• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

4 Reasons to Have Live Linux at Home

LPI Announces Academic Training Partners in Malaysia

Desktop

• Best Use for an Old Laptop: TinyCore Linux

  Like many computer geeks, I have more unused computers than I know what to do with. Old hardware is often considered to be obsolete when often the MSWindows went pear shaped.. I know that Linux can breath new life into almost any hardware, so I have a hard time letting older machines go. Unfortunately, they often don’t have the needed components to be fully usable — what good is a computer these days without networking?

  TinyCore Linux is an ultra-small Linux desktop; the 4.0 release is just under 12MB. TinyCore is stripped down, so don’t expect the bells and whistles of a more active desktop, such as KDE or OSX or Windows has. Instead, its claim is that it runs in RAM and it runs fast, which is great for older hardware.

• Frankendesktop: My Gothic desktop fantasy

  Over the course of the day, I have to hop between various desktops. That experience set me wondering what a desktop would look like if it were assembled from all the favourite features that I encounter daily. Of course, it’s pure fantasy. But just in case, somewhere on the planet, a team of developers is trying to create the ideal desktop, here’s a roadmap that they might like to follow.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Podcast Season 3 Episode 19

  In this episode: Canonical launches an app developer portal and there’s a new mobile Linux initiative. We create a whole new section of the podcast, discover lots of things and discuss whether secure booting will hinder Linux adoption.

Kernel Space

• Kernel Log: Linux 3.1 approaches

  Kernel version 3.1 will probably be released in the next few days. After a break of more than four weeks, Greg Kroah-Hartman has released new stable kernels. The X.org developers are thinking about merging the most important graphics drivers into the X Server.

  Late last Tuesday night, Linus Torvalds issued the ninth release candidate of Linux 3.1. Since then, some further corrections have been integrated into the main development branch; however, in the past few days there have not been any new hints on when Linux 3.1 might get released – but it is likely to be released some time this week, or next week at the latest, as indicated by Torvalds when releasing RC7.

• The kernel column with Jon Masters #106

  As is the case every month, Jon Masters looks at the latest developments in the Linux kernel community, including work on new architecture and ABI support, not to mention Kernel.org disruptions…

• Logitech C270 Webcam and Linux

  After years of having an audio-only computer, I finally succumbed and bought a USB webcam, so that I can do video calling through Skype.

  First, because I’m frugal, I looked on-line to see what low-cost cameras were available at my local retail chains. The Logitech C210 seemed to be the least expensive and most available.

• The VirtualBox Kernel Driver Is Tainted Crap

Applications

• Photoshop Alternatives for Linux

  Photoshop is without doubt the most well known piece of photo editing software. It is used by serious hobby photographers and professionals alike. However, although you can run Photoshop on a Linux machine by using a virtual box containing a Windows operating system, there are some good alternatives available on Linux. Unlike with the Windows or Apple operating systems, most Linux software is open source and so free to install and use. There is also a good reason why you should be wary of paying for some types of software on Linux. Here is our round-up of the best on offer.

• Evolution Mail Client To See Significant Changes

  Evolution, the e-mail client that’s part of the GNOME desktop, will be seeing many significant changes during the GNOME 3.4 development cycle.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to mounts an archive for access as a file system

  • Managing Linux Systems with Webmin System Administration and Module Development

  • ClipGrab – An Awesome Video Downloader For Linux

  • How to install a virtual instance of Ubuntu Linux on a Toshiba Thrive tablet

  • Installing PHP 5.3 on CentOS 5.7

  • Change Unity-2D Launcher auto-hide behavior in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric

  • Use MySQL Replication Like an Expert to Improve Performance and Enhance Availability

  • Guidelines for Securing Open Source Software

  • Getting Around in GIMP – Layer Masks

  • Convert CENTOS 6 server to Scientific Linux 6

  • Review: DNS & BIND on IPv6

  • Boost Internet Speed with Faster DNS

  • How (and why) to do math with awk

  • The Magical Art of Compositing in Blender

    Apart from being a great 3D modeller and one of the best animation programs, Blender is also a great compositing program (since the release of Blender 2.37a and later, till the release of 2.58). This article covers compositing in Blender.
    Compositing is the art of combining several images into a final image. In a 3D program, the artist often wants to combine a 3D element into several 2D elements, including the background and other scene elements. This is specially so when it comes to 3D movie making. You might have created a character, and naturally would like the character to move in a suitable location and a conducive atmosphere. It is not always possible to create detailed 3D environments if one’s system lacks the resources (RAM) to handle such heavy scenes. In such cases, it is always advisable to use 2D backgrounds to give the illusion of a setting for your 3D character. With a great compositor like Blender, this becomes easy.

• Wine

  • Wine 1.3.30 Has New DirectSound & More

    New Wine development releases normally come every other Friday, but last week there wasn’t any Wine 1.3.30 release. Fear not, however, as the Wine developers have went forward with the Wine 1.3.30 release this Monday. Wine 1.3.30 does offer up a few interesting features.

  • Wine 1.3.30 Released

Desktop Environments

• Testing, XFCE to the Rescue

  What a busy week it has been with testing, finding bugs, confirming and submitting. Generally I test Gnome and KDE isos, but this time went off the wall as my frustrations grow with both Gnome and KDE and decided to test XFCE 64 bit edition. Last time I looked at XFCE was like version 4.0, so to my surprise 4.8 will knock your socks off compared to that.

  So I have decided that with my Sabayon Forensic spins, I will go with xfce instead. I’ve been up to my ears in the skel files learning the xfce ways, adding and removing packages and been testing local isos via the wonderful tool molecule. My computer is feeling the pains tho, molecule will really give those cpus a work out. So drop the KDE and Gnome editions and just go with XFCE to make this simpler and more universal for working with various computers. Gnome-shell is kinda of a nightmare right now on various hardware. KDE has it’s issues too, but works better than gnome-shell.

• Linux For The Masses!

  I remember when the 4.0 release of KDE hit the public, which I believe should never have happened that early. I didn’t like what the KDE 4 series brought to the table, and in some ways I still don’t, but I gave the project the time it needed to mature, which the KDE team wasn’t giving it by releasing too early in my opinion. Anyway, I found the 4.6, and 4.7 releases something I could work with, and give it a fair try. To be perfectly honest too, there was aspects of the KDE 3 series that I wasn’t fond of, and had found some problems with it many times, even with the last release of it. Nothing’s perfect, and it’s foolish to think all things must fit that way. But to the point, I waited it out, let it mature, and have been pleasantly surprised. Would I switch back to KDE after all this time since I left the 3 series? I don’t know. I won’t say that it wouldn’t happen, but I can’t say it will. I grew to like the GNOME 2 series, even with its lack of configuration options, and simplistic UIs, compared to KDE. But I could easily switch if need be, or more importantly, if GNOME 3 matures quickly, or even Unity, I could switch to those. They’re tomorrow.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Plasma Active

    Here is the About screen for Plasma Active One, as seen in our instance running on top of MeeGo, recently abandoned by Intel and Nokia Linux-based operating system for mobile devices.

  • Results from poll about future of XScreensavers in KDE Plasma

    Today ended the poll on forums.kde.org about the future of X Screen saver support in the KDE Plasma Workspaces. I want to thank everybody who participated in the poll. The poll and the thread clearly help us to see what the users need and want and what we need to provide.

  • KDE’s Summer of Achievements

    KDE took part in its 7th year as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code. Thanks to Google’s generous funding and KDE’s mentors we were able to work with 51 students over the summer, once again making KDE the largest organization taking part in Google Summer of Code. Choosing the right students was hard but the selection turned out well. The students coded in nearly all areas of KDE from Calligra and Rekonq to Amarok and KStars. Their projects turned out very well, and we’ve once again been impressed with the talent and dedication of the students. All 51 students passed their mid-term evaluation and 47 successfully passed their final evaluation. Valorie Zimmerman, KDE Administrator for Google Summer of Code, says: “KDE got forty-seven completed projects, which is tremendous. Our focus though is not on the code itself, but on the students and their involvement with KDE. However, their projects enrich KDE immensely, and you’ll be seeing their code integrated into our codebase over the next few months. “

  • digiKam Tricks 3.9.5 Released

  • Humanizing metal and electrons

    We think that looking at different devices as isolated worlds, needing completely different “Apps” and UX stacks for each kind of device it’s pretty limiting, and it’s not the way who uses it (aka “humans”;) thinks.

    What we believe in, is that computing devices (doesn’t matter if it’s the laptop, a tablet, or something running in a washing machine) should exist in function of helping the people accomplishing the task they want to do, no more, no less, devices shouldn’t be something complex, hard and therefore “harming”, but should just be extensions of the user harm, of the user mind, just tools, and in every situation, the best tool for the best job.

  • How Cute can Konqui Be?

  • Plasma Active Perspectives: The App Story

    Plasma Active brings a flexible, elegant, activity-driven user experience to a spectrum of devices. This article is part of a series of articles about different perspectives on Plasma Active. In the first installment, we look at a number of applications that come with Plasma Active. Kontact Touch, Calligra Active, Bangarang and a collection of Active Apps provide a stable and powerful set of functionality, making Plasma Active suitable for personal and professional use cases.

  • KDE’s ‘Plasma Active’ Tops GNOME 3 and Unity

    Mobile devices have been influencing desktop software design for several years now. Mostly, I’ve not been impressed. Either the results are awkward, like GNOME 3, or over-simplified, like Ubuntu’s Unity.

    I had just about reached the conclusion that the mobile influence represented a step backwards in desktop design — then I tried KDE’s Plasma Active, a desktop designed for touch screen tablets, and all my assumptions were trampled underfoot.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Has Gnome 3 decided that people shouldn’t want screen savers?

    As you may know, years ago some fresh young face on the Gnome team decided, for no sensible reason, to re-implement the xscreensaver daemon from scratch and call it “gnome-screensaver”. This re-write was still able to run the 95% of xscreensaver that comprised the actual, you know, screen savers. It ran them badly, but it ran them.

  • Elementary Viper Luna Gnome Shell Theme

    Elementary Viper Luna Gnome Shell theme is inspired by DanRabit’s work on Elementary Luna desktop. The theme is created by justviper who in past gave us couple of nice Gnome Shell themes.

  • Looking For a Beautiful GNOME Shell Theme? Try ‘Nord’

  • Gnome 3.2 reviewed | Its uber cool and feature rich

    Gnome 3.2 was released a few days back. With an improved shell and various other integrations, this shell will please many users. We had been looking closely at the developments from the Gnome stable with our posts on Installing Gnome shell, Gnome Shell extensions and Gnome Shell themes. Check out this article to find out more about the new features in Gnome 3.2

  • Gnome 3.2 Review

    All in all, it’s a mixed bag of a release. The improvements that have come with it are definitely welcome. The Gtk+ theme updates have certainly improved my day to day experience with the desktop, and I’m hopeful that the new applications and online accounts integration will turn in to really excellent features in the near future.

    Unfortunately, many of the bugs and annoyances from the 3.0 release persist – largely because the Gnome team doesn’t consider these bugs but features – and some new ones have been introduced.

    Weighing things up, I’d say that my overall experience with the desktop is little improved from 3.0. That said, it’s not an altogether bad thing since I did quite like the 3.0 release and still find this series of Gnome releases to be the best free desktop for my needs.

  • Thoughts on being an upstream

    I’ve been reading things people report in Bugzilla for years. How I feel about this now is that there are really several, entirely different things that we presently lump under “bug”. For example, I think it’s pretty clear that someone’s random ideas for a change to the design are totally different from say identified code regressions, which are in turn different from proposed patches.

Distributions

• Slackware 13.37 – Perfect for My Laptop

  Most people who have dabbled in Linux for a while “know” that Slackware is difficult to install, configure, make work and keep up to date. It is an OS only for geeks. Not so. These days the developments in the wider universe have trickled down to Slackware as well, and having something like KDE 4 as default desktop already means plenty of things taken care of, with all the utilities and options this desktop environment is providing.

• New Releases

  • Owl-current 2011/10/10 snapshot

  • 10/10/2011 — SMS version 1.6.2 Released!

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Million Dollar Baby…

    Since the begining of the Mageia adventure, 243 people gave money to Mageia.Org, helping us to buy hardware, domain names, goodies, …
    It makes an average donation of € 62 ($ 83) per donor! Thank you to all the money donors or ressources partners (ielo, gandi, online) but also to all other people offering in the way they want: time (packagers, triage, qa, artwork, marketing, bug report, dev…) or just by spreading Mageia arround them by buying TS or talking on forums, events…

• Gentoo Family

  • Sabayon 7 Brings The Experimental Fusion Kernel

    Sabayon Linux, the easy-to-use distribution derived from Gentoo, reached version 7.0 yesterday. Among other improvements, Sabayon 7 features an “ultra-optimized” Linux 3.0 kernel as well as the project’s experimental Fusion Kernel.

    Some of the key software packages to Sabayon Linux 7 include the Linux 3.0 kernel, GNOME 3.2, KDE SC 4.7, Xfce 4.8, and LibreOffice 3.4. In total there’s been more than 4,000 package updatss since Sabayon 6.0, which arrived back in June. There’s also XBMC 10.0 support, an updated Entropy Framework, support for new languages and fonts, and semi-automated package updates.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat (RHT) Approaches New Upside Target of $44.40

    Shares of Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) have bullishly opened above the pivot of $42.75 today and have reached the first resistance level of $43.64. Analysts will be watching for a cross of the next upside pivot targets of $44.40 and $46.05.

  • Red Hat: Perfect Short Candidate For This Market

    Red Hat, Inc. (RHT) is a provider of open source, Linux-based software for corporate IT customers. The company has been a rumored acquisition target for years, with potential suitors including Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), and most recently Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

  • Red Hat’s Open-Source Software Lowers Costs

    Cloud computing has been compared to an electricity grid, mainly because end users can access power and services without having to set up and run the infrastructure.

    With the cloud, software and applications are stored on remote servers and delivered over the Internet rather than individual computers.

  • Fedora

    • Results of the voting for the Fedora 17 release name

    • Fedora 17 Has A Tasty Codename: Beefy Miracle

      Last week Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu 12.04 LTS would be codenamed Precise Pangolin while this evening Red Hat’s Jared Smith has announced the codename for Fedora 17, which will be released around the same time next spring.

    • Testing Fedora 16 “Verne” – Beta

      I made the upgrade of my operating system to Fedora 16 (a.k.a. Verne). The first thing I did was update my applications. Then I did the procedures mentioned in this link.

      The download size was about 1.2 GB so I waited for it to end. I did not have to do any other commands in particular. When it was over, I restarted my computer to see if it had worked properly.

      The first thing I noticed was the advance of a grub2 grub. After changing to black at the bottom of plymouth. Then I realized I had changed from the login screen. Now I like Fedora more.

    • “I’m a Beefy Miracle” song

    • Fedora 17 Will Be Named Beefy Miracle

      Jared Smith proudly announced earlier today the codename for the upcoming Fedora 17 operating system, due for release next year.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Is in the Wings: Three Days and Counting

        It’s now been almost six months since the release of Ubuntu 11.04, or “Natty Narwhal,” and that means it’s about time for the next version of Canonical’s popular Linux distribution to make its official debut.

      • Small Things That Matter: Logging Out of Ubuntu From the Dash

      • Unity: I just can’t

      • The Supreme Court of India Embraces Ubuntu Linux

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 236

      • Official Ubuntu 11.10 CDs Go On Sale

        The official Ubuntu 11.10 CDs have gone on sale in the Canonical Store.

      • Video: Ubuntu 11.10 Review

        For our Ubuntu fans as well as those who just want to learn about the upcoming release, I found this on youtube. I was hoping for HTML5 playback option, but this seems to be Flash only. The review was done from a recent release candidate that I believe will be the final release due out this Thursday. I still prefer KDE myself.

      • Sushi File Previewer in Ubuntu 11.10 Unity

        One of the new features in GNOME 3.2 is quick file preview. Pressing space while a file is selected in the file browser will open a window with a preview of the file contents. Previews of images, videos, music, PDF documents, and more are supported.

      • Transforming the home PC with Ubuntu 11.10

        Millions of home users give their computers a new lease of life with Ubuntu each year. The upcoming version, Ubuntu 11.10, has substantial benefits for those looking for the latest personal cloud and web technologies, as well as those running on older hardware.

      • Ubuntu will power HP’s new cloud service

        Ubuntu Linux will be the primary operating system powering HP’s upcoming cloud service, Ubuntu maker Canonical said last week. HP recently opened a private beta program for an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud that will offer both compute and storage capacity, using the OpenStack open source cloud platform.

      • An Elephant On A Computer

        Probably a good idea to install one of the countless Linux and open source distros as a backup OS on the old traveling netbook.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 arrives with ARM support

        Canonical is claiming to have released the first general-purpose server platform to run on ARM architecture chips with Ubuntu 11.10, which also introduces a service orchestration framework and updated support for the OpenStack cloud platform.

      • Ubuntu prepares for ARM-based servers

        Linux vendor Canonical is to make the latest iteration of its operating systems for client and server, Ubuntu 11.10, available for download this Thursday.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 will support ARM processors to take on Red Hat

        Canonical’s popular Ubuntu Linux distribution will get its second update of 2011 this month for both desktop and server editions. However it is the server edition that Canonical has made the biggest changes to by supporting ARM processors.

      • The Other Issue With Ubuntu 11.10: Boot Speed

      • Ubuntu Server Aims to Own the Cloud

        With a lack of any license fees and a focus on cloud features from its primary sponsor, Canonical, Ubuntu has flourished in the cloud, becoming a popular guest operating system on Amazon EC2 and other infrastructure-as-a-service options.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, new feature info

        Currently the most up-to-date Ubuntu distro is Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, this arrived back in April and initially we weren’t seeing a lot of love for the new Unity user interface which this OS version introduced, but now people have had a chance to use it you can understand why it was favored to the dated Gnome layout.

      • HP to Use Linux-Based Ubuntu Platform in Upcoming Cloud Computing Service

        Canonical has announced that Hewlett Packard has chosen Linux-based Ubuntu platform as the lead and guest OS in its upcoming cloud computing offering.

        In a blog post, Canonical, which handles the software distribution, revealed that CEO Jane Silber made the announcement during the OpenStack cloud computing conference in Boston.

      • Indian Supreme Court Switches Over To Ubuntu; So Should USA

        The Supreme Court of the world’s largest democracy has ordered all courts across India to switch to GNU/Linux based operating system Ubuntu. Prior to this move the courts across India were using the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is mainly targeted at servers. More than 17,000 courts around India will now be switching over to Ubuntu from RHEL.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • The Top 5 Ubuntu based Linux distributions

          In this article I am introducing some of the most amazing derivatives of Ubuntu. Ubuntu based distros are basically Ubuntu with specialized applications in a particular domain. For instance, it could be in education like Edubuntu or multimedia or Mythubunu. Read on to find out more.

Devices/Embedded

• Tux goes for a spin

  The Linux Foundation has announced a new event and a new emphasis for Linux: the inaugural Automotive Linux Summit.

  The Auto Summit, which will happen on November 28 in Yokohama, Japan, is geared to “address the growing need for carmakers and Linux developers to collaborate on the future of computing on wheels.”

  And, I would suspect, a chance to really try to showcase the in-vehicle capabilities of MeeGo and Tizen, two mobile platform projects stewarded by the Linux Foundation.

  You don’t hear much about these platforms’ in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) features, except in press releases about the platforms themselves, where we all die a little bit inside when we read the word “infotainment.” But it’s as good a term as any to describe the class of devices that have come as an option in cars in recent years, like seat warmers. OnStar, GM’s big revenue generator, and Ford Sync, an equivalent IVI platform powered by Microsoft’s Embedded Automotive operating system, are two examples of this kind of system.

• Phones

  • Tizen Could Be a Giant Step Back for Mobile Linux

  • Android

    • MontaVista’s IVI stack hosts Android and HTML5 in virtual containers

    • Samsung unveils 4G LTE Android slider for enterprise market

      Samsung might have postponed this week’s Nexus Prime announcement, but Verizon Wireless announced it will start selling another Samsung smartphone with 4G LTE support on Oct. 13 for $150. The enterprise-focused Samsung Stratosphere runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird, and is equipped with a four-inch Super AMOLED display, a QWERTY sliding keyboard, and dual cameras, says the carrier.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Motorola Xoom Tablet: The Business Review

    Is the Motorola Xoom – a Google Android-powered tablet – ready for business users and channel partners? David Courbanou, my peer here at The VAR Guy, wasn’t all that impressed with early Xoom 2 chatter. But I’ve spent recent days using the original Xoom. iPad lovers cover your ears: I believe the Xoom tablet has something to offer the business world.

    First things first. While attending the recent Box.net customer conference, I received a Xoom tablet for free. Generally speaking, The VAR Guy’s editorial team doesn’t accept free technology unless it’s part of a broad conference giveaway — as in this case. Also, we always disclose how we received the hardware and software we test.

  • Motorola Solutions spins ruggedized Android tablet

    Motorola Solutions announced a ruggedized, seven-inch Android 2.3.4 tablet for enterprise users. The ET1 tablet offers a dual-core, 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of flash memory, a 1024 x 600 pixel display with extra thick Gorilla Glass, and an eight-megapixel camera with barcode reading capabilities, the company says.

Pros and Cons of Open Source Software

And even though I can only cover a fraction of the open source/closed source applications available today, I ‘ll touch on the most common software titles.

FLOSS software things which I wonder about

I attended the Floss Unconference fest yesterday at Manchester Conference centre (a location I had planned to use for BarCampManchester2 due to their ability to do overnights and excellent warren like structure).
The event was reasonable but not well attended, which was a shame. It needed about another 30 people to feel more busy and active. Not quite sure why people never came out for it…? But to be honest I only spotted it by hearing a tweet from Teknoteacher. Anyhow, at the end of the day there were lightening talks and I jumped at the chance to talk about software which really needs to be developed on Linux. I’ve adopted this post to apply to most Floss type things…

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Chrome Remote Access Beta: Have mom install it right away

• Mozilla

  • State of Mozilla and 2010 Financial Statements

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Conference

• A message from the Eocene; or, the ballad of WordPerfect

  From time to time, I look back fondly on the years when I ran Windows. It doesn’t last; my wife’s computer has XP on it, and XP needs some periodic adjusting, and then it all seems like just a bad dream.

  [...]

  But the other day I opened up LibreOffice Writer in my Mageia installation on the laptop. It opened up in about ⅔ of a window, as it always does (it must be a KDE thing, because it does the same thing in my Kubuntu) (or it was transient; weeks later, sometimes it opens up in a full window), and I maximized it, and I realized that I’m really never going to love LibreOffice Writer.

• A FOSS Success Story: LibreOffice Turns 1

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU PDF no longer an FSF high priority project

• Upon further review . . . [Ed: I do not agree with Stallman's critics, just informing about opinions]

  – A glaring omission: While re-reading my blog post, it mistakenly reads like it’s just Richard Stallman’s statement on Steve Jobs that is the sole reason for my leaving the FSF. It’s not. The statement about Jobs is just a tipping point in a list of several incidents where I, and others, have run into resistance, censorship and pariah-hood by merely questioning the FSF gospel over the years that I have been a FSF member. As an aside, an e-mail exchange with FSF executive director John Sullivan — some long and detailed, some not — allowed me to air my grievances, and I am grateful to him for lending a proverbial ear to hear these concerns. Sullivan’s e-mail exchanges, as well as discussions with others, show there is room for change in the organization.

• Time to fork the FSF

• I’d buy that for a dollar

  I hear “Photoshop is bad”, but I think you should say “Gimp is awesome” instead. I hear “Windows is evil”, but I’d rather hear “Use Fedora today!”.

• Leave It To Richard Stallman To Go There

  I met Stallman for lunch many years ago at a San Francisco Burmese restaurant. Stallman can be an infuriating man, but he can also be a very charming lunch companion.

Public Services/Government

• PL: Deputy Prime Minister calls FLOSS “the greatest success of the 20th century”

  Waldemar Pawlak, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, saluted Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as the “greatest success of the 20th century” in a conference talk on 27 September 2011. He added that FLOSS is based on very sound principles and can provide solutions to some of the problems of civilization which we will face in the 21st century.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Hardware

  • BAD NEWS: iPhone 4S Has A Lot Less Standby Time Than Previous iPhones

  • Open-source sprinkler controller keeps your lawn looking great

    [Ray] wrote in to share a great project he just recently wrapped up, an open-source sprinkler valve controller. Built in collaboration with Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief [Chris Anderson], the sprinkler controller is designed to replace the limited commercial sprinkler timers that typically come with a new home sprinkler setup.

OpenIndiana—a Free Fork of the Solaris OS (Part 1)

OpenIndiana comprises the Illumos core, taken from OpenSolaris, with a set of GNU user-land tools. OpenIndiana can even be called an analogue to GNU/Linux, but instead of a monolithic Linux kernel, it uses the OS/Net-based derivative kernel known as Illumos, which is 100 per cent ABI compatible with the Solaris kernel. In short, we can assume that OpenIndiana is actually the OpenSolaris operating system.
Once upon a time, there was Sun Microsystems. Not just an IT industry flagship, but also a legendary firm. Famous for SPARC processors, the Java language, and for the decades it spent developing its own UNIX OS, Solaris. Solaris’ successor is the OpenIndiana project.

Hardware

• Linux Hardware: Harddrives for Video Editing on Linux

  I like to shoot and edit video (on Debian GNU/Linux, of course on KDE, using the wonderful KDEnlive Video Editor), but in video editing, there is always a bottleneck. My wife and I recently purchased a Nikon D5100 camera which shoots fantastic video in hi-def! I was worried that my video editing computer hardware wouldn’t be able to keep up with these large HD video files.*

Health/Nutrition

• “Occupy Wall Street” Should Protest Wall Street Takeover of Health Care

  The lobbyists for U.S. health insurers surely have to be feeling a little uneasy knowing that thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who have been marching and protesting in Washington as well as New York and other cities might target them in the days ahead. After all, the headquarters of the insurers’ biggest lobbying and PR group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), at 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., is just blocks away from Freedom Plaza, where the demonstrators have set up camp — and problems with health insurers appear to be near the top of the list of protesters’ concerns.

  Health Care for America Now, an umbrella advocacy group that played a key role in the health care reform debate, last week analyzed the 546 comments that had been posted by then on the “We are the 99 percent” Tumblr site. It found that 262 of the comments mention such problems as getting denials for doctor-ordered care from their insurance companies and having to forego treatment because of hefty out-of-pocket costs.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Boston Police Assault #OccupyBoston arresting around one hundred protesters

  At 1:30 this morning police in full riot gear attacked the participants of Occupy Boston, which had peacefully gathered on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Without any regard for the protester’s constitutional rights, the Boston Police Department made no distinction between protesters, medics, or legal observers, arresting legal observer Ursula Levelt, who serves on the steering committee for the National Lawyers Guild, as well as four medics attempting to care for the injured.

Finance

• Occupy Wall Street

• Goldman Sachs CEO cancels lecture at Barnard

  In response to Blankfein’s invite, Columbia students had organized “School the Squid” week—referring to writer Matt Taibbi calling Goldman Sachs “a great vampire squid”—including a series of discussions and film screenings focused on corporate greed and abuse of power.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• ALEC Tied to British Political Scandal

  British Conservative Party defense secretary Liam Fox is in the midst of scandal that has grown deeper as ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are revealed. Pressure has been growing on Fox in recent weeks after having been caught in a lie about unethical dealings with his friend and former flatmate, and more ethical problems arising from the operation of a recently-dissolved, ALEC-connected “charity” Fox founded.

Censorship

• David Cameron encourages web censorship

Civil Rights

• Electronic Surveillance Scandal Hits Germany

  A German hacker organization claims to have cracked spying software allegedly used by German authorities. The Trojan horse has functions which go way beyond those allowed by German law. The news has sparked a wave of outrage among politicians and media commentators.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• EU Governments Oppose an Open Wireless Infrastructure

  Paris, October 11th, 2011 – As the European Union engages in important discussions on the future of the radio spectrum policy – i.e the future of open wireless communications -, it’s becoming clear that national governments are aligned on the position of dominant telecom operators. To protect open wireless communications operated and controlled by citizens, the EU Parliament must resist the pressure and defend its position.

DRM

• Removing DRM can prevent piracy

  One of the biggest factors leading to music being pirated is the security software which is used to stop it being… er… pirated.

  Economists from Rice and Duke Universities have been using game theory to work out that DRM technologies, which restrict music file copying and moving, encourage illegal file sharing instead.

  Dinahy Vernik, assistant professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business told Ars Technica that DRM restrictions prevent legal users from doing something as normal as making backup copies of their music. Because DRM makes things inconvenient, punters choose to pirate.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • ACTA’s Impact on Industry and Human Rights – Letters to EU Parliament

      La Quadrature du Net has written to two key committees of the European Parliament regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). As the EU Parliament engages in preparatory works in view of its upcoming consent vote on ACTA, La Quadrature stresses that the Parliament must fully assess the dangers of this agreement for innovation, competition and competitiveness of EU businesses, but also for human rights.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Dave Whitinger, LXer

I know of Dave Whitinger from LXer, which is a lot of people’s must-read for Linux and open source news (obviously, it’s one of my daily stops). Dave has a fascinating setup. As you’ll read, it’s Fluxbox over Fedora, and as Dave points out, it allows him to use the same user interface for as long as he wants to. Thinking like this keeps Dave out of the UI wars and lets him focus on work. It’s a novel concept…

Different computer users, one common Linux complaint

I guess I fall in the gourmet user category. I decided not to jump into the MS Office 2007 wagon because I could use the previous version quite efficiently. Well, since the version I bought did not include PowerPoint, I had to learn how to use electronic presentation software in StarOffice. Additionally, I didn’t like the Ribbon interface…and they killed “Linxs”. To modify pictures, I used Satori (never liked Photoshop), not MS Paint. And I didn’t use MS Movie Maker to produce videos, but VirtualDub. I required my OS to be able to handle Japanese input. Finally, I also wanted my OS to handle text-to-speech synthesis, to fire all sorts of alarms (music, alerts, actions) and to keep me protected from malware. I managed to learn how to do all that in Windows (with the obvious exception of the latter, which is virtually impossible). To do everything I required, the computer depended on many, many third-party programs to add functionality to the MS OS.

I never shy away from learning. That’s the reason why migrating to Linux was not so difficult for me…not to mention that I found a friendlier environment in which all tasks I require from the OS can be performed more easily than in the MS operating system.

Small Victories? I’ll Take ‘Em…

Unfortunately, one of her most counted-on apps will not run in Wine or Crossover. Efficient PIM is a great little all-around calendaring app with a ton of features. She has now upgraded to the full version just so she has a license, should she ever have to reinstall. I had a legit license for WinXP SP3 and I installed it via VirtualBox on her Linux side.

From what I understand, she is now working more than half the time in Linux. Microsoft is in the position to abuse their customer base this way because people think they have to endure it to access their computer.

I am glad to report there is one less of them today.

Kernel Space

• Motherboards With Broken ASPM On Linux

  One of the many OpenBenchmarking.org features that haven’t yet been fully taken advantage is the opportunities presented by the vast collection of system hardware/software information and logs that have been submitted to this collaborative testing platform from Phoronix Media. OpenBenchmarking.org is much more than just being a storage place for benchmark results. After writing a simple plug-in this morning, here’s a list of many motherboards that have broken PCI-E Active State Power Management support from their BIOS, which can lead to greatly increased power consumption under Linux.

• Intel’s Brewing A New Linux Driver Release Cycle

  Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center (OSTC) team responsible for the open-source Linux graphics driver stack is drafting new plans for how they release their driver code. The release model and release criteria for the Intel Linux driver will be quite different from the status quo of putting out new releases on a timed quarterly basis.

Applications

• 8 Best Free Linux Music Notation Software

  Music notation is a system which represents music in a written form by using musical symbols. For a musician to be able to read, understand, and play music, the composition must be in written form. A system of notation is essential for musicians to be able to play music as intended by the composer.

• MOC Lightweight Powerful Console Audio Player

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Set up Qemu&Spice USB Redirection support on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric)

  • Multiserver Setup With Dedicated Web, Email, DNS & MySQL Database Servers On Debian Squeeze With ISPConfig 3

  • Integrate Video Streaming Into Your C/C++ Application Using Nex Gen Media Server API

• Wine

  • CrossOver 10.1.1 and CrossOver Games 10.1.2 released

    CodeWeavers has released a maintenance update for CrossOver and CrossOver Games, the change logs with some of the many changes made in the releases are provided below.

• Games

  • Speed Dreams (Racing Game) 2.0 Beta 1 Released With Reworked Cars And Tracks, More [PPA]

Desktop Environments

• Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin survey published

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE takes on Android, Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets

    If another group was trying to take on Android and Apple’s iOS on smartphones and tablets, I’d dismiss them. RIM, BlackBerry’s parent company, is having a heck of a time getting anyone to buy into PlayBook and while HP TouchPad users loved it,HP killed the TouchPad after only a few weeks. So, why should anyone think that KDE, makers of one of the two most popular Linux desktops, should stand a chance with Plasma Active? Well, because KDE has a long history of delivering the goods with minimal resources.

    So what is it? Plasma Active is not, like Android, iOS, or webOS, an operating system. It’s a KDE 4.x style interface and application programming interface (API) designed for touch devices. The Plasma Active Team states that “Plasma Active is innovative technology for an intelligent user experience (UX). It is intended for all types of tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as set-top boxes, smart TVs, home automation, in-vehicle infotainment. The goals for this KDE open source project are:
    A fast embedded UX platform with minimal memory requirements
    Customizable and modular to support different form factors
    An interface that adapts as users change Activities.

  • Plasma Active One released!

    Today marks a major milestone for KDE Plasma Workspaces. Plasma Active One has been released, primarily for tablet computers. It is the latest expression of the Plasma concept, following Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook. In the KDE tradition, Plasma Active One is designed for the best User Experience—for people on the move and engaged in many activities.

    Plasma Active is a truly open project. It is modular, customizable, and offers an attractive app development environment. The KDE Community and the Plasma Active team invite participation from individuals and companies with interests in ultraportable computing.

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 2nd October 2011

  • KDE Releases Plasma Active One User Experience

    There’s several screenshots of this new KDE tablet user experience within the press release. Plasma Active can be installed as a package and there are also live images available for those interested in testing this mobile user experience from the KDE developers.

Distributions

• Tiny Core 4.0 Put Together Your Own Desktop

  The traditions of small size and speedy operation that were established in previous versions of this distro have been upheld in the new release, and believe it or not, improved upon. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you could be staring at a fully loaded desktop ten seconds after you boot from the 12MB ISO image.

• New Releases

  • Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7r1 Is Available for Download

    Alan Baghumian proudly announced on October 9th, the immediate availability for download of the Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7r1 operating system.

    Parsix GNU/Linux 3.7r1 is the first maintenance update to Parsix 3.7 series, bringing a lot of new features and improvements, and of course many updated packages.

• Red Hat Family

  • Video: Red Hat on CNBC’s Mad Money

  • Triangle CEOs back tax break

    BY DAVID RANII The News and Observer

    The CEOs of Red Hat and Quintiles, two of the largest companies based in the Triangle, say that a new bipartisan bill co-sponsored by North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan could entice them to hire more U.S. workers.

    Red Hat’s Jim Whitehurst and Dennis Gillings of Quintiles were among a half-dozen local business executives who turned out at a press briefing Friday, flanking Hagan in a show of support for the bill that calls for temporarily cutting the tax rate for corporate profits earned overseas. Many multinational corporations with a presence in the state across a range of industries – including Cisco Systems and Duke Energy – have pushed for the tax break.

  • Red Hat will wait on Progress

    Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst said the Linux software company can afford to delay its move into one of Progress Energy’s two downtown Raleigh buildings while the utility overhauls its merger plans with Duke Energy.

    In August, Red Hat announced it would shift its headquarters from N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus to downtown Raleigh, where Progress plans to exit one of its buildings in conjunction with its merger with Charlotte-based Duke. But a glitch emerged last week when federal regulators sought assurances that the merged company won’t manipulate electricity rates.

  • Red Hat

  • Red Hat to Acquire Gluster

  • Open Virtualization Alliance Grows

    It appears that KVM, the Linux kernel’s built-in virtualization, has become mainstream with the Open Virtualization Alliance now having 200 members. Started by HP, IBM, Intel and RedHat the Alliance seeks to promote and standardize KVM and associated tools so that price/performance and competition thrives.

• Debian Family

  • Updated Debian 6.0: 6.0.3 released

    The Debian project is pleased to announce the third update of its stable distribution Debian 6.0 (codename squeeze). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

  • Download Debian 6.0.3 Now

    The Debian project proudly announced a couple of days ago, October 8th, the third maintenance release of the stable Debian 6.0 operating system.

    Debian 6.0.3 brings fixes to various security issues, as well as improvements to some serious problems. Some of the packages included in the previous versions of the distribution were also updated with the Debian 6.0.3 release.

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 11.10 In The Offing, Will Have ARM and Cloud Features

        Reports from a variety of sources indicate that the forthcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) will feature ARM architecture support as well as a variety of cloud features.

        At the Open Stack conference in Boston this week, Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical (which makes Ubuntu), gave a keynote wherein she teased details of the upcoming distro, which is due to launch this week–Thursday, October 13th, to be exact.

      • The World Welcomes Oneiric Ocelot: Ubuntu 11.10

        The Ubuntu Linux distribution has come a long way since it’s first release in 2004. It started out as a nicely packaged Linux desktop, built from a specific set of packages cultivated from the nearly thirty thousand packages available in the Debian distribution. Regular six-month releases ensured that Ubuntu would always be close to the cutting edge of Linux and free software development. Every fourth release is a long-term support offering, which gets security and support updates for three years. In the last seven years Canonical, the primary commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, has added a server version of Ubuntu, built UbuntuOne, a cross-platform cloud storage solution, and made great strides in cloud computing.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 to Feature Arm Support, Cloud Orchestration

        The next version of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution, to be released next week, will be the first to run on the Arm architecture, as well as the first edition to offer a new cloud service orchestration engine, called JuJu.

      • Ubuntu Linux heads to the clouds

        Last week, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company Canonical CEO Jane Silber announced at the OpenStack cloud software conference that HP has chosen Ubuntu as the lead host and guest operating system for its Public Cloud. That’s impressive. It’s Canonical’s biggest enterprise win to date, but that’s only a hint of what Canonical is up to with the cloud.

        Canonical started its move to OpenStack from Eucalyptus in February. While Canonical has promised its not going to leave its Eucalyptus users without support, the company is clearly pinning all its cloud plans going forward around OpenStack.

      • Ubuntu 11.10 launch interview- Unity is here to stay

        Linux User talks to Canonical’s Gerry Carr to get the full low-down on Ubuntu 110.10 ‘Oneric Ocelot’ ahead of its 13th October launch…

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux 1.2.1 and other Updates

          At little over a month ago the Bodhi team and I released our second update release. We were unaware at the time that the version of GCC used to compile the kernel on this release had an issue that caused an issue for some users when compiling and inserting extra kernel modules (such as the nvidia drivers and Virtual Box). This update release today contains a kernel in which this issue has been resolved.

          If you already installed Bodhi 1.2.0 (or an earlier release) and your system is working fine (odds are it is, this issue was only affecting some users) there is no reason to install this new release. It is simply a bug fix release so the ISO image has the updated kernel by default.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Playing With Android/Linux on my GNU/Linux PC

    • Watch Large Hadron Collider Collisions with an Android App

      If you have a phone or tablet that runs Google Android, you should check out the new LHSee app, released by the University of Oxford and available in the Android Market. Funded by the Science & Technology Facilities Council, the LHSee app delivers data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN directly to your handheld device. LHSee, released last week and currently in version 1.0, requires Android 2.2 and up and will need full Internet access. The new app is already a hit — it has a 4.5 star rating and 123 reviews in the Android Market.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • HP: who snuck Android on our TouchPad?

    Even though Hewlett-Packard gave up on its TouchPad this past August after just releasing it in the beginning of July, HP isn’t done with this tablet yet.

  • HP to investigate TouchPad units sold with Android OS

Events

• Draw your way to LA and SCALE 10X

Web Browsers

• Chrome

  • Google Releases Chrome Desktop-Sharing Feature

    Called Chrome Remote Desktop, the new feature is in beta testing and lets you connect any two computers that have a Chrome browser, including systems running Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, as well as Chromebooks. The app can access all data on a remote computer and requires the person sharing access to their computer to give a code to the person who will tap into it remotely. That authentication must be done every time access is granted.

• Mozilla

  • Future Firefox to slurp updates silently

    Mozilla is changing the way Firefox installs on computers in an apparent concession to enterprise users it previously ruled were irrelevant.

  • Stop Firefox from Greying Out URLs in the Navigation Bar

  • Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs On The Fate Of Firefox In A Mobile Era

    Firefox is one of the world’s most popular desktop browsers, with more than 450 million users. But as the world increasingly turns to mobile devices to access the web, Mozilla is in danger of getting left in the dust. A recent Pew report found that roughly 68% of all smartphone owners access the mobile web on a typical day; what’s more, 25% of those users go online mostly using their phone (rather than, say, a PC).

  • Mozilla postpones Firefox 3.6 update plan

  • Firefox Boounce, Switch Search Engines Effortlessly

  • Mozilla: Rising revenue, but rising challenges

    The Mozilla Foundation, the developer of the Firefox Web browser and an organization charged with defending openness on the Web, plans to report today that its revenue increased 18 percent from $104 million in 2009 to $123 million in 2010.

    Expenses rose, too, though–from $61 million to $87 million–and Mozilla generated less net cash, down from $26 million to $22 million, according to Mozilla’s tax filings. But hey, in case you missed it–Mozilla measures its success by improving the Web, not amassing a pile of cash.

  • Firefox 8: The Next Major Version of Mozilla’s Browser

    While many Firefox users are still working with version 7, Mozilla has made a beta version of Firefox 8 available, and this version can be thought of as the next major iteration of the browser. You can download the beta now. It’s the latest of several upgrades to Firefox that Mozilla has delivered since moving to a rapid release cycle in February, which came in response to machine gun-paced releases of Google Chrome. Firefox version 8, is in Mozilla’s own view, the next big upgrade.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle Drives Java Technology Forward at Annual Conference

  One of the side benefits of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems was it gained control over Java, and therefore gained a wedge against its Java-loving rival IBM. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared victory over IBM Power Systems in the Java performance category at its Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last week, while at the same time, Oracle and IBM teamed up at the nearby JavaOne 2011 conference to discuss the future of the world’s most popular programming environment.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Free Software Foundation Calls PDF Done

  Matt Lee of the Free Software Foundation announced earlier this week from their web-site that this high priority FSF project has been removed from their list since the mission is complete. The foundation cites libpoppler as an open-source library supporting modern PDF features like annotations and forms as now being good enough to mark GNU PDF off their list.

• Richard Stallman Draws Heat for His Negative Comments on Steve Jobs

• Eric S Raymond Defends Richard M Stallman Over Steve Jobs

• RMS – Too Crude to Lose

  When it comes to software freedom, Richard Stallman is a bomb throwing anarchist. That’s a good thing. The FOSS community needs a few bomb throwers in its arsenal.

  His job is to keep the bad guys, those who constantly attempt to usurp our principles for their own gain, at bay. More importantly, his job is to expose them, which helps keep us FOSSers from believing the spinmasters when they use Orwellian magic to convince us that “closed is open.”

Openness/Sharing

• A New Experiment in Open-Source Citizenship

  Not long ago I received in the mail a slender envelope with international postage on the front. Inside was a small card-paper placard bearing my name, handwritten, confirming my citizenship in what is apparently the world’s newest nation—neither South Sudan nor Kosovo, of course, nor even a nascent Palestine, but rather nowhereisland. This decidedly more post-materialist undertaking is the brainchild of British artist Alex Hartley.

• Big Pharma’s Open Innovation Initiatives Zoom In on Discovery

  The software industry was a trailblazer in the field of open-source innovation. Savings to users were estimated at about $60 billion a year, according to a 2008 study by The Standish Group International. Open-source collaboration has now spread to the biopharma industry, among others.

OpenIndiana – back and better

The last time I took OpenIndiana for a test run it was back when the project was first getting up and running. At the time they’d just moved away from the OpenSolaris project and were in the process of moving things over and getting their infrastructure in place. Predictably running a development release of a new project in the midst of a major change wasn’t a smooth experience. At the time some applications didn’t work properly and, though the project’s work with file system snapshots was coming along nicely, the newborn OpenIndiana wasn’t yet ready to face the world. Well, some time has passed, a new stable release (version 151, Desktop edition) is here and it’s time to see what a fully formed OpenIndiana can do!

Security

• Linux Developers Urged to Examine their Systems for Possible Hijack

Wikileaks

• Google Hands Wikileaks Volunteer’s Gmail Data to U.S. Government

  The contacts list and IP address data of Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks volunteer and developer for Tor was given to the U.S. government after they requested it using a secret court order enabled by a controversial 1986 law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, according to the Wall Street Journal. The law allows the government to demand information from ISPs not only without a warrant, but without ever notifying the user.

Finance

• Michael Lewis: The United States is Now a Third-World Nation

  Michael Lewis, author of the new book “Boomerang,” says the United States and many European nations suffered a moral failure which lead to economic collapse. Lewis insists that the U.S. economic situation will get much worse before it gets better.

• Michael Hudson on #OccupyWallStreet and the Need to Treat Banks as Utilities

• What They’ve Come to Find at Occupy Wall Street Is America

  Sal Cioffi and Randy Otero are union electricians from Local 3 of the IBEW in New York. They’re working on the Freedom Tower a few blocks over in lower Manhattan. Over the past couple of days, they’ve taken to having their lunch in Zuccotti Park, in the middle of the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have set up camp here. The event has grown sufficiently that it’s now attracted almost as many food trucks and mobile falafel units as it has television-news trucks, so there’s always some place for Sal and Randy to buy lunch. So they park themselves on the stone bench, put their hard hats on the ground and, almost organically, they become part of the event.

  “We’ve had demonstrations, and it never makes the news,” says Sal. “We could have 10,000 workers demonstrating, and it won’t make the news. At least, something like this, they get the publicity.”

• “Occupy” Movement Comes to Madison, Wisconsin

  The energy from Wisconsinites protesting Governor Scott Walker’s attack on working people in early spring may have inspired Occupy Wall Street, and on Friday, Occupy Wall Street inspired demonstrations in Wisconsin. Around 150 people gathered in Madison’s Reynolds Park Friday night for the first in a series of Occupy Madison demonstrations.

• How I tracked down The Market

  Has anyone seen him? Has anyone talked to him? Gotten answers? Maybe asked him to change his ways? I cannot think of a single journalist, economists, or policy maker who has interviewed The Market. And then I knew…this was only a job only for Dr. Gal Noir. I wanted to hear more about The Market’s rationale for what seemed to be very disturbing developments. I wouldn’t normally investigate questions that are only of interest to me, but it turns out that The 99% have been asking the same questions too. Of course, we all know who The 99% are. Here are their stories and their faces. But no one seems to know exactly who The Market is!