02.27.12

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Projects showcase Central La. students’ interest in science

  The 12-year-old Pollock Elementary School pupil showed how he believes Linux is better than Windows at the Louisiana Region IV Science and Engineering Fair Saturday at Louisiana State University at Alexandria’s Fitness Center.

• Ten Things I Wish I Knew When Becoming A Linux Admin

  Ten years ago I installed Linux for the very first time. To be exact, it was Slackware 7, the best distribution at the time in my opinion. Since then I’ve come to favor Debian Linux as my favorite version…at least for my Linux servers. I like to have a solid core system installed that I can build from scratch, but this is for another time. This article is for you new Linux admins; here are the ten things I wish I knew when starting my Linux admin journey.

• Desktop

  • GNU/Linux on the Desktop: Alive and Growing

    So, while Adobe and AK may believe GNU/Linux is dead in the water, the real reason for abandoning Flash on GNU/Linux lies elsewhere, likely the fact that Flash is a dead-end technology with HTML 5 ramping up. Killing Flash in 5 years is irrelevant for that reason.

• Kernel Space

  • Linux 3.3-rc5

• Applications

  • 6 Best Free Linux Media Centers

  • Database Monitoring as a Managed Service: Monitis for MySQL

  • Why Inkscape is WAY ahead of Adobe Illustrator

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Using PHP5-FPM With Apache2 On CentOS 6.2

• Desktop Environments

  • The Completely Blank Xfce Desktop

    The Xfce desktop environment comes with Xubuntu and is also available in the Xfce versions of Linux Mint, Fedora and other Linux distributions. Using Xfce, you can easily set up a highly functional but completely blank desktop – no icons, no menus, nothing. Just a blank screen or a favourite wallpaper, ideal for the user who hates distractions or loves simplicity. Here’s how to do it.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 188

      · Announced Distro: SystemRescueCd 2.5.0
      · Announced Distro: Descent|OS 2.1
      · Announced Distro: Dream Studio 11.10

  • Gentoo Family

    • Sabayon 8.0: slightly burnt dessert

      February 2012 brought us some fresh releases of Linux-based operating systems. These systems are not as big and famous as Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuSE, but still have a considerable army of fans.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat vs Oracle Linux Support: 10 Years Is New Standard

      The Linux chess match between Red Hat and Oracle now involves a showdown on long-term support strategies. Indeed, both Red Hat and Oracle recently extended their Linux support life cycles to a lengthy 10 years. The big potential winners are partners and customers that are trying to maintain long-term IT road maps involving Linux data centers.

    • Is It Time to Try on Red Hat?

      Software firm Red Hat Inc. (RHT) captured my attention this weekend as I was scanning through lists of stocks. This poor equity was largely abandoned in December by investors despite a strong earnings report. A mix of sky-high expectations and poor news from Oracle (ORCL) in late December had the security dropping close to $39 on extremely high trading volume. The kind of high volume that bottoms are built on.

    • Red Hat’s Cloud and Virtualization Win: More to Come?

      It’s a familiar story: Like so many other telecom services providers, CDLAN is trying to push into cloud services. For CDLAN, the path to SaaS and cloud services involves an open source twist: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Is this a sign of things to come for Red Hat?

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Orange Head of Devices in feisty mood after first Intel phone launch

      Today unfortunately…unfortunately…I have a feeling that some companies who had a very open philosophy have started to question their philosophy for financial reasons. One of the reasons we are working with Intel is that Intel lead the Linux Foundation for years, and the spirit of Intel towards freedom and openess matches with the values of Orange. We will continue to work with the Linux Foundation, and you know that Tizen is coming, and you will see more and more coming of Tizen https://www.tizen.org/. Linux mobile is Tizen, everyone can use it and we are very pleased to be part of this journey with Intel and with Samsung.

    • Orange “bets” on Intel Atom-powered ‘Santa Clara’

      The device, codenamed Santa Clara, was officially announced on Monday at Mobile World Congress 2012 (MWC). The handset is one of the first to be unveiled that uses the Intel Atom Medfield chip but Patrick Remy, vice president of devices at Orange, told ZDNet UK that it was a gamble that paid off.

      “When we started working with them it was a bit of a bet, there was no such product on the market, but we were willing to make that bet because we had a relationship with them and we also wanted to bring innovation — it’s not about bringing the same thing as just anybody else,” Remy said.

    • Android

      • Samsung Launches Phone With Built-in Projector At Mobile World Congress

        The main feature of the phone is its projector as the rest of the hardware is not that high-end. It runs on Android 2.3, has a 1.0GHz dual-core processor, 4.0” 480×800 (WVGA) TFT screen and only 8GB of internal memory. The good news is it comes with a MicroSD slow which supports upto 32GB cards, so you have more than enough storage. The phone comes with a 5MP main and 1.3MP second camera. So, from hardware and software point of view this is a decent (not so impressive) phone, but that is not the ‘USP’ of the phone.

      • Sony Announces New Xperia Phones At Mobile World Congress

        Sony has announced two Android powered smartphones at Mobile World Congress — Xperia P and Xperia U. Sony claims that these phones boast Reality Display powered by Mobile BRAVIA Engine for razor-sharp clarity, along with fast capture to take the camera from sleep to snap in little over a second with a single key press. Both smartphones come with powerful 1 GHz dual-core processors for super fast performance.

      • Sony announces the Xperia P: Aluminum unibody, shipping Q2

      • Huawei launches Ascend D quad/quad XL and D1 flagships. Wants to sell 60 million smartphones in 2012

      • Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD has quad-core K3 processor, 1920 x 1200 display (hands-on pictures)

      • HTC’s MWC 2012 event

      • T-Mobile HTC One S coming Spring

Free Software/Open Source

• Press Release: KuwaitNet to open source VPN platform

  KuwaitNET, a complete Internet solutions provider, announces the launch of VPNPlatform.org in an effort to give back to the open source community which has been a large driver of their business over the years.

• Open source opens doors for Aussie start-up

  It’s pretty rare for a start-up company to benefit from more than a decade of software development valued at about $2 million each year. Rarer still for one to land a six figure contract before it has even launched a commercial product.

  But that is precisely what Gold Coast-based Opmantek has done. The company was formed in October 2010 to acquire the commercial rights to the popular open source network management software Network Management Information System (NMIS), a product first developed in 1999 by one of Opmantek’s founders, Keith Sinclair.

• Events

  • GNUmed holds mini conference

    GNUmed has been around a while. Most communication happens via the mailing list. Not everyone is comfortable with mailing lists and users tend to stay away from it. That is why we are planning a get together in Leipzig, Germany.

• Education

  • Nature Editorial: If you want reproducible science, the software needs to be open source

    Modern scientific and engineering research relies heavily on computer programs, which analyze experimental data and run simulations. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a scientific paper (outside of pure theory) that didn’t involve code in some way. Unfortunately, most code written for research remains closed, even if the code itself is the subject of a published scientific paper. According to an editorial in Nature, this hinders reproducibility, a fundamental principle of the scientific method.

    Reproducibility refers to the ability to repeat some work and obtain similar results. It is especially important when the results are unexpected or appear to defy accepted theories (for example, the recent faster-than-light neutrinos). Scientific papers include detailed descriptions of experimental methods—sometimes down to the specific equipment used—so that others can independently verify results and build upon the work.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Gnash 0.8.10 GNU Flash player released

Leftovers

• TEST: How to know if your computer license should be revoked

• Finance

  • SEC Seeks Testimony of Ex-IKB Employee in Lawsuit Against Goldman’s Tourre

    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to question a former employee of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG (IKB) in its lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader Fabrice Tourre, court records show.

    The SEC today asked a federal judge in New York to issue a so-called letter of request that would allow the agency to take testimony from Jorg Zimmerman, a resident of Germany.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Facebook suffers lobbying exodus

    The move signals that the gloves are coming off in the ongoing lobbying fight between content providers and Internet companies. Facebook’s lobbying spending increased about 285 percent from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011.

• Privacy

  • Judge dismisses lawsuit over Google privacy changes

    A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that sought to force the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to block Google’s planned privacy changes.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • ‘The Free Internet Act’ Emerges As Redditors Craft SOPA Alternative

    When two proposed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA looked as if they could become law, social news site Reddit helped organize a large-scale online protest that led lawmakers to table the bills indefinitely. But the activism didn’t stop there, and now Redditors are trying to draft legislation of their own.

    “The Free Internet Act,” as the idea has been tentatively named, intends to preempt any future legislation aiming to limit the scope of the Internet or censor content. Redditors have turned the “r/fia” page into a place to craft something they’d like to someday see become a standard for governing the Internet.

  • Study Confirms What You Already Knew: Mobile Data Throttling About The Money, Not Stopping Data Hogs

    Of the four national mobile operators, only Sprint still offers an “unlimited” data plan — and most industry watchers expect that to go away soon. When the operators talk about this stuff, they complain about how unlimited plans are abused and the amount of data being used by so-called “data hogs” is crippling network bandwidth. Of course, the alternative story is that they just want to charge people higher rates, and putting a toll booth on data usage makes that possible. A new study by Validas confirms that the latter theory seems to match with reality. The company looked at 11,000 mobile phone bills of users on both throttled (tiered) plans and unlimited data plans and found… data usage was effectively the same. In other words, for all the talk about how tiers and throttles are needed to stop bandwidth hogging… reality shows that these plans have little impact on actual data usage. Or, to put it really simply: these plans are all about the mobile operators making more money and have nothing to do with network capacity.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Why Ebook Portal Library.nu Differed From Other Filesharing Sites

      A couple of weeks ago the popular ebook portal Library.nu was shut down, apparently voluntarily, after a coalition of book publishers obtained an injunction against it and a similar site.

    • Leaked Audit in Eminem Royalty Suit Highlights Huge Stakes for Record Industry

      Here’s what an examiner turned up when opening Aftermath’s financial books to see how much was owed to Eminem’s production team.

    • If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know

      When it comes to competing with piracy, one of the talking points of copyright maximalists is that content creators “can’t compete with free.” These people complain that because pirates don’t have to cover production costs, competing with them is a losing venture. What these people have not learned, despite our many attempts to teach them, is that price is not the only cost considered when consumers choose between buying legally and pirating. Over at Gamasutra, one expert blogger, Lars Doucet, has shared a very profound look at four “currencies” people consider when making such a choice.

    • One More Copyright Infringement, And HADOPI Must Disconnect Itself From The Net

    • Crony Capitalism: Big Companies Sponsor Fancy Dinner For TPP Negotiators

      We’ve talked about the ridiculous Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations, which are being held with incredible levels of secrecy, and which appear to include a wishlist of every copyright reform change that Hollywood wants, with little to no public scrutiny. The USTR, who’s in charge of negotiating the agreement for the US claims that there’s unprecedented transparency — and that may be true if you’re talking about the unprecedented lack of transparency in the negotiations. And where it gets really ridiculous is that while the public has no access to the information, the big company lobbyists have pretty much full access. We already spoke about the recent meetings in Hollywood, where TPP negotiators got to party with the Hollywood elite — but civil society/public interest groups who tried to hold an open meeting in the hotel (and reserved space and everything) were kicked out of the hotel.

    • UK Labour Party: Let’s Just Get On With Kicking People Offline Over Copyright Infringement

      As Techdirt reported at the time, the UK’s Digital Economy Bill was rammed through Parliament, without proper scrutiny or even much democratic process, in the dying hours of the previous government. Since then, the implementation of the Digital Economy Act has moved forward relatively slowly. That’s partly because there have been a series of legal challenges from ISPs concerned about its legality (and likely cost for them). In addition, it made sense for the current UK government to wait for the completion of the Hargreaves report on copyright in the digital age before proceeding.

    • Reductio Ad Absurdum: Eternal Copyright Is Crazy… But What About Today’s Copyright Term?

      Of course, it’s easy to laugh at satire like this… until you remember that some make such arguments seriously. But, similarly, it seems worth recognizing that for most of us, copyright is already effectively eternal. Here in the US nothing has entered the public domain in quite some time and it’s questionable if or when anything new will enter the public domain… as most people fully expect Disney to push for another copyright term extension as Mickey Mouse approaches the public domain yet again.

    • ACTA

      • FFII call for action: Act on ACTA

        over the past 10 years we have been at the forefront of many policy initiatives to prevent more risks for software professionals: Software Patents, IPRED1+2, Data Retention, European Interoperability Framework and many others. Since 2008 we have been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and sought to bring transparency in the process. Our involvement was partly successful, for instance criminal enforcement was not extended to patents and the Commission released the text of the agreement. However, both process and content are still deeply flawed.

      • ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign

        Last week, we observed that major content companies have enjoyed a steady drumbeat of victories in Congress and the courts over the last two decades. The lobbying and litigation campaigns that produced these results have a counterpart in the executive branch. At the urging of major copyright holders, the Obama administration has been working to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is just the most visible component of this ambitious and long-running project.

      • Where did the patients go?

        The European Commission decided to ask the EU Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA. Commissioner Karel De Gucht stated: “We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property.”