01.05.12

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Cory Doctorow at 28c3: The Coming War on General Purpose Computation

• Server

  • Interview with Igor Sysoev, author of Apache’s competitor NGINX

    NGINX is the new start rising in the landscape of web servers. Well, it’s hardly “new” — it will soon turn 10. However, it’s definitely rocking the web server world, with Netcraft showing a huge increase in usage in the last few months.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.2 released

• Applications

  • FatRat Is A Powerful Download Manager For Linux

    Do you download a lot of stuff from the web, either from a direct download, RSS feed, torrents or RapidShare, and were frustrated that there was not a single software that you can use to manage them all? Well, that’s because you have missed out FatRat. In fact, FatRat will be the one and only download manager you ever need.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Hands-on: hacking WiFi Protected Setup with Reaver

    • [How to] Run the Linux Deepin Software Centre in Ubuntu 11.10

    • Fixing “username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported” Error In Ubuntu

    • How to get over Gentoo’s X display problem after update

    • CentOS Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum

    • How to install Cinnamon on Fedora 16

  • Games

    • Heroes of the Community!

    • Open-Source Versions Of BioWare 3D Game Engines

• Desktop Environments

  • A Minimal XFCE Desktop

    Although I’ll go on record as saying that I think the Ubuntu Unity concept is a good one, it’s not excellently executed. In fact, even in this latest Ubuntu release (version 11.10) it is still sluggish, slow to respond, and buggy. If there’s one thing that really gets old to me, it’s a computer that can’t really keep up when I have to get work done. I’m not talking about super strenuous stuff (I don’t edit HD video for living) but simple web browsing and file management. It’s not cool when If feel like I’m fighting my computer to launch an application or switch tasks. Unfortunately, this what I often ended up doing in Unity when ever things got a bit more complex than one or two browser windows open.

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • How to Make GTK3 Apps Look Presentable in KDE4

      With the release of Gnome 3, many developers of GTK apps have begun to port their programs from GTK2 to GTK3. If you have used Ubuntu 11.04, you will notice that many of the popular GTK2 themes did not yet have GTK3 equivalents, which left the few GTK3 applications looking awful.

    • Kdenlive Part 6: Workflow and Conclusion

      Post-production is a long and involved process. As these articles have demonstrated, Kdenlive is capable of handling every step with efficiency and flexibility. In this final article, we will discuss the final export of the full project from Kdenlive, as well as examine the over-all free software workflow of post-production.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Getting things done with Gnome!

    • Lefebvre Introduces GNOME 3 Fork

      Clement Lefebvre, founder and all around head honcho of the Linux Mint project, formally introduced his vision of the desktop to the Linux masses recently. “Under the hood Cinnamon is forked from Gnome Shell and based on Mutter and Gnome 3. The latest release, Cinnamon 1.1.3, brings stability and improvements to what has already become our favorite desktop.”

• Distributions

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu gadget to debut at CES?

          Will a gadget running the Ubuntu version of Linux debut at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas later this month?

• Devices/Embedded

  • Thumbdrive-sized streaming media players coming soon

    Roku plans to embed its streaming media player technology into a thumbdrive-style device that plugs directly into a TV’s HDMI port. The “Roku Streaming Stick” will instantly convert ordinary TVs into “smart TVs,” says Roku CEO Anthony Wood.

  • At last you can buy a Raspberry Pi!

    In my recent series on Encouraging the next generation of Hackers I looked at the concept and ideas behind the (in my opinion) exciting Raspberry Pi project.

    For those who don’t know the Raspberry Pi is a project to produce a credit-card sized computer (with some pretty decent specs) which will be available for £15/$25. Following my articles on here I saw a number of comments on others sites bemoaning the lack of availability of the Raspberry Pi itself. As one commenter put it “I’m sick of reading about this – when will it be available?”

  • Phones

    • Android

      • ClockworkMod Tether Tethers Your Android Phone for Free, No Root Required

      • Good news from Asus for Transformer Prime users

      • HTC makes good on promise, all future devices to be unlockable

        Peter Chou has made good on his word to no longer lock the bootloaders of HTC Android phones. It was noticed by XDA member Nightwing, while tweaking an HTC Rezound.

      • Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc successor teased for CES

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Motorola Launches Xoom 2 For Germany

      Germany is to get the Motorola XOOM 2 and it’s baby brother, the Motorola XOOM 2 Media Edition in February, of this new and possibly the end of the world, new year. But the Germans should still have time to appreciate the many appetizing features on these two tablets.

    • New Quad-Core Processor Specially Built For Android 4.0

      ZiiLabs has created the 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor, specially optimized for Android. It combines 96 StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs. By doubling the number of StemCell Media processors compared to the previous ZMS-20, the new processor delivers twice the peak media performance, and can reduce power consumption up to 50 percent.

    • Motorola Prepping Update for the XOOM “Google Experience Device” – Is That a Hint at Ice Cream Sandwich?

    • Leaked press image teases 7-inch ASUS Eee Pad tablet

      In the market for a new 7-inch Android tablet? You may soon have another option to consider, as an image of a new Android-powered ASUS Eee Pad slate have begun making their way around the web. The slab in question packs a 7-inch display and what appears to be a set of dock connectors at the bottom of the device. The folks at Notebook Italia aren’t quite sure of what kind of specs this thing might include, but they do suggest that the 7-inch Eee Pad might make its debut at CES next week.

    • Velocity Micro to unveil pair of affordable ICS tablets at CES

      Velocity Micro, makers of the Cruz tablet line, is ready to pull the curtain back on a pair of new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwiches at CES next week. The next generation of Cruz products keep with the tradition of respectable specifications and an affordable price point and come in 7-inch and 9.7-inch sizes. Although we don’t know the price of the larger model, the smaller of the two will have an attractive $150 sticker.

    • Pantech to release sub $300 waterproof Pantech Tablet next week

      Some exciting news for AT&T customers that we can’t wait to get our hands on as well. We’ve just learned from BGR about the announcement of the Pantech Element, which should be released on January 8th at $299.99 with a 2 year LTE data contract, or $449.99 without a contract. As far as specs, they’re anything but standard. The Element packs an 8-inch screen, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, Honeycomb (much to our dismay, the tablet won’t be rocking the latest and greatest Android version), and 16 GB of internal storage.The 5MP rear camera can reportedly record 1080p HD video, and the 2MP front camera brags about its ability to Skype in 720p.

Free Software/Open Source

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Apache OpenOffice (Incubating)

    I suspect that finding the newly christened and newly energised project and application formerly known as “OpenOffice.org” is less than super easy for some. So, the link is there… Right now, I’m using the latest build for Mac OS X of Apache OpenOffice (thanks to Raphael Bircher!), and not only is it stable but fast. I’ve also added the usual extensions, etc.

• CMS

  • Dries’ vision for Drupal 8

    In January last year the developers of popular open source content management system Drupal celebrated the release of version 7. Drupal 7 included significant architectural changes as well as usability enhancements.

• Licensing

  • Mozilla overhauls for version 2.0 of public licence

    Patent protection and modernisation to reflect recent changes in copyright law have been addressed. The MPL 2.0 has also been polished to “incorporate feedback from lawyers outside the United States on issues of applicability in non-US jurisdictions”.

Leftovers

• Finance

  • The US Economy in 2012 – Two Big Problems, Two Ready Solutions

    A number of Obama’s historical allies feel that the President missed a major opportunity by not embracing the Simpson-Bowles blueprint when it was first released a year ago.

    [...]

    “Ronald Reagan once said,” writes Christina Romer in her concluding paragraph, “‘There are simple answers – there just are not easy ones.’ What needs to happen on fiscal policy is relatively straightforward. The hard part is getting politicians to do it.”

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • The Real “Winner” in Iowa: New “Super” Front Groups That Are Super Corrupting Our Democracy Thanks to “Citizens United”

    Contrary to most press accounts, there was a decisive winner in the Iowa caucuses last night, and it was neither Rick Santorum nor Mitt Romney. The “winner” was the so-called “Super” PACs (political action committees), the mutant front groups for political candidates that were “created” in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that unleashed corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited money influencing elections. The losers were the American people and the integrity of the democratic process, which is so vulnerable to attack ads and other influence funded by the 1%.

  • “Energy in Depth,” “Counter-Insurgency” Tactics, and Astroturf “Energy Citizens”

    The corporations pushing for expanded “hydraulic fracturing” (“fracking”) for “natural gas” are putting big money into PR campaigns due to growing citizen concerns about this damaging drilling process. At a “Media and Stakeholder Relations: Hydraulic Fracturing Initiative 2011″ meeting this winter, an industry representative went so far as to suggest that industry public relations agents download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps’ “Counterinsurgency Field Manual.” He noted that it would be helpful because the industry is “dealing with an insurgency.”

  • Mitt Romney’s “Super” Friends Take Aim through the “Restore Our Future” Super PAC

    The PAC Is Run by Romney’s Former Campaign Strategist Carl Forti

    The pro-Romney Super PAC that carpet-bombed Iowa with ads against Gingrich is led by Carl Forti. Forti is the man who ran Romney’s campaign for president in 2008. He was perhaps Romney’s closest advisor and strategist when Romney placed second in Iowa four years ago.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Challenging Counterfeit Counterfeiting Data

    Julian Sanchez has an excellent post at the CATO website debunking claims in the U.S. on the financial impact of counterfeiting and piracy, which is being used to promote the dangerous Stop Online Piracy Act. The post focuses on the fake $250 billion per year claim that is frequently invoked by copyright lobby groups, noting that the number is not based on an actual study but rather a 1991 sidebar in Forbes that took a guess at the global market. In 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office examined the counterfeiting data claims and found that they could not be substantiated and last year the Social Sciences Research Council released a massive study on counterfeiting and piracy that thoroughly debunked the claims.

  • Copyrights

    • Piracy is not a problem; SOPA is not a solution

      Recently, as I was browsing the shelves of my local used book store, I realized that I was engaged in “piracy” of exactly the same kind as what the legacy entertainment industry has slammed as a scourge so terrible that it is worthy of giving up our online freedoms to protect. This is what SOPA is supposed to protect us from.

    • Disaffection with Jamendo among artists

      Jamendo has been one of my favorite sites for finding free-licensed music (i.e. music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution or Attribution-ShareAlike licenses) for projects. So, it’s very sad for me to find out that it has had a flagging reputation over the last year or so. I first noticed earlier this year that some artists were disappearing from the site. Originally, I attributed this to artists becoming disaffected with free culture in general, which worried me a lot.

      However, I’ve had a chance to track down a few of the artists and find their own comments (and complaints). Several have expressed concern over dealing with Jamendo’s management, which has apparently become somewhat inattentive — especially with issues surrounding the Jamendo Pro service and the other ways artists can make money through the site. Perhaps they are understaffed or overloaded. I don’t really have the whole picture, but whatever the actual details, it seems a fair number of free-culture musicians have been leaving Jamendo.

    • Crystal Ball Gazing at the Year Ahead in Tech Law and Policy

      Technology law and policy is notoriously unpredictable but 2012 promises to be a busy year. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) offers some guesses for the coming months:

    • Busted: Canadian Parliament Hosts BitTorrent Pirates

      YouHaveDownloaded is a great resource that reveals what people behind an IP-address have downloaded on BitTorrent.

    • ACTA

      • FFII provisional note on the Legal Service’s Opinion on ACTA

        On a request from Members Lichtenberger and Engström, the European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee decided to release the Legal Service’s Opinion on ACTA. You can find the documents here.