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07.15.12

Links 15/7/2012: Chromebooks, Linux Devices, and PCs for Senior Citizens

Posted in News Roundup at 6:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why People Seem to Love Closed Systems

    Patrick Gray, writing in TechRepublic, has some theories about why open source computing has yet to live up to some expectations. In the abstract, people may love the idea of the openness and freedom in technology. In practice, however, “vendors and consumers alike voted with their wallets for closed systems.” He cites the appeal of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

  • A French open source software specialist woos U.S. e-retailers

    France-based e-commerce platform provider PrestaShop seeks to expand in the U.S. Having opened a Miami office in 2011, it provides software for about 6,000 U.S. e-commerce stores—roughly six times as many as last year.

  • Best Ruby on Rails Hosting 2012

    The web hosting review site Top-Cheap-Web-Hosting.com announced the best Ruby on Rails hosting provider for 2012, based on ruby on rails hosting features, loading speed, reliability, technical support and price.

  • Workshop in Free Open Source Software (FOSS)

    The first 30 minutes of the workshop will present an overall of goals of the foundation, the philosophy and advantages of open source software and how it hall be implemented in Fiji.

    “Linux has the same features of operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh,” said SFF President, Mr Kush Singh.

  • Open Source Web Development Provides Custom Web Development Services at Reasonable Rates
  • Samsung Open Source Code for Epic and Skyrocket Models

    Samsung, in an apparent attempt to encourage hackers and developers and trying to give them a head start with the ongoing roll out of the OTA updates, have released the source codes of the Sprint Epic and AT&T’s Skyrocket on their download pages. The updates are available currently on their download pages for anyone interested.

  • 25 free open source projects IT pros will love

    Although it’s popular these days to pooh-pooh the advertising-supported, for-profit SourceForge in favor of GitHub, the SourceForge folks want to remind you that the forge still hosts more than 300,000 projects and serves up a good 4 million downloads a day.

  • Digsby becomes Open Source project

    There are a number of reasons why a closed-source project is turned into an Open Source project by its parent company or developer. Among them lack of interest by the parent company or developer, a drop in popularity, not enough resources to continue development, having been bought by another company, or a change of hearts. It is not really clear from the announcement why Digsby is going down the Open Source route but judging from the frequency of blog posts on the official site, it could be a bit of everything sans the being bought by another company part.

  • Digsby becomes Open Source project
  • Major Open-Source ARM Announcement Coming

    There’s a very exciting open-source announcement coming soon that will please an increasing number of ARM Linux users and fans of open-source graphics drivers.

    This forthcoming announcement, which isn’t being detailed yet but will be yet another Linux graphics exclusive for Phoronix the near future, is something entirely different from the other recent open-source ARM Linux graphics advancements. As something until then. let’s recap the existing open-source ARM graphics activities:

    - The Lima driver project that’s sponsored by Codethink and led by Luc Verhaegen as a reverse-engineered open-source ARM Mali graphics driver. Here’s the latest update on Lima from LinuxTag Berlin back in May.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Introduces Persona, A Better And Secure Login System

        A normal web user may login and use to tens to hundreds of sites everyday. This is a hectic task and also one may remain in doubt as how his/her data is being used in each of these networks. To simplify this login system and to give users better control over their data, Mozilla has introduced a new product in the market, Persona.

      • Is Firefox’s Rapid Release Cycle Causing Too Many Problems?

        In early February of last year, we noted that for the very first time, Mozilla had pledged to move to a rapid release cycle for the popular Firefox browser. “Can’t wait,” responded one reader. It was clear at the time that Mozilla was making the move to better respond to competition from Google Chrome, which was already on its own rapid release cycle.

        Fast-forward to today, and Chrome’s market share is about equal to or possiby greater than Firefox’s, depending on whose numbers you believe. And, Mozilla has had to wrestle with problems related to its rapid release cycle. Now, one former Firefox developer is saying that Firefox’s woes can be blamed on the cycle itself.

      • Mozilla’s Rust language version 0.3 released

        With the announcement that version 0.3 of Mozilla’s Rust has been released, the alternate procedural, concurrent, OO and functional style is continuing its rapid evolution. Designed as a safe alternative to C or C++, as it is being developed, Rust is being used to create an experimental parallel browser called Servo. Version 0.1 of Rust was introduced in January 2012 after being created as a side project by Graydon Hoare in 2006 and revealed to the world in 2010. Version 0.3 includes over 1,900 changes from April’s version 0.2, as the developers work through the roadmap that will lead to a 1.0 release of the language.

  • SaaS

    • How a Looming Talent Gap Will Crush Enterprise Hopes for Big Data

      Large enterprises are putting a lot of money and effort into making sure they have the latest and greatest in Hadoop and other big data infrastructure tools, but it turns out their IT teams are far from prepared to actually use those tools once they are in place.

      That’s one observation from Jeremy Howard, president and chief scientist of Kaggle, which uses crowdsourcing techniques to provide statistical and data analytic services for clients.

  • Databases

    • The stealth success of PostgreSQL

      Other open source databases may have more name recognition, but PostgreSQL is seeing strong growth — as is the company EnterpriseDB, which helped develop it

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Drupal Experiences Exceptional Growth

      Drupal is possibly one of the most popular open-source CMS in the world, and probably one of the largest free software community with over 800,000 members. During the last year, the Drupal business has experienced exceptional growth, both financially and socially.

    • Joomla! 3.0 Alpha 1 Released

  • Healthcare

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • A GCC Proposal To Build It Better, Faster

      There’s a proposal within the GCC development camp to change the CFLAGS under which the GNU Compiler Collection is built when in a release mode.

      Dimitrios Apostolou proposed on Wednesday to the GCC development list Change default BOOT_CFLAGS for release builds.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Filmmaker Pledges to Live Open Source for a Year

      It’s one thing to like open source, but it’s another thing to live open source. Sam Muirhead, a 28-year old filmmaker who lives in Berlin, is making headlines for an unusual pledge he has made: He has sworn that beginning August 1st, he will spend one year living totally open source. And he doesn’t just mean he will use open source technology. He means that his beer, the paper he uses–everything he uses–will be open source.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Accounting for Vendor Lock-in

      I am not an accountant. However, as a Graham and Dodd value investor over the years, I’ve picked up some of the fundamental principles. A key one is the Matching Principle, that revenues and expenses should be booked in a way that clarifies the underlying business performance, rather than based purely on the timing of cash transactions. In some cases this requires the use of special accounts, for things like depreciation, where the lifetime of a fixed asset (say factory machinery) extends beyond a single revenue cycle.

      A similar technique is used when dealing with deferred expenses. For example take the case of a nuclear power plant. A plant has a useful lifetime, but when that end date arrives there is a clean up cost. The property is not immediately usable for other purposes, but must undergo an expensive remediation. From an accounting perspective there is an asset retirement obligation, a form of deferred expense. This deferred expense is recognized on the books as a liability based on the present value of the expected clean up cost, which is then depreciated.

Leftovers

  • Linus Torvalds Asks Google To Stop Google+ Event Spam

    If you are a Google plus use, there are two things you would be most annoyed about. One is there is no way to see the private messages sent to you if you plan to respond to them two days later. Second is the new Google+ Event. I was bombarded by the event invite the moment it was announced.

  • Oracle, HP face off in court over Itanium

    Oracle turned its attention away from its Android patent fight with Google on Monday to battle Hewlett-Packard over Oracle’s decision to stop making new versions of database software that works with HP’s Itanium-based servers.

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Andrew Williams, Ex-Treasury Spokesman, Headed To Goldman Sachs

      Andrew Williams, a former spokesman for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, is headed to Goldman Sachs at the end of July, the Financial Times reports. That’s only increased the speculation that Geithner may head to Goldman next year.

      Williams, currently director of media relations at General Electric, is the second of Geithner’s top spokesmen to decamp to Goldman. Richard “Jake” Siewert, also a former spokesman for Geithner, left the Treasury Department a few months ago to lead Goldman Sachs’ public relations department.

    • Goldman’s fall from grace continues

      Starting tomorrow banks will begin to tell investors how they did in the second three months of 2012. Overall, the indications are that the quarter will be a disappointment. But, surprisingly, Goldman Sachs (GS) may emerge as the biggest loser. Expectations for the once-vaunted investment bank have fallen more than rivals.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • How a Right-Wing Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage

      When Idaho state legislators proposed a seemingly uncontroversial bill to ban access to commercial tanning beds by minors earlier this year, IdahoReporter.com took up the issue with force.

      The state news website, an affiliate of the conservative Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and overseen by the free market Idaho Freedom Foundation, posted six stories on the proposal between Feb. 16 and March 22, when the bill was voted down in a state Senate Committee.

    • Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked: A Look Into the Life & Work of America’s Most Successful Propagandist

      In the vast ecosystem of corporate shills, which one is the most effective? Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as propaganda: nuance, obfuscation, distraction, suggestion, the subtle introduction of doubt—these are more effective in the long run than shotgun blasts of lies. The master of this approach is Malcolm Gladwell.

      Malcolm Gladwell is the New Yorker’s leading essayist and bestselling author. Time magazine named Gladwell one of the world’s 100 most influential people. His books sell copies in the millions, and he is in hot demand as one of the nation’s top public intellectual and pop gurus. Gladwell plays his role as a disinterested public intellectual like few others, right down to the frizzy hairdo and smock-y getups. His political aloofness, high-brow contrarianism and constant challenges to “popular wisdom” are all part of his shtick.

  • DRM

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