNet makes it seem like defeatism is the route to achieving something, at least based on their editors’ blog (Larry Dignan). Interestingly enough, some blogs in ZDNet recently started emulating — perhaps unintentionally — Techrights‘ “summary” format (same formatting, same structure therein). Here is the example of defeatism:

It’s fairly obvious that patents are the new tactical nukes in the technology industry. Companies want to grab patents largely to defend lawsuits than actually create anything. The companies with the most patents win.

Short of some cross industry disarmament policy—something that won’t happen—there will have to be some reform on the patent front.

It goes on to explaining that it’s a lost cause to fight back. Very disappointing, very ZDNet. Conversely, TechDirt comes out swinging with this post about patent trolls, which says ‘the court clearly noted the “non-practicing entity” part of the business in pointing out that, “As a non-practicing entity, Eon-Net was generally immune to counterclaims for patent infringement, antitrust, or unfair competition because it did not engage in business activities that would potentially give rise to those claims.”‘

TechDirt also has this new post about “Patent Troll To Settle For Nothing”:

Last summer we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous patent troll, named Gooseberry Natural Resources LLC, who holds a ridiculously broad patent (6,370,535) that it claimed covered the basic concept of generating a press release online, which it then used to sue a bunch of companies who had been in business since way before the patent was issued. At the beginning of this year, we noted that Gooseberry tried to expand the definition of what the patent covered, and sued a bunch of tech sites you probably read, including Fark, Reddit, Slashdot, TechCrunch and Digg. As we noted at the time, as with most patent trolls, Gooseberry was just a shell company, and the real owners of the patent were a secret. Tragically, even with the combined investigative power of those sites, no one was able to piece together who really owns that patent.

So progress is being made after all. “Google-Microsoft spat could be tiny step toward patent reform” says another headline:

The public row between Microsoft and Google continues, with both Microsoft and Google issuing new responses to one another over Google’s original accusation of patent bullying. The basic gist is this: Google says Microsoft’s invitation for Google to join the Novell patent consortium was a “false ‘gotcha!’” that would have put Android at a disadvantage, while Microsoft asserts that Google merely wanted to assert the same patents against others. Both parties say that the other has not directly addressed their core arguments.

Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer speaks of a “rather radical plan to limit/channel patent trolls” and it is “Time To Really Deal With The Broken Software Patent System,” alleges Brad Feld in his latest good article. He explains: “There have been two dynamite stories on NPR recently – the first on The American Life titled When Patents Attack! and one on Planet Money titled The Patent War. If you have an interest in this area, the two are well worth listening to.

“In the past week, the discussion exploded starting with a post from Google titled When patents attack Android. The word “patent” shows up in 20 of the Techmeme River articles from the last week. Martin Fowler, a software developer, had a well thought out article titled SoftwarePatent. And they kept coming.”

The FSF is trying to get an Ogg version of the show and TechDirt cites the same broadcast:

Politicians, Innovation & The Paradox Of Job Creation

There’s been a ton of talk from politicians lately about the importance of “creating jobs.” This comes from both major political parties, of course. We’ve seen the Democrats jump heavily on the jobs agenda and the Republicans have been hyping up their ability to create jobs as well. A few months ago, This American Life produced a fantastic episode on the hilariousness of politicians claiming that they’re going to “create” jobs, with a focus on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (one of the few stories about him that has nothing to do with unions).

This whole debate over software patents carries on in various circles and a solution that may include abolishment of software patents should not be considered far-fetched. That’s what a lot of the public wants and increasingly demands too, as awareness is increased. █

Mark Cuban Calls for Abolishment of Software Patents

Posted in America, Patents at 3:51 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Mark Cuban

Photo credit: James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Summary: A billionaire calls for the end of CII patents, which helps show that people at all levels of society want those patents to just die

Mark Cuban is a controversial figure which we wrote about before, also in relation to patents. Whatever we may think of him as a businessman, he has just done something commendable by publicly calling for the end of software patents. To quote a portion.

1. End all software patents. Don’t make them shorter, eliminate them.

I have no problem with software being copyrightable just as it always has been. That is more than enough protection and keeps enough lawyers un-gainfully employed.

Cuban is a controversial person with high reputation, so the corporate media echoed his views and others paraphrased him by writing: “According to billionaire internet entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban, the chaos created by software and process patents has some very big negative effects: it’s costing the U.S. economy jobs and spurring a “Patent Arms Race” that will inevitably impact consumer prices. But he’s proposing a solution: eliminate the process patents that are used to ‘patent’ software.”

Let us hope that Mr. Cuban puts his money where his mouth is. █

Links 10/8/2011: More Linux Tablets in Asia, Lies With Statistics

Posted in News Roundup at 3:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Vendor-led community projects? Don’t forget your hat

    Brian Proffitt asked an interesting question last week with regards to the OpenStack project: ‘can a commercial vendor lead a project as openly as a foundation?’

    It’s an interesting question, and one that is particularly prescient given the observed re-balancing of control and community.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Android testing platform mimics human UI interaction

        Wind River announced the Wind River UX Test Development Kit, an Eclipse-based Android software testing platform that aims to reproduce human interaction with user interfaces. Wind River also updated the related Wind River Framework for Automated Software Testing (FAST) for Android to version 1.6, adding a benchmarking index, and new configuration, monitoring, and testing tools.

      • Preview And Images: The Next Firefox UI

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The Hurd

      GNU’s Hurd kernel is shaping up. It may never have much of a role on the desktop because Linux has such a lead and wide acceptance but, on servers, there is little to keep Hurd out. Virtual machines usually offer only a few virtual devices after all so Hurd does not need a lot of drivers to run in one. Many servers are virtual these days so Hurd might fly there. Real NICs are cheap and plentiful, too. A real server could just change NICs if need be. Hurd has glue-code to allow use of drivers from Linux. Depending on how well that works, Hurd may run nicely. If Debian is interested in it Hurd must be at least stomping its hooves.

    • GNU Xnee 3.10 (‘Heron’) released

      We are pleased to announce the availability of GNU Xnee 3.10

    • Caribou Week Who Is Paying Attention Anyway – We Need a New Maintainer

      After making a non-binding resolution to report my Caribou progress on a weekly basis, I flaked. Of course. But luckily Nohemi has picked up the slack and have kept you all up to date about the libcaribou powered GNOME Shell keyboard in her more binding GSoC reports. So no more architecture diagrams are needed, you all get the idea. But if you didn’t, let me make it clear: The goal of Caribou is to make it easy to implement new on screen keyboards where you would only need to provide the view, and libcaribou will be your model and controller.

    • [GNU Psychosynth] Master’s thesis and new release!

      As previous posts announce, latest developments were driven by my Master’s Thesis held in the University of Granada. Last week I defended it and now I am, officially, a software engineer :-) The document is written in English; it is the best description available of all the new core refactoring and an interesting read if you want to contribute to the project.

  • Project Releases

    • [Midor] Cleanup, Adblock speed-ups and crash dialog love

      Time for a major release. The leading motto is cleanup and as we jump to Midori 0.4.0 we increase minimum requirements to WebKitGTK+ 1.1.17 and Vala 0.10 (Vala used to be optional). This allows us to say goodbye to several portions of backwards-comaptibility code. Anybody who has some familiarity with the code knows Midori used to try very hard to run on older systems, some may say too hard. Midori 0.3.6 will remain available for anyone who can’t upgrade yet. This benefits users insofar as more time is available for new features instead of looking at old code.

    • PLplot Release 5.9.8

      This is a development release of PLplot. It represents the ongoing efforts of the community to improve the PLplot plotting package. Development releases in the 5.9.x series will be available every few months. The next full release will be 5.10.0.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Standards/Consortia

    • A Gentle Introduction to OpenCL

      Writing and running your first app with code executing on the CPU and the GPU

      OpenCL provides many benefits in the field of high-performance computing, and one of the most important is portability. OpenCL-coded routines, called kernels, can execute on GPUs and CPUs from such popular manufacturers as Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and IBM. New OpenCL-capable devices appear regularly, and efforts are underway to port OpenCL to embedded devices, digital signal processors, and field-programmable gate arrays.

Leftovers

  • Chomsky: Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault — What’s Next?

    Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving talks at the universities there. In California, the main universities — Berkeley and UCLA — they’re essentially Ivy League private universities — colossal tuition, tens of thousands of dollars, huge endowment. General assumption is they are pretty soon going to be privatized, and the rest of the system will be, which was a very good system — best public system in the world — that’s probably going to be reduced to technical training or something like that. The privatization, of course, means privatization for the rich [and a] lower level of mostly technical training for the rest. And that is happening across the country. Next year, for the first time ever, the California system, which was a really great system, best anywhere, is getting more funding from tuition than from the state of California. And that is happening across the country. In most states, tuition covers more than half of the college budget. It’s also most of the public research universities. Pretty soon only the community colleges — you know, the lowest level of the system — will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they’re under attack. And analysts generally agree, I’m quoting, “The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over.”

  • Science

    • Interview: Gaël Varoquaux

      I was fortunate enough to get Gaël Varoquaux to accept a written interview. He is a very, very busy man. He was recently heavily involved in SciPy 2011 where he gave a presentation entitled Python for Brain Mining: (Neuro)science with State of the Art Machine Learning and Data Visualization. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did!

  • Security

    • Three out of four rootkit infections are on Windows XP

      FREEMIUM antivirus vendor Avast warns that unpatched Windows XP machines continue to pose a serious threat to the internet ecosystem by harbouring three quarters of all rootkit infections.

      The company has an unique insight into the threat landscape thanks to over 130 million active Avast! antivirus installations worldwide that send it malware telemetry. According to a recent analysis performed by the firm’s researchers, 74 per cent of 630,000 rootkit samples found in the wild originated from Windows XP machines.

    • Lies and Statistics

      I prefer more openness in IT. That’s why I use Debian GNU/Linux, a cooperative product of the world working for us and not against us. Debian publishes all its known bugs and reports for the world to see so you can know the bugs that are out there before you install the software. A search using Google for “remote code execution” on bugs.debian.org reveals 157 hits for all open bugs, not just this year’s and for all the thousands of packages available. Using Debian’s index one can travel back in time to bug #50004 from 1999.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • detention: source

      Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, whose disappearance in April caused an international outcry, endured intense psychological pressure during 81 days in secretive detention and still faces the threat of prison for alleged subversion, a source familiar with the events told Reuters.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Obsolete Expertise and the US Economy’s Energy Problem

      If you came of age in the twenty years leading up to the millennium, it’s likely you will treat energy as a non-limiting input to the US economy. As a journalist, policy maker, or economist, you are far more likely to produce political explanations when faced with economic dilemmas. The Great Recession has offered the perfect occasion to witness the phenomenon, a financial crisis which specifically kicked off amidst 150 dollar oil in 2008. Instead of advising the President that the country faced debt-deflation, with a nasty overlay of high commodity costs, the White House economic team has drawn from the post-war playbook which holds that if you stimulate the economy generally then the system will magically reorganize itself. Well, that hasn’t happened and it’s not going to happen.

  • Finance

    • Revolving Door at S.E.C. Is Hurdle to Crisis Cleanup

      A senior lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission recently took center stage in a major case involving a controversial mortgage security sold by Goldman Sachs.

      There was just one slight twist in the legal proceedings. The S.E.C. lawyer was not the prosecutor taking the deposition. He was the witness.

    • Insight: Debt relief replaced with recession fear

      In a matter of days, investor relief that the United States avoided default has been replaced by fears Europe’s debt crisis is deepening and the world’s biggest economy may be slipping back into recession.

    • Goldman Sachs Model at Risk as Dodd-Frank Pares Trading in Dark
    • Goldman Sachs As Part of the “Predator State”
    • U.S. Subsidies to Systemically Dangerous Institutions Violate WTO Principles

      This article makes the policy case that U.S. subsidies to its systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) violate World Trade Organization (WTO) principles. The WTO describes its central mission as creating “a system of rules dedicated to open, fair and undistorted competition.” There is a broad consensus among economists that the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) receive large governmental subsidies that make “open, fair, and undistorted competition” impossible. To date, WTO is infamous for its hostility to efforts by nation states to regulate banks effectively. At best, the result is a classic example of the catastrophic damage cause by the “intended consequences” of the SDIs’ unholy war against regulation.

    • BOMBSHELL REPORT: Goldman Sachs Got Billions From Taxpayers Thru AIG For Its OWN Account, Crisis Panel Finds; Contradicting SWORN Testimony From Execs
    • Confessions Of A Wall St. Nihilist: Forget About Goldman Sachs, Our Entire Economy Is Built On Fraud

      There was a strange moment last week during President Obama’s speech at Cooper Union. There he was, groveling before a cast of Wall Street villains including Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, begging them to “Look into your heart!” like John Turturro’s character in Miller’s Crossing…when out of the blue, the POTUS dropped this bombshell: “The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we’re proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny.”

      The Big Secret, of course, is that every living creature within a 100-mile radius of Cooper Union would fail “this scrutiny”—or that scrutiny, or any scrutiny, period. Not just in a 100-mile radius, but wherever there are still signs of economic life beating in these 50 United States, the mere whiff of scrutiny would work like nerve gas on what’s left of the economy. Because in the 21st century, fraud is as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet Volts—fraud’s all we got left, Doc. Scare off the fraud with Obama’s “scrutiny,” and the entire pyramid scheme collapses in a heap of smoldering savings accounts.

    • Why are the big banks getting off scot-free?

      For most citizens, one of the mysteries of life after the crisis is why such a massive act of looting has gone unpunished. We’ve had hearings, investigations, and numerous journalistic and academic post mortems. We’ve also had promises to put people in jail by prosecutors like Iowa’s attorney general Tom Miller walked back virtually as soon as they were made.

      Yet there is undeniable evidence of institutionalized fraud, such as widespread document fabrication in foreclosures (mentioned in the motion filed by New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman opposing the $8.5 billion Bank of America settlement with investors) and the embedding of impermissible charges (known as junk fees and pyramiding fees) in servicing software, so that someone who misses a mortgage payment or two is almost certain to see it escalate into a foreclosure. And these come on top of a long list of runup-to-the-crisis abuses, including mortgage bonds having more dodgy loans in them than they were supposed to, banks selling synthetic or largely synthetic collateralized debt obligations as being just the same as ones made of real bonds when the synthetics were created for the purpose of making bets against the subprime market and selling BBB risk at largely AAA prices, and of course, phony accounting at the banks themselves.

    • Total Employment in the US Falls Again

      Total employment in the United States fell in July by 38,000 people, from 139.334 to 139.296 million. This was a much smaller loss than the previous month. However, once again the average number of total employed for the current year is in decline. My forecast is that by next year, after revisions and the complete data, 2011′s average—currently at 139.55 million–will fall below 2010′s average of 139.07 million. | see: United States Total Employment in Millions (seasonally adjusted) 2001-2011.

  • Civil Rights

    • Private companies own your DNA – again

      Many scientists cheered last year when a federal judge ruled that human genes couldn’t be patented. The case involved Myriad Genetics, which holds the patent rights on two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, that are associated with increased risks for breast and ovarian cancer. Thanks to these patents, you can’t look these genes in your own body without paying a fee to Myriad. Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, that was the state of gene patents until last May, when judge Robert Sweet ruled that the Myriad’s patents were invalid.

IRC Proceedings: August 9th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 12:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

GNOME Gedit

#techrights log

#boycottnovell log

#boycottnovell-social log

Enter the IRC channels now

Links 10/8/2011: Linux/Android Tablets Multiply, OpenGL 4.2 is Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 4:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Does Loving Linux Make Us Dislike Windows?

    Today I’m a full-time desktop Linux enthusiast, who is familiar with dozens of popular distributions. I’d consider myself very comfortable with Linux on the desktop. What’s interesting though, is the change in how I view Windows.

    These days, I avoid Windows as much as possible since I feel much more limited with it. Perhaps this is what Windows users trying Linux feel when stepping outside of their regular computing routine?

  • Samsung Remove Ubuntu Logo From Galaxy Ad [Updated with video]

    Seeing the Ubuntu logo sailing alongside hundreds of Android App icons in a TV spot for Samsung’s Galaxy S II was a strange, but not unwarranted, sight to begin with.

  • Answering readers and critics on Linux configuration anarchy
  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 159

  • Desktop

    • Seven Concerns on the Linux Desktop

      Instead, the major desktops seem to be responding to the pressures around them rather than taking charge of their direction. Some of these pressures are self-created, while others are historical or common to all modern desktops, free and proprietary alike. Some are barely articulated, although they operate no less powerfully for that.

      Whatever their origins, here are seven concerns that are shaping the Linux desktop today:

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: First release candidate for Linux 3.1

      Expected to be released in about two months, the next kernel version will offer optimised virtualisation, add bad block management components to the software RAID code and include an extended Nouveau driver for NVIDIA’s Fermi graphics chips. Several developers have been criticised for their clumsy use of Git in this development cycle.

      Linus Torvalds has issued the first release candidate of Linux 3.1, closing the merge window of this version, whose final release is expected in late September or early October, 17 days after the release of Linux 3.0. Therefore, the first phase in the Linux development cycle was three days longer than usual. This was caused by the diving holiday Torvalds is currently taking in Hawaii; he is providing an impression of his trip on Google Plus.

    • Linux 3.1-rc1 Kernel: A “Pretty Normal Release”
    • How to piss off a Linux kernel subsystem maintainer – part 6

      There’s nothing like waking up and receiving in your inbox, a few scant hours after the merge window has opened up again, a plea for why you haven’t already reviewed and applied all 117+ patches that the author sent to you a few weeks ago, back when they well knew you could not apply them due to the merge window being closed.

      Oh, and to top it all off, as the message was sent in HTML format, it didn’t hit the mailing lists, I was the only one who received it. Because of that, I figured it was better if I just ignored it as well, just like the vger.kernel.org filters did.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Ryan Gordon Criticizes Open-Source Drivers Again

        There’s just one and a half days left to the Humble Indie Bundle #3, but in less than two weeks the game offering has already grossed nearly $1.9M USD. Recently the developers behind these indie games had allowed the community to ask them questions on Reddit about their work. Ryan “Icculus” Gordon was one of the developers responding and he had provided some interesting comments.

      • Charlies Games original Bullet Candy comes to linux!

        As we retweeted via twitter on the day and as now other awesome sites have picked up, Charlies Games have ported over the original Bullet Candy to Linux.

        It will cost you a measly $1 + if you are feeling nice anything more you wish to donate.

      • Mesa GLSL-To-TGSI Is Merged To Master

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Open Source: Pondering the Linux GUI

      First we had the KDE 3.5 to KDE 4.0 debacle. A release numbering scheme by the KDE folk that differed from what is considered the norm ended up with alpha level code being pushed out in most major desktop distributions of Linux. Many people were so upset about radical and broken changes to KDE during this period they left KDE, swearing never to return. It does not matter if KDE is “okay” now. Some of these people will probably not return to KDE.

      Some of the disenchanted former KDE using folk moved to Gnome and liked what Gnome was at the time. These people got comfortable with Gnome 2.x and enjoyed the features it has. Now we have the strangeness that is Gnome 3. Once again, many people are not happy with the changes in Gnome 3. Especially upsetting to some is the loss of functionality they took for granted and an extreme change in the look and feel of Gnome.

    • Five Linux Desktops That Aren’t Unity or GNOME 3

      GNOME 3, however, has turned out to be just as controversial, and if any evidence were required, none other than the father of Linux himself–Linus Torvalds–recently provided it by condemning the desktop environment and switching to Xfce instead.

    • Linus Hates GNOME 3 and I Don’t

      My editor at LinuxPro, Joe Casad, asked me if I wanted to write an article covering the differences between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3, but I declined (I was already working on something else). The reason for his request was this piece by my colleague, Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols, where Steven that talks about Linus Torvalds’ intense dislike for GNOME 3. In the article, Linux suggests that a fork of GNOME 3 is in order.

    • Does Linus Run Linux Mint?

      Earlier he mentioned some of the other distributions he has used. In 2007 he told apcmag.com, “So right now I happen to run Fedora on my machines. Before Fedora had PowerPC support, I ran YDL for a while, and before that I had SuSE. Funnily enough, the only distributions I tend to refuse to touch are the “technical” ones, so I’ve never run Debian, because as far as I’m concerned, the whole and only point of a distribution is to make it easy to install.” He even took a swipe at Gentoo or LFS I think when he added, “so Debian or one of the “compile everything by hand” ones simply weren’t interesting to me.”

    • What Would Linus Do About GNOME 3? Why, Use Xfce
    • 9 Most Useful Compiz Plugins

      Last time we wrote about all the useless plugins in Compiz. This time, we won’t be bashing your favorite compositing window manager. Today, we’ll be listing the most useful plugins Compiz can boast of.

      So, without much ado, here’s a list of the most useful and popular Compiz plugins out there (in no particular order):

    • Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin, Aftermath

      I am sad to leave already, but tomorrow I’ll start my internship at the Mayflower office in Munich. I had a really good time in Berlin and enjoyed the talks at the Desktop Summit.

    • Keynotes and Sandals – Day Two at Desktop Summit 2011

      For the second full day at the Desktop Summit, the organizers played a little trick on us by starting talks at 9:00 a.m. Those who were awake enough after the dinners and chat of the previous night were treated to talks on Calligra (the KDE creativity and productivity suite), suggestions about blending the web and the desktop, color management and the build process for GNOME. Those who were still in bed will have to wait for the videos and slides to be posted online in the next few days.

      The hallways and courtyard were again busy with small, lively discussions. As the morning went on the attendance at talks increased noticeably. Sunday was also the day of the press conference, where key figures from GNOME, KDE and the cross-community organizing team met with the press to answer their questions about the event and the future of free software.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Control The Music Your Way With Amarok [Linux]
      • World domination

        KDE dominates the Desktop Summit, they even convinced the design shop opposite the venue to decorate with an big K. :D

      • Get the branding: Unofficial KDE abbreviations list

        Sometime last year I expressed my thoughts on the kde-promo mailing list that one of the reasons for lacking support of the KDE rebranding initiative from 2009 was the lack of official abbreviations – after all, “KDE 4.7” is easier to write than “KDE Plasma Desktop 4.7”. I got no responses but for the last months I didn’t really care a lot.

        After yesterday’s announcement of KDE Frameworks 5.0 I’ve seen talk about “KDE 5.0” on several web sites. But as anyone into KDE knows, there is no KDE5. Reading the mailing lists and other Planet KDE posts, it seems to me that the Plasma Workspaces won’t necessarily jump to the next major version once Frameworks 5.0 are released.

      • Keynotes and Sandals – Day Two at Desktop Summit 2011

        For the second full day at the Desktop Summit, the organizers played a little trick on us by starting talks at 9:00 a.m. Those who were awake enough after the dinners and chat of the previous night were treated to talks on Calligra (the KDE creativity and productivity suite), suggestions about blending the web and the desktop, color management and the build process for GNOME. Those who were still in bed will have to wait for the videos and slides to be posted online in the next few days.

        The hallways and courtyard were again busy with small, lively discussions. As the morning went on the attendance at talks increased noticeably. Sunday was also the day of the press conference, where key figures from GNOME, KDE and the cross-community organizing team met with the press to answer their questions about the event and the future of free software.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Five awesome new themes for your gnome shell

        The gnome shell extensions are getting more and more cool by the day. With high quality themes gnome shell really becomes the most pleasant Linux desktop to use. This is a list of five wonderful shell themes. You could use it on your gnome shell theme in ubuntu, fedora or any other distro.

      • Transparent voting: why I like the idea even though I think it would be useless

        Transparent voting is an idea that is ideally really useful but also completely useless in GNOME.

        Some people in GNOME have been asking for transparent votes. When the board votes, they would like to know who voted which way. I totally agree with them – it’s important to know how different board members think so that you can make educated choices. However, I also agree with the people that say that it would be totally useless.

      • GNOME Shell Multi-Touch Support State

        On the third day of the Berlin Desktop Summit there wasn’t any major announcements like the previous two days when we found out the KDE plans for Wayland, basic plans for KDE 5.0, and initial thoughts concerning GTK4. One of the talks that I attended on Monday that was of closest interest to that of Phoronix content is the work being done towards making a multi-touch GNOME Shell.

  • Distributions

    • Linux Distro: Tails – You Can Never Be Too Paranoid

      Tails takes the form of a bootable live image that can be used from a CD ROM, a USB stick or via a network boot. Once booted, it executes from RAM, taking care not to make use of a swap partition. The desktop is Gnome 2.0 and the applications are a fairly standard selection. The web browser is an old, but usable, version of Iceweasel 3.5 (Debian Firefox). There are other applications to handle graphics work, audio editing, media playback, text editing, instant messaging and a email client – basically, everything you need when you’re on the run from enemy agents. Extra software can be added via the Synaptic package manager which pulls directly from the Debian repositories. So far, so similar to most other live desktop distros. Security and limited footprint on the the host machine are the areas in which the distro differs from the run of the mill.

    • Reviews: Here’s looking at Linvo, kid

      Since I got into the Linvo trial to try out their atomic updates, I’d like to talk some more on the subject. Though I haven’t had a chance to install it yet there is another project out there with a surprisingly similar objective to Linvo. This other project is called NixOS. NixOS is a small distribution built on top of the Nix package manager, which is designed to make updates atomic and to insure the operating system is always in a usable state. As with Linvo’s stated goals, NixOS is said to support multiple users installing different versions of software. Nix also has a roll-back feature. The result is supposed to be a system without global program directories (/usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, etc), instead each version of each package gets its own directory. NixOS is a research project and isn’t targeted at home or business users. However, for people who are interested in trying out something different you can learn more from the project’s website.

    • The Six Best Linux Community Server Distributions

      One question we get a lot: What are the best community server distributions? That question isn’t as simple as it sounds. What makes a distro “the best”? Why community distributions, specifically? It’s not a simple question — but read on and we’ll point you to six distros that will help you reach a satisfying answer.

    • Browser Linux – An Extremely Lightweight & Fast OS For Older x86 Computers [Linux]

      Unless you’re a web developer or programmer, you most likely don’t really need a whole lot of applications aside from a web browser, perhaps a media player, file manager/viewer and text editor. Maybe that’s why a lot more people nowadays own smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, etc, and can get away with not using their main computers or laptops for light web browsing. If you wish to have an equally lightweight operating system with just the tools you need but on your actual laptop, you can use Google Chrome OS or Jolicloud.

    • Tiny Linux distro gets dependency fetching and simpler USB install

      Team Tiny Core announced a new version of its small-footprint, in-memory Linux desktop distro. Tiny Core 3.8 includes faster shutdown, updates to the BusyBox tool collection, improved searching, and the ability to re-download non-installed extensions, among other enhancements.

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Releases 11.2 LiveDVD to Crickets

        Ah, Gentoo. Gentoo was once one of the most popular distributions going. But somewhere along the line it declined. It’s become a fringe distro that even with dedicated developers and loyal users can’t seem to get its mojo back. I used Gentoo for several years and perhaps the reasons I moved on might be the same others did as well.

        In 2002 Gentoo was sitting at number three on the Distrowatch Page Hit Ranking. It’s been falling down that list every year since. This year it’s at 18. Version 11.0 was released in March and I don’t think anyone reviewed it. The Rolling Programmer tried, but “hit a brick wall.” Regardless, I don’t think it’s not-so-ease-of-use that took Gentoo down. I lay the blame at Moore’s Law.

      • Installing Gentoo on a Notebook in 2011

        The first time I installed Gentoo, back in late 2004, I used an at-the-time brand-new Dell Inspiron (5150 if I recall) notebook as the victim. At that time, Gentoo was a new world to me, and a confusing one. It took me about a half-week’s worth of actual work to get it installed, but it happened, and it was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had with a PC.

        There was a problem, though. As Gentoo is hugely a do-it-yourself Linux distribution, there are many things that are just not done for you without your explicit consent. Things have become a little easier over the years, especially with the very informative guides and major improvements made to Gentoo’s own software, but even today it’s still an amazing challenge to get it installed onto a PC and configured correctly (the latter being the more difficult part).

        [...]

        I am glad I decided to give Gentoo another shot on a notebook, and I can’t see me moving off it anytime soon.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat to Present a Cloud Technology Update via Live Webcast on August 10

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that members of the Red Hat executive team will host a press conference that will be broadcast live via webcast at 12pm ET on Wednesday, August 10.

      • Red Hat Extends Open Source Summer Teaching Program to the Academic Year

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the expansion of its Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE) 2011 that took place in late July in Raleigh, NC. Now in it third year, POSSE is a higher education faculty program that immerses professors in the culture, tools and practices of open source communities. Due to the overwhelming success of this year’s summer weekend workshop, several POSSE activities are scheduled throughout the 2011-2012 North American school year.

      • Fedora

        • No Btrfs by default in Fedora 16

          BTRFS WILL NOT BE THE DEFAULT FILE SYSTEM FOR F16

        • Feature preview of Fedora 16 installer

          Fedora 16 is more than two months away from final, stable release, but pre-Alpha installation ISO images have been floating around. News from the Fedora camp have already indicated that btrfs will be the default file system on Fedora 16, joining the ranks of MeeGo, the first (Linux) distribution to use btrfs as the default file system.

          With several articles already published about Fedora and btrfs (see the latest here), I downloaded a pre-Alpha image just to see what the new partitioning scheme will be on Anaconda, the Fedora system installation program, with btrfs. If btrfs is to be the default, a file system with a built-in volume management system, what will happen to LVM?

        • Monday in Fedora

          I suppose this is a sort of a test. I’m going to keep a little log of everything I do during the day related to Fedora. We’ll see how far I get.

        • Fedora 16 Alpha Release Candidate 2 (RC2) Available Now!

          As per the Fedora 16 schedule [1], Fedora 16 Alpha Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is now available for testing. Please see the following pages for download links and testing instructions. In general, official live images arrive a few hours after the install images: see the links below for updates. When they appear, the download directory should be the same as that for install images, except with the trailing “/Fedora/” replaced by “/Live/”.

        • Btrfs Switch Postponed To Fedora 17

          While it originally appeared that Fedora 16 would be the first major distribution (besides possibly counting MeeGo) to switch to Btrfs as the default Linux file-system, that’s not going to happen. Fedora 16 will continue defaulting to EXT4 and it will not be until Fedora 17 now that Btrfs will be the Fedora file-system default.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian GNU/kFreeBSD on production

        During the last few weeks I had to work through some of the limitations that were holding me back, such automated driver load and FUSE. I was lucky enough that other people filled the missing pieces I wanted, such as NFS client support and a GRUB bugfix that broke booting from Mirrored pools.

        [...]

        If you have installed Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, was it meant for production or just a “toy machine”? If you considered using it on production, did it succeed at satisfying your needs, or did something hold you back? Leave your comment!

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Membership

            The Ubuntu project accepts many kinds of contributions from people all over the world. After time, many contributors develop a sense of belonging and ownership of the project. When someone has been with the project for a long time and have made significant contributions to the project, then they may apply for membership. When you become an Ubuntu member, you become an official part of the project. You become a representative. You get an @ubuntu.com email address, an Ubuntu cloak on Freenode. You even get to vote on who serves on the Ubuntu Community Council, the top-level community governance committee in Ubuntu. For people who are serious about Ubuntu, membership is a big deal. Many people consider Ubuntu membership one of their biggest achievements.

          • Canonical Working to Put Ubuntu on the ‘App Development Map’

            Ubuntu may be marketed as “Linux for human beings,” but Canonical is working hard to make it the open source platform of choice for app developers as well. And it’s now calling on those who fall into the latter category to offer feedback on how Ubuntu can better meet their needs. Read on for details.

            I’ve always interpreted Ubuntu’s “Linux for human beings” mantra to mean that the operating system was built first and foremost to be friendly for non-geeks. To a remarkable extent, Ubuntu has succeeded in that vein, distinguishing itself as the most popular and one of the simplest Linux distributions for desktop users.

          • [Screenshots and Video] First Look at All New Ubuntu Software Center Tech Preview

            Ubuntu Software Center is getting a complete makeover in its GTK3 avatar and first tech preview of this whole new look landed today in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot.

            Being just a tech preview as of now, the current Software Center is still there by default. However, the demo can be launched by running the command software-center-gtk3 from the terminal.

          • Is Canonical Weighing Other E-Mail Options with Thunderbird?

            Few people are as passionate about their e-mail clients as they are about, say, browsers or phones. But that certainly doesn’t mean all mail apps were created equal, as Canonical showed recently when it commissioned a comparison of the open source clients Thunderbird and Evolution. Here’s a look at some of the findings.

            The Thunderbird standalone e-mail client enjoys relatively wide popularity. Developed by Mozilla, it runs on pretty much every modern operating system out there, and has been around for nearly a decade.

          • Amazon issues with EBS affect Ubuntu images in the EU-WEST region
          • Top 5 Ubuntu Alternatives

            The following article will list five of the best alternative operating systems to the popular Ubuntu OS, personally selected by the author.

            We’ve written this article to help some of our readers in finding a good alternative to the current release of the Ubuntu operating system, because of the Unity interface.

            Personally, I use Ubuntu 11.04 everyday and I have no problem with it. When Unity was about to be born, I was like “no way I am using that,” but I got used to it, and I’ve even managed to customize it the way I like it.

          • Ubuntu: The desktop Linux with the cloud inside

            Things can get really confusing when you start working with cloud-computing but we can all agree that having cloud file-storage is a good thing. It’s just so much easier to keep files in a universal storage box in the sky than worrying about whether you put the right USB drive in your laptop bag when you left for work. At this time though only one mainstream desktop operating system comes with the cloud built-in: Ubuntu.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Has Firefox 6 and Thunderbird 6

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Free app brings easy penetration testing to Android

          Zimperium will soon release a penetration-testing app called Android Network Toolkit (Anti), ready to sniff our Wi-Fi vulnerabilities for good or evil, says Forbes. The software was shown at the DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas, following a Black Hat security conference that featured presentations on a new DARPA Cyber-Fast Track project, the Shady RAT cyber-attack, and Facebook facial-recognition tools.

        • HTC releases OpenSense SDK for tapping 3D, stylus features

          HTC released a software developer kit for its Sense UI skin for Android. The OpenSense SDK offers APIs that let developers harness the GUI’s look and feel, as well as a stereoscopic 3D display (available on the Evo 3D 4G smartphone) and a stylus pen (available with the HTC Flyer and Evo View 4G tablets).

        • Android ‘smartwatch’ acts as Bluetooth extension to smartphones

          Blue Sky has begun taking pre-orders for the “I’mWatch,” an Android 1.6-based gadget that offers a 1.5-inch screen and audio jack, interacting with smartphones via Bluetooth to display alerts. The device follows last week’s WIMM One wearable Android watch, as well as an Android-based watch platform from Motorola called the MotoActive that popped up recently on the web.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Motorola Xoom gets Android 3.1

        Motorola has released a UK Android 3.1 update for the Motorola Xoom, activating long-awaited features for early adopters.

        The patch brings users up to speed with Honeycomb’s improved multi-tasking, resizable home screen widgets and keyboard and mouse compatibility, as well as a host of support for other USB or Bluetooth devices.

      • Lenovo ThinkPad Tablets: A Closer Look From Inside Lenovo

        The wait is over. Here at Lenovo, we have introduced our new Android-based ThinkPad tablet — taking the brand full circle. You can read the press release here. It’s hard to believe that the first ThinkPad, introduced back in 1992, was a pen-based tablet, but it was. The iconic ThinkPad 700c ushered in the familiar notebook form factor later. I once wrote a blog that goes deeper into the ThinkPad tablet history lesson for those who are curious. Nearly 20 years later, could our new ThinkPad tablet be the weapon of choice for business success? I think so.

      • Seven-inch Sharp Galapagos tablet runs Android 3.2

        Sharp announced a seven-inch, 1024 x 600-pixel “Galapagos A01SH” tablet running Android 3.2 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor — and its FCC approval suggests it’s eventually destined for the U.S.. Meanwhile, the Toshiba Thrive “Honeycomb” tablet has received a sleep-and-resume bug fix, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 got a “magazine-like” TouchWiz UI update.

      • Pandigital launches $159 Android tablet with Cortex-A9 processor

        Just a few days after Pandigital began selling a $170 Nova and $180 Planet tablet at BestBuy and Amazon, respectively, it introduced a third seven-inch Android tablet called the Star, for $160. What’s more, the company disclosed that all three tablets include ARM Cortex-A9 processors, representing a price breakthrough for products based on the technology.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • OSCON Round-up

      Reading some stories recently, it would be easy to conclude that there was some sort of a decline in open source. I’ll not pretend to have new and objective data on the subject, but having just returned from OSCON in the USA I have to say rumours of the death of open source are premature.

    • Ohio LinuxFest Registration is Open for Business
    • ESC Boston features giveaways, tackles embedded security

      Keynotes and tracks were announced for the ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Boston, set for Sept. 26-29, including keynotes on embedded security and medical devices. ESC Boston offers a Linux/Android track, featuring a session on Android’s Open Accessory Kit, as well as giveaways to “All Access” users of a BeagleBoard-xM board and a Texas Instruments programmable, wireless-enabled eZ430-Chronos sports watch.

  • Web Browsers

    • Google, Mozilla Team Up to Create a Smarter, Action-Based Web

      Google has announced a new set of APIs for its Chrome web browser, which are designed to connect applications and sites across the web. Web Intents, as Google is calling its new meta-website API, allows websites to pass data between each other — for example, to edit a photograph or share a URL with friends.

      Developers at Mozilla have been working on a similar framework for Firefox, and now Google says it will work with Mozilla to develop a single API that works in both web browsers.

    • Mozilla

      • The Mozilla Interview: Why Firefox Matters

        Mozilla’s Firefox experienced a pretty rapid turn of fortunes last year and is still dealing with the effects of a changing browser landscape today. The rise of Chrome, a more competitive Microsoft, an increasingly loyal Apple user base, the often-delayed release of Firefox 4, created a perfect storm against Mozilla that is affecting its market share and credibility. Johnathan Nightingale agreed to spend some time with us to talk about the current state of Firefox and its immediate future in a very competitive environment.

      • Firefox Extension for Anonymous Browsing Hits Version 1.0

        There are lots of valid reasons why many people around the globe want to be able to use the web and messaging systems anonymously, despite the fact that some people want to end Internet anonymity altogether. In many parts of the world, opressive government regulations threaten free speech, and worse, which has produced an extensive list of technologies that people around the world use to beat the Internet censors. Among these, Tor, from the Tor Project, is one of the most powerful and flexible open source solutions for online anonymity. Last summer, we covered one of these solutions, a Firefox extension called HTPPS Everywhere, which leverages Tor for browsing anonymity. Now, there is an official version 1.0 available.

      • Creating Firefox web apps that look like native apps

  • Databases

    • MariaDB Crash Course released

      I am happy to announce that the first MariaDB book is released!

      The book is called MariaDB Crash Course and is written by Ben Forta, who also wrote the MySQL Crash Course book.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice.org: Showdown for Best Open Source Office Suite

      With the release of a new version of LibreOffice this month, it’s a good time to look at the two major open source office suites, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org, to see what advantages each offers, and which is a better bet for end users.

      Both products are suites of office applications, comprising word process, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, database, drawing, and math tools. Both also spring from the same code base. OpenOffice.org was created by a German company called Star Division, which Sun Microsystems bought in 1999. Originally the suite was called StarOffice, and it was popular in the European market as an alternative to Microsoft Office. After picking it up, Sun changed the name of the product to OpenOffice.org and released its code as open source. The product retained some popularity in the enterprise, partly because of its cross-platform capabilities and no-cost license.

    • TLWIR 12: Libreoffice 3.4.2, NASA, and the Asus X101

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Moto: From Dining To Open-Source Software

      Two months ago there was a mention of Moto on Phoronix as being a place for a wonderful (and tasty) high-tech dinner. At the time it was mentioned just for their use of interesting technologies to make wonderful dishes, and partnerships with NASA and other organizations to conduct food research. Come to find out, my favorite American restaurant is also entering the open-source software business. The restaurant is working on some interesting open-source code… In particular, they’re hoping to revolutionize restaurant management software with this project they have been working on, dubbed Moto Matrix.

    • Open Source Effort Will Deliver Low-Cost Wi-Fi for All

      One of the great things about open source software is that it doesn’t just bring a wealth of benefits to businesses. Rather, by making low-cost, high-quality software widely available to everyone, it also has the potential to change lives around the world.

    • A new way of measuring Openness, from Android to WebKit: The Open Governance Index

      [Much has been said about open source projects – and open source platforms are now powering an ever-increasing share of the mobile market. But what is “open” and how can you measure openness? As part of our new research report (free download), VisionMobile Research Partner Liz Laffan introduces the Open Governance Index – a new approach to measuring the “openness” of software projects, from Android to WebKit]

  • Standards/Consortia

    • OpenGL 4.2 Specification Published With GLSL 4.20

      The good news: Khronos has published version 4.2 of the OpenGL specification in conjunction with the GL Shading Language version 4.20 specification. The bad news? The open-source Linux graphics drivers are falling hopelessly behind in keeping up-to-date with the latest upstream OpenGL releases and what is supported by the proprietary drivers and those for other operating systems.

      The release of OpenGL 4.2 isn’t much of a surprise, it’s coming just around one year after the OpenGL 4.1 specification. The occasion for this release is the SIGGRAPH conference taking place this week in Vancouver, Canada. “The OpenGL 4.2 specification has been defined by the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos, and includes the GLSL 4.20 update to the OpenGL Shading Language. The OpenGL 4.2 specification contains new features that extend functionality available to developers and enables increased application performance.”

Leftovers

  • Amazon, Microsoft Data Centers Go Down Without Much Fanfare

    It finally happened. We had a fairly significant cloud outage the other day and we didn’t have a lot of hand-wringing about the perils of cloud computing. Could it be that we have finally reached a point where we don’t have to defend the future of cloud computing each time a data center has problems, or is it just that everyone is on vacation in August and nobody was paying attention?

  • Microsoft gives BPOS customers credit note for latest crash

    This is the latest in a series of embarrassing cloud outages for Redmond after a summer of interruptions began in May, but differs from other incidents in that an “Act of God” was responsible for knocking out the service.

  • Security

  • Civil Rights

    • Secret Identities Online and Defamation

      The Internet has given rise to thousands of online chat forums, where participants can sound off on the issues of the day often shielded by the cloak of anonymity. Anonymous speech can be empowering — whistleblowers depend upon it to safeguard their identity and political participants in some countries face severe repercussions if they speak out publicly — but it also carries the danger of posts that cross the line into defamation without appropriate accountability.

      Striking the balance between protecting anonymous free speech on the one hand and applying defamation laws on the other sits at the heart of a new Ontario Superior Court decision released last week. The case involved postings about Phyllis Morris, the former mayor of Aurora.

08.09.11

More SUSE Managers and Developers Have Left the Company

Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OpenOffice, OpenSUSE at 1:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft’s Linux ally, SUSE, is losing major talent, getting increasingly involved in the leading Free/libre office suite, and does nothing but offer a Microsoft-taxed distribution of GNU/Linux

IT DOES NOT take much to see that SUSE is a wreck of its former self, still looking for identity and finding new sugar daddies to give orders to it (scarily enough, a couple dozen LibreOffice developers are now indirectly funded by Microsoft, through SUSE).

While SUSE has some general news (not much of it) and updates about Factory, which comes from the OpenSUSE Web site (they also announced a coming event), the project in general seems to have little purpose other than offer a GNU/Linux distribution Microsoft will make money from and also use to validate its patent extortion.

Noyes is quoting some Microsoft proponents and talking points in her coverage of the SUSE-Microsoft deal, which helps not at all.

Meanwhile, having surveyed the location of some notable SUSE staff, it turns out that James Bottomley is now at Parallels and Bruce Lowry, Novell’s former head of PR, is still in Skoll Global Threats Fund. Markus Rex, who left and became Member of the Board at the Open Source Business Foundation, practically left the company in the hands of a gold-certified Microsoft partner, which soon thereafter gave Microsoft more control over SUSE. The old SUSE (S.u.S.E.) is very different from today’s SUSE. They just share the same name/brand. █

Links 9/8/2011: Linux 3.0.1, KDE 5.0 Roadmap

Posted in News Roundup at 7:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • NPC to offer GNU/Linux class this fall

    It’s been called the Universal Operating System that can be securely customized to perform any computing task. And this fall, Northland Pioneer College will again be offering classes on the GNU/Linux Operating System using a revised, up-to-date curriculum on Thursday afternoons, 1 to 5 p.m., Aug. 25 through Dec. 8, in the Learning Center, room 133, at the Show Low – White Mountain Campus.

    “Learning GNU/Linux gives people options and choices when it comes to using operating systems,” commented instructor Eric Bishop, who also heads NPC Information Services Division. “Linux is a free, open source operating system that is very stable, secure and efficient, with thousands of free programs associated with it. Learning to use Linux also lets you learn more about how computers and operating systems work ‘under the hood,’ in a general sense.”

  • The wonders of the shell

    For those of you too young to know things weren’t all windows and clicks. There used to be a time when you used to control the computer using just the keyboard.

    And a great time that was indeed… if you wanted to copy all the .jpg files from a folder you need only but type in a command and it would be done! Now? After you press about a million clicks, do a 2 million drags and watch 10 million internet cats you get to finish the task you set your mind to. Some say it’s easier this way, it makes more sense to the normal user to drag a picture symbolizing a file from one box to another in order to copy/move it and indeed it is easier, but what if you have 10.000 files scattered around a 100.000 file folder?

  • Loving and Hating Linux

    The first reason (and possibly primary reason) is that it is still an operating system that you are using. No operating system has ever worked on all hardware, with all software, or without bugs. This means that at some point you are going to be infuriated or at least disappointed. In my experience, Linux fowls up a lot less often than do Winders or OSX, and as such I use it. I am sure that we have all experienced Xorg issues. This happens more to me now than ever before due to Xorg trying to automagically configure itself. I am also sure that we have all had issues with ALSA at some point. My latest was an issue with HDMI audio conflicting with an onboard audio chip. It was easily solved, but annoying none the less. There are also those times when you have a dependency issue. You might have one version of a library that is required for foo, and then a different version of the same library required for bar, and for some reason the system won’t allow you to have both… annoying, but it can be worked around.

  • Disney to Produce Penguin Film… Called ‘Tux’.

    The film is to be an adaptation of “gritty” Japanese graphic novel ‘Tuxedo Gin’, the storyline of which sees a young street fighter “fall into a coma and learns that he …only has enough karma points to be reincarnated as an animal 15 pounds or less.”

  • Ignore the speculation, Linux is far from dead

    Usually I try not to overdo the Linux evangelism. I’d rather Linux succeeded on its own merits than from the fumbling insights that come from the mouths of believers.

    But last month I read an article and it left me feeling a little down. It was titled Is Linux Finished? and the author outlined what he thought were the reasons for the distinct lack of success Linux has had on the desktop.

    A lot of it had to do with Apple stealing its niche, the lack of a decent user experience and the confusion that comes with distro fragmentation. It was a good article and each of these points is valid.

  • Desktop

    • Recycle’s Friend, Reuse

      Recycling is something we all deal with, or at least should deal with, when it comes to technology. Old computers, monitors, motherboards and their ilk are full of toxic chemicals that must be disposed of properly. Thankfully, “Being Green” is a trend that hasn’t really lost any steam. As technologists, we understand the need to use less power, recycle old technology and make wise purchasing decisions when it comes to hardware. And, we shouldn’t forget recycle’s buddies reduce and reuse either.

      With modern virtualization, it’s possible to reduce the number of servers we need to buy. Add to that the reduction in power usage with low-power CPUs, and it’s relatively easy to reduce the amount of waste in our server rooms. Unfortunately, it doesn’t eliminate the problem completely. That’s where reuse comes into play. In the photo, you’ll see a clock I received as a Christmas gift. It’s simply the circuit board from some sort of router that has “clock guts” added to it. Geeky yes, but if it’s stuck on my wall, it’s one fewer piece of computer scrap in a landfill.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • RapidDisk, A New Linux RAM Disk Kernel Module

      Released last month was RapidDisk 1.0, which is a Linux kernel module that up to this point has received little attention on the Internet. RapidDisk is a new Linux RAM disk kernel module like the brd and zram modules, but with a different feature-set.

    • Linux 3.0.1
    • Linux File System Monitoring

      A lot of the embedded systems I work on lately run Linux. I enjoy that, because I’m a long-time UNIX user and I run nothing but Linux on my personal computers and servers these days (well, assuming you count Android as a form of Linux, which I do).

    • Graphics Stack

      • X.Org Server 1.11 RC2 Is Released

        Keith Packard has tagged X.Org Server 1.11 RC2. The X.Org Server 1.11 release is imminent and the RC2 marks the end of development except for critical fixes.

      • Nouveau GeForce 400/500 Fermi On Linux 3.1

        Besides boosting the Intel Sandy Bridge performance, the Linux 3.1 kernel is also great for open-source graphics in that it has improved support for NVIDIA GeForce 400/500 “Fermi” graphics cards via the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver. The Linux kernel has already supported kernel mode-setting for these GPUs and then more recently there was 2D/X-Video acceleration as well as 3D acceleration when paired with the Nouveau Gallium3D “NVC0″ driver. The accelerated support though has required manually extracting the graphics processor’s microcode after the GPU was initialized by the proprietary driver. With the Linux 3.1 kernel, Nouveau can generate its own “FUC” microcode to circumvent this problem. In other words, there is now “out of the box” open-source support for NVIDIA GeForce 400/500 graphics cards.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Approaching the desktop summit

      It’s only one day left until the global KDE and GNOME communities meet at Berlin for the second desktop summit. Hundreds of free software contributors from all over the world, the core of the free desktop community is meeting at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the middle of the German capital from August 6th to 12th.

    • The Linus effect

      On July 26th Linus said he switched to Xfce because he doesn’t like GNOME 3. Guess what happens when someone picked up the news yesterday:

    • What is the difference between GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE?

      In Linux, there are so many choices, and this includes the desktop environments and window managers. Four of the most popular desktop environments in Linux are GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE. All four offer sophisticated point-and-click graphical user interfaces (GUI) which are on par with the desktop environments found in Windows and Mac OS X.

    • KDE Draws Up Plans For Wayland In 2012

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Top 5 Plasma Widgets for the KDE Desktop

        With KDE 4.7, the KDE team has managed to create one of the most beautiful desktops out there, and to be honest, it’s even more appealing than Windows 7 or Mac OS X. On the usability front, KDE doesn’t seem to cut corners. Trademark features like Activities and Plasmoids (widgets) are polished to near perfection. Also, since the initial KDE 4 release, a lot of quality community-created widgets and plugins have sprung up, making the KDE workspace more than just an alternative to GNOME 3 or Unity. So, if you’ve just installed KDE on your computer, here are some of the best widgets you can drop on to your desktop and make your friends jealous.

      • RAW image processing with digikam
      • Donations
      • The Plans For KDE Frameworks 5.0 Were Just Announced
      • KDE 5.0 roadmap announced

        Most eyes in the Linux desktop world are on the Berlin Desktop Summit this week, as members of the GNOME and KDE camps come together for a joint technical conference running from August 6-12 at Humboldt University in Berlin. Currently, KDE seems to be making the most strides in the joint event, with the surprise announcement of the KDE 5.0 roadmap, which was revealed by KDE developer Aaron Seigo in his blog Sunday.

      • Important Announcement Coming Today at Desktop Summit

        Today at 17:30 there is a panel presentation here at Berlin Desktop Summit that is unfortunately titled “KDE Platform 4 Roadmap” and the schedule says I’m presenting it. This was submitted prior to the Platform 11 meeting in Randa so it could make the speaking schedule here at the Desktop Summit. At the time I didn’t know what precisely we’d decide on at Platform 11 .. and the title reflects that.

        What I did know was that we would want to communicate the results (whatever they would be) from Platform 11. That is in fact what we will be doing. Better yet, I will be joined by David Faure, Kevin Ottens and Stephen Kelly in doing so.

        Interestingly, however, the presentation will not be about KDE Platform 4. It will be about KDE Frameworks 5.0.

      • Dragon Player 3
      • KDE Having Fun at Desktop Summit 2011

        Friday, 10:00, August 5, 2011. A big group of people was standing a bit lost in the cloakroom of the Humboldt University at Unter den Linden, Berlin. They were the volunteers for the Desktop Summit 2011 – but without guidance and leadership, they were just nervously looking around and talking to each other.

        But at 11:00, Mirko Boehm came in, gathered everyone together and told them what to do! Tables got moved, tape stuck to floors, posters hung up.

      • King of KDistros (Poll Results)

        Alright, thanks to mobile technology, I was able to put together a very quick note to let you know how the King of KDE distros went.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • As Linus was saying . . . .

        Until recently, I had several of my lab machines using GNOME — until my hardware and I were relegated to second-class status by being only able to use the GNOME 3 Fallback Mode while the rest of the world went on its merry way using GNOME 3. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s OK: Regular readers of this blog also know that in the recent past I have taken both GNOME 3 and Unity to task for bailing on already experienced users in an effort to dumb down the desktop for those who are new to Linux.

        Of course, the woe I documented in past blogs about it is nothing compared to the choice words Linus Torvalds has for GNOME 3.

      • Testing Gnome 3
      • You’re Living in the Past, Dude!

        At the 2000 Usenix Technical Conference (which was the primary “generalist” conference for Free Software developers in those days), I met Miguel De Icaza for the third time in my life. In those days, he’d just started Helix Code (anyone else remember what Ximian used to be called?) and was still president of the GNOME Foundation. To give you some context: Bonobo was a centerpiece of new and active GNOME development then.

        Out of curiosity and a little excitement about GNOME, I asked Miguel if he could show me how to get the GNOME 1.2 running on my laptop. Miguel agreed to help, quickly taking control of the keyboard and frantically typing and editing my sources.list.

      • Top 10 GNOME Wallpapers

        Wallpapers!! What would we do without them? Here is the ist of top rated Gnome wallpapers which captured the attention of the users of gnome-look.org. What would we do without them??

      • Karen Sandler: Freedom from my heart to the desktop

        This is Karen Sandler, the Gnome Foundation’s new Executive Director, delivering her keynote speech at OSCon 2011. It is by far and away the best explanation of why software freedom matters that I’ve heard in a very long time.

      • So much to do, so little time

        Well, my time here with GNOME is coming to a close. This, of course, doesn’t mean I won’t be contributing to future projects (or maybe even enhancing this one), but it does mean college is on the horizon and my time will be greatly limited by it.

      • Premature bad taste becomes the norm
      • The Earliest Talk About The GTK4 Tool-Kit
      • Dear Gnome: Please listen to your users

        When Gnome 3 was released I pretty much immediately took the plunge and upgraded to it. I initially used the default Gnome Shell for a bit. There were some really big regressions right away. You can’t change your fonts, icon theme, GTK theme… I found a tool called gnome-tweak-tool that does allow changing those things, but I find it annoying that I can’t do it via the default system-settings tool.

  • Distributions

    • The best Linux distro of 2011!

      Fedora, Mint, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian and OpenSUSE go head-to-head – we’ve dropped the six most popular Linux distributions of the day into a cage fight for your affections. Read on to discover which distro comes up top for installation ease, customisation, performance, security and more. Which flavour of Linux gets the gold medal? You might very well be surprised, so read on for all the juicy details…

      In the beginning, Linus created the kernel. The kernel worked (sort of) and was good. Then, in an ever-spiralling Babelesque explosion of code, the world got umpty-ump different Linux distributions, some of which seem to differ from each other only in the colour of their desktop screens.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • August 2011 issue of The PCLinuxOS released

        The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the August 2011 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Meemaw and Andrew Strick. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

      • Mandriva 2011 with kernel 3.0

        We prepared unofficial image for Mandriva 2011 RC2 with kernel 3.0 by MIB group. Note: because it is unofficial distro, it destined only for testing purposes. Mandriva 2011 will be with kernel 2.6.38.7, and later, after some period of testing, we will update kernel to 3.0. You may get Mandriva 2011 with 3.0 kernel from here.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo Linux releases 11.2 LiveDVD

        Gentoo Linux is proud to announce the availability of a new LiveDVD to celebrate the continued collaboration between Gentoo users and developers. The LiveDVD features a superb list of packages, some of which are listed below.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Top 10 Reasons Why Larry Ellison Dislikes Red Hat
      • Red Hat Certifies 400 Virtualization Professionals

        Red Hat‘s virtualization strategy is gaining momentum. One key indicator: The open source software company has trained 400 professionals on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). But that’s not all. Roger Egan (pictured), VP of North American Channels, has revealed several other milestones to The VAR Guy — including plans for a Cloud Partner Symposium. Here’s the update.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 16 Features With Desktop, Virtualization, Etc

          Fedora 16 (codenamed Verne) is set to be released at the end of October while the software string freeze and alpha change deadline just passed this week, with the only alpha release being scheduled to take place in mid-August. Fedora 16 is set to continue in Red Hat’s tradition of contributing real innovations to the Linux stack, with some of the new Verne features being talked about in this posting.

          As talked about already, Fedora 16 may use the Btrfs file-system by default, but according to the feature list Wiki page its status is currently at 0%. Other features include automatic multi-seat support, Chrony becoming the default NTP client, firewalld will be the default network firewall solution, and Fedora will finally switch to using the GRUB2 boot-loader rather than legacy GRUB. Also going out the door in Fedora will finally be the HAL daemon with everything being migrated over to UDisks, UPOwer, the UDEV library, etc. Fedora 15 switched over to systemd and with Fedora 16 they will finish up migrating SysVinit scripts over to systemd files.

        • My view of Fedora®
        • Fedora 15 Sometimes Really Suck

    • Debian Family

      • People behind Debian: Margarita Manterola, Debian Women member

        When I think about Margarita, I always remember her as a friendly and welcoming person. Like most of the Debian Women members by the way. But she likes to spread some love and organized a Debian Appreciation Day for example.

        I think I met her in real life for the first time at Debconf 6 in Oaxtepec (Mexico). She deeply cares about Debian in general. She has proven it multiple times with her DPL candidacy and by giving talks like Making Debian rule again.

      • Derivatives

        • KNOPPIX 6.7.0 Delivers a Few Surprises

          Once upon a time KNOPPIX was the king of hardware detection and an innovator in live CD technology. Well, time passed and more distribution developers began concentrating on live images and pretty soon remaster applications let anybody with an idea release their own Linux distribution. The Linux kernel itself took most of the hardware detection and configuration burden off developers. KNOPPIX then began declining in popularity and for a while seemed to be morphing into a specialty distribution. Well, I lost track of it about then and didn’t think of it again until yesterday when I heard 6.7.0 was available. I figured I might take a look and see what it’s been up to lately.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Shuttleworth: All your rights are belong to us

            Before I open palm — make that palms — and insert face, let me say that the Ubuntu community’s general mantra of “haters gonna hate” never really works as a valid argument when someone disagrees with what the self-appointed Ubuntu/Canonical leader/founder/Grand Poobah, or any other Ubuntu/Canonical leader, says. It’s a profoundly weak argument that first and foremost makes you sound shallow and stupid. It also makes you sound like you don’t have a reasonable response, as well as sounding like you’re incapable of responding.

          • Making mountains out of molehills

            The DMB grants both Ubuntu Membership and upload rights to (portions of) the Ubuntu archive. Both are assessed rather differently (one community and one somewhat more technical). Most of the current argument is about Membership (the only person the DMB deferred for upload rights was correctly so; it was a Per-Package Uploader application for packages which were not in the archive yet)

          • A Formal Introduction to The Ubuntu Orchestra Project

            Today’s post by Matthew East, coupled with several discussions in IRC and the Mailing Lists have made me realize that we’ve not communicated the Ubuntu Orchestra Project clearly enough to some parts of the Ubuntu Community. Within Ubuntu Server developer circles, I think the project’s goals, design, and implementation are quite well understood. But I now recognize that our community stretches both far and wide, and our messages about Orchestra have not yet reached all corners of the Ubuntu world :-) Here’s an attempt at that now!

          • Ubuntu Membership and Contributions to Upstream Projects

            There has been a lot (perhaps too much) discussion on the ubuntu-devel mailing list about (among other things) to what extent contributions to an upstream project should be taken into account when assessing whether a person’s application for Ubuntu membership should be granted.

            Jonathan Carter has very properly added it to the agenda for discussion by the Community Council at their next meeting.

          • Should Upstream Contributions Count?

            The Ubuntu Community Council will be deciding in a week or so whether upstream or external contributions count for Ubuntu membership & commit privileges. I always thought that all contributions that were for the good of Ubuntu counted.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Released – Changes and Screenshots
          • Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Review | Oneiric Ocelot

            Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Oneiric Ocelot development release is out and available to download, check release notes, download options and what’s new in Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Here.

            With each release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot coming out we see a highly impressive development work most of it discussed at Ubuntu UDS from Ubuntu developers and community members that could make the final release of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot is one of the best distribution will be available at the moment.

          • Ubuntu Photography Guidelines

            The Ubuntu Brand has released guidelines for photography related to Ubuntu and Canonical. You can find the PDF at the bottom of the Ubuntu Brand Guidelines page titled “download the Ubuntu photography guidelines”. The PDF offers some simple Ubuntu style techniques for emphasizing the subject. These photo tips help reflect the Ubuntu brand values of freedom, collaboration, reliability and precision. Download the PDF and check it out!

          • Contributions of Non-Technical People

            In fact, if you run and love Kubuntu, we want and need your creativity, your testing, your bug reports, your corrections on the wiki, your help on artwork, documentation, promotion (like this blog!), your helpful voice in IRC, identica, twitter, Google+ — the sky is the limit! Community work is as important as the code, because people create the love, create the community, create the software.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • A newbie’s report on Kubuntu

              I’ve to confess that I was never fond of KDE. If you ask me ‘why’, then I’ve to tell that may be I’ve started my Linux life with Gnome and it was like ‘love at first sight’! I was introduced with Ubuntu at 2007 and to be frankly, I liked it so much that I never felt to try other distros to give a serious run. I’ve tested Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora – but I’ve not taken them seriously. As a result I became a solely Ubuntu guy. My laptop still runs Ubuntu 10.04 (and I am quite happy with Lucid). This solely Ubuntu-only-background makes me a total newbie in the world of Kubuntu! But why I am using Kubuntu now? Well… after buying the new desktop, I thought to taste Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu, because (in my opinion) unity in Ubuntu is still in its early stage and I do not wanted to install Lucid in my desktop. So I choose Kubuntu Natty Narwhal to give a try. The result? I am an one-month old Kubuntu user!

            • Linux Mint XFCE: Gnome’s heir?

              Regular readers know I’ve switched away from Ubuntu and onto Linux Mint. I think the move away from the standard desktop interface and toward things like Unity and Gnome Shell is a mistake. Linux Mint is still using Gnome 2.32, a smooth and mature interface that suits me fine. But nobody’s doing any more work on the Gnome 2.x environment; the Gnome project is moving in a different direction now, and unless someone forks Gnome 2.32 – someone with deep pockets, to give it credibility and legs – then sooner or later the Gnome-based traditional desktop will have nowhere to go. I don’t know how much longer distros like Mint can hold out and still use Gnome 2.x; I give it a year, 18 months at the outside. So I continue to seek alternatives for when the time comes.

            • Linux Mint: This didn’t go to 11

              Regular readers will remember that I’d moved everything to Linux Mint. Most of the desktop boxes were running Mint 11, but I kept the laptops on Mint 10 because of a power regression in the kernel. It’s not such a big deal if desktop processors burn a little more power, but on a laptop it means short battery life and heat problems.

              Well, the power regression has been solved – or at least there’s a workaround – so I decided to go ahead and move my main laptop to Mint 11.

              I think I left it that way for about two days before moving back to Mint 10.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Open Embedded: An alternative way to build embedded Linux distributions

      As embedded processors have grown more powerful and feature-rich, the popularity of the Linux operating system in embedded applications has grown in leaps and bounds. Although the fact that Linux is open source and free of licensing fees is one major driver of its popularity, another key driver is the wealth of application software and drivers available as a result of Linux’s widespread usage in the desktop and server arenas.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • $199 Asus X101 targets Linux tablet alternative

        Though bearing some of the hallmarks of a Netbook, the Asus Eee PC X101 will be offered as an alternative to that category of small laptops, according to an Asus blog post.

        Asus spelled out today that the X101 is a departure from the Netbook as we know it. First of all, it’s even thinner and lighter than a traditional Netbook (which is already pretty light and thin to begin with) at 0.69-inches and two pounds, respectively.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Seven Signs that You Have Been Brainwashed by Microsoft

    Considering the last events I’ve been able to observe, as well as Mechatotoro’s contributions, I compiled this short list of manifestations of a Microsoft-only mentality, just for fun.

    1. You think free/libre software is unreliable and dangerous, but then you download cracked versions of programs and feel proud about it.

    2. If your Windows system breaks down, you are able to do all your computing off a Linux live CD, but then you look for a (pirated?) Windows copy and install it.

  • Despite successes, FLOSS still misunderstood, villianized

    Despite increasing evidence that corporations are turning to open source more than ever, there’s also countering evidence that people have a long ways to go before they “get” open source.

    The notion that innovation is driving open source adoption now is a theme that’s been woven heavily in my conversations with open source community members these past couple of weeks. More and more I am getting notes about organizations that have never used open source as a methodology before, now starting to deploy it in their in-house development departments or joining in existing FLOSS projects.

  • Commercial Gains Mean Growing Pains for Open Source Community

    Recent conversations at OSCON, which I’ve attended since 2004, as well as observations through talks with vendors, users and developers in open source all indicate a common theme: With commercial successes for open source software come some community growing pains.

    This was also illustrated to some extent by the attendance, content and vibe at this year’s OSCON, a good annual check on where commercial open source software stands in its ongoing maturation, evolution and disruption.

  • Open Source Meets Systems Management
  • Does open source need corporate backing to succeed?

    Much of Android’s success down to Google’s backing, says researcher

    Android is one of the most successful projects in the open-source world, but that’s mostly because of Google’s “muscle”, according to one researcher.

    Liz Laffan, an analyst at VisionMobile, has attempted to measure the “openness” of several open-source software platforms – ranking Google’s OS in last place.

  • The transition from “them” to “we”

    While a lot of large Free Software projects do have some sort of formal “membership” structure (e.g. for GNOME there is the foundation), in reality being part of a project is more about your mindset. It’s easy for anyone to complain from the outside about something – and then the project is “they”.

  • NZ Open Source Society elects new president

    Egressive owner and open source advocate Dave Lane has been elected president of the New Zealand Open Source Society.

    The president, vice president Peter Harrison and other committee members were confirmed at the Society’s annual general meeting late last week.

  • Linux Australia readies conference code of conduct

    Expands anti-harassment policy with Ada Initiative.

    Linux Australia has announced plans to introduce a conference code of conduct following a controversial keynote presentation at linux.conf.au (LCA) in January.

    A number of conference attendees complained about futurist Mark Pesce’s use of sexual images in his presentation, in breach of LCA’s anti-harassment policy.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Extending our Reach: Many Layers of User Sovereignty

        Today we access the Internet in many ways, with phones and tablets and new devices becoming more prevalent. These devices have new operating systems, new business models, and new opportunities. They also bring new challenges to interoperability and user-sovereignty. How should Mozilla respond? Should Firefox and Gecko be our only tools? Or should we develop other tools?

  • Public Services/Government

  • Licensing

    • A Guide to Open Source Licensing

      If you’re working on or launching an open source project, one of the most basic decisions you must make is which license the project will be released under, and choosing the perfect license is more complex than ever. Over the years, we’ve provided many free guidelines on this topic, but it’s a moving target. In this post, you’ll find our updeated collection of all the things you need to know to make an informed open source license decision.

  • Programming

    • In Search Of… A Few Good Developers
    • Rugged Individualism, Community, and Templating Systems

      Consider this: I have at various times in my career written a templating system, an object model, and a test framework. I no longer use nor maintain those projects, and you will not find them in anything other than the Internet’s vast elephant graveyard (if they even exist there).

      These projects are long gone in part because other projects are (now) obviously better and I have exceedingly good taste in predicting the future, but (more seriously) because the value of those projects to the community was far less than the value of competing projects.

      I have the right to publish a new templating system to the CPAN, but without a staggeringly compelling reason to do so (such as that it uses a different technical approach or that it provides the most useful subset of features of an existing system with far fewer requirements or much better resource usage), the community is probably better off if I refrain from doing so.

    • Announcing our Code of Conduct and Community Contributed Docs

Leftovers

  • 141 nice fonts of popular Movies, games and Brands

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Police use Flickr to identify London riot

      London has been the scene of utter chaos over the past few days, and last night it hit a new peak when it seemed many parts of the UK capital were under siege, from north to south.

  • Finance

    • The Personality of Goldman Sachs or What’s in the Gold Sack?
    • Republican Leaders Are Receiving Greatly Increased Contributions From Wall Street Firms

      Republican consultant Eddie Mahe said he had “no doubt” Wall Street has been betting that the House Republican majority would lead the effort to “repeal or at least modify” the revised financial regulations enacted last year.

    • Goldman Sachs ready to bail out California

      Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are the lead lenders and will pony up $1.5-billion each. The consortium also includes Citigroup, Barclays, JPMorgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and US Bank.

    • BofA, Goldman Sachs Find State Mortgage Cases Hard to Shake

      A Washington state judge in Seattle said in rulings over the past two months that Bank of America, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and other underwriters can’t cite faulty data from appraisers or expired statutes of limitation to avoid Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle’s claims that there was false information in offering documents for at least $3.9 billion in securities it bought.

    • Goldman Sachs rates desk hemorrhages traders

      More than a dozen traders have quit Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s (NYSE:GS – News) North American government bonds and derivatives trading desk in New York in recent months as the bank takes fewer risks and big bonuses for ambitious traders dry up.

      Goldman has been handing out promotions and better pay to its salespeople rather than the traders who manage the bank’s inventory of securities and derivatives, people familiar with the bank’s operations said.

  • Civil Rights

    • ‘U’ team aims to expand digital freedom through Telex program

      According to Wustrow, Telex is a two-part system where users download software that allows Telex stations to act as a proxy site outside of the restricted country. He noted that one major difference between a typical proxy website and Telex is that proxy websites often have only one IP address that needs to be blocked, but Telex will have multiple addresses, making censorship very difficult.

      Wustrow added there are only a handful of undersea cables to China, but Telex stations would be sufficient for the program to work there. Nonetheless, there are still several hurdles to the implementation of this program.

      For example, Wustrow said there is no definitive price, but each Telex station could cost thousands of dollars and the stations would have to be incentivized for Internet Service Providers to install them. He added that in return for installing Telex stations, ISPs could sell the service to users to subsidize costs or the U.S. government could sponsor efforts toward increased Internet freedom.

IRC Proceedings: August 8th, 2011

Posted in IRC Logs at 6:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

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