Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

05.25.13

Links 25/5/2013: Beaglebone Black (BBB), Tizen Comeback

Posted in News Roundup at 5:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Dandelion Linux Desktop

    Some desktops are featured because of their widgets, while others because they’re full of useful data. This week’s featured desktop, from Lifehacker Chookstar, gets the nod because it’s simple, elegant, and uses smart GNOME tweaking to bring everything together neatly.

  • Considering a Linux career? Four tips for new college grads

    Tis the season for college graduations, and that means there are countless fresh grads out there looking for their first real, professional jobs.

    Those in IT would be hard-pressed to come up with a better area to focus on than Linux, which is consistently shown to offer higher salaries and more opportunities than do other parts of IT. There’s tremendous demand for Linux skills today, so those who possess them are in a nice position as they enter the job market.

  • It Seems I Won’t Be Writing For Linux Advocates After All

    Last week I had announced in the LXer forums that I would be a contributing author to Linux Advocates. That was followed by a post on the site announcing that I would be joining their team. I was honestly excited about this. I felt that writing for Linux Advocates would add credibility to my stories and bring me back some of the wider audience I had when I wrote for O’Reilly Media. The additional exposure would help me market my consulting business which brings Linux and FOSS solutions to businesses and organizations looking to reduce IT costs and enhance the reliability, stability and security of their IT infrastructure.

    Today it became clear that I wouldn’t be writing for Linux Advocates after all. I’ve learned a lot in the past week and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is for the best.

    First, a number of prominent writers and developers in the Linux community tried to get me to reconsider. The big issue for them was what they saw as heavy handed moderation by Dietrich Schmitz, including banning a number of them from the site entirely. I’ve argued that website owners have the right to moderate and control the content on their sites. I’ve made clear that such editorial control is most definitely not censorship as some have claimed. The dispute between Mr. Schmitz and those who felt they were unfairly treated, including several former Linux Advocates writers, spilled over into five different threads in the LXer forums and several Google+ pages and included a great deal of rather heated language.

    [...]

    Mr. Schmitz’ response was direct and to the point. If I can’t accommodate how he chooses to run his site then I should go elsewhere. Once again, he was getting writing from me on a voluntary basis on a website were he is currently begging for money to make ends meet. This is a Linux advocacy site. You’d think he’d be the one to accommodate an aversion to proprietary tools that aren’t in any way necessary for him to publish my writing. I guess not.

    So.. no, sorry, Mr. Schmitz, I won’t be accommodating you. I’ll find ways to bring traffic to my blog which don’t require sacrificing my security, privacy or principles. I still have other outlets who would like me to write for them as well.

  • More Twists And Turns On the GNU/Linux Advocacy Site That’s Not

    Welcome to the club of refugees from some tyrant on an ego-trip, Caitlyn. You and others might be more comfortable at GNU/Linux Advocates.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • The apps of KDE 4.10 Part VI: Calligra Suite

        You may be a bit confused as to what Calligra Suite is, in fact you may not have ever even heard of it before now. Essentially Calligra Suite is a fork of the KOffice project from back in 2010 and has now become the de facto group of KDE publishing/office applications, as KOffice isn’t really being developed any more. It consists of the following applications:

      • Solutions Linux and KDE Paris Dinner

        This year we also have a KDE Paris Dinner on Tuesday evening, at 21h. Location has not been defined but it will be in Paris (of course).

  • Distributions

    • Linpus Lite 1.9 review

      Linpus Lite is a desktop distribution published by Linpus Technologies, Inc., a Linux software solutions provider headquartered in Taiwan. It is based on Fedora, but with a focus towards modern hardware and mobile computing.

      The latest edition, Linpus Lite 1.9, was released back in early February of this year, and was updated in the first week of this month. The last edition before this latest round of releases, was Linpus Lite 1.7, which was released in March of 2012, and reviewed here. This article presents a detailed review of this latest release, based on test installations on real hardware and in a virtual environment.

    • A New X.Org-Free Wayland LiveCD Released

      For technology demos and testing, the “first true Wayland LiveCD” has been released that can start Wayland directly without depending upon an X.Org environment.

    • New Releases

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandrake, Mandriva Archives Safe

        For those that still hold some nostalgia for Mandriva/Mandrake, there’s good news. The OpenMandriva project was able to obtain a lot of the files before their server was scrapped. An archive has been set up by the OpenMandriva gang for all to share.

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • IT Thought Leaders to Keynote at Red Hat Summit 2013

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced a lineup of keynote speakers featuring executive thought leaders from Accenture, Cisco, HP, IBM and Intel for the ninth annual Red Hat Summit, to be held June 11-14, 2013 in Boston. Red Hat Summit brings together a diverse group of senior business and technical leaders to learn, network and experience open source and to discuss the innovative technologies and best practices organizations are applying to drive innovation and business.

      • Red Hat OpenStack, Linux, Virtualization: Cloud Triple Play?

        OpenStack has hundreds of backers. But the Red Hat OpenStack distribution, still under development, could emerge as the preferred open source platform for public and private clouds. Here’s why.

      • Red Hat Discusses Gluster Roadmap Ahead of LinuxCon Japan Workshop

        Fresh on the heels of his talk on achieving total data center victory at Collaboration Summit in April, John Mark Walker, Gluster community leader at Red Hat will show us how to get there at the Gluster Workshop at LinuxCon Japan on Friday, May 31 in Tokyo.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project, Community, Mourns Loss of Ray Dassen

        The Debian Project today is mourning the loss of legendary Linux developer Ray Dassen. Ray Dassen served the Linux community and Debian at large for nearly all of Debian’s life, having joined the project in the very beginning working hand-in-hand while the project’s founder, Ian Murdock.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Important Points about Beaglebone Black (BBB)

      If you can’t communicate to your BBB from Browser, Use Google Chrome Browser. There is Some Problem with Firefox. Never use Internet Explorer.

    • Intel Shows Off GNOME3-Based Tizen Shell
    • Latest Tizen sightings: Samsung phone, Intel laptop demo

      Days after releasing version 2.1 of the Linux-based Tizen mobile operating system, Samsung confirmed an upcoming GT-I8805 Tizen smartphone, and Intel demonstrated a laptop running Tizen 3.0 in a GNOME shell. Other developments around this week’s Tizen Developers Conference include a Tizen App Challenge and 2013 phone launch promises from NTT DoCoMo and Orange.

    • Introducing the BeagleBone Black’s Linux 3.8 kernel

      This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.

    • BeagleBone Black ships, climbs Linux 3.8 Device Tree
    • Handheld SDR Transceiver runs Linux on ARM/FPGA SoC

      Epiq Solutions announced a handheld software defined radio (SDR) device with an RF transceiver that tunes from 300MHz to 3.8GHz, plus a built-in 1PPS GPS. The Matchstiq Z1 is built around a Linux-ready iVeia Atlas-I-Z7e computer-on-module equipped with a Xilinx Zynq Z-7020 SoC, which integrates dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores along with FPGA circuitry.

    • Phones

      • blinkx launches open-source video player for Tizen

        For mobile app creators in the Tizen community, blinkx has developed an open source HTML5 video player to help developers incorporate a fully functional video player into their applications. The lightweight and easy-to-use code allows developers to build a single- or multi-video player experience with their own videos in multiple formats. As a result, creators of new and existing Tizen apps will be able to easily incorporate a video player with customisable playlists and configurable settings.

      • Tizen Linux demo on an ultrabook (video)

        Tizen is a Linux-based operating system that’s backed by Samsung and which is expected to ship on Samsung smartphones this year. But the OS isn’t just for mobile devices like phones and tablets.

      • Tizen with GNOME 3 shell shown by Intel

        Tizen, the mobile operating system that has yet to see a device launched with it, is already widening its reach to laptops. Tizen, a Linux Foundation project with Intel and Samsung collaborating on development, is due to appear on smartphones in the latter part of the year with Tizen 2.1, which uses a Linux base layer with a user interface built using Enlightenment libraries to run HTML5-based apps. At the Tizen Developers Conference held this week though, Intel showed an early version of what will become part of Tizen 3.0 later in the year. Tizen Experts recorded a video of the Intel Tizen variant running on an i7 Ultrabook.

      • Samsung, carriers tout first Tizen mobes for late 2013

        ou could be forgiven for thinking there’s not much going on with Tizen, the Linux Foundation’s open source mobile OS. It’s been two years since the project was launched and there still are no Tizen devices on the market. But that’s about to change – and there has been a lot happening behind the scenes, as well.

      • Ballnux

        • HTC One ‘Google Edition’ with stock Android reportedly in the works

          HTC may follow Samsung’s lead and produce a “Google Edition” of its latest flagship smartphone running stock Android. According to sources that spoke to Russell Holly at Geek, work on a version of the HTC One without its Sense software customizations is underway, with a US launch said to be “imminent.” Holly previously leaked accurate information on the Galaxy S4 Google Edition ahead of its announcement at the I/O conference.

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • 62 Open Source Replacements for Popular Financial Software

    The open source community offers a wide array of options to assist you, whether you’re tracking your personal bank accounts, managing your small business, setting up an online shop or monitoring finances for a large enterprise.

    Like much of the software industry, financial software is in the midst of great change. While many consumers and companies still use traditional software that they have installed on their PCs and/or servers, many are turning to cloud-based solutions. In addition, many users are looking for solutions that include mobile capabilities.

  • Five Companies Partner, Launch Open Source Video Viewability Tech
  • Japplis Releases the First Open Source Office Suite Written in Java
  • Is Google Code In Trouble? No More Open Source Downloads For You

    At the time of its creation, I had thought that it would competitive with Sourceforge (which it was), but as it turns out Sourceforge will now get the last laugh.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome 28 Beta gets faster, brings fullscreen mode to Android

        Google has released a beta version of Chrome 28 that introduces a number of new developer features and performance improvements. The increased page rendering speed is, Google says, due to a new threaded HTML parser that is part of its WebKit fork Blink. The company claims the new parser improves page loading times by ten per cent, mostly through pipelining DOM content. The parser also has to stop less during parsing which also reduces load time.

    • Mozilla

      • Restore Firefox’s All Tabs preview feature

        If you have upgraded the Firefox web browser to version 21, the most recent version at the time of writing, you may have noticed that it is missing the All Tabs preview feature that was included in previous versions of the browser.

      • Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks Contest Is Calling for Your Short Video

        There are lots of people in the U.S. gearing up for a long Memorial Day weekend, and if you happen to have extra time on your hands this weekend you may want to consider entering Mozilla’s Firefox Flicks contest. It’s a global video contest designed to give budding filmmakers the opportunity to create and submit short videos about letting people discover “the power of the web on mobile devices.” (We covered it when it launched.)

      • Poll: Firefox Does Not Need Fewer Options

        You may remember that back on March 22, Christine Hall penned an article here on FOSS Force concerning worries expressed by Alex Limi, a project design strategist at Mozilla, over configuration issues with Firefox. It seems that Mr. Limi expressed concerns on his blog over the fact that was possible for a user to “render the browser unusable to most people, right in the main settings.”

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Building a cloud ecosystem with open source software

      Mention the words “open source” to IT pros interested in adopting cloud computing, and their ears likely will perk up. Open source software offers a solution to the vendor lock-in concerns many enterprises have with committing to a cloud platform. And cloud platforms like the OpenStack Foundation, which fosters ‘coopitition’ among seeming competitors in the hot cloud computing market, give companies the option to build interoperable open source clouds. But what options do enterprises have when seeking open source PaaS?

    • Open Source Big Data: DataStax Expands Cassandra, Hadoop Business in Europe

      Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it’s time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

    • Introduction to OpenStack Part One, From Zero to Domination

      OpenStack is a cloud software stack designed to run on commodity hardware, such as x86 and ARM. It has no proprietary hardware or software requirements, and it integrates legacy systems and third-party products. In other words you can adopt it into your existing tech infrastructure without disruption.

    • Cloudscaling, Focused on OpenStack, Gets $10 Million in Funding

      San Francisco-based company Cloudscaling is the latest small company focused on the open source OpenStack cloud computing platform to score some meaningful venture capital. The company has raised $10 million in Series B funding from partners including Trinity Ventures, Juniper Networks and Seagate. That’s some pretty solid backing, and Cloudscaling–which provides infrastructure-as-a-service support–is just the latest Northern California company to get solid funding.

  • CMS

    • Matt Mullenweg on how open source is democratising the web

      From the mind of a 19-year-old to the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) — WordPress has done some serious growing up in 10 years. Used by major publishing houses such as CNN and the New York Times and influential blogs like TechCrunch, the CMS has making publishing easy for a decade.

  • Education

    • Computers are today’s pencils

      Not everyone has a computer. And, not all schools have access to the types of technology that are second nature to many of us at our workplace. It is also true that many people in the general public don’t know about open source and the free alternatives that are available to them, like LibreOffice instead of Micrsoft Word.

      The Kramden Institute is doing something about it by refurbishing computers and installing Ubermix on them, which is an open source operating system preloaded with over 60 educational, science, and learning applications for students.

  • Funding

    • Gittip Wants to Make Working on Open Source A Sustainable Living

      What if I told you could work on open source projects full-time and make a living from that? You would get to do what you love and make money for it. That’s what Chad Whitacre is looking to accomplish with Gittip. The site, which uses the tag line: inspiring generosity, is doing just that. With over 1,110 active community members on Gittip in under a year, they are currently exchanging over $3,000 every week. While it’s not necessarily at the point where you would be able to quit your job and work on open source projects full-time, the site has been continually growing.

    • Wargaming to Support Open-Source Foundations

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • OpenGov Voices: Data.gov relaunches on open source platform CKAN

      Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions profileof the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Deborah Estrin wants to (literally) open source your life

      Estrin talks about how this is a big departure from traditional medical research. “Instead of relying on federal grants or venture capital, we want to bring rapid prototyping to this field, innovating on modular software methods so that clinicians can borrow, blend and adapt mobile tools to transform chronic disease management.”

      Will Cornell Tech work at reinventing CS grad school? Will Estrin’s Open mHealth project bring open source down to the cellular level? It is certainly worth watching both efforts to see her progress.

    • Transparency Camp event report and review of new tools

      I got bitten at camp this weekend, but indifference would have been the only relevant repellant and thankfully, I’m allergic to that. Here’s what I learned as a first-time camper.

  • Programming

    • LLVM Clang 3.3 RC2 Is Ready For Testing

      The release of LLVM 3.3 along with its sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end and Compiler-RT is imminent. A second release candidate was posted just prior to the weekend to usher in some last minute testing.

Leftovers

  • Peak Facebook: British users lose their Liking for Zuck’s ad empire

    Facebook’s popularity is slumping in the UK as users become fed up with being bombarded with advertising, a YouGov survey has revealed.

    In a report examining social media use among web-savvy Brits, the market research firm found a 9 per cent drop in Facebook usage since April 2012.

  • The Price of Popularity: $18/1K Followers!

    No, I’m not referring to the army of ‘Bielbers’ with posters of the singer hanging in their bedroom. I mean ‘bots’ or fake Twitter accounts. Of the international pop sensation’s 37.3 million followers on Twitter, 53% are so called ‘bots’. And he’s not alone. Recent news has exposed many celebrities with a significant percentage of their Twitter followers coming from inactive or automated accounts. This doesn’t stem solely from Hollywood either. Supposedly, President Obama’s Twitter audience is made up of around 70% inactive or fake profiles, totaling over 21 million. That’s more than the population of the state of New York (which has 29 electoral votes!).

  • Security

    • News service served with cease and desist after server access

      The Scripps Howard News Service recently reported on a data leak it had found which exposed the sensitive information of up to 170,000 phone company customers who had applied for discounted phone lines. But instead of a statement from the data’s owners, the authors got a cease and desist.

    • Google to replace SSL certificates

      Google will update its certificate infrastructure and has, as a precaution, warned of potential problems. Starting in August, the company will replace its SSL certificates to implement new, longer keys. The change will also affect the root certificate that Google uses to sign all its own certificates.

  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs’s New Business Standards

      We could believe that Goldman Sachs is now taking on new ethical standards if they even mentioned how they would change the old unethical standards used before the financial crisis. When a bank does not have to even admit wrongdoing, why in the world would they stop doing wrong ? The whole effort by Goldman is really a public relations exercise that investors will probably believe but we don’t.

    • Looking for Gulnara

      Truly disgraceful behaviour by the Swiss authorities.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Alex Jones: Conspiracy Inc.
    • NFIB and AHIP: Hidden influence-peddling in Washington

      I was not among those who believed the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision would open the floodgates of corporate money to influence elections and public policy. While the decision enables corporations to call for the election or defeat of federal candidates, those expenditures have to be reported and few corporations will take the risk of losing customers by getting involved in politics so publically.

  • Civil Rights

    • Security forces fire rubber bullets at striking South African miners

      Police fired volleys of rubber bullets at striking South African miners at a mine owned by Lanxess Chrome Mining Ltd on Tuesday, near the city of Rustenburg. Some 500 miners had assembled at daybreak, taking action without union approval. At least 10 miners were hospitalized, and police forces subsequently took control of the mine.

    • “Operation Tripwire” — the FBI, the Private Sector, and the Monitoring of Occupy Wall Street

      This article was first published by PRwatch.org on December 31, 2012, while we were writing our report “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” published by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy in May 2013. We re-release it now as part of a PRwatch series on the new report.

05.24.13

Links 24/5/2013: Fedora ‘Pidora’, CIvil Rights Debated in the US

Posted in News Roundup at 10:10 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • LinkSmart’s Low-Cost, Big Data Plan with Linux and MapR

    LinkSmart’s audience and link management platform for publishers was built with big data at its core. So when management decided to migrate the cloud-based application to their own hardware, there was no question it would be completely powered by Linux.

    Linux-based infrastructure allows the 3-year-old startup to cut costs, both by avoiding the licensing fees of proprietary systems and by tapping the community’s collective knowledge base instead of paying for expensive support contracts, said CTO Manny Puentes.

  • Linux-Based Education OS Gets New Features
  • GNU/Linux Is Important After All

    If I was the type to have heroes, Richard Stallman would be near the top of my list, not far below John Lennon and Abbie Hoffman, and way out ahead of Tom Hayden or the several-times-over reinvented Bob Dylan, though the freewheeling Bob Dylan who took it down Highway 61 will always be near the top of the list.

  • Desktop

    • HP And Operating Systems

      Little by little, OEMs are coming to the realization that if they don’t sell FLOSS, someone else will do it. Being an M$-only OEM is no longer good business.

    • USA Too

      GNU/Linux had a huge double spike, doubling ~April 15 and again on May 18. What’s with that? It’s bigger than possible with most organizations. Could it possibly be Dell’s selling Ubuntu GNU/Linux? How could that shift display itself overnight like that?

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Digia launches Boot to Qt technology preview
      • Introducing Boot to Qt – A Technology Preview
      • Digia Announces “Boot To Qt” Project

        Digia has announced a new commercial endeavour that pairs a lightweight Qt stack atop an Android kernel/base operating system.

        Boot To Qt is Digia’s new solution for developing “slick user interfaces on embedded devices.” This new stack consists of a UI component driven by thr Qt Framework, ready-made developer images, full Qt Creator integration, and a VirtualBox-based simulator. Android is being used as the base layer to the OS.

      • KDE 4.11 Will Be The Last Major KDE4 Workspaces Feature Release

        For those that didn’t hear already, KDE 4.11 will be the last Plasma Workspaces feature release in the KDE4 series and this upcoming version will be maintained for a period of two years.

      • Pre-order Akademy 2013 T-shirt
      • A rich python console and more in Kate editor

        I have done some improvements in the plugins: python_console_ipython, python_autocomplete, python_utils, js_utils, xml_pretty and django_utils. These plugins I added a month and a half ago (except python_console_ipython) to the kate repository. I have done two improvements and a new feature:

      • Plasma Workspaces to go into feature freeze with version 4.11

        KDE developer and Plasma team leader Aaron Seigo has announced that version 4.11 of Plasma Workspaces will be a long term support (LTS) release. Seigo says the developers are close to a feature freeze for the next version of KDE’s desktop shell and that, once Plasma Workspaces 4.11 is released, there will be no more feature developments in this branch. However, as part of their stabilisation releases, the developers will provide bug fixes and translation updates for two years after the 4.11 release.

  • Distributions

    • Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

      A recent poll on Hacker News asking about Linux distributions of choice got me thinking, what can can we learn from a bigger picture of the distro landscape than a single HN poll? I went looking around and dug up a couple of other sources of information — Linux Journal’s annual reader’s choice awards, and data from Google Trends.

      What makes these three particular choices interesting is that they span a broad swathe of user types, from the hacker (Hacker News) to the enthusiast (Linux Journal) to the “average” Linux user (Google). That means we can learn from the trends across these three user types — considering which communities may be more predictive or more technical vs which represent broader adoption today.

    • Zorin OS 7 Release Candidate out now

      Pre-release version of Zorin OS 7 Core available for testing, the RC including Linux Kernel 3.8 and an overhauled graphical interface

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Pidora, Raspberry Pi’s Unfortunately Named Fedora Remix

          Unfortunately, while Pidora looks to be a very interesting distribution for the Raspberry Pi, with many features taking advantage of the board’s unique properties, the Fedora team made one critical error during its development: they forgot to Google their intended name.

          As it turns out, Pidora has a rather embarrassing meaning to some members of the community: in Russian, “pidora” is a derogatory word for a male homosexual. It’s closest translation into English would be “faggot”.

        • Raspberry Pi’s Fedora becomes Pidora

          Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

        • Pidora: Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi ARMs Up (Thanks to Seneca)

          You can now add another Linux distro to the list that will run on the Raspberry Pi. The core distro for the small device is the Debian based Raspian and there is also an Arch based Linux for the Pi too.

        • Meet Pidora: A Custom Version of Fedora for Raspberry Pi

          As the diminutive $25/$35 Linux-based Raspberry Pi devices continue to contribute to imaginative applications, they’re also emerging as shining examples of new ways Linux can be deployed. Tinkerers have already put all flavors of Linux on the devices, and now, Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology (CDOT) have announced the release of Pidora 18, a custom version of Fedora specifically for the Raspberry Pi. Here is more on it.

        • Fedora Project Announces Pidora Remix for Raspberry Pi

          The Fedora Project has been supporting Raspberry Pi, the diminutive $35 computer, for some time. Today they’re making the Pidora “remix” of the core Fedora distribution available. Like the Raspbian distribution of Debian, Pidora is compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi.

        • Fedora ‘Pidora’ now optimised for Raspberry Pi mini-computer

          The Raspberry Pi mini-computer is to be served with new “Pidora” build of Fedora packaged for ARMv6 architecture.

          NOTE: Fedora is a free and open source Linux-based operating system sponsored by Red Hat — it is typically classed as the second-most commonly used Linux distribution, after Ubuntu.

        • Pidora is Fedora Linux for the Raspberry Pi
        • Fedora Raspberry Pi remix reborn as Pidora
        • New Fedora Package Manager Still on Track
        • Review: Korora 18 “Flo” KDE

          That is where my time with Korora 18 “Flo” KDE ended. The odd error message in the installation of Skype may cause other people to reconsider entirely, which is why I can almost but not quite recommend Korora for newbies. Given the popularity of Skype and given that the helper package in the repositories conflicts with a core system package (making it useless now), it might be good if developers in that community could come together to write a more current tutorial on how to deal with Skype. Also, the stunted nature of Mupen64Plus means I wouldn’t use this for myself. But really, it only needs a tiny bit more work before I can comfortably recommend this.
          You can get it here.

        • Pidora 18 (Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix) Release
        • New Security Feature in Fedora 19 Part 3: Hard Link/Soft Link Protection

          It is surprising to most people who understand Linux and Unix that you are allowed to Hard Link to any file on the OS as long as it is on the same file system.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Build your own supercomputer out of Raspberry Pi boards

      Who says you need a few million bucks to build a supercomputer? Joshua Kiepert put together a Linux-powered Beowulf cluster with Raspberry Pi computers for less than $2,000.

    • Arduino Yun SBC adds Wifi, Linux to Leonardo features

      Arduino announced the first open source Arduino hacker board with built-in WiFi, and also the first to run Linux. The $69 Arduino Yún integrates the functions of an Arduino Leonardo, featuring an ATmega32u4 microcontroller and 14 GPIO pins, with an Atheros AR9331 WiFi SOC running OpenWRT embedded Linux on a 400MHz MIPS processor.

    • Introducing the BeagleBone Black’s Linux 3.8 kernel

      This guest column by BeagleBoard.org co-founder Jason Kridner introduces the BeagleBone Black’s cutting-edge Linux 3.8 kernel, up from the original BeagleBone’s 3.2 kernel. The new kernel incorporates a new Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) display driver architecture, as well as full support for the Device Tree data structure introduced in Linux 3.7 in order to streamline ARM Linux development and hardware support.

    • BeagleBone Black ships, climbs Device Tree with Linux 3.8

      BeagleBoard.org has begun shipping its faster, cheaper “BeagleBone Black” SBC with a Linux 3.8 kernel, supporting Device Tree technology for more streamlined ARM development. The $45 BeagleBone Black runs Linux or Android on a 1GHz TI Sitara AM3359 SOC, doubles the RAM to 512MB, and adds a micro-HDMI port.

    • First Linux-Driven Arduino Board Reaches Out with WiFi

    • Phones

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Report: Android-related Projects Far Outpace iOS Projects

          The creation of new Android-related open source projects picked up in a big way in 2012, radically outpacing new iOS projects, according to data released by Black Duck Software. Black Duck manages and secures implementations of open source software, and has large samples of real-world data on open source software in use and in development. Its latest study shows that new Android mobile projects outstripped iOS projects by a factor of four in 2012, expanding by at least 96 percent in each year since 2007. New iOS project growth, by comparison, was 32 percent from 2011 to 2012.

        • Google’s Android Strategy For Smartphone Domination

          Many people will be quick to point out that it Google is a technology Company with lot of products. However, Google at heart is Advertising Company.

        • Google Is On A Mission To Make Android Developers Rich

          Google always wants developers to build apps for Android first and not iOS. Google I/O 2013 was developer’s paradise which showed that the company is committed to making tools that make things easy for developers.

          To attract developers into choosing Android as the first option, Google is striving to help them take full advantage of the Android Ecosystem to generate monetary profits for themselves. Android apps have come a long way and are at par with its iOS counterparts, therefore Google can now focus on optimising the ecosystem and innovate.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Intel Demo GNOME-Powered Tizen OS Ultrabook

        Tizen, the open-source Linux software platform aiming to power everything from smartphones to smart TVs, is seemingly coming to laptops.

        Intel demoed a Tizen laptop experience at the Tizen Conference 2013 in San Francisco, USA, earlier this month. And it wasn’t demoed on any old heap of hardware, either: Intel were showing off the OS newcomer on an i7 Ivybridge Ultrabook.

        The Tizen OS experience is powered by ‘Tizen Shell’ – a UI built upon GNOME-Shell.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source, cross-platform office suite Joeffice was created in just 30 days

    Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said.

  • ProjectLibre edges in on Microsoft Project dominance

    ProjectLibre is an open source project management solution ready to give Microsoft Project a run for their money.

  • Google Abandons Open Standards for Instant Messaging

    In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing “Talk” platform with a new one called “Hangouts” that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users.

  • Getting involved in Free Software
  • Open-source office suite written in Java

    The first open source office suite written in Java has been released by Japplis, a company based in the Netherlands.

  • New Maven plugins for simpler architecture management

    Macker, the second plugin, allows specific dependencies between packages to be defined and those rules to be automatically verified. The plugin is the result of observations by the company that targets for dependencies between packages set at the beginning of a project are often not met. Macker is a fork of software of the same name from Codehaus that hasn’t been updated since 2003. The forked plugin from andrena objects has been adapted to current versions of Java.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 22 Beta Ready To Test

        Keeping track of where Firefox is going is difficult given you have at least two horizons to keep your eyes on. Here we have a brief look at what to expect in Firefox 22, currently in beta and close to being rolled out.

        The big news in Firefox 22 is either WebRTC or asm.js depending on your particular interests.

        WebRTC isn’t new but now it is deemed stable enough to be on by default.

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Pattern, Open Source Framework, Aims to Accelerate Analytics on Hadoop
    • Open Source Big Data: DataStax Expands Cassandra, Hadoop Business in Europe

      Big Data is becoming a big deal beyond the United States, and it’s time for the international channel to pay attention. The latest evidence: DataStax, which provides enterprise database management services based on open-source software. The company is making an aggressive push into the European market in what may be the first move toward a greater presence throughout the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region as a whole.

      DataStax, which is based in California and counts 20 Fortune 100 companies among its customers, distributes an integrated Big Data platform based on the open-source technologies Cassandra, Hadoop and Solr, all of which are developed by the Apache Foundation. It focuses on database scalability and reliability, and has been particularly innovative in the NoSQL trend.

  • Databases

    • Salesforce Nabs Open Source Database Guru for War on Oracle

      The grudge match between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and his former protege Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, has reached legendary proportions in recent years. Ellison and Benioff pepper their speeches and interviews with not so subtle digs at each other’s companies, and Oracle even went so far as to cancel Benioff’s scheduled keynote at the Oracle Open World conference in 2011.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Single-board computers and software freedom

      Single-board computers (SBCs) are computers delivered as one circuit board that are powerful enough to run a real operating system. SBCs are typically inexpensive and versatile, making them an exciting tool for a wide range of applications, from education to scientific research. But there’s a problem; all of the SBCs currently available have major flaws — hardware that doesn’t work without running a nonfree program.

  • Programming

    • Google Code disables direct file downloads

      Google has announced that it will in future not allow direct file downloads from its Google Code hosting service. The company says that “increasing misuse” of the service has forced it to take the step in the interest of keeping the platform’s community “safe and secure”.

Leftovers

05.23.13

Links 23/5/2013: Threat to Civil Rights in UK, KDE 4.11 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 12:34 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • $99 Linux stick turns any HDMI display into a virtual desktop

    Hard on the heels of the news that Dell’s “Project Ophelia” thumb PC is expected to ship this summer, thin client vendor Devon IT on Tuesday rolled out a similar contender of its own called the Ceptor.

  • Samsung Talks About Its Aggressive Linux Talent Recruitment Strategy
  • From subversive to mainstream: Looking back on 18 years with Linux
  • CCE Addresses Growing Demand in CAE Space by Extending Support to Linux Platforms

    CCE, a leader in advanced interoperabilitytechnology, announced that in response to a growing demand from customers in the CAEspace, it has successfully completed porting of its 3D CAD interoperability technology toLinux platforms.

  • GNU/Linux chosen as operating system of the International Space Station

    This is a wise choice for the space station, and a high-profile victory for software freedom. It brings good publicity for free software, demonstrating its respected position in the world of science and technology.

  • It’s Easier Than Ever to Slap Your Favorite Linux Distro Onto a Chromebook

    If you’ve been in the market for a portable computer, you may very well have considered buying a Chromebook. And, if you favor a particular Linux distro, perhaps Ubuntu or Mint, you may be interested in buying a $200 or $250 Chromebook only to put your favorite flavor of Linux on your new system. (The Acer system shown here sells for $199.) As we’ve reported, many OStatic readers have expressed interest in buying a Chromebook to run Linux. Now, there are very simple instructions for doing so online and a growing body of evidence that people are having good experiences with their Linux Chromebooks.

  • Designing Electronics with Linux

    In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn’t even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices. Although you could build them using trial and error, having a way to model them first to see how they will behave is a much better choice—in steps oregano. With oregano, you can design your circuitry ahead of time and run simulations on it to iron out any problems you may encounter.

  • LinuxTag: LiMux firmly established in Munich

    Peter Hofmann, the leader of Munich’s Linux migration project, has denied rumours that the LiMux clientGerman language link will be “decommissioned” when the initiative runs out at the end of the year. “The City of Munich has no intention to switch”, he said at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin on Wednesday. The basic instruction given by Munich’s City Council in 2003 was to create more independence and autonomy for Munich’s IT, said Hofmann. This task won’t be completed when the project runs out in October, he explained, adding that further adjustments will be needed in the specialised application and server areas.

  • Linux Ranks Among Top Skills for Big Data Jobs
  • Linux Format 172 On Sale Today – Has Ubuntu lost it?

    With its Distrowatch ranking falling faster than Man Utd now that Sir Alex Ferguson has departed, Ubuntu is no longer the all-conquering force that it was. So what’s happened? Has it, in fact, lost it, or is there a more subtle game afoot? We answer this conundrum (sort of) in the latest Linux Format.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Qt 5.1 Launches on Tizen with Standard Look and Feel
      • Finnish mobile maker Jolla announces first MeeGo phone

        Another thing to notice is that a compatibility layer on the device allows the user to even run Android apps on the phone.

      • May Updates to KDE Plasma and Applications
      • Plasma Workspaces 4.11: A long term release

        One of the most exciting things about this direction is that our distribution and packaging partners will be able to have a version that will see releases which focus exclusively on stabilization for at least two years. There will be no new features added after 4.11.0 to Plasma Desktop and Netbook, though the code will be adjusted as needed to maintain and improve existing functionality. This should make Plasma Desktop 4.11 an excellent candidate for inclusion in distributions that have a longer shelf-life.

      • KDE 4.11 to be Long Term Release

        It was just last week we looked at some of the proposed features for upcoming KDE 4.11 as it neared soft feature freeze. Well, today some new information about KDE 4.11 came to light. Aaron Seigo said today that 4.11 would be a “long term release.”

        A long term release means a particular version will be kept up to date with stabilization and security updates for an extended period of time; in this case, two years. This will give distributions that skate safely in the well-worn groove of stability a chance to have a longer term plan and more stable offerings. Seigo said, “no new features [will be] added after 4.11.0 to Plasma Desktop and Netbook, though the code will be adjusted as needed to maintain and improve existing functionality.” He believes this will help developers and distribution developers a chance to focus on polishing.

      • Digia previews “Boot to Qt” platform
      • Digia launches Boot to Qt technology preview

        Digia launched a technology preview of Boot to Qt, a commercial offering that provides “a fully-integrated solution for the creation of slick user interfaces on embedded devices.” The current version of Boot to Qt is built on top of an Android kernel base layer, and includes support for the Nexus 7, BeagleBoard-xM, SABRE Lite, and x86 hardware.

      • ReKonq Gaining Chrome Extension Support, Still Sponsored By Blue Systems

        It’s been just a little over a year since the mystical Blue Systems started sponsoring development of ReKonq. Blue Systems is second only to the KDE e.V. in platform investment, sponsoring not only numerous core applications, but multiple distributions as well. ReKonq has come a long way since 0.9.2 (May 2012) and with the help of Blue Systems developer Adjam, it is taking baby-steps towards Chrome Extension support.

      • Quo vadis, Dolphin? First results from the user study.

        We conducted a large study about strength and weakness of file managers in may 2013. In this article we present first results, discuss issues and questions that occur during the study, and present the schedule for the statistical analysis.

      • Homerun 1.0.0!

        Today, I am happy to announce the release of Homerun 1.0.0. This new version comes with a few new features.

  • Distributions

    • Another Day, Another Distro: Antergos Linux Is Born

      “A distribution I never heard of has changed its default desktop, stopped supporting Cinnamon — though it is still included — and changed its name,” said Mobile Raptor blogger Robin Lim. “To me, it really is of little significance. No offense meant to the development team — I am sure it is a fine distribution — it is just that it is floating in a sea of fine distributions.”

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Rating Lowered to Market Perform at BMO Capital Markets (RHT)

      • Fedora

        • Raspberry Pi’s Fedora becomes Pidora

          Fedora and the Seneca Centre for Development of Open Technology released an optimized Fedora 18 Remix for the Raspberry Pi, and unveiled a new name for the remix. “Pidora 18,” based on a new build of Fedora optimized for ARMv6, features speedier performance and includes packages from the Fedora 18 package set, says the Pidora project team.

        • Free and open source support for RAR archives in Fedora

          RAR is somewhat of a legacy format in terms of compression ability but RAR remains popular in many places especially for its split archive feature. Current Fedora users are used to installing unrar command line utility from RPM Fusion to get the ability to extract RAR files and unrar is supported by the GNOME (File Roller) and Ark (KDE) archive managers however it is a proprietary utility and unavailable for other architectures like ARM which are getting popular in Fedora as well.

        • Another week of rawhide (2013-05-21 edition)
        • When Xubuntu and Debian fail, Fedora it is for HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop

          I’ve spent just about a month with this new HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop that shipped with Windows 8. That means UEFI and Secure Boot.

          And new hardware. We all know how difficult Linux can be with new hardware.

        • Fedora 18 Comes To ARMv6, Raspberry Pi

          While Fedora 18 has been out for months and so has Fedora 18 for ARM, an ARMv6 spin of Fedora 18 targeting the popular Raspberry Pi development platform has finally been released.

          Fedora 19 isn’t too far out now, but Fedora 18 for ARMv6 to cater towards the very low-end Raspberry Pi hardware has been spun. This release is being falled “Pidora 18″ and was announced on Wednesday,

    • Debian Family

      • Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 rounded up

        The GNU/Hurd development team at the Debian project has released a version of the Distribution based on Debian 7 “Wheezy” and the GNU Hurd kernel. Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 is the first major release of the distribution after years of development work, even though it is not an official Debian release. The Hurd kernel is a Unix-like microkernel design based on the Mach kernel and has itself been under development since 1990.

      • CrunchBang 11 Waldorf

        CrunchBang 11 has been released so it’s time for a review. I last looked at CrunchBang back in 2009. Wow! Has it been that long? I’m pleased to report that CrunchBang 11 didn’t disappoint in any way.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-friendly SBC suits display apps on trains, planes, buses

      MEN Mikro announced a compact, rugged single-board computer based on Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom E600-series embedded processors. The Linux-friendly SC27 SBC is aimed at driver displays and in-seat infotainment systems in trains, buses, and airplanes, where wide-temperature operation and resistance to shock, vibration, and dust are critical.

    • Raspberry Pi Gets New Wayland Weston Renderer

      After working on the Raspberry Pi support for Wayland/Weston, Pekka Paalanen has announced a new “rpi-renderer” for the low-cost ARM development board.

      The rpi-renderer is better than the current gl-renderer and should be better for the hardware although it’s not as flexible.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Driving innovation with Open Source

    Yesterday, eighteen technology decision-makers from the Singapore Government gathered at the FutureGov lunch briefing — conducted in partnership with Red Hat — to discuss how Open Source technology can drive openness and innovation in the public sector.

  • Why The “Star Trek Computer” will be Open Source and Released Under Apache License v2

    If you remember the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you know exactly what someone means when they use the expression “the Star Trek Computer”. On TNG, “the computer” had abilities which were so far ahead of real-world tech of the time, that it took on an almost mythological status. And even to this day, people reference “The Star Trek Computer” as a sort of short-hand for the goal of advances in computing technology. We are mesmerized by the idea of a computer which can communicate with us in natural, spoken language, answering questions, locating data and calculating probabilities in a conversational manner, and – seemingly – with access to all of the data in the known Universe.

  • Concurrent is building a Hadoop assembly line in open source

    Cascading creator Concurrent has developed a new open source tool called Pattern for running machine learning models on Hadoop clusters. When combined with its SQL tool called Lingual, users can move data from one stage to another easily.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • OpenStack Public Cloud Setbacks: Real or Imagined?

      Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) has killed its OpenStack public cloud plan. Rackspace (NYSE:RAX) is not growing as quickly as planned, despite betting the company on OpenStack. Some pundits now wonder if a giant like IBM can save OpenStack. Should cloud integrators be concerned about the open source platform? Absolutely not. Here’s why.

  • Databases

    • A Look Inside Tumblr’s Architecture

      tumblrYahoo recently purchased Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion. Tumblr pushes some surprisingly high numbers through their service, so aninside look at the architecture that Yahoo bought is well worth the read. The portion I found most interesting are the details on the MySQL database setup, and how Tumblr uses MySQL to scale massively, and keep the service available.

    • SQLite gets memory-mapped I/O

      SQLite, the ubiquitous, lightweight, C-based SQL engine, which is embedded in many applications, has been updated to SQLite version 3.7.17 with support for memory-mapped I/O which could potentially double performance and use less RAM. The new functionality adds xFetch() and xUnfetch() methods which are automatically called if memory-mapped I/O is activated, to map the data into memory. The developers point out that there are disadvantages to the technique that require coders using the functions be more robust in how they handle pointers and errors and that it is possible to not see performance boosted in certain test cases. Therefore, by default, memory-mapped I/O is turned off. Programmers wishing to exploit the functionality should consult the documentation.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • Public Services/Government

    • Impact of open by default on local government

      For those of you that may not have read the memorandum in its entirety it directs federal agencies to make all data open and machine readable by default. Obviously there are caveats to that. Agencies can redact data that does not meet disclosure standards regarding security and privacy. The excitement centers around the language of open by default.

  • Licensing

    • Unlicensed code: Movement or Madness?

      One of the hot topics of commentary on open source development at the moment is the licensing situation on GitHub. When code is committed to GitHub, the copyright owner (usually the author or their employer) retains all rights to the code, and anyone wishing to re-use the code (by downloading it, or by “forking” and modifying it) is bound by the terms of the license the code is published under. The point of discussion in this case, is that many (indeed, the majority) of repositories on GitHub contain no license file at all.

    • Jante’s Shield

      It’s difficult to be critical of open source software. Often, it’s created by volunteers who are motivated purely by the challenge and the desire to do something good. This attitude is why we’ve got such a thriving ecosystem of distributions and software, and why the GPL has become such a disruptive idea. It has also enabled many companies to build a viable business model supporting, extending and distributing this software in ways that would never occur if they were shipping their own proprietary software. This is what causes the occasional friction in the community, and it’s completely understandable. On the one hand you have communities working together in a way that I think is similar to the Swedish ‘Law of Jante’ – the idea that individual success is downplayed in favour of the achievements made by the groups. On the other hand you have traditional company values, bigging up its individual success and vitality in order to compete with other (non-open source) businesses doing the same.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Science finds a better foundation for research in the open

      The flipside of having to resolve such issues, though, is the incredible power of transparency in the research process which openness offers. Any researcher that has hammered away at a piece of published research for months in a futile attempt to recreate its findings will understand the feeling of extreme frustration when the scientific literature falls short of reproducibility. If so much of our research isn’t repeatable, aren’t we building houses upon rather sandy foundations?

    • Open Hardware

  • Programming

    • Linux System Programming, 2ed
    • Google Code disables direct file downloads

      Google has announced that it will in future not allow direct file downloads from its Google Code hosting service. The company says that “increasing misuse” of the service has forced it to take the step in the interest of keeping the platform’s community “safe and secure”.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Source, Open Standards 2013 Conference, 18/04/2013, America Square Conference Centre

      A member of the Geospatial Engineering team at Newcastle, David Alderson, recently attended a GovNet series conference in London, entitled “Open Source, Open Standards”. This was held at the America Square Conference Centre, and more information about the conference can be found here.

      The conference delegates were largely comprised of various government agencies including the Department for Transport, Office of National Statistics, representation from emergency services, Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as well as representation from many local councils from around the UK. From within these various organisations the delegates were largely found to be based within some part of their specific IT operations.

Leftovers

  • Driver who tweeted about knocking cyclist over is under investigation

    A motorist is being investigated by police after she boasted on Twitter that she had knocked a cyclist off his bike.

  • Apple Mobile Devices Cleared for Use on U.S. Military Networks

    The Pentagon cleared Apple Inc. (AAPL) devices for use on its networks, setting the stage for the maker of iPhones and iPads to compete with Samsung Electronics Co. and BlackBerry for military sales.

    The Defense Department said in a statement today that it has approved the use of Cupertino, California-based Apple’s products running a version of the iOS 6 mobile platform.

  • A shield law for reporters? Thanks, but no thanks!

    A lot of journalists have embraced the idea. But I believe that journalists should say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

    Tempting as it might be, a federal shield law is a bad idea for journalists. We do not need it, and we may ultimately regret it. The relevant part of the First Amendment to the Constitution says: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. That powerful simple phrase “no law” means just that – no law, period. It means Congress simply cannot legislate in this area.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Raw Milk Supporters Rally in Baraboo, Wisconsin for Farmer Vernon Hershberger’s Criminal Trial

      Farmer Vernon Hershberger’s trial started May 20 in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and will most likely continue until May 24 at the earliest. Hershberger is a raw milk producer. As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported, he is charged with four misdemeanor offenses: operating a retail food establishment without a license, operating a dairy farm as a milk producer without a license, operating as a dairy plant without a license, and violating a holding order. If convicted, the Amish father of ten children faces up to 30 months in county jail and fines of over $10,000.

      Supporters suspect that he is being singled out to make a cautionary example threatening other raw milk producers in Wisconsin (Wisconsin’s law allows “incidental sales” of raw milk on the farm, but its interpretation has been increasingly strict in the last few years).

  • Security

    • Report: DDoS service as a legitimate, FBI-approved business

      US security blogger Brian Krebs writes about a service that is relatively new, at least to the general public: DDoS attacks. Apparently, one enterprising “stress tester” discovered by Krebs even told the blogger that he was working for the FBI.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

      Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

  • Finance

  • Censorship


    • RIAA: 20 Million Piracy Takedowns Sent to Google, Still No End in Sight

      To mark the occasion of 20 million URL takedown notices sent to Google by RIAA member companies, the organization has complained that search engines still aren’t doing enough to reduce the piracy problem. The RIAA says it is using a bucket to deal with “an ocean of illegal downloading”, one in which content is replaced and re-indexed in a never-ending loop. Notice and takedown procedures aren’t fit for today’s reality and must be revised, the music group argues.

  • Privacy

    • Privacy Alert #1: Explicit Consent, the Cornerstone

      When you are browsing the web, can you say who collects information about you, what is the nature of that information and who may access it? Can you control who may know what about you? The European Commission intended to give you the power to do so, but European Parliament may vote otherwise, under pressure by corporate lobbies.

  • Civil Rights

    • Jailed Pussy Riot member declares hunger strike

      A jailed member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot told a court she is on a hunger strike after being barred from attending a parole appeal hearing in person, Russian state news agency Ria Novosti reported Wednesday.

      Maria Alyokhina was sentenced in August to two years in prison for performing a song critical of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a prominent Orthodox cathedral last year.

    • Feds Tracked Reporter’s Movements, Personal E-Mail in Criminal Conspiracy Investigation

      In an effort to unmask a leaker who fed a reporter classified information about North Korea, FBI investigators tracked the journalist’s movements in and out of a government building, obtained copies of e-mails from his personal account and also took the unprecedented step of alleging that the reporter engaged in a criminal conspiracy simply for doing his job.

    • US Suspends Constitution in Permanent World War on Terror
    • Capitalising on tragedy

      Yesterday’s events in Woolwich were appalling, but Lord Carlile and John Reid wasted no time in attempting to use this atrocity in justifying a return to reductions in personal privacy and other human rights.

    • Now is not the time for politics, Lord Reid

      Today, the country begins the process of coming to terms with the horrific attack in Woolwich yesterday.

      We know little about those who have committed this brutal terror attack. Videos and photographs have brought the chilling savagery of the perpetrators into our homes.

      As the Prime Minister said:

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Newegg nukes “corporate troll” Alcatel in third patent appeal win this year

      In 2011, Alcatel-Lucent had American e-commerce on the ropes. The French telecom had sued eight big retailers and Intuit saying that their e-commerce operations infringed Alcatel patents; one by one they were folding. Kmart, QVC, Lands’ End, and Intuit paid up at various stages of the litigation. Just before trial began Zappos, Sears, and Amazon also settled. That left two companies holding the bag: Overstock.com and Newegg, a company whose top lawyer had vowed not to ever settle with patent trolls.

    • European Parliament aims for fake openness in TTIP / TAFTA

      The draft European Parliament resolution on EU trade and investment negotiations with the United States of America aims for fake openness. Paragraph 21 of the draft resolution recalls the need for continuous and transparent engagement by the Commission with a wide range of stakeholders. I have visited some Civil Society Dialogues organised by the Commission. The Commission just states there are no problems and, sorry, as trade negotiations are secret, they can give no details. A masochist may find such meetings rewarding.

      Civil society organisations want access to draft negotiation texts, at least for regulatory aspects. Companies have access, the Commission discriminates against citizens, while access is a human right. See the FFII letter to European Parliament Trade committee; see also KEI comments.

    • How Cheap Genetic Testing Complicates Cancer Screening For Us All

      Sometimes, more medical information is a bad thing. The influential United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends against most women getting genetic screenings for their susceptibility to breast cancer. Why? Because the tests are imperfect: for every woman who gets tested for genes associated with onset breast cancer, even more will falsely test positive, leading spooked patients into needless surgery or psychological trauma. Super cheap genetic testing from enterprising health startups, such as 23andMe, have complicated cancer detection for us all by increasing the accessibility of imperfect medical information.

      After discovering a mutated BRCA1 gene, known to increase the likelihood of breast cancer 60 to 80 percent, actress Angelina Jolie underwent a radical preventive double mastectomy. Her brave confession in the New York Times brought much needed attention to breast cancer awareness, but it’s dangerous in the hands of a statistically illiterate population.

    • Copyrights

      • Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me

        Kim Dotcom has announced that he is the inventor of the so-called two-step authentication system and has a patent to prove it. The Megaupload founder says the security mechanism, which has just been introduced by Twitter, is being used by U.S. companies more than a billion times every week without permission. Dotcom says he doesn’t want to sue, but might if the likes of Google and Facebook don’t help fund his legal battle with the U.S. Government.

      • Is a broadcast to everyone private under the Copyright Act?

        For the final post in my copyright series, I want to focus on another example in my series of discussions about formalism vs. policy in copyright. Today’s case is WNET v. Aereo, which allowed continued operation of a creative television streaming service. As I’ll discuss below, the case pretty clearly complies with the statutory scheme, much to the relief of those who believe content is overprotected and that new digital distribution methods should be allowed. This time, the policy opposition is best demonstrated by Judge Chin’s dissent in the case.

      • TAFTA: First Step Towards a Super-ACTA

        In a plenary vote, the European Parliament just adopted a mandate to the European Commission explicitly allowing it to “include strong protection of intellectual property rights (IPR)” in the proposed EU-US trade agreement negociations, the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also know as “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP).

05.22.13

Links 22/5/2013: Debian GNU/Hurd, New Go Language Release

Posted in News Roundup at 11:23 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Devon Ceptor: $99 Linux-based HDMI stick for enterprise

    Devon IT plans to launch a tiny device called the Ceptor in July which you can plug into any TV or monitor to turn it into a thin client machine. Basically the Ceptor is a $99 device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket. It has an ARM-based processor and runs a Linux-based operating system, but it’s really designed to let you login to remote server running virtual desktop software.

  • Steven Ovadia: I wiped Windows and never looked back

    I run My Linux Rig

  • Linux is an Art – Driving Force Behind Linux

    We comes across Linux (Foss) in our day-to-day life. In fact we are surrounded by Foss technologies. The first thing that might come to the mind of ours is that why is Linux appraised so much even in Windows and Mac user Community.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Is the Instrument Panel the Next Target for Open Source Software in Cars?

      The In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) System has received much of the focus from open source software initiatives in the automotive industry so far with the Automotive Grade Linux working group and the GENIVI alliance. But the instrument panel, which shares many technologies with IVI, is also ripe for development with Linux.

      The instrument cluster will probably be the next focus of open source software development in the automotive industry, said Rudolf Streif, Director of Embedded Solutions at the Linux Foundation. Traditionally the instrument panel was a set of mechanical guages that monitored speed, engine temperature, fuel levels and more. Most dashboards are electronic now and will eventually be replaced by another screen and integrated with the IVI system, he said.

    • Linux Kernel 3.9.3 Is Now Available for Download

      A few minutes ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly announced that the third maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

    • Linux 3.10-rc2 Kernel Takes In A Few Extra Pulls

      The second release candidate for the LinuThe second release candidate for the Linux 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle. x 3.10 kernel is now out there. Torvalds released 3.10-rc2 on Monday with a few extra pulls that he wouldn’t have accepted later on in the release cycle.

    • Hot Relocation HDD To SSD Support For Btrfs

      In working to enhance the performance of the Btrfs file-system in cases where certain data/files are frequently used, a set of patches for providing hot relocation support has been posted.

      The Btrfs hot relocation support comes down to when storing data on a traditional (rotating) hard disk drive, when data gets “hot” (a.k.a. being frequently used), these patches would allow the data to be automatically migrated to a non-rotating disk (i.e. solid-state drive). By moving the frequently used data over to an SSD, the performance would obviously be much more optimal than keeping it on an SSD but making it so not all of your data would need to be stored on a costly SSD.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KTp 0.6.2 Released

        We have just released version 0.6.2 of KDE Telepathy, KDE’s instant messaging client.

      • rekonq, working on extension support
      • Calligra Author Gets a Distraction Free Mode

        wanted to throw a little light on a feature that just landed in the Calligra repositories: A distraction-free writing mode for Calligra Author and Calligra Words.

        The distraction-free mode means that we disable most UI elements and lets the user focus totally on the contents. This was one of the most asked-for features when I did a little survey half a year ago and asked which features that our potential users wanted. I say ‘potential’ because this was before the first release of Calligra Author and we didn’t have any users at all by then.

      • Okular welcomes configurable review tools

        This way you can decide that by default you want your highlighter to be green instead of yellow. Or even have two highlighters in the review bar.

      • Qt For Tizen Launches, Based On Qt 5.1

        Just two weeks after talking about a Qt 5 tool-kit port for the Tizen platform being worked on, the first release is now available.

      • Grid + Assistant = Awesome Perspective Assistant

        Been quiet some time since my last blog about Krita, well, I had been a bit busy with college work. Nonetheless, with whatever time I had, and all the help from Boud, I have been able to import a particular feature from the Perspective Grid to the Perspective Assistant.

  • Distributions

    • Emmabuntus 2 – The French Revolution

      One of my favourite things about writing about Linux is when I decide to review one of the smaller distributions.

    • New Releases

      • Neptune 3.1 is ready

        We worked hard and spend a lot of effort in creating this service release for Neptune 3.0. So if you like it please consider donating to us a small amount of money so we can further develop and strenghtens our efforts.

      • Puppy 5.6 (Precise)

    • Screenshots

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux 3 brings a raft of key updates

        Mageia has long been what you might call a “best-kept secret” of the Linux world, consistently residing among the top five distributions in DistroWatch’s page-hit rankings despite minimal marketing and hoopla.

        The distro has only been around since it was forked from Mandriva Linux back in 2010, of course, but after several weeks’ delay the Mageia project on Sunday finally launched the third major version of the free and open source operating system.

      • Mageia 3, the WONT FIX scim bug, and iBus
      • OpenMandriva Picks Name, Releases Alpha

        While the rest of Linuxdom was reading of the Debian 7.0 and Mageia 3 releases, the OpenMandriva gang have been hard at it trying to get their new distribution some attention. The OpenMandriva name was made official and an alpha was released into the wild.

      • More good news: We have an iso that installs
      • Mageia 3 KDE Review: Simple, refined, elegant and fantastic!

        To be honest, I have used quite a few KDE distros in last couple of years but never saw a resource efficient distro like Mageia 2. Under similar conditions, Mageia performed better than almost all the KDE distros I have used. Plus, with Mandriva Linux going commercial and PCLinuxOS becoming independent of Mandriva, Mageia and ROSA are perhaps the limited ways to know what’s brewing in the Mandriva camp. Incidentally both the Mandriva derivatives present really beautiful KDE distros!

      • Mageia 3 out, no more delays

    • Debian Family

      • 2013-05-debian gnu hurd 2013

        It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian “sid” at the time of the Debian “wheezy” release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release.

      • News about Debian GNU/Hurd
      • Removing unwanted applications in Debian

        One of the biggest pitfalls for a new Debian (or Linux) user is attempting to remove an unwanted application than came installed with the Desktop installed. This can result in the Debian package manager informing the user that there are various packages which can be autoremoved. Allowing the package manager to autoremove these packages then removes packages essential to the Desktop environment, destroying the installation. Why?

      • Derivatives

        • Tails 0.18 Screenshots
        • Tails 0.18 can install packages on the fly

          Version 0.18 of Tails, The Amnesiac Incognito Live System designed for users who need to protect their privacy and be as anonymous as possible, has been released with a preview of a new feature which allows a custom list of packages to be installed and automatically updated each time a network connection is made. The new feature makes use of the persistent volume support in the distribution but users should be aware of the ramifications of using the persistence when attempting to leave no traces.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu: Restoring the Community Link

            The story of Ubuntu and the Missing Community Link has progressed in the last week. A conflict that initially seemed symbolic of the division between Canonical employees and Ubuntu volunteers has since transformed into an illustration of Ubuntu’s skill at handling community conflict.

            For now, at least, the issue appears to have been resolved, although concerns linger about how to avoid similar divisions in the future.

            The conflict arose when Canonical’s design team removed the link to the community site from the main menu on the Ubuntu home page to a sub-menu at the bottom of the page. The change resulted in one-third fewer click-throughs to the community site, but more importantly, the change seemed to confirm fears of a continuing de-emphasis of the Ubuntu community.

            As a result, Benjamin Kerensa and Mark Terranova, two prominent Ubuntu members, began a campaign to restore the position of the link. Much of the campaign was kept within conventional channels, but events reached a low point when Kerensa’s private video that compared Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to Adolf Hitler was briefly made public by Mark Terranova.

          • May 2013 Ubuntu Developer Summit Summary
          • Respect in Community Discussion and Debate

            Recently there was yet another storm in a teacup that distracted us from creating and sharing Ubuntu and our flavors with others. I am not going to dive into the details of this particular incident…it has been exhaustively documented elsewhere…but at the heart of this case was a concern around the conduct in which some folks engaged around something they disagreed with. This is not the first time we have seen disappointing conduct in a debate, and I wanted to share some thoughts on this too.

          • The key to the success of Ubuntu

            To finish this aloud thinking, I really think that Ubuntu is doing something right. And that is, taking the important decisions fast, and sticking to a plan. I do not know if the path they are following will give them the final success, but I am sure that if the start listening everyone who disagree with that said path, they are never going to succeed.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Kubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail review – Cushty

              It is time to test the third sibling in the Ubuntu family, the one named Kubuntu. So far, we’ve had Ubuntu, which was somewhat bland. Then we also had Xubuntu, which worked like a charm, except for a kernel oops thingie affecting the entire range, a silly thing to coincide with the official release. The KDE version is next.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New 32-way Raspberry Pi cluster built by US PhD candidate

      Joshua Kiepert, a PhD candidate from Boise University, has built an awesome 32-way cluster from Raspberry Pis. Although clusters from Pi’s have been made before, and even much larger, this is still a seriously cool project.

    • Raspberry Pis Chained Together Provide Massive Computing Muscle

      As we’ve covered before, when it comes to the top open source stories of the last 12 months, it’s clear that one of the biggest is the proliferation of tiny, inexpensive Linux-based computers at some of the smallest form factors ever seen. The Linux-based Raspberry Pi, priced at $25 and $35, leads the pack among these devices.

      But in a new twist on what Raspberry Pi devices are capable of, they’re being chained together to form supercomputers and powerful clusters. If it sounds like a joke, you may be surprised at the enormous computing power these lash-ups are capable of. They may even have the power to democratize supercomputing-level data crunching at very low price points.

    • HOT Raspberry Pi DIY Mini Desktop PC Build

      We recently set out to design a mini desktop computer with the wildly popular Raspberry Pi single board computer. The Raspberry Pi is a Linux-driven, ARM processor-based micro computer that is known for its low cost and small size. People use the device for a variety of projects, from micro-servers to low cost media players. Basically, our goal was to turn what is currently one of the cheapest bare-bones computer boards into a fully enclosed mini desktop computer that could be taken anywhere without the need for cabling or setup. One of the high level goals of this project was also to learn about programming with Linux and get a good feel for it with the Debian distribution.

    • TI OMAP5432 dev kit boasts Linux and Android support

      Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a development kit for designs based on the TI OMAP5432 SOC (system-on-chip), which integrates dual 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore CPUs. The OMAP5432 EVM (evaluation module) targets high performance, graphically oriented, low power embedded applications such as human-machine interfaces, portable data terminals, digital signage, and medical monitoring devices.

    • Arduino launches Wi-Fi board and ready-to-roll robotics platform

      Arduino has launched a new family of development boards and its first full robotics platform at Maker Faire Bay Area over the weekend. The Arduino Yún is the first release in a new line of Wi-Fi enabled boards and is based on the Arduino Leonardo coupled with an embedded Wi-Fi board running a MIPS variant of Linux. The Arduino Robot is the company’s first robotics platform that is fully functional out of the box and consists of two boards connected by a ribbon cable which are equipped with motors, wheels and sensors in a circular design that is reminiscent of the Roomba. The design also features a color LCD screen, microSD card slot, a compass, LEDs and control elements.

    • BeagleBone Camera Cape gains Android 4.1.2 support

      QuickLogic has released Android 4.1.2 support for its custom Parallel Camera Interface (CAM I/F) chip for TI’s Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 SOC (system-on-chip). The new support, which comes in addition to earlier Linux support, adds Android compatibility to the BeagleBone’s 3.1-megapixel Camera Cape.

    • Accessing the Raspberry Pi’s 1MHz timer

      A fixed-rate timer is not part of the ARM specification, but most ARM-based SoC’s have such a timer. The Raspberry Pi is no exception. However, reading its timer in Linux takes a Unix hacker’s understanding.

    • Phones

      • Jolla Smartphone Announced

        At an online presentation today, Jolla Ltd. released further details around the Jolla phone and its Sailfish operating system, an open source OS based on the Linux Meego project. The world’s first Jolla device was shown to an enthusiasic group of developers.

        [...]

        With Jolla, your other half, you have the ultimate freedom to let loose, innovate and individualize your own mobile world.

      • Jolla seeks Sailfish smartphone pre-orders

        Jolla Ltd. opened pre-order voucher sales for the first smartphone to run its Sailfish OS, an open source distribution based on the Linux MeeGo project. The dual-core, 4.5-inch Jolla phone features a gesture UI, Android app compatibility, and interchangeable “Other Half” back covers that switch user profiles.

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Sony releases its Android drivers for AOSP

          As part of its AOSP for Xperia project, Sony has released proprietary Wi-Fi drivers and OpenGL graphics libraries of its Xperia S smartphone, Xperia Z smartphone and Xperia Tablet Z. The company has opened GitHub repositories for all three devices that include Android source code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the proprietary drivers and instructions to build AOSP images with the drivers and libraries and then install them on the company’s devices.

        • Google I/O: How to build battery-efficient apps
        • Tough Cat B15 Android Phone Marks U.S. Debut

          The makers of tractors and other construction equipment are trying to drum up partners to sell its rough ‘n’ tumble Android smartphone.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why we do this crazy thing we do

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Big Data

  • Databases

    • HeidiSQL 8.0 arrives with polished user interface

      Ansgar Becker has announced the release of HeidiSQL 8.0, the latest version of the open source SQL client for Windows. The new version brings a query history function, supports search and replace in results and introduces folders for tables, views, routines and sessions that allow users to better organise the user interface. HeidiSQL supports MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server and Microsoft SQL databases and enables database administrators to browse and edit data as well as import and export data from SQL files.

    • SQLite Now Faster With Memory Mapped I/O

      SQLite 3.7.17 was released yesterday. What makes this new release of the popular lightweight SQL database software noteworthy is that it introduces support for memory-mapped I/O.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Seven great features of OpenOffice and Libre Office that you probably ignore

      For many people Apache OpenOffice and Libre Office, which I’ll call collectively FOs (Free Offices suites) for short, are nothing but “free, as in free beer” substitutes of Microsoft Office for basic to intermediate needs. Many users in this category may run the FOs for years without ever discovering some of their features, that is, without realizing the full power and flexibility of these tools.

  • CMS

    • Pantheon’s Drupal Open Source CMS Partner Program

      The demand for expertise in open-source programming has come up fairly frequenly in recent months (here’s an example). And the channel seems to be taking notice, as an announcement Tuesday by Pantheon of a partner program for connecting developers with expertise in Drupal, the open-source content management system (CMS), with organizations building enterprise-quality websites.

      Drupal, which is now more than a decade old, is a key open-source technology behind the modern Web. Alongside alternative open-source CMS engines, like WordPress, Drupal makes it easier to build complex websites. It’s the system behind some of the most popular sites out there, from McDonald’s to the Linux Foundation to — last but not least — Britney Spears’s homepage.

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • ktap 0.1 released

      I’m pleased to announce that ktap release v0.1, this is the first official
      release of ktap project, it is expected that this release is not fully
      functional or very stable and we welcome bug reports and fixes for the issues.

    • [ANNOUNCE] ktap 0.1 released
    • KTAP Released For Linux Kernel Dynamic Tracing
    • Jira 6 adds mobile interface, revamps web interface

      Jira, Atlassian’s issue tracker and management software, has received a user interface revamp and got a new mobile interface. Jira began life as a software development tool, but according to Atlassian, a recent survey found two thirds of the user base also used it for tasks other than software development. With this in mind, Atlassian set out to make Jira more modern and quicker to use.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs

      On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the “leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community” published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates ‘preference’ for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK’s new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK’s government for public consumption.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Rapid development of citizen cyberscience projects on Crowdcrafting.org

      At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software platform called Crowdcrafting was officially launched. This platform, which already has attracted thousands of participants during several months of testing, enables the rapid development of online citizen science applications, by both amateur and professional scientists.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Review of the new Digital Public Library of America

        (The official launch had been planned to occur at the Boston Public Library but the temporary closing of the library due to the Boston Marathon tragedy prompted that event to be postponed until the fall.)

  • Programming

    • Google Updates Go Open-Source Language
    • Zend Framework 2.2 focuses on consistency

      Most of these services now include “abstract factories” that are either registered by default or can be added to an application’s configuration. The service manager uses abstract factories to handle multiple services that follow the same instantiation pattern, but which have different names. The developers have also implemented new plugin manager instances, Zend\Stdlib\Hydrator\HydratorPluginManager and Zend\InputFilter\InputFilterPluginManager. The first can be used for retrieving hydrator instances and, for example, allows custom hydrators to be used across all form instances, while the second makes it possible to retrieve input filters. This allows input filters to be reused and ensures that all input instances are provided with custom validators and/or filters. The developers have also added the new translators and sessions factories.

Leftovers

  • Does a ‘fiscal cliff’ await software vendors switching to cloud?

    The move to cloud is seen as the ultimate form of product cannibalization for software vendors, since customers will be switching from high-end purchases to relatively low monthly payments.

  • Hardware

  • Finance

    • The Search for Change

      Of course UKIP are not a real alternative. I said “do not despise UKIP supporters”, not “do not despise UKIP”. UKIP are a false “alternative” dangled by the mainstream media and the bankers. But the support for them is evidence that the public do very much want some alternative. I shall append this to the article as it must be more ambiguous than I thought.

    • Sen. Warren Asks AG Holder Why No Wall Street Prosecutions
    • Sen. Warren demands to know why criminal bankers aren’t being locked up

      There’s been a rash of mega-settlements between the government and the nation’s largest banks in recent years over allegations of foreclosing on people without just cause, knowingly making bad loans and reselling the debt, making false statements to rob from retired pensioners, laundering money for drug cartels, repressive regimes and terrorists, and agreeing to settlements and then ignoring them, to name a few.

    • “True the Vote,” the Victim? Voter Vigilante Group Says IRS Targeted Its “Verify the Recall” Effort in Wisconsin

      The Texas-based Tea Party group True the Vote is claiming they were one of the groups inappropriately “targeted” by the IRS since their application for charitable status has been delayed for years. Although many Tea Party groups were singled-out by the IRS for improper reasons, there may be good reasons for the agency to take a close look at True the Vote’s application for charitable status, particularly given the group’s involvement with the Wisconsin “Verify the Recall” effort.

    • How the Government Targeted Occupy

      Freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human freedoms. This freedom is not merely about one’s ability to choose to believe or not believe in religion or a particular philosophy. In a democracy, freedom of conscience is about the ability to be critical of government and corporations, and to be free from the chilling fear that being critical will subject you to government surveillance.

      Freedom of conscience is not fully realized in isolation. Without the ability to share one’s thoughts, to speak out about injustice, or to join with others in peaceably assembling to petition for redress of grievances, this core freedom is not truly free. Americans should be able to exercise these most sacred rights in free society without worry of being monitored by the government.

    • Rise Up or Die

      Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information.

    • Yahoo: $1.1 Billion Tumblr Buyout Blunder?

      So Yahoo is buying its way into a crowded market to acquire a business that has no profits. Sounds like a disaster.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • A Quick Look at some Mobile Providers’ Customer Data Policies

      There’s been concern recently about what mobile providers are doing with customers’ data after a Sunday Times article on EE selling information about them. We’ve had a brief look at some of their customer data policies to try to work out what’s going on.

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • 3D Printing

      If you read this blog you must have an internet connection, so presumably have heard of 3D printing. It is a very disruptive technology with potential to change manufacturing in a variety of ways – and indeed even things such as medicine. I recently had some correspondence with Joshua Pearce whose engineering group is working on materials for use in 3D printing. He is concerned about a patent arms race in this area being drag on innovation. He is looking at creative ways to preempt some of the patent nonsense.

    • Trademarks

      • A monopoly over numbers?

        Are you familiar with the ISBN? A unique identifier issued by the U.S. Government to identify books? Did you know that the U.S. Government has granted a private company Bowker a monopoly over issuing them? They are very proud of it…as if it is a good thing!

    • Copyrights

      • Do we need a law?

        In the dimension of copyright, the issue of plagiarism often comes up. There is a common misunderstanding that there is a connection between copyright or plagiarism. Plagiarism is not generally a violation of copyright law – although in some cases where extensive copying takes place it may be. Rather it is a failure of attribution. Basically plagiarism is not illegal – but it is heavily punished through contract law. It is a good example of “why we don’t need a law for that” contrary the oft expressed opinion if something is bad we need a law against it.

05.21.13

Links 21/5/2013: Handbrake Turns 0.9.9, NetBSD 6.1

Posted in News Roundup at 6:24 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • China and Linux: A Lesson in Industry Transformation

    Organizations around the globe are increasingly developing new applications for big data, mobile and cloud, not to mention the increasing creation and use of social tools, within major markets like banking, communications, retail, transportation and finance. These new applications are also fundamental to operating in a connected world where sensors, data centers, smartphones and even cars are now all connected in a large ecosystem.

  • Is The Canadian Government Rolling Out GNU/Linux Clients?

    The sudden increase by 2%, ~480K users, can only be a whole province’s schools or the Government of Canada. Nothing else is large enough for the sudden change. Even Dell could not do that pushing GNU/Linux at the retail level. The Government of Canada has been considering use of GNU/Linux for more than a decade but certainly not globally. They even considered dual-booting rather than one OS or the other per user. In 2011, Transport Canada documented how severely they were locked in to that other OS. There’s no way they suddenly switched. Recently the government rewarded a teacher who developed a GNU/Linux laboratory. They may have read about GNU/Linux and studied it but they don’t seem to have any motivation to switch despite having an estimate of break-even of 18months for migration.

  • Reality Check: 5 Linux Features You Want in Your Company

    One of my favorite things to do when I am teaching is explaining the whole Linux thing to my undergrad students. It takes a while to understand that no, their instructor isn’t crazy (about this), there really is a free operating system out there that’s pretty much running the Internet, supercomputers, and the DVR back in their dorm room.

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • The Windows Kernel’s Achilles’ Heel

      “Compared to the Linux kernel, the kernel of that other OS is as inspiring as wet noodles,” blogger Robert Pogson said. “No one can trust it to work for them. After decades of BSODs, vulnerabilities by the score and sluggish behavior on fast hardware, many suspect that there is evil in the black hole.”

    • Stable kernels 3.9.3, 3.4.46, and 3.0.79

      Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the 3.9.3, 3.4.46, and 3.0.79 stable kernels. As always, they contain important fixes throughout the tree, so users should upgrade.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Using Six Monitors With AMD’s Open-Source Linux Driver

        Linux graphics drivers have come a long way in recent years for both the open and closed-source solutions from AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. In this Sunday article, a Phoronix reader has shared his experiences in going from failing to setup two monitors under Linux just a few years ago with NVIDIA to now successfully driving six monitors on a single system using the AMD Linux driver.

      • Freedreno Gallium3D Now Banging The Adreno A3XX

        One month after Rob Clark began developing his Freedreno Gallium3D stack for Qualcomm’s Adreno A3xx hardware, he’s beginning to achieve visual success. While the code hasn’t yet been merged into mainline Mesa, on an A320 as found on the Google Nexus 4 he has es2gears (the OpenGL ES version of glxgears) successfully running on this open-source code.

  • Applications

    • Explore the Night Sky with Stellarium

      A visit to a planetarium might be fascinating, but doesn’t occur very often. The Stellarium software, however, provides a really interesting and convenient alternative. Moreover, Stellarium helps in observing the actual night sky. Because the software presents the sky photorealistically, nothing stands in the way of making it available in a classroom or during a lecture. And, because Stellarium is available in the repositories for all the major distributions, installation is at the click of a button.

    • QEMU 1.5 Supports VGA Passthrough, Better USB 3.0

      Just three months after the exciting QEMU 1.4 release, QEMU 1.5 is now available with many exciting and new features for those using this open-source software in a virtualized world. There’s the VFIO VGA pass-through support, USB 3.0 improvements, and much more.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • 24 Peachy Free Linux Games (Part 2 of 4)

        Linux has an ever-expanding library of thousands of free games, many of which are released under an open source license. A good selection of these titles are entertaining, highly addictive, offer captivating gameplay, and are most importantly, great fun to play. Identifying entertaining and challenging games is something that we have a passion for.

      • Reptile Games’ electro beat-’em-up Megabyte Punch coming to Linux
      • 24 Peachy Free Linux Games (Part 2 of 4)

        Linux has an ever-expanding library of thousands of free games, many of which are released under an open source license. A good selection of these titles are entertaining, highly addictive, offer captivating gameplay, and are most importantly, great fun to play. Identifying entertaining and challenging games is something that we have a passion for.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • Antergos Linux 2013.05.12 review

      Antergos Linux is a desktop distribution based on Arch Linux. The distribution started under the Cinnarch moniker with the objective of providing a Cinnamon-only desktop distribution using the same rolling release development model as its parent distribution.

      It got its new name after the developers came to the conclusion that it was going to be extremely difficult to reconcile the Cinnamon and Arch Linux development models, opting instead to use GNOME 3 as the default desktop environment and provide support for other desktop environments.

    • Best Linux Distro For a New User?

      There’s still a perception that Linux is difficult to use and is only for Geeks. This seems rather silly, since most casual users, the folks who use their computers only for surfing, email and word processing, would have little to no learning curve at all using many Linux distros these days. In fact, even with some of the more “advanced” distros, your grandma wouldn’t have any trouble sitting right down and doing whatever it is she does when she’s on the computer.

    • Hybryde Fusion: A very unique Linux distribution

      Hybryde Fusion is a new desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. Unlike most other Ubuntu-based distributions, it brings a few interesting features to the table.

      Hybryde Fusion 13.04 is the distribution’s first release and the developer, Larrieu Olivier, is based in France. I’m still playing with a test installation, so this is not a review, but a presentation of a bunch of screen shots just to show what this distribution has to offer.

    • Happy Anniversary, LinuxMigrante!

      Although Megatotoro migrated to Linux a bit later than I did, he took his migration seriously and learned a lot of Linux tricks before I did, all thanks to Mepis, Pardus, and AntiX, his distros of choice.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Before Mageia 3: Mageia 2 in Perspective Redux

        The early articles of this site revolved around the late and somewhat lamented Mandriva, which faced troubles as a Linux distribution, product, and company. Although Distrowatch lists Mageia within its top 10 of most clicked distributions, Mageia receives the same coverage in the media as long running PCLinuxOS and Sabayon. In fact, popular frugal Linux distribution Puppy Linux is mentioned more in articles and forums than Mageia.

        Why run Mageia 2 when the developers will be releasing Mageia 3 ( an RC is already out) soon? Well, to see if an updated previous release is a stable one – typically a good sign that a distribution has matured and the next release deserves a go. The positive reception for openSUSE 12.3, for example, was already foreshadowed by the excellent openSUSE 12.2 (which I’m still running to this day).

      • Mageia 3 Released, Still Using Legacy GRUB

        At long last the third major version of Mageia, the popular community fork of Mandriva Linux, is now available. There’s a lot of new stuff to Mageia 3 like a new version of RPM and updated systemd, but the distribution is still not shipping GRUB2 by default.

      • Mageia 3: Here’s what I gained and what I lost

        Mageia 3 was released today and I downloaded the Live DVD version to replace my Mageia 2 Desktop install without further consideration. Normally, I test the betas and the RC of a distro carefully in a virtual machine. This time, sadly, I had no time to do that.

      • Linux Top 3: Mageia 3, Linux Mint 15 and New Linux Kernels for All
      • Mageia 3 arrives “all grown up” after two months’ delay

        Almost two months later than initially expected, the Mageia developers have released the third major version of their Linux distribution. Mageia was originally forked from Mandriva over two and a half years ago and is now “all grown up and ready to go dancing,” according to its developers. Mageia 3 updates the distribution’s kernel, systemd startup tools, the six available desktop environments and a large number of included applications. The release is dedicated to long-time Mandriva contributor and Intel employee Eugeni Dodonov who died last year in a road accident.

      • Mageia 3 is out!

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Chromium May Become Default Ubuntu Browser in Version 13.10

            Ever since 2005, Ubuntu has delivered Mozilla’s Firefox browser as its default browser, which has made millions of Ubuntu users loyal users of Firefox. But Firefox is hardly the only browser choice that Ubuntu users have. If you’ve tried Chromium–the open source core of Google’s Chrome browser–you already know that it’s fast, clean and very stable. That has now produced a lively discussion going on online about whether Ubuntu 13.10, due later this year, should ship with Chromium as the default browser.

          • Laptop Week Review: The Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition With Ubuntu

            Dude, you got a Linux-powered Dell! In all the years I’ve reviewed laptops I’ve never been as pleasantly surprised by an Ultrabook as I was with the Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition. This ultrathin, ultralight SSD laptop originally came in Windows flavor but, much to my surprise, I far prefer the Ubuntu edition of this device. It is solidly built, acceptably priced given the solid state drive, and surprisingly powerful.

          • What to Expect from Unity in Ubuntu 13.10
          • The Cost Of Ubuntu Disk Encryption

            It’s been a while since last running any Ubuntu Linux disk encryption benchmarks, but thanks to recent encryption improvements within the upstream Linux ecosystem, it’s time to deliver some new Linux disk encryption benchmarks. In this article are results comparing Ubuntu 13.04 without any form of disk encryption to using the home directory encryption feature (eCryptfs-based) and full-disk encryption (using LUKS with an encrypted LVM).

  • Devices/Embedded

    • $99 HDMI stick turns displays into virtual desktops

      Devon IT unveiled an HDMI stick that can turn any HDMI-compatible monitor or display into an interactive virtual desktop. “Ceptor” is somewhat larger than a typical USB memory stick, runs Devon IT’s Linux-based ZeTOS “zero client” operating system on a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 SOC (system-on-chip), and sells for $99.

    • Arduino Yun weds Arduino, WiFi and linux at Maker Faire 2013

    • Phones

      • Jolla prices first Sailfish OS smartphone at €399 for a 2013 launch

        Jolla has just unveiled its first smartphone, which will go on sale this year for €399 (roughly $510). Running the company’s MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS, it features a 4.5-inch display, a dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera, LTE (in selected markets), removable back covers, 16GB of onboard storage, and a microSD slot. According to Jolla, the handset will be “compliant” with Android apps, although it’s not sure how many apps will be supported, nor is it clear where users will download the apps from.

      • Jolla Launch

      • Ballnux

        • See the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active for the first time
        • Samsung Galaxy Grand Quattro Launched in India

          Following the success of Galaxy Grand, Samsung launched the Galaxy Grand Quattro in India today. Priced competitively at Rs.17,290, the grand Quattro targets the lower mid range segment.

          The Galaxy Grand Quattro features a 4.7 inch at 480×800 resolution. The Dual-SIM phone is powered by 1.2GHz quad core Cortex A5 processor, Adreno 203 GPU, 1GB RAM and is running Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2. It comes with a 5 megapixel shooter and 0.3 megapixel from facing camera. The internal memory is limited to 8GB, but has an expandable memory up to 32GB.

        • Samsung Calls Out Developers with $800,000 Galaxy S4 App Challenge

          If you’ve been following recent market share numbers for smartphones and mobile operating systems, then you know that Samsung has achieved a dominant position with its Android phones, and especially the Galaxy line of phones. Now, Samsung has launched its “Samsung Smart App Challenge 2013,” inviting developers who work with the company’s peer-to-peer software to develop competitive apps for the S4 phone. The contest includes $800,000 in prize money.

        • Did Samsung confirm a new Galaxy device: the Galaxy S4 Mega?

      • Android

        • Google Glass will be a big deal, so deal with it

          Perhaps no group has earned a borderline obscene pejorative as quickly as the wearers of Google Glass. I mean, the product, not due for release until early next year, is seen in the wild today only on the few thousand who are its early testers. And yet we already

          have the term “glasshole.” Google Glass has also been banned ahead of its release. This all seems to stem from the belief, voiced by writers such as Jason Perlow, that Google Glass is evil, since “it’s a ‘stealth’ recording device.”

        • Intel’s Android mobile chipset play embraces ARM

          Intel has released a new set of development tools for the Android Jelly Bean mobile device operating system called Beacon Mountain.

          Beacon Mountain version 0.5 is only compatible with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

        • Dell Project Ophelia USB Android stick to ship in July, priced at $100

          We know that “wherefore art thou?” was about Romeo, but if your question was for (Dell’s) Ophelia, then it’s likely more “when art thou.” The answer? July. The Android pendrive / USB computer we saw back at CES may be one of many, but distinctive thanks to its mainstream PC-maker origins. We’re still lacking a lot of the specifics, other than that there’s WiFi, Bluetooth, Wyse PocketCloud integration, plus, of course, HDMI and Android 4.something.

        • Dell Project Ophelia Android USB set to launch in July

          Dell’s latest move to insinuate itself into the Android market, Project Ophelia, will be hitting our shelves soon.

        • Intel releases ‘Beacon Mountain’ Android-on-Atom dev tool

          Indroid Inside Intel has released “Beacon Mountain” a development environment for Android apps on both its own Atom silicon and ARM chippery.

          Beacon Mountain emerged over the weekend, promising “productivity-oriented design, coding, and debugging tools for apps targeting … smartphones and tablets.”

        • Google H840 media player hits the FCC: Next Nexus Q?

          Last year Google introduced a media player called the Nexus Q which was designed to let you stream content from your phone or tablet (and from the internet) to your TV. It didn’t last long.

        • Verizon’s “XFON” Likely the XT1060, Also Runs a Snapdragon S4 Dual-core MSM8960

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Twitter uses open source to automate security

    Twitter is increasingly using open source automation tools to ensure security processes are taken care of in all the code it produces.

    “Automation is where we see application security teams going in future,” Alex Smolen, Twitter product security team software engineer, told the Security Development Conference 2013 in San Francisco.

  • Has Open Source’s time come?

    In 1991, a Finnish university student posted a project on an internet discussion board that would change the world. Linus Torvalds had put up the first version of Linux, a computer operating system that within thirty-five years, millions of volunteer programmers around the world would have developed to a point where versions of Linux power 75% of mobile phones sold around the world in the first quarter of 2013 and the majority of websites on the internet, including the one you’re reading this article on right now.

  • RTKLIB Open Source GNSS Precise Positioning Software Supports NV08C Receiver
  • Don’t sell free software cheap

    How can I get paid for free software development? That’s a question many developers ask. And it’s a good question, because software development is expensive, no matter what the license is. Money is one way to pay for this, but fortunately there are many other ways to get paid for free software. The one thing you should never do, though, is to sell free software cheap.

  • Google’s chat client drops Jabber compatibility

    Google is currently deploying an update for its Talk chat client that will replace it with the new Hangouts app. Introduced last week at the I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the Hangouts application is designed to put an end to having three simultaneously available real-time Google communication services – Talk, Google+ Messenger and the original Google+ Hangouts – and is available for Android, iOS, Windows, and as a Chrome extension.

  • “Mobile-first” Bootstrap 3 is almost ready

    Mobile use cases are the major focus for the next version of the open source web frontend framework Bootstrap. Under the heading of “Bootstrap 3 will be mobile-first”, the developers have merged the responsive CSS templates into the core bootstrap.css file, dropping support for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.6 in the process. The changes are aimed at making site designs implemented in Bootstrap adaptable to mobile resolutions by default, without the user having to explicitly enable additional functionality. Bootstrap, which originated at Twitter, has become popular with many developers and is used by hundreds of sites.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Ubuntu 13.10 may ditch Firefox for Chromium

        For years, Ubuntu and Firefox have strolled the open source countryside hand-in-hand. That could change with the release of Ubuntu 13.10, however, as Canonical is thinking about dumping Firefox for Chromium.

        It’s hard to believe that Firefox’s run as the default browser on Ubuntu could be coming to an end. In 2005, it was Firefox 1.0.2 that shipped with Hoary Hedgehog. Eight years later, you’ll find Firefox 20 in Ubuntu 13.04. When 13.10 arrives in the second half of this year, you may have to install the package manually from the Ubuntu Software Center if you want to keep surfing with the ‘fox.

  • CMS

  • BSD

    • Announcing NetBSD 6.1
    • NetBSD 6.1 and 6.0.2 released

      The NetBSD Foundation has announced the first feature update of NetBSD 6 in the form of NetBSD 6.1. The changes in 6.1 include fixes in the kernel for processes with attributes. Networking gets fixes for “atomic fragments” in IPv6, fixes for locking issues in the ipf packet filter, many changes to the npf packet filter library and a correction to the VirtIO NIC driver which had been crashing recent QEMU versions. Filesystem changes include various fixes and working big-endian support for smbfs and an ability to mount ext2fs and msdosfs in 32-bit compat mode.

  • Project Releases

    • Handbrake turns 0.9.9

      The developers of HandBrake, the popular open source video transcoder, have announced the release of version 0.9.9 of the popular video conversion application. Another two beta releases of HandBrake, one which previews the transcoder working with Intel’s Quick Sync Video SDK and another which uses OpenCL to accelerate cropping and scaling and decoding on windows, were also released.

    • Handbrake 0.9.9 Supports OpenCL Offloading

      Just three months after the exciting QEMU 1.4 release, QEMU 1.5 is now available with many exciting and new features for those using this open-source software in a virtualized world. There’s the VFIO VGA pass-through support, USB 3.0 improvements, and much more.

    • m23 rock 13.1 is ready!

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • HetNet News: Range networks integrates its open-source equipment; new Firetide CEO

      Range Networks, which makes open-source cellular systems, announced that its equipment now integrates with operators’ SS7-MAP core networks and supports 4G. The company, which targets rural and developing markets and private industrial networks with low-cost network equipment, has been collaborating with SS7Ware and said that its One Core Network now supports 2G, 3G and 4G network nodes to be run off of the same core network. Previously, the company’s equipment was limited to 2G, 2.5G, and 3G GSM systems.

  • Programming

    • Perl 5.18 goes stable

      The latest release of Perl, Perl 5.18, is now available as a stable release. Among the many changes that have taken place over the twelve months of development and 400,000 changed lines of code, is a major overhaul of how hashing is implemented.

      The new hash implementation uses a random seed which will vary the return values from keys(), values() and each() each time a program is run; this change makes Perl’s hashes more robust and exposes hash-order dependency bugs. This improvement in security is accompanied by a fix for code injection through translations (CVE-2012-6329) and stopping Perl calling memset with a negative value (CVE-2012-5195), a problem which could become a heap overrun.

Leftovers

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • 20 children among 91 dead in Moore, Oklahoma tornado

      Twenty children were among at least 91 people killed when a powerful tornado swept through an Oklahoma City suburb, tearing down blocks of homes and two schools, local officials said.

      The state medical examiner’s office released the latest death toll but the number was climbing rapidly, as emergency crews combed through smashed homes and the collapsed remains of an elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Civil Rights

    • Weev in solitary confinement for remotely tweeting from prison

      Weev, whose real name is Andrew Auernheimer, was taken to court and subsequently landed in jail following his infamous and controversial AT&T hack. He’s in prison for 41 months, but even holed up behind bars Weev is causing trouble of the non-violent kind. The Daily Dot reports that Weev is believed to be locked up in solitary confinement following an unsanctioned tweet that shouldn’t have been published in the first place.

      Auernheimer’s lawyer Tor Ekeland says the tweeting from his client’s @rabite handle is the cause of the sudden isolation – Auernheimer is even unable to speak with his lawyer. While Auernheimer isn’t allowed access to the Internet directly, there’s something called the Trust Fund Limited Computer System (TRULINCS), a system where inmates can send email messages to approved contacts. Basically, he would use this system to send messages to a secure contact who would then tweet for him – think of it like surrogate tweeting.

      What looked like his own tweets were actually messages Auernheimer was sending to an approved content to tweet for him … at least that’s what is being assumed. With the help of a friend or friends, Auernheimer has been able to tweet relatively frequently. You can see his stream embedded below.

05.20.13

Links 20/5/2013: First Salifish Smartphone, Mageia 3 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 11:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Logitech Adds ‘Linux Compatible’ Option to Product Site; Sign of Good Things to Come?

      As rich as the Linux OS is, one of its sticking-points is that a lot of companies don’t properly support their products for it. Your Logitech mouse might work just fine under the OS, of course, but it wouldn’t be the company to thank; rather, the support comes from the efforts of developers who share the same passion for the OS as you do. My ASUS Xonar audio card works brilliantly under Linux, but ASUS had nothing to do with it.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 3 Released with Steamy Goodness

        he third official release of, the popular Mandriva fork, Mageia is now available. After months of delays and a mountain of challenges, Patricia Fraser said, “We still can’t believe how much fun it is to make Mageia together, and we’ve been doing it for two and a half years.”

        Like every new release, Mageia 3 comes chocked full ‘o upgrades. Some of these include Linux 3.8.13, Xorg X Server 1.13.4, GCC 4.7.2, KDE 4.10.2, GNOME 3.6, LibreOffice 4.0.2, GIMP 2.8.2, and Firefox 17.05. But a few new surprises await as well.

    • Debian Family

      • Review of Debian GNU/Linux 7.0

        Debian GNU/Linux is one of the oldest surviving Linux distributions and will be celebrating its 20th anniversary later this year. The venerable project is home to hundreds of volunteers who maintain over 35,000 software packages. Debian has expanded over the years and currently supports nine hardware architectures, displaying an unusual level of flexibility for a Linux distribution. Debian isn’t just a long lived Linux distro, the project also maintains ports which allow developers and users to experiment with running GNU software on top of alternative kernels, including Hurd and the FreeBSD kernel. This amazing diversity, along with Debian’s reputation for stability, has caused many developers to base their own projects on Debian.

        Dozens of the world’s most popular and widely used open-source projects (including Ubuntu, Linux Mint and KNOPPIX) can trace their ancestry back to Debian. Apart from being one of the largest existing open-source projects Debian is also a social experiment. The project is run as a democracy, a rarity in the open-source world, where developers vote on important changes and are guided by a constitution. For the reasons given above, more so than the anticipated features, the release of a new version of Debian sends ripples through the open-source community. Debian may be a famously conservative project, but everything its developers do affect large portions of the open-source population. I was quite eager to see what Debian 7.0, code name Wheezy, would offer.

      • How to transform a Debian based system to a Debian Edu installation

        Debian Edu / Skolelinux is an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server, network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago, 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity, please donate some money.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Development plans for Ubuntu 13.10

            Among the topics discussed by the developers at Ubuntu Developer Summit 13.05 were the planned new features for Ubuntu 13.10. The next version of the distribution, code-named “Saucy Salamander”, could include early versions of Ubuntu’s Mir display server and have the Qt-based Unity Next desktop environment for testing. However, the default configuration will continue to include the graphics stack of Ubuntu 12.10 with X11, Compiz and Unity 7. By 2014, Canonical plans to unify the code base for Ubuntu’s smartphone, tablet and PC desktops, based on Mir and Unity Next.

          • Ubuntu Touch: the (natural) next step in personal computing?

            I don’t think many people have realised that we are on the verge of a technological revolution. The computing world is changing, and this is the first time GNU/Linux is catching the revolution as it begins. Computers are getting smaller and smaller, while phones are getting bigger and bigger. Everybody can see that they about to converge — but in what form? Well, the answer is: GNU/Linux — before anybody else. The ingredients? A great GNU/Linux distribution, a leader with the right vision, and a few very bold, ground-breaking choices. Mix it well: the result is Ubuntu Touch. Let me go through these ingredients.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” gets release candidate

              The Linux Mint developers have announced a release candidate for the upcoming version of their distribution, Linux Mint 15. The release, which is code-named “Olivia”, is being built on Ubuntu 13.04 and is billed by Linux Mint founder Clement Lefebvre as “the most ambitious release since the start of the project.”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • OpenPandora review, part two

      Welcome, Willkommen, Bienvenue! To the second article in my Pandora series. As you recall, several weeks back, I received a test unit from Michael Mrozek, of the world’s smallest, most-powerful gaming micro-computer. In the first installment, we talked most about initial impressions, the look & feel, specifications, and a brief taste of the variety of its capabilities, technologies and interfaces.

      Now, we will dig deeper. In this article, I will focus on firmware refresh of the test unit, trying to bring the system to a newer edition, as well as dabble in the ins and outs of the Xfce desktop environment. I will leave the gaming-oriented MiniMenu and the Android mod for the third and last part in this would-be trilogy. Follow me.

    • Arduino launches Yún for WiFi connectivity under Linux

      THE SINGLE BOARD MICROCONTROLLER Arduino has been revamped to offer WiFi connectivity under Linux, in order to make connecting to complex web services much easier directly from the device.

      Named the Arduino Yún, which apparently is Chinese for “cloud”, the microcontroller claims to be the first of a family of WiFi products combined with a customised version of the Linux operating system (OS) distribution OpenWRT called Linino.

      Designed in collaboration with chip firm Dog Hunter, Linino provides signed packages to ensure the authenticity of the software installed on the device and, according to Arduino, Linino is the most used Linux distribution for embedded devices.

    • Phones

      • Jolla announces first Sailfish-based smartphone

        Finnish startup Jolla has announced its first smartphone, which shows off its Sailfish OS on a 4.5-inch screen.

      • Jolla announces its first Salifish OS smartphone
      • Here Comes Jolla, Yet Another Deviant Linux Smartphone
      • Sailfish OS phone “Jolla” debuts, available for preorders

      • Ballnux

        • Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review – A surprise

          Holy shit! What you, Dedoimedo, you sellout, you hypocrite! Wait, calm down. All is well. There’s a reason why I decided to buy a tablet. One, I can afford it. Two, I really wanted to see what makes the retards get so excited. Three, I had an actual business need for this, but more about that later. Anyhow, this is my very first experience with a tablet. Honestly. I’ve never used one before. So it should be definitely most interesting. I’ve dabbled in Android a bit now and then, and overall, I was not really impressed. The x86 version for netbooks was ok but not magnificent, however, on the other hand, my smartphone experience was, overall, quite frustrating.

          Let’s how a pretentious old git like me managed to cope with this new modern technology. Better yet, why a pretentious old git like me would ever want to buy a device that is operated by touch only. Finally, this is a proper, thorough review of the Samsung tablet, probably of a higher quality, relevance and greater depth than anything else out there, because after all, it’s Dedoimedo writing this stellar review. Avanti.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why We Need Open Source: Three Cautionary Tales

    Open Enterprise mostly writes about “obvious” applications of open source – situations where money can be saved, or control regained, by shifting from proprietary to open code. That battle is more or less won: free software is widely recognised as inherently superior in practically all situations, as its rapid uptake across many markets demonstrates. But there are also some circumstances where it may not be so obvious that open source is the solution, because it’s not always clear what the problem is.

    For example, in the field of economics, there is a well-known paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff entitled, “Growth in a Time of Debt.” The main result is that “median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower.” Needless to say, this has been seized upon and widely cited by those in favour of austerity.

  • Open source browser based code editors

    The humble browser. Its main purpose, for many years, was to serve up simple HTML documents and provide information on just about any subject you could think of. In the last decade, with broadband taking over from dial-up, and net connections getting ever quicker, websites have increasingly provided applications usually restricted to the desktop.

  • CMS

    • Open Source WordPress Grows on Yahoo Tumblr Buyout

      The big news in the tech world that emerged over the weekend is that Yahoo is set to repeat its decade old mistake and acquire Tumblr (Geocities redux) for $1 Billion.

      I’m not a fan of Tumblr, but I am a fan of freedom and WordPress, both of which are apparently now ‘winning’ as a side effect of this deal. While it’s still unclear precisely how Yahoo’s ownership may/may not affect Tumblr, users are already voting with their blogs.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Five Star Movement urges Italian city of Bari to move to open source

      The administration of the Italian city of Bari must increase its use of free and open source software solutions, say local representatives of the Five Star Movement. Switching to open source will be part of the movement’s election programme for the municipal elections in 2014.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • An Interview With Dr. Joshua Pearce Of Printers For Peace

        Joshua Pearce, PhD, is a researcher at Michigan Tech who rearches open source and low-impact solutions to engineering problems. He is also the founder of the Printers For Peace contest, an effort to bring together clever 3D-printed ideas that have loftier aims. You can win one of two 3D printers if you submit a winning project.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Cablegate

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin developer chats about regulation, open source, and the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto

      With Bitcoin all the rage and startups popping up left and right, it’s hard to know who’s an expert in the virtual currency and who just has an opinion. Most people would put Jeff Garzik in the former camp.

    • The world is rich – the rich are the problem

      There’s no shortage of food, no shortage of wealth to solve social crises. The problem is a system that enriches a few and starves the many. We hear day in day out about the massive poverty and hunger that exists in the world. NGO’s and various non-profits have been around for decades appealing for assistance in feeding the world’s poor. Some experts think it is simply an overpopulation problem and it is the poor that are to blame; if only they’d have fewer children, they advise. It is not too many people that are the problem. It is not the lack of medical knowledge or technical expertise that leads to staggering infant and adult death rates in some parts of the world. It is the lack of social infrastructure and the political will needed to provide it.

    • TV presenters, bankers and government advisers among 1,000 Britons linked to tax havens

      - Broadcaster and former footballer John Fashanu on list

      - Trade adviser Alpesh Patel also named on leaked database

      - It also includes Goldman Sachs and Coutts, The Queen’s bank

      - Data has been leaked in tranches by a whistleblower since 2009

      - HMRC keen to clamp down on wealth sheltered in tax havens

    • The IRS Scandal: It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

      DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

      The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional “fusion center” personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).

    • Dissent or Terror: How Arizona’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate Interests, Turned on Occupy Phoenix

      Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a nationwide “counter terrorism” apparatus emerged. Components of this apparatus include the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (U.S. DHS), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ODNI’s “National Counterterrorism Center” (NCTC), and state/regional “fusion centers.”

      “Fusion centers,” by and large, are staffed with personnel working in “counter terrorism”/ “homeland security” units of municipal, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement/”public safety”/”counter terrorism” agencies. To a large degree, the “counter terrorism” operations of municipal, county, state and tribal agencies engaged in “fusion centers” are financed through a number of U.S. DHS grant programs.

  • Privacy

    • Lawmakers eye regulating domestic surveillance drones

      Amid growing concern over the use of drones by police and government officials for surveillance, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to limit the use of unmanned surveillance “eyes in the sky” aircraft.

    • Council debates banning drones from Evanston’s skies
    • Weaponized Drones used for Law Enforcement across America: How Your Town Can Stop Drones

      When Charlottesville passed a resolution against drones in February of this year, I heard from people all over the country again. Since that time, to my knowledge, one little town in Minnesota called St. Bonifacius has passed something, while dozens and dozens have tried and failed. The problem seems to be that drones can have good uses as well as bad. Of course, that’s grounds for halting the lawless and reckless spread of drones until we can figure out any ways in which their good use can be compatible with our Constitutional rights. But that would make too much sense. When there’s money to be made, technology to be played with, and terrorists to destroy our freedoms if we don’t hurry up and destroy them first, the American way is full steam ahead. But I actually think I might have at least a partial answer this time.

      [...]

      …drones armed with rubber bullets and tear gas.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science

      Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was challenged to publish an issue of the BMJ exclusively comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody noticed. He replied, “How do you know I haven’t already done it?”

Links 20/5/2013: Plenty of Linux News, Google/Android Announcements

Posted in News Roundup at 2:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Google Glass Runs Linux: Glasses Hacked On Stage To Support Ubuntu; Find Out How To Install It [PHOTOS]
  • Google shows developers how to hack Glass and run Ubuntu

    Google has shown attendees of its Google I/O event how one can go about running another operating system – namely Ubuntu – on their Google Glass. According to Engadget, the company showcased the process during a session named “Voiding your Warranty”.

  • Desktop

    • City of Munich – IT Capital of Germany

      Did Munich’s migration to GNU/Linux stimulate local IT businesses or did local businesses empower Munich to migrate?

    • Linux World Embraces Google Chromebooks

      The latest incarnation of the Linux Kernel was released this week, and for the first time, it includes code for running Linux on Google Chromebooks. Chromebooks come loaded with Chrome OS — a web-happy, Linux-based operating system designed by Google — but the new kernel code will make it easier to run other versions of the popular open source operating system on these machines.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Logitech Begins Supporting Linux Users

      While Linux game developers and publishers have grown more interested in the Linux market-share over the past year following Valve’s major Linux play, one of the sectors that is still lagging behind is gaming hardware and peripherals. Fortunately, Logitech is finally beginning to show their Linux cards.

    • Linux’s “Ondemand” Governor Is No Longer Fit

      By default the Linux kernel uses the “ondemand” CPU frequency governor for achieving maximum clock frequency when system load is high and a lower clock frequency when the system is idle. However, it turns out that for at least modern Intel CPUs, this is likely no longer the case. This default kernel choice may lead to poor battery life and performance for modern Linux systems.

    • Lots Of Crypto Optimizations For Linux 3.10 Kernel
    • XFS In Linux 3.10 To Put On Extra Protection

      The XFS file-system with the forthcoming Linux 3.10 kernel will have an experimental feature for CRC protection of meta-data.

    • Audio Drivers Updated For The Linux 3.10 Kernel
    • Intel Commits More Mesa Performance Optimizations

      Just days after landing some OpenGL performance tweaks, Intel’s Eric Anholt has committed some more performance optimizations for the Intel i965 Mesa driver.

    • CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL Pulled Into Linux 3.10 Kernel

      Covered earlier today on Phoronix was the full request for providing full dynticks support for Linux, a.k.a. “CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL” as the kernel configuration operation is known. As covered earlier, the experimental kernel option benefits workloads where there is just one task running (rather than dynamic ticks when no CPU task is active) and can benefit in the number of timer interrupts generated. For end-users this can benefit real-time latency, HPC computing, and even desktop/mobile workloads.

    • Overclockix Is Still Around For Linux Stress-Testing

      Overclockix, a Linux distribution with a long and bumpy history, has seen a new release. Overclockix .017 is now available as a Debian/Knoppix-based platform for hardware tweaking, stress-testing / burn-in software, and network security.

    • F2FS File-System Gets Major Changes In Linux 3.10

      F2FS, the promising “Flash Friendly” file-system developed at Samsung and has shown promising performance results on various flash devices, has seen more improvements with the Linux 3.10 kernel.

    • Fedora and Ubuntu Kernel Config Comparison

      Every once in a while, I crawl out from under the rock that is bugzilla and I try and look around at what others are doing in the distro kernel space. Today I was curious how Fedora and Ubuntu compare in how they configure the kernel. I’ve long thought that for all the focus the kernel gets, it should be the most boring package in an entire distro. It should work, work well, and that is about it. It isn’t there to differentiate your distro. It’s there to let your distro run. So, will my personal belief stand up, or would I find something in the configs that proves one “distro” is better than another? Let’s dive in.

    • Btrfs In Linux 3.10 Gets Skinny Extents, Quota Rebuilds

      The Btrfs file-system pull request by Chris Mason has been submitted for inclusion into the Linux 3.10 kernel.

      The two main features introduced to the Btrfs file-system in Linux 3.10 is skinny extends and support for rebuilding of quota indexes.

    • Linux 3.10: Improved eCryptfs AES-NI Performance

      The eCryptfs pull for the Linux 3.10 kernel has been merged. What’s noticeable about this feature pull is the improved encryption performance for modern AMD/Intel CPUs supporting AES-NI.

      Tyler Hicks wrote with the code, “Improve performance when AES-NI (and most likely other crypto accelerators) is available by moving to the ablkcipher crypto API. The improvement is more apparent on faster storage devices. There’s no noticeable change when hardware crypto is not available.”

    • Intel Releases Linux Thermal Daemon

    • Graphics Stack

      • Modern Intel Gallium3D Driver Still Being Toyed With

        While it’s not the default Linux graphics driver for Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge hardware, the “ilo” independently-developed Gallium3D driver for modern Intel graphics hardware continues to be developed.

        Since last December there’s been a Sandy/Ivy Bridge Gallium3D driver developed by Chia-I Wu. The work mostly comes as an experiment or toy, but last month it was merged to mainline Mesa.

      • Radeon Gallium3D Gets Important Cayman Fixes
      • AMD Radeon R600 GPU LLVM 3.3 Back-End Testing

        One of the exciting features of LLVM 3.3 that is due out next month is the final integration of the AMD R600 GPU LLVM back-end. This LLVM back-end is needed for supporting Gallium3D OpenCL on AMD Radeon graphics hardware, “RadeonSI” HD 7000/8000 series support, and can optionally be used as the Radeon Gallium3D driver’s shader compiler. In this article are some benchmarks of the AMD R600 GPU LLVM back-end from LLVM 3.3-rc1 when using several different AMD Radeon HD graphics cards and seeing how the LLVM compiler back-end affects the OpenGL graphics performance.

      • VA-API Gets New H.264/MPEG-2 Encoding API Support

        NVIDIA’s proprietary driver and the open-source Gallium3D Linux graphics drivers — namely now the open-source Radeon UVD support — are using VDPAU as their accelerated video playback API. Meanwhile, Intel still continues to invest heavily in VA-API as their preferred video acceleration API for Linux. An exciting set of 42 patches to improve VA-API was published on Monday.

      • Sub-Surfaces Support Merged Into Wayland

        Support for sub-surfaces has been merged into mainline Wayland after the protocol work and other changes for this exciting new feature has been in development for several months. Sub-surfaces by itself isn’t too exciting to end-users but will benefit application developers in enhancing the Wayland-powered Linux desktop.

      • NVIDIA Releases 310.51 Driver To Kill Off The Series

        NVIDIA has announced the release of their 310.51 “certified” proprietary graphics driver for Linux, Solaris, and BSD operating systems.

      • DRM Graphics Driver Comes For Dove/Cubox

        The SolidRun CuBox is advertised as the “world’s smallest desktop computer” with a size of just two-inches cubed (5cm). The CuBox is powered by an ARM PJ4 800MHz SoC and now it has available an open-source DRM Linux graphics driver.

      • Mesa 9.1.2 Fixes A Handful Of Graphics Driver Bugs

        Ian Romanick of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center has announced the immediate release of Mesa 9.1.2 for open-source graphics drivers.

      • AMD R600 Gallium3D Optimizing Back-End Merged

        Vadim Girlin’s shader-optimizing back-end for the AMD R600 Gallium3D driver has been merged into mainline Mesa.

      • Unigine Adds In Support For Oculus Rift & WebGL

        Unigine Corp has made another round of noteworthy updates to their visually amazing cross-platform game and simulation engine.

        The main items to point out with the latest Unigine Engine revision is there’s now support for Occulus Rift. Occulus Rift is the promising low-cost virtual reality head-mounted display that was born as a Kickstarter project. Unigine is making the Occulus Rift VR HMD support available through an “AppOculus” engine plug-in and they’ll soon release new versions of Heaven and Valley that offer this feature.

      • GLSL 1.30 Support For AMD RadeonSI Driver With LLVM

        Michel Dänzer of AMD has provided a set of patches that should provide for the necessary patterns and intrinsics for AMD to round out GLSL 1.30 support within their RadeonSI open-source Gallium3D driver for Radeon HD 7000/8000 series graphics cards.

      • Previewing The Radeon Gallium3D Shader Optimizations

        With the AMD R600 Gallium3D shader optimizing back-end having been merged last week, new benchmarks were carried out at Phoronix to see the impact of the experimental shader optimizations on multiple AMD Radeon HD graphics cards.

      • Intel Releases OpenCL SDK XE 2013 For Linux

        Intel released yesterday the Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications XE 2013. This is an OpenCL SDK for Linux that supports OpenCL 1.2 and all of the latest and greatest Intel hardware.

        Intel’s already been shipping their OpenCL SDK for Linux in years prior, albeit sadly it’s closed-source and only runs on the CPU. This OpenCL XE 2013 for Linux continues to only work on the CPU side and doesn’t support GPU integration for Ivy Bridge and Haswell processors. (On Windows, however, there is the OpenCL GPU support.) With OpenCL SDK XE 2013, there’s new features and improvements.

      • Pixman 0.30 Release Has Major Back-End Work

        A major release of the Pixman rendering library happened on Wednesday. Pixman 0.30 now has some major back-end improvements and other changes to better the pixel manipulation software.

      • Color Management Code Merged Into Wayland/Weston

        The Wayland color management work done by Richard Hughes and talked about for the past month has finally landed in mainline Weston. The code allows for ICC color profiles to be specified within the Weston configuration file or a CMS implementation to be loaded from a pluggable module.

    • i915.ko authors, by the numbers

      total lines counted: 67417 (compare with git ls-files — ./drivers/gpu/drm/i915/ | xargs wc -l)
      [('Jesse Barnes', 16255),
      ('Chris Wilson', 13174),
      ('Daniel Vetter', 11066),
      ('Eugeni Dodonov', 3636),
      ('Paulo Zanoni', 3434),
      ('Ben Widawsky', 2935),
      ('Eric Anholt', 2176),
      ('Keith Packard', 1773),
      ('Zhenyu Wang', 1703),
      ('Ville Syrjälä', 1130)]

    • Open-Source AMD Driver Gets “Hainan” GPU Support

      The open-source AMD Linux graphics driver now boasts support for AMD’s next-generation “Hainan” GPU products, a.k.a. the Radeon HD 8800 series.

      AMD Hainan is rumored to be the performance GPUs making up the Radeon HD 8800 series with the HD 8850 “Hainan Pro” and HD 8870 “Hainan XT” products initially.

    • Benchmarks

      • Benchmarking The Intel P-State, CPUfreq Changes

        On Friday there was the controversial news about the Linux “ondemand” cpufreq governor no longer being fit for best performance and power-savings on modern processors. Fortunately, for better handling the CPU frequency stage changes on modern Intel CPUs, Intel recently introduced the new P-State kernel driver.

        With this news, plus word that changing the cpufreq governor can really boost the Mesa performance, many Phoronix readers were excited with 3+ pages of comments.

      • Linux 3.10 Kernel Benchmarks On A Core i7 Laptop

        As our latest coverage of the Linux 3.10 kernel comes new comparison benchmarks of the latest development kernel compared to its predecessor from an Intel Core i7 laptop sporting NVIDIA graphics.

      • Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. XFS vs. F2FS On Linux 3.10

        Building upon our F2FS file-system benchmarks from earlier in this week is a large comparison of four of the leading Linux file-systems at the moment: Btrfs, EXT4, XFS, and F2FS. With the four Linux kernel file-systems, each was benchmarked on the Linux 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10-rc1 kernels. The results from this large file-system comparison when backed by a solid-state drive are now published on Phoronix.

      • Linux 3.10 Kernel Benchmarks For Intel Ivy Bridge

        Earlier this month I delivered Radeon DRM driver benchmarks and Nouveau DRM driver benchmarks from the in-development Linux 3.10 kernel. Being published this Friday evening are now Intel Ivy Bridge graphics benchmarks from the Linux 3.10 kernel compared to the earlier releases going back to Linux 3.5.

      • F2FS File-System Shows Regressions On Linux 3.10

        With the merge window on the feature-rich Linux 3.10 kernel having been closed, the usual roundabout of Phoronix benchmarking of the Linux kernel has commenced. In our initial testing of the F2FS file-system on Linux 3.10, however, yields negative performance changes.

        The first F2FS benchmarks showed much hope for the Samsung-developed “Flash Friendly File-System” when compared to EXT4, Btrfs, and other competitors. It’s worked very well for not only SSDs but also SDHC storage, USB flash drives, and against the cruddy Microsoft exFAT Linux support.

      • Early Radeon OpenGL Benchmarks From Linux 3.10

        While the first release candidate of the Linux 3.10 kernel isn’t even out yet, there’s already been the DRM graphics pull, as a result here’s some early open-source Radeon Linux graphics benchmarks.

        Going up this afternoon are just some quick and dirty benchmarks of the Linux 3.10 kernel Git code as of this morning compared to the Linux 3.9 mainline vanilla kernel release. The test cards were the AMD Radeon HD 5830 and HD 6570 discrete products. When the Linux 3.10 kernel is mature and ready for release, more extensive Linux GPU benchmarking will commence. Today’s article is just to whet the appetite for those Linux enthusiasts curious about the open-source Radeon driver performance.

      • Greater Radeon Gallium3D Shader Optimization Tests

        After delivering preview benchmarks of the AMD Radeon Gallium3D driver’s new shader optimization benchmark, Vadim Girlin, the back-end’s author, has shared some complementary Linux OpenGL benchmark results.

      • The First Nouveau Benchmarks On Linux 3.10

        Similar to yesterday’s early Radeon DRM benchmarks from Linux 3.10, here’s some initial OpenGL performance results for NVIDIA GeForce hardware when using the Nouveau DRM that’s updated in the Linux 3.10 kernel.

      • A New Set Of OpenGL Benchmarks Come To OpenBenchmarking

        FurMark, TessMark, and other advanced OpenGL 2.1/3.2/4.0 benchmarks are now available via the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org.

        In cooperation with Jerome of Geeks3D.com, the GPUTest cross-platform benchmark/tech-demo is now available via our open-source benchmarking software. GPUTest is designed as a GPU stress test that is supported on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X operating systems.

      • Gallium3D Continues Improving OpenGL For Older Radeon GPUs

        Curious to see how the performance of the open-source ATI/AMD Linux graphics driver is evolving for aging hardware, a new round of OpenGL benchmarks were carried out on the once-popular ATI Radeon HD 4870 “RV770″ graphics card. The performance was compared between the Mesa 7.11, 8.0, 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2-devel Git releases from an Ubuntu Linux system to see how the performance has changed for this driver in the past two years.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • 10 amazing Linux desktop environments you’ve probably never seen
    • Are Compositing Window Managers Lightweight?

      With the recent talk about developing a lightweight KDE desktop, the KWin maintainer, Martin Gräßlin, is talking out to try to clarify whether the compositing window manager is lightweight.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Features Being Developed For KDE 4.11 Desktop

        With one week to go until the soft feature freeze for KDE 4.11, there’s a better idea for the features that are likely to come to the next major release of the KDE Plasma desktop.

      • KDE’s Krita Ported To OpenGL 3.1, OpenGL ES 2.0

        KDE’s Krita painting application back in the day was one of the first to support an OpenGL-accelerated canvas. After their GL support fell behind, it’s now been brought up to speed by porting their graphics rendering code-paths to supporting an OpenGL 3.1 Core Profile and OpenGL ES 2.0.

      • The water we swim in

        Healthy relationships. I’ve been thinking about them not in my personal life, but in terms of teams in free software. When I first began contributing, it was within a team creating an application (Amarok), so rather small. Then I became active in Ubuntu-Women, which is larger, but still not huge. Then Kubuntu, then the larger Ubuntu community, and now KDE, which is truly enormous.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Starting Development Of GNOME Shell, Mutter 3.10

        With the first GNOME 3.10 development release due this week, the first GNOME 3.10 development snapshots (v3.9.1) of the GNOME Shell desktop and Mutter compositing window manager were checked in.

        GNOME 3.10 is tentatively set to be released on 25 September while this is the first development release due this week (GNOME 3.9.1). With just a little more than one month since the GNOME 3.8.0 release, there isn’t too much to look at for the 3.9.1 packages.

  • Distributions

    • JULinuXP and JULinOX OS ETPE 2013

      First of all JULinuXP boots in about 20 seconds, uses less than 512 MB of RAM, and most importantly it protects your privacy from Google, Yahoo, and Bing, along with anyone else. Of course if you use Facebook and other such sites, that’s your problem, but at least your browser isn’t sending them any info either, and if there is any info, it’s deleted before or after you close your browser. Also each browser forces HTTPS, and uses DuckDuckGO’s search engine. Firefox still has Google search if you type something in the main address bar, but Firefox also has more security to remove stuff when you get done browsing.

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat CEO Whitehurst on innovation, OpenStack, Hadoop

        Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst argued that enterprise software vendors are at an inflection point where they’ll adapt or falter, noted OpenStack is keeper but needs enterprise support and Hadoop has become a strong open source project that’s becoming commercially fragmented.

      • Linux, Standards and the Enterprise: Why Red Hat Enterprise Linux Remains the Best Choice

        The free clones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux I mentioned earlier are not permitted to name their source, referring merely to “the upstream provider,” but pretty much everyone in the Linux community knows precisely what they mean. They represent a real advantage to Red Hat (the distribution if not the business) in that they allow businesses to try before they buy. They provide the opportunity to run a test bed or non-critical system at reduced cost. The clones also allow non-profits and cash strapped small businesses to forgo commercial support, at least for a time, and still use software that is entirely compatible with the leading enterprise Linux distribution. As organizations grow and their needs change converting a server or workstation running a clone to a genuine, supported Red Hat system is a simple process.

      • Fedora

        • Korora 18 Supports Experimental Steam Client

          Korora, the Fedora-based Linux distribution that focuses on desktop friendliness through a number of modifications and extra packages, has released their Fedora 18 incarnation.

        • Open-Source Radeon UVD Video Support On Fedora

          Are you itching to try out open-source AMD Radeon “UVD” video acceleration support over VDPAU on Fedora Linux?

        • fedoraproject.org Account System (FAS) security issue.

          A bug has been discovered in the Fedora Account system that could have exposed some sensitive information to logged in users.

        • DNF Still Advancing As Experimental Yum For Fedora

          DNF is the experimental fork of the Yum package manager that premiered in Fedora 18. While much hasn’t been heard of this experimental Yum replacement since its debut, work on it has still been progressing and is turning out to be in great shape, is slowly approaching feature-parity with Yum, and is faster.

          DNF hasn’t come to mind since last writing about it in 2012, but development has progressed and on Fedora 18/19 it still can be tested in parallel to Yum. Re-sparking interest in DNF is a new blog post on the Fedora-Next blog about DNF.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Why I love Raspberry Pi

      I’ve always admired the concept, execution and possibilities of Raspberry Pi, the British designed and built world-conquering credit card-sized ARM GNU/Linux computer. But despite following the Raspberry Foundation’s every move closely, and frequently promising that I’d buy myself a Pi soon, for some reason I never did.

    • Watch and record live TV on your Raspberry Pi

    • Phones

      • China market: Several smartphone components in short supply

        A shortage in the supply of some key components, including high-end camera modules, touchscreen panels and multi-chip package (MCP) memory chips, is worsening in the smartphone industry supply chain in China, according to industry sources.

      • Qt5 Port For Tizen Is Underway

        There’s active work underway for bringing the Qt 5.x tool-kit to the Tizen Linux platform.

        A Phoronix reader, Jaroslaw Staniek, wrote in this morning to share the news about the community-driven Qt 5 port for Tizen. The goal of this work is to bring the Qt 5 frame-work to Tizen, allow Qt Creator to be used for Tizen application development, and use the default Tizen’s look and feel based on Qt Quick 2 for application development.

      • Smartphones outpace feature phones for first time ever

        In the first quarter of 2013, smartphones accounted for more than half of phone makers’ shipments worldwide. Samsung remained the top dog, but LG, Huawei, and ZTE all saw big gains.

      • Ballnux

      • Android

        • Android is just the beginning: How Bluetooth is preparing for the internet of things

          Last night at Google I/O, Bluetooth scored a major victory for connected consumers when Google said it would support the Bluetooth Smart Ready platform natively in Android. This was functionality that iOS devices already have, and it should mean that Android users will get more functional apps to go with their Bluetooth-enabled devices.

        • The Place of FLOSS in End-User Computing
        • Google I/O: Unifyied Ecosystem Across All Google Platforms

          We were eagerly waiting for hardware updates from Google I/O 2013, but this year’s I/O conference was strictly focused on development tools and Google Services. Chrome merging with Android was key point at the keynote speech.

        • Google I/O : Official Social Media App Announcements For Google Glass

          Google Glass is getting lot of attention at this year’s Google I/O. There are already few official third-party apps support for glass, especially from social media houses.

          Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, CNN, Elle and Evernote have promised to support Google glass by announcing their official Google glass apps or “glasswares”. In fact facebook has already released the app and is available for Glass Users. Other Google glass apps are still in development.

        • Android-on-Intel accelerates as Clover Trail+ devices debut

          Lenovo’s Android-based K900, the first phone to use Intel’s dual-core 2GHz “Clover Trail+” Atom Z2580 system-on-chip, began shipping in China, and ZTE announced a Z2580-based, 4.5-inch “Grand X2 In” aimed at Europe. Yet, Atom-based Android phones won’t truly shine until Intel’s “Merrifield” SOC arrives in early 2014 using Intel’s 28nm, Tri-Gate “Silvermont” architecture.

        • Sony Xperia UL pictures and specs leaked: 5-inch display and Snapdragon 600 CPU

          Back in March we reported that Sony was looking to add to their Xperia line, and today we have confirmation on one of the devices.

        • NVIDIA Shield pre-orders are now live

          So excited about selling the NVIDIA Shield are retailers that they have begun offering pre-orders early. Effective immediately, you can place an order for the gaming console/controller/Android device through places like Newegg, GameStop, and NVIDIA.

        • I/O 2013: Google Glass designers predict possibilities for wearable tech market

          There approximately 6,000 attendees at this year’s developer conference, and you can’t walk a few steps without bumping into someone sporting the Android-powered specs.

        • How Google updated Android without releasing version 4.3

          Google covered a lot of ground in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote at Google I/O yesterday, but one thing it didn’t announce was the oft-rumored next version of Android. However, persistent rumors insist that the elusive Android 4.3 is still coming next month—if that’s true, why not announce it at I/O in front of all of your most enthusiastic developers?

        • Sony Posts Android Open Source Project Code For The Xperia Tablet Z To GitHub

          There’s a lot to like about Sony’s latest generation of Android devices. One od the things that most people don’t like is the custom interface that Sony puts on pretty much everything. If you want to do away with it and get some sweet, clean Android Open Source Project code running on your shiny new Xperia Tablet Z, Sony is happy to oblige. They’ve posted an AOSP 4.2 build for the Tablet Z to GitHub, following their surprisingly open approach to other devices, most recently the Xperia Z flagship.

        • Those $200 notebooks Intel is promising will probably run Android

          Recently Intel CEO Paul Otellini said he sees a future where you can buy an ultrathin notebook featuring an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor for as little as $200. Now CNET has a few more details about Intel’s vision for the future of cheap notebooks, and that vision includes Google Android.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • 7 open source projects to cut your teeth on (and the ones to avoid)

    The reasons for contributing to open source projects are as diverse as the projects themselves: To garner new skills, add experience, network with peers, or just for fun. Choosing a project that best suits your needs, and one that is friendly to newcomers, however, can be a daunting task. We polled well-known open source contributors for their recommendations, and the best way to start. They also offer advice on which projects to avoid. Here’s what they said:

  • 5 Reasons Infotainment is the First Target for Open Source Software in Cars

    The In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) System is the most complex electronic system in the car. It collects data from all of the car’s sensors and integrates functions as diverse as navigation, climate control, media playback, cellphone connectivity and more.

    Yet automakers have focused on IVI as their first target for open source software collaboration. Both the Automotive Grade Linux working group and GENIVI alliance are pioneering collaborative efforts to develop a Linux-based open source platform for IVI software development.

  • Cool tool: One click installation of open source apps

    Downloading open source applications can sometimes be a pain in the neck. There can be multiple drivers, a variety of related components and a handful of little status bars that move from left to right at varying rates of speed.

    ComodIT wants to change that. The company, which specializes in automating infrastructure resources, has a new tool called the Direct Installer, which promises one-click installations.

  • Enterprise Networking Week in Review: VXLAN, SDN, and Open Source

    This week on Enterprise Networking Planet, the dust settled from last week’s coverage of Interop, allowing us to look forward to networking’s future.

    As always, our Sean Michael Kerner provided plenty of insider guidance. This week, he brought us two exclusive video interviews. Lew Tucker, Cisco’s Cloud CTO, talked about OpenStack, VLAN, and the Internet of Things, and Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation, dismissed criticisms of OpenFlow and discussed OpenDaylight.

    Speaking of the future, Cisco, Aruba, and Brocade all had earnings calls this week, and Sean covered those, too. Cisco reported good news, particularly in data center, 10 GbE, and SDN adoption. Aruba expressed optimism about its recent acquisition of Meridian Apps, which will enable indoor GPS and other application and location awareness capabilities over WiFi. Brocade, meanwhile, plans to focus on future growth, particularly in the on-demand data center space.

  • Jedi Academy Thrives As Open-Source Software

    It was one month ago that Activison and Raven Software open-sourced two of their games. While Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are old titles, they are now thriving as open-source software.

  • Adobe Open-Sources CFF Rasterizer For FreeType

    Adobe has open-sourced their advanced CFF rasterizer for the FreeType project. This Adobe contribution, along with the support of Google, will improve FreeType font rendering on Linux and other platforms.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 22 Beta Enables WebRTC Support

        The big feature being flipped on for the Firefox 22 Beta is full WebRTC support. WebRTC is the Web Real-Time Communication API drafted by the W3C and Google for handling browser-based VoIP, video chat, file-sharing, and other services native to the browser. There was already some WebRTC support in Firefox while now the support is fully-on.

      • Mozilla Needs More Time Before Blocking Third-Party Cookies By Default

        After much public discussion of the issue, Mozilla has decided to postpone blocking of third-party cookies by default in the next version of Firefox. As noted in this post, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) had raised a major stink over the issue, citing “the impact the ban would have on small Internet publishers, which depend on such cookie technology to sell advertising to niche audience segments.” According to Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, though, Mozilla just needs more time to implement the technology.

      • Firefox 22 beta delivers WebRTC and more

        Where the most recent Firefox release was somewhat light on features, the next release, Firefox 22, which has just gone into beta, will be offering some more substantial enhancement. Foremost of those is full WebRTC support, which will allow web developers to integrate real-time audio and video connections between browsers with all the required components – DataChannels, PeerConnection and GetUserMedia – included. WebRTC can be orchestrated with JavaScript-based applications and can potentially be used for anything from simple user-to-user chatting with video calls and file sharing to interactive multiplayer games on the web. The WebRTC features are now enabled by default.

      • Firefox beta gets WebRTC on by default, OdinMonkey JavaScript optimizations, Web Notifications API, and more
      • Firefox OS developer phones sold out

        Spanish manufacturer/seller Geeksphone already has run out of the two Firefox OS phones that went on sale for developers today.

      • Mozilla: Look ma, no plug-in for video, apps

        The makers of Firefox team up with the 3D graphics gurus at OTOY to show off a new codec that can run high-end video and desktop apps in the browser.

      • The Man Who Turned Off Cookies In Firefox Doesn’t Care If It Hurts Advertisers

        Jonathan Mayer is the man who turned off third-party cookies in upcoming versions of Firefox. (Cookies are the little bits of code that web sites drop onto your browser as you surf so that advertisers can target you with ads.)

        Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jonathan-mayer-and-cookies-in-firefox-2013-5#ixzz2TgszO23H

      • Phones for Apps for Firefox OS

  • SaaS/Big Data

    • Open Source Zend Framework 2.2 Brings PHP to OpenStack Cloud

      Over the years, Zend Framework has grown and this week, Zend Framework 2.2 is being officially released. This latest Zend Framework has lots of goodness in it, but for me one thing stands out – OpenStack support.

    • OpenNebula 4.0 Improves The Open-Source Cloud

      OpenNebula 4.0 “Eagle” has been released as the latest major release of this popular, open-source cloud computing system.

      The OpenNebula 4.0 release offers up various new Virtual Machine features, scheduler improvements, a re-designed administration interface, and worthwhile enhancements to many of its other subsystems.

  • Databases

    • phpMyAdmin 4.0 Release Kills Off The Tables

      phpMyAdmin, the popular browser-based software for MySQL database administration, has hit a significant milestone with the release of phpMyAdmin 4.0.0.

    • PostgreSQL 9.3 Beta 1 Released

      The first beta release of PostgreSQL 9.3, the latest version of the world’s best open source database, is now available. This beta contains previews of all of the features which will be available in version 9.3, and is ready for testing by the worldwide PostgreSQL community. Please download, test, and report what you find.

    • Ubuntu Looks Towards MySQL Alternatives

      Discussed today during another session of this week’s virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit was what to do about MySQL. With Oracle MySQL, there’s growing frustration with the database software by the Linux and open-source communities over Oracle’s lack of disclosure with security bugs/fixes, non-public bug information, lack of much “outside code” from other parties going into MySQL, and various other complaints.

    • Migrate from MySQL to MariaDB in FreeBSD

      The usage of MySQL for development is free. As you are not giving away that product (MySQL), no GPL restrictions apply. If you want to distribute MySQL in some form, the licenses apply. See: MySQL commercial license

      MariaDB is a community-developed fork of the MySQL relational database management system, the impetus being the community maintenance of its free status under the GNU GPL. As a fork of a leading open source software system, it is notable for being led by its original developers and triggered by concerns over direction by an acquiring commercial company Oracle. Contributors are required to share their copyright with Monty Program AB.

  • CMS

    • Essential WordPress Security Plugins

      A few weeks ago I told you about some security precautions to take when using the open source web platform WordPress to protect your site against brute force attacks. However, those precautions are just the beginning. A website administrator has to be forever vigilant to keep the bad guys away.

  • Funding

    • LFCS: The value of FOSS fiscal sponsorship

      As open source becomes more popular and mature, questions of formalizing the governance and corporate structures of projects are becoming of increasing importance, as can been seen by the rising visibility of various FOSS foundations. At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, Tony Sebro shared his insights about the value that fiscal sponsors bring as umbrella organizations for FOSS projects. Sebro is the General Counsel of Software Freedom Conservancy, which is the home of about 30 free and open source projects, including Samba, Git, and BusyBox.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Hackers Meeting 2013 in Paris, France

      Thanks to a kind offer from Sylvestre Ledru (http://sylvestre.ledru.info/) we have a venue for this year’s GNU Hackers Meeting: we will be at IRILL (http://www.irill.org) in Paris, France, for the second time after the very successful 2011 edition. Since I live near Paris and I also happen to work at IRILL once or twice a week I’ve decided to do something to help organize the event, along with Sylvestre and Dodji Seketeli (http://dodji.seketeli.com/) who graciously volunteered as well.

    • GCC 4.9 Diagnostics Will Begin Playing With Colors

      While GCC 4.8 was released less than two months ago and GCC 4.9 isn’t likely to surface until 2014, there’s already a new feature to the next major update of the GNU Compiler Collection. GCC 4.9 introduces support for colored outputs in debugging.

      With LLVM/Clang offering a great diagnostics experience, GCC developers have been challenged to improve the diagnostics and debugging abilities within their open-source compiler. Introduced with GCC 4.8 were improved diagnostics thanks to the Clang competition and it looks like GCC 4.9 will continue trying to enhance the support for the long-standing Free Software Foundation compiler.

    • Options to Control Diagnostic Messages Formatting

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Aaron Swartz prosecutors will unseal evidence, but won’t name names

        The federal judge who would have overseen the trial of Aaron Swartz on computer hacking charges has ordered the prosecution to reveal much of the evidence it had against him. However, the government and MIT will be allowed to keep most of the relevant names redacted.

        Swartz killed himself in January, not long before he was scheduled to defend himself in a trial that could have resulted in several years of prison time. Swartz famously used MIT’s computer network to download millions of academic papers published in the JSTOR archive, and prosecutors said those actions violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

      • Redacted Emails Ordered Released in Aaron Swartz Case

    • Open Hardware

      • Wikiweapons and Printing 3D Guns. It’s Just a Stalking Horse for What’s to Come

        When I wrote an article for FSM a few years ago about 3D printing it was a big topic in the open-source community but it had not yet gone fully mainstream. If there was one thing guaranteed to make 3D printing explode onto the mainstream news media it was an item about someone “printing” a gun. That got your attention, didn’t it? Mine too. It’s controversial of course but it might just be the beginning of a rerun of the Napster/Piratebay episodes in the 21st century – with the inevitable debate between patent-free, non-hierarchical open-source models and patent-encumbered proprietary software and hardware. Napster was a ripple. 3D printing will be a tsunami.

      • Now You Can Buy 3D Printers From Staples

        The office supply chain announced Friday that it is now selling 3D printers through its website and will start selling 3D printers in select stores by the end of next month. Staples is touting itself as the first “major U.S. retailer” to sell the product.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • eHealth week – digital innovation isn’t just for the young!

    This week in Dublin it has been eHealth week. A chance to look at all the great things digital technology can do for health and care – especially as the average European gets older.

  • How humble USB turned engineer into tech ‘rock star’

    With computer technology advancing at an ever bewildering pace, it’s comforting to know that one little feature remains steadfastly future-proof and, more importantly, foolproof.

    The USB (Universal Serial Bus) is as relevant today as it was when the 12 millimeter by 4.5 millimeter ports and cables first started appearing back in the late 1990s, providing users with a discreet and straightforward way of transferring data between a range of digital devices.

  • Justice O’Connor Regrets
  • Stevens: Rationale for Bush v. Gore was “unacceptable”
  • O’Connor questions court’s decision to take Bush v. Gore

    In interview at Tribune, retired justice also calls for merit selection of judges

  • Alito and Roberts are the most pro-businesses justices since 1946, study finds

    Not every decision by the Roberts court has favored businesses. But the U.S. Supreme Court is more pro-business in its rulings than any other since 1946, according to a new study. And two of its justices are also the most pro-business among 36 who served on the court since World War II.

  • Feds Realize That Exploiting A Bug In Casino Video Poker Software Is Not Hacking And Not A CFAA Violation

    For years, we’ve talked about how casinos were able to get away with not paying people who won jackpots from electronic gambling machines, by claiming that their wins were really because of software glitches. That always seemed like a highly questionable practice, but even more questionable was filing criminal charges against winners who won because of those glitches. We talked about one such case back in 2007, and then another one in early 2011. That 2011 case involved two guys, John Kane and Andre Nestor, who had figured out a bug in some video poker software from International Game Technology, a gaming giant.

  • Science

    • Monsanto, Dow Chemical Crops Face Further Delays on Environmental Studies

      The U.S. Department of Agriculture will conduct environmental assessments of new corn, soybean and cotton seeds genetically engineered to withstand herbicides, further delaying the possible launch of products from Monsanto Co. (MON) and Dow Chemical Co. (DOW).

    • Bill Nye Boo’d In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun

      Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

      As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

      But don’t tell that to the good people of Waco, who were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence,” according to the Waco Tribune.

    • Obama pedals bike at 3rd White House science fair

      It was an offer President Barack Obama couldn’t refuse.

      “You’re welcome to try this out if you like,” the Oakland Park, Fla., high school student said.

      With that, a president who often laments a lifestyle that denies him the pleasure of driving eagerly hopped on the blue-and-silver bicycle in his dark blue suit and pedaled away, never mind that the machinery didn’t take him anywhere.

    • Western leaders study ‘gamechanging’ report on global drugs trade

      Review by Organisation of American States on illicit drugs ‘could mark beginning of the end’ of prohibition

    • Samsung claims 5G mobile data transmission breakthrough

      Samsung says it has developed the world’s first “adaptive array transceiver” technology, an innovation that allows part of the super-high-frequency Ka band of the radio spectrum – at 28GHz – to be used for cellular data transmission.

      The firm indicates its equipment, which features 64 antenna elements, overcomes a problem involved with using this frequency, which can cause the signal to weaken in rainy conditions.

      “Samsung’s recent success in developing the adaptive array transceiver technology has brought us one step closer to the commercialisation of 5G mobile communications in the millimetre-wave bands,” said Chang-Yeong Kim. head of the firm’s Digital Media & Communication Centre in Seoul.

    • Samsung to rollout commercial 5G by 2020

      Samsung Electronics has developed a technology aimed at allowing data transmission up to several hundred times faster than the current 4G networks, paving the way for introducing high-speed 5G wireless data connections to users by 2020.

      The company’s new adaptive array transceiver technology, claimed to be first-of-its-kind in the world, operates in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • Military spending and the EU crisis

      High levels of military spending played a key role in the unfolding economic crisis in Europe and continues to undermine efforts to resolve it.

    • US vows to continue its foreign ‘war on terror’ bid for at least 10-20 years

      A top US military official has emphasized that the American so-called “war on terror” on Muslim world will continue for ‘at least 10 to 20 years.’

    • Obama War Powers Under 2001 Law ‘Astoundingly Disturbing,’ Senators Say

      The war authorization that Congress passed after 9/11 will be needed for at least 10 to 20 more years, and can be used to put the United States military on the ground anywhere, from Syria to the Congo to Boston, military officials argued Thursday.

    • Hofstra student killed by police during break-in

      In this photo copied from the 2010 Sleepy Hollow High School yearbook, high school student Andrea Rubello is shown. Police said Rubello, a junior at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., was shot and killed Friday, May 17, 2013, during a break-in near the college campus.

    • Judge tosses out manslaughter charges against NYPD officer who killed teen

      A judge has dismissed manslaughter charges against a New York City police officer who shot dead an unarmed teenage boy in his bathroom.

      Bronx supreme court justice Steven L Barrett said the Bronx district attorney’s office failed to properly instruct members of a grand jury in considering allegations against officer Richard Haste for his role in the death in 2012 of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham.

    • China Spends $125 Billion Per Year On Riot Gear And ‘Stability Maintenance’

      Mannequins in riot gear, armoured cars and drones line a police equipment and “anti-terrorism technology” trade fair in Beijing as vendors seek to profit from China’s huge internal security budget.

      The country is estimated to have more than 180,000 protests each year and the ruling Communist Party spends vast sums on ensuring order — more even than on its military, the largest in the world.

  • Cablegate

    • Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution

      The Justice Department’s disclosure that it had secretly subpoenaed phone records from the Associated Press has prompted a wave of comparisons between President Obama and Richard Nixon. Four decades ago, the Nixon administration attempted to block The New York Times from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to the newspaper by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

    • Globaleaks 0.2 Alpha

      Globaleaks is an open source project aimed at creating a worldwide, anonymous, censorship-resistant, distributed whistle-blowing platform. It enables organizations interested in running whistle-blowing initiatives to setup their own safe zone, where whistle-blowers and recipients can exchange data.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Jump Ship in Pollution Fight Against Chevron

      Faced with an enormous 2011 oil-pollution verdict in Ecuador, Chevron (CVX) turned the tables on its main legal foe, launching a fierce counter-attack against the lead plaintiffs’ lawyer in federal court in New York. That onslaught raised serious questions about the tactics that activist attorney, Steven Donziger, an American, employed to win the $19 billion judgment in Ecuador.

      Now it has cost Donziger some of his most important lawyer-allies in the U.S., who have quit the fight, saying they lack the resources and will to battle Chevron.

      ‘[...]

      Keker lashed out at Chevron and its law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher: “Through scorched-earth litigation, executed by its army of hundreds of lawyers, Chevron is using its limitless resources to crush” Donziger “and win this case through might rather than merit.” Keker also condemned Kaplan. “Encouraged by this court’s implacable hostility to Donziger, Chevron will file any motion, however meritless, in the hope that this court will use it to hurt Donziger.”

  • Finance

    • NFL Player Instagrams Himself Peeing on IRS Building

      Tax-season gripes regarding the Internal Revenue Service are about as American as baseball and apple pie. But we bet you’ve never expressed your frustration quite like NFL player Evan Mathis did on Wednesday.

    • Where will we be without the bankers?

      We need banks that serve the economy – not the bankers.

    • Yahoo board OKs $1.1B purchase of Tumblr: report
    • Apple Said to Be Subject of Senate Offshore Tax Hearing

      Apple Inc. (AAPL) will be the subject of a May 21 Senate hearing on U.S. companies’ offshore tax practices, said two people familiar with the inquiry.

      Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook will testify at the hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of the people said.

    • Goldman Sachs Wins Even When Muzzled by the Feds

      Almost three years ago, when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) paid $550 million to settle fraud accusations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the claims was that Goldman misled the bond-insurer ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. in a horribly complex deal named Abacus.

      Goldman settled without admitting to the accusations. The terms also prohibited Goldman from denying the SEC’s allegations in its public statements. Then, this week, a funny thing happened. A New York state appeals court, in a 3-2 ruling, dismissed ACA’s lawsuit against Goldman. ACA said Goldman misled it. The court said the insurer’s claims didn’t hold up.

    • Walmart destroys the cultural heritage of Mexico

      As an archaeologist, I welcome the news that “[t]rade unions in Canada, the United States and Mexico are preparing protests and legal action against the Mexican subsidiary of Walmart” . That $24 million in bribes was allegedly paid by Walmart representatives to built the store at Teotihuacán is sad, but, in hindsight, makes a lot of sense. It takes a lot of gall to wilfully risk a country’s most beloved heritage site and, as it seems, it takes a lot of money too. However, I am sure Walmart felt it was worth it: if only a fraction of the 2.5 million annual visitors to Teotihuacán walk through Walmart’s doors, they would have easily recouped their ‘investment’.

    • “The Other IRS Scandal”: David Cay Johnston on Dark Money Political Groups Seeking Tax Exemption
    • Fincen’s New Regulations Are Choking Bitcoin Entrepreneurs

      More than a decade ago, regulators nearly suffocated PayPal. Now it looks like they’re trying to squelch another disruptive, innovative payments system.

    • Who’s Getting Rich off the Prison-Industrial Complex?

      You likely already know how overcrowded and abusive the US prison system is, and you probably are also aware that the US has more people in prison than even China or Russia. In this age of privatization, of course, it’s also not surprising that many of the detention centers are not actually operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. So clearly, some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages.

      But who are these people?

      Using NASDAQ data, I looked through the long list of investors in Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US, to find out who was cashing in the most on prisons. When we say “prison-industrial complex,” this is who we’re talking about.

    • Trade Talks? Only Business Insiders Invited

      As the future of the proposed Canada-European Union Trade Agreement becomes increasingly uncertain — the EU has been unwilling to compromise on the remaining contentious issues leaving the Canadian government with a deal that offers limited benefits and significant costs — the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is likely to emerge as the government’s new top trade priority.

    • Accidentally Released – and Incredibly Embarrassing – Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in ‘Naked Short Selling’

      It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

      The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

      Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

    • The Question that Launched the IRS Scandal: Planted?

      It struck me as odd that IRS official Lois Lerner would suddenly offer a mea culpa ex nihilo — on the sensitive subject of the agency’s targeting of political enemies — off the cuff while she was speaking at a tax conference organized by the American Bar Association. When she was asked about that during a telephone call on Friday, she said only that she was asked a question and answered it.

    • Homeland Security seizes funds at main Bitcoin exchange

      The U.S. government has reportedly shut down a prime source of liquidity for Bitcoin by seizing an account connecting a Japanese currency exchange, Mt. Gox, and payment services provider Dwolla.

    • Austerity Is Dead; Stop Pushing It, Drop the Chained CPI and Increase Social Security

      Deficit projections have already by $200 billion for this year alone, so why do Republicans keep lunging for ever-more radical spending cuts like they were corn dogs at a barbecue? That’s more in deficit reduction than President Obama’s proposed cut to Social Security would “save” in ten. So why hasn’t he withdrawn the proposal?

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Is There Really a ‘Scandal Trifecta’?

      The White House is evidently in a tough spot thanks to what’s being called a “scandal trifecta”: Benghazi, the Justice Department seizing AP phone records, and the IRS targeting Tea Party groups. Much of the Beltway press corps–which has pushed the Benghazi story for months–is seeing the Obama presidency in a state of near free-fall.

    • Conservative Koch Brothers Turning Focus to Newspapers

      Three years ago, Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists and supporters of libertarian causes, held a seminar of like-minded, wealthy political donors at the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colo. They laid out a three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes.

    • The Remarkable Decline in the Wall Street Journal’s Long-Form Journalism

      I do not have any particular expertise in the inner workings of the Wall Street Journal newsroom, but this chart speaks for itself. It shows the number of stories the Journal published that were over 2,500 words from 2002 to 2011. Dean Starkman of Columbia Journalism Review created the chart and referenced it again today. (He used to work at the publication.)

    • The bizarre campaign against Apple’s Tim Cook

      Targeted criticism of Cook first scored a hit last November, when Dan Lyons wrote the scathing article “What’s it like to work for Tim Cook?” based on on comments by a man who’d never actually worked for Cook.

    • AP memo on Boston coverage: ‘We made mistakes because we didn’t follow our own very good guidelines’

      “There was much great work from AP staffers [reporting from Boston] and we celebrate that,” Associated Press executive editor Kathleen Carroll writes in a memo. “But we had some missteps, too. And that’s what we want to talk about here today.”

    • Two tech executives quit Mark Zuckerberg’s Fwd.us political group

      Two prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have quit Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s political advocacy group Fwd.us after protests from environmentalists and liberal groups, a person familiar with the situation said late Friday.

  • Censorship

    • Government accused of sneaking in web filter

      The federal government has been accused of sneaking mandatory web filtering through the back door after one of its agencies inadvertently blocked 1200 websites using a little-known law.

      Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/government-accused-of-sneaking-in-web-filter-20130517-2jq3p.html#ixzz2TjUYLpZ8

    • Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment: The Risks of Liberty

      “Our approach under the First Amendment has wisely, I think, generally been to risk suffering the harm that speech may do in order to avoid the greater harm that suppression of speech has often caused.” That line is vintage Floyd Abrams. So, too, is the following one: “The oldest reality about the First Amendment is this: Hardly anyone really believes that we should protect the speech of those with whom we differ.” In other words, protecting free speech can be risky and can mean protecting the expression of those who offend us.

    • Tor and the Censorship Arms Race: Lessons Learned

      On July 24th 2013 Roger Dingledine and Jacob Appelbaum will give a talk about Tor and Internet Censorship. The talk will be at the Garching campus of the TUM (U-Bahn stop: U6 Garching Forschungszentrum), in the FMI (Informatics/Mathematics) building, in room HS1 (the big lecture hall) starting at 18:00. Admission is of course free.

    • The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution

      How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet? That’s a question we faced during our January visit to North Korea, when we attempted to engage with the Pyongyang traffic police. You may have seen videos on the Web of the capital city’s “traffic cops,” whose ballerina-like street rituals, featured in government propaganda videos, have made them famous online. The men and women themselves, however—like most North Koreans—have never seen a Web page, used a desktop computer, or held a tablet or smartphone.

    • Censors increasingly take aim at Google content

      Google on Thursday released data showing that requests by governments to censor the Internet giant’s content have hit new heights, with Brazil and the United States leading the way.

      Google received 2,285 government requests to remove content from it properties, including YouTube and search pages, in the second half of last year as compared to 1,811 requests in the first six months, according to its latest Transparency Report.

      The requests related to 24,179 pieces of content, up from 18,070 items, the California-based Internet giant said.

    • US officials to Delhi court: Can’t summon Facebook, Google

      India had asked the US to help in serving papers to the executives of 11 Internet companies who are accused of hosting content designed to fuel communal hatred.

    • Bus Company Threatens Redditor With Lawsuit, Meets Ken White, Runs Away

      Another day, another case of a business attempting to stifle online criticism via threat of lawsuit, amirite? We’ve seen it again and again. Companies ignorant of the terrifying Streisand Effect go after critics and, normally, the only warm and fuzzy feeling we can take away from it is knowing that these abusers are more hated as a result of their threats than they were before. But not today, friends. Today’s story ends hilariously well.

      [...]

      So, we’re dealing with a company that enjoys suing its own customers after slapping their wallets around with insane fines that seem designed less to encourage good behavior than to simply extract more money out of people. Well, if Suburban Express is happy to sue its own customers, you can guess just how aggressive they like to behave with the internet upon which some of these customers express their displeasure. Unfortunately, when that displeasure is aimed at one of the company’s drivers who told an exchange student, “If you don’t understand English, you don’t belong at the University of Illinois or any ‘American’ University,” then you’re going to raise the ire of roughly everyone. It was a witness to that event, Jeremy Leval, who took to Facebook to describe the incident.

    • Trade Sanctions Cited in Hundreds of Syrian Domain Seizures

      In apparent observation of international trade sanctions against Syria, a U.S. firm that ranks as the world’s fourth-largest domain name registrar has seized hundreds of domains belonging to various Syrian entities, including a prominent Syrian hacker group and sites associated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    • Germany asked to intervene with Dotcom

      Kim Dotcom’s lawyers intend to ask the German government to intervene with the United States and try to block his extradition on criminal copyright charges, German news agency DPA has reported.

      London-based Canadian human rights lawyer Robert Amsterdam, who co-wrote a “white paper” released last week criticising the case against Dotcom’s MegaUpload business, told the DPA that Germany had not done enough to assist Dotcom.

      He said he would ask the German government to intervene on the grounds that Dotcom’s human rights had been violated by the US.

      “We can take this to the office of the Chancellor, which we will, as well as to the German Foreign Ministry, to raise the issue with Washington,” he told the DPA.

  • Privacy

    • Leak Investigations Are an Assault on the Press, and on Democracy, Too

      This was supposed to be the administration of unprecedented transparency. President Obama promised that when he took office, and the White House’s Web site says so on this very day.

    • In AP surveillance case, the real scandal is what’s legal
    • White House pushing new federal shield law

      In damage control mode after revelations that the Department of Justice seized records from Associated Press reporters, the White House is pushing a federal media shield law that died in the Senate four years ago.

    • Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press

      We now live in a world where public servants informing the public about government behavior or wrongdoing must practice the tradecraft of drug dealers and spies. Otherwise, these informants could get caught in the web of administrations that view George Orwell’s 1984 as an operations manual.

      With the recent revelation that the Department of Justice under the Obama administration secretly obtained phone records for Associated Press journalists — and previous subpoenas by the Bush administration targeting the Washington Post and New York Times — it is clear that whether Democrat or Republican, we now live in a surveillance dystopia beyond Orwell’s Big Brother vision. Even privately collected data isn’t immune, and some highly sensitive data is particularly vulnerable thanks to the Third Party Doctrine.

    • Media organizations call on Justice Department to mitigate damage from broad subpoena of journalists’ phone records

      The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and major news organizations are calling on the U.S. Justice Department to return secretly subpoenaed phone records of more than 100 Associated Press journalists, to explain how such an egregious overreach could happen and outline what will be done to mitigate the damage.

    • Obama Administration Secretly Obtains Phone Records of AP Journalists
    • Do-Not-Track Talks Could Be Running Off the Rails
    • What If We Thought More Often About Being Tracked Online? Man Stalks Himself To Find Out

      It’s no secret that data mining is big business–but what if Internet users could monetize their personal data on their own? New York University grad student Federico Zannier raised the question by unleashing an arsenal of digital espionage tools on his own computer: a Chrome extension that documents every web address visited; software that records GPS location; and a custom application that takes a screenshot, a webcam photo, and records the mouse position every time a new tab opens.

    • Taking the privacy message to MEPs

      This week ORG supporter Ryan Jendoubi visited MEPs in Brussels to ask them to support stronger privacy rights – as part of our ongoing Naked Citizens campaign. In this post he talks about why he was there and how the message was received.

    • U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance

      Justice Department agreed to issue “2511 letters” immunizing AT&T and other companies participating in a cybersecurity program from criminal prosecution under the Wiretap Act, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

    • Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA

      Army General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, is having a busy year — hopping around the country, cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network.

      In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.

    • Head of the NSA Warns of ‘Disruptive & Destructive’ Cyber Attacks – ISO 27014 Can Help
    • DISA/NSA move to address insider threats to enterprise networks
    • US under constant threat of cyber attack: NSA boss
    • India´s ´Big Brother´: The Central Monitoring System (CMS)

      Starting from this month, all telecommunications and Internet communications in India will be analysed by the government and its agencies. What does that mean? It means that everything we say or text over the phone, write, post or browse over the Internet will be centrally monitored by Indian authorities. This totalitarian type of surveillance will be incorporated in none other than the Central Monitoring System (CMS).

    • Law Requiring Warrants for E-Mail Wins Senate Committee Approval

      A Senate committee today backed sweeping privacy protections requiring the government, for the first time, to get a probable-cause warrant to obtain e-mail and other content stored in the cloud.

    • On Expectation of Privacy

      Privacy in pubic is now being destroyed to the point to include any activity you conduct over the Internet, whether it’s been technically designed to be private or not. The IRS has recently come under fire for spying on Americans’ email under the guise that using email surrenders one’s expectation of privacy. Anyone who understands how email works knows that its design intent, when working properly, keeps email private: it partitions off one’s email from any other users on the network, and on the server. It’s inherently private, unless of course a hacker breaks into the system and steals your privacy. Simply because email exists in a public environment doesn’t invalidate one’s expectation of privacy. Consider a single-room bathroom inside a public department store or restaurant. It is surrounded by the public, however our law still protects the inside of those four walls as a private place. Just because a criminal could potentially kick in the door and snap a photo of you on the toilet doesn’t
      suddenly remove your right to privacy inside this room, yet the same argument is being made against electronic mail and other forms of otherwise private communication.

    • Judge Holds Himself in Contempt for Cellphone Violation

      The judge said he had recently switched from the Blackberry model he has had for years to a Windows phone with a touchscreen, and believes the phone wasn’t locked when he came to the bench with the phone in his shirt pocket. Worse, this particular phone apparently comes with voice activation, which was news to the judge. He said something to trigger it, and the phone spoke up.

    • Apple, AT&T and Verizon receive lowest marks in EFF privacy report

      Apple has submitted plans to open a new retail store on Union Square, replacing its nine-year-old store at Stockton and Ellis streets a few blocks away.

      Supervisor David Chiu said he hoped the new silver box-shaped computer store and customer service center would “turbo-charge” the Union Square area, which has long been home to many of the city’s high-end retailers.

    • Apple’s Customer Data-Privacy Rules Struck Down by German Court
    • German Court Says Apple’s Privacy Policy Conflicts with National Data Protection Law
    • EFF Gives Twitter High Marks for Protecting Users’ Data

      How safe are your favorite websites? The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) evaluated 18 major Internet companies for privacy and transparency, and Twitter and West Coast ISP Sonic.net came out on top.

    • For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying

      The report features new findings, as well as consolidating a year of our research on the commercial market for offensive computer network intrusion capabilities developed by Western companies.

    • This EULA Will Make You Rethink Every App and Online Service You Use

      Similarly, without an open, unified network, the whole notion of business online would have been entirely feudal from the start. Instead, it only took a feudal turn around the turn of the century. These days, instead of websites on the open internet, people are more likely to create apps in proprietary stores or profiles on proprietary social media sites.

    • Do You Want the Government Buying Your Data From Corporations?

      Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received– it’s all in databases that are increasingly linked and correlated. Still, there’s a lot of personal information the government can’t collect. Either they’re prohibited by law from asking without probable cause and a judicial order, or they simply have no cost-effective way to collect it. But the government has figured out how to get around the laws, and collect personal data that has been historically denied to them: ask corporate America for it.

    • Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones

      ATF says no law enforcement agency could unlock a defendant’s iPhone, but Apple can “bypass the security software” if it chooses. Apple has created a police waiting list because of high demand.

    • FBI Seeks Real-Time Facebook, Google Wiretaps

      Should Facebook, Google and similar sites be forced to adapt their infrastructure so that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can easily tap suspects’ communications in real time?

  • Civil Rights

    • Student Defaulters – to be arrested on sight at all borders

      With National declaring that student defaulters who have not paid for their education are to be arrested on sight at our borders, I thought it my civic duty to assist Police and Border Guards to share a Wanted poster with readers.

    • Student loan defaulters to face border arrest
    • From Hooligan: How I Got Kicked Out of the Supreme Court

      In March 1995, I visited the sacred burial ground of Americans’ rights and liberties – the Supreme Court.

    • You’re to Blame for Factory Deaths. Well, You and Walmart

      The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki (5/20/13) has figured out who’s to blame for unsafe working conditions for garment workers: people who wear clothing.

    • The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties

      Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ’s attack on AP’s news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record on civil liberties, transparency, press freedoms, and a whole variety of other issues on which he based his first campaign.

    • Marco Rubio Pushes For “Enhanced REAL ID” For ALL US Citizens—If They Want A Job!
    • New Federal Regulations Give Pentagon Sweeping Domestic Police Power

      The militarization of local and state law enforcement didn’t make its debut in the Watertown lockdown, however. For decades, police have received millions in grants from the federal government. Cash-strapped police departments and sheriffs’ offices have traded local control for new technology and martial materiel.

      The blurring of the lines between armed forces and police forces has accelerated quickly, resulting in a situation where “it would be difficult to discern fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.”

    • Worse Than The AP Phone Scandal

      Before Attorney General Eric Holder oversaw a Justice Department that secretly seized AP journalists’ phone records, he was guilty of something even worse, and closely related to the AP scandal. He argued a little-known case before the Supreme Court called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which found that speech (and other forms of nonviolent advocacy) could be construed as material support for terrorist organizations. The case involved a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the Humanitarian Law Project, which, according to its website, is “dedicated to protecting human rights and promoting the peaceful resolution of conflict by using established international human rights laws and humanitarian law.” It also enjoys a consultive status at the UN; so, in other words, hardly a radical organization.

    • Letter: Stand together to preserve freedoms

      I wrote a letter for the newspaper in March (“NDAA is a wake-up call to America,” March 13); this is a follow-up. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 was passed into law and signed by (President) Obama on Dec. 31, 2012. As I told you this Act sounds good, but in reality abolishes the Bill of Rights. I also stated that the entire United States has been redefined as a “battlefield” wherein the military, the FBI or any other law enforcement under Obama’s thumb can arrest any U.S. citizen without cause. This is possible by using the familiar little “catch-all” word that has been used (and abused) since Sept. 11. The word is terrorism. The laws written in post-9/11 have made it possible to effectively destroy anybody the government doesn’t like or agree with. The government is able to shut down anything and anybody just be using the T-word even if it doesn’t apply at all.

    • Dutch police may get right to hack in cyber crime fight

      The Dutch government has announced plans to give police far greater powers to fight cybercrime.

      Under a new bill, investigators would be able to hack into computers, install spyware, read emails and destroy files.

    • FBI Documents Suggest Feds Read Emails Without a Warrant

      New documents from the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ offices paint a troubling picture of the government’s email surveillance practices. Not only does the FBI claim it can read emails and other electronic communications without a warrant—even after a federal appeals court ruled that doing so violates the Fourth Amendment—but the documents strongly suggest that different U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the country are applying conflicting standards to access communications content (you can see the documents here).

    • Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform

      The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

      Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Lives versus Profits

      More broadly, there is increasing recognition that the patent system, as currently designed, not only imposes untold social costs, but also fails to maximize innovation – as Myriad’s gene patents demonstrate.

  • Breast cancer gene data beneficial, controversial
  • Angelina Jolie, breast cancer and the gene-patenting question
  • EU Targets Seeds and Gardeners; Critics Lash Out

    As part of the seemingly never-ending drive to expand and centralize its own coercive power, the controversial European Union in Brussels is now targeting seeds and gardeners with a proposed new “law” aimed at regulating all “plant reproductive material” within the bloc. Despite strong backing by mega-corporations and genetic-engineering giants, however, the proposal has sparked a furious grassroots outcry around the world that transcends traditional political divides.

    Critics are calling on the emerging EU super state to kill the scheme immediately. Over 200,000 people have already signed a petition against the plan. Another 35,000 signed a petition refusing to accept the scheme, and thousands more signed a separate statement vowing non-compliance. The growing coalition fighting back against the program brings together unlikely allies, too: environmentalists, leftists concerned about corporate power over government, libertarians, farmers, conservatives, liberals, gardeners, small-scale seed producers, advocates for national sovereignty, and more.

  • Jack Ohman: The four new bases of DNA
  • How Big Agribusiness Is Heading Off The Threat From Seed Generics — And Failing To Keep The Patent Bargain

    Recently we wrote about how pharmaceutical companies use “evergreening” to extend their control over drugs as the patents expire. But this is also an issue for the world of agribusiness: a number of key patents, particularly for traits of genetically-engineered (GE) organisms, will be entering the public domain soon, and leading companies like Bayer, BASF, Dow, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta are naturally coming up with their own “evergreening” methods.

  • Supreme Court Seems Skeptical As Myriad Claims Gene Patents Should Exist, Because It Put A Lot Of Work Into Finding Them

    As many people know, on Monday, the Supreme Court finally heard the Myriad Genetics case, to look at whether or not genes are patentable subject matter. For the past few decades, the USPTO has generally argued that you can patent genes, which just seems crazy to most folks who point out that it’s nuts to patent something that exists in your body. Supporters argue that they’re trying to patent the process of isolating the gene, but that’s just semantics. As you may recall, the appeals court, CAFC, had decided that genes are patentable because they’re separate from your DNA. After that, the Supreme Court disallowed patents on medical diagnostics, and asked CAFC to reconsider the Myriad case with that as a guide. In response, CAFC stuck by its guns, insisting that genes are patentable.

  • Don’t Let Patents Kill 3D Printing

    One of the reasons why 3D printing is suddenly on the cusp of going mainstream is the expiration of some key patents that have held the technology back for decades. And yet, of course, with any area of the market that is getting hot, there is suddenly a rush to get more patents. In fact, we’ve already seen a few patent fights begin concerning the new generation of 3D printing companies. Recently, the EFF has decided to try to try to put a stop to a series of patent applications that, if granted, would have the potential to again hold back the 3D printing market even further.

  • Sussex academy pays £100,000 to use ‘patented’ US school curriculum

    Aurora Academies Trust is challenged over use of patented ‘Paragon curriculum’ that has been criticised by Ofsted

  • India patents 1,300 yoga moves

    India has made available a list of 1,300 newly registered yoga poses, compiled to prevent the ancient moves from being exploited by patent pirates, the Times of India said.

    Hindu gurus and some 200 scientists compiled the list from 16 ancient texts to prevent yoga teachers in the United States and Europe from patenting established poses as their own.

  • Trademarks

    • Hackathon Trademarked in Germany? Now What? ~pj

      I am sure you saw that somebody in Germany, a company called nachtausgabe.de, has sneaked through a trademarking of the word HACKATHON in Germany. There was no opposition, because nobody knew about it. We know now, however, so what can anyone do about it? It turns out, plenty.

      It’s a word that OpenBSD and Sun each came up with independently at the same time back in the ’90s, for heavens sake, and it surely can’t belong to any one company now that it’s in the dictionary and everyone has freely used it for years now.

      Anyway, as soon as I read about it, I wrote to the German equivalent of the USPTO, DPMA, the German Patent and Trademark Office, and I’ve learned some things that can still be done. I’ll share them with you, so the community knows how to go forward if it proves necessary.

    • Apple wins trademark case over ‘iBooks’

      A small New York publisher that uses the label “ibooks” has struck out in its lawsuit against Apple, after a New York court on Wednesday held that the publisher’s mark was not distinct and that consumers would not confuse the two companies’ products.

  • Copyrights

    • Dotcom granted leave for Crown appeal

      Kim Dotcom has been granted leave to appeal his case against the Crown in the Supreme Court.

      The MegaUpload mogul’s legal team applied in March to be heard in the country’s highest court after a decision about disclosure made in the Court of Appeal went against him.

      Dotcom’s lawyers want to be able to view the documents that make up the basis of the US Government’s case against him.

    • Judge Denies Copyright Class Action Against YouTube
    • European Parliament to Vote Green Light to Next ACTA?

      On 22 May, the European Parliament will vote in plenary on a resolution on the proposed EU-US trade agreement, the “Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement” (TAFTA), also know as “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership” (TTIP). After the ACTA, SOPA and PIPA battles, once again the entertainment industry will try to use a trade agreement as an opportunity to impose online repression. With Wednesday’s vote, Members of the European Parliament may be about to vote in favor of the same kind of repressive copyright enforcement provisions that they rejected in ACTA a few months ago.

    • BitTorrent Accounts for 35% of All Upload Traffic, VPNs are Booming

      New data published by the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that BitTorrent can be credited for one third of all North American upload traffic during peak hours. BitTorrent usage also remains strong in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. The report further confirms that SSL traffic has more than doubled in a year, partly due to an increase in VPN use.

    • Viacom Loses Again–Viacom v. YouTube

      How many things have to go wrong for Viacom before it wakes up and smells the hummus? It’s now lost twice in the district court, it’s created a bunch of precedent unfavorable to its interests, it’s proven that even it can’t figure out which clips it authorized to post on YouTube and which it didn’t, it gave up complaining about YouTube’s behavior after 2008 (making the case entirely backward-looking), it got caught repeatedly astroturfing, and in general it’s looked like a massive jackass. Perhaps its next appeal will finally kill this case as it deserves, though that will single-handedly cause a new downturn in the legal industry as hundreds of lawyers look to find new sugar daddy clients.

    • Hollywood Docket: Alicia Keys Settles Lawsuit Over ‘Girl on Fire’

      In his lawsuit, Schuman alleged that Keys’ “Girl on Fire” used copyrighted material from his composition. The complaint filed in California federal court didn’t spell out with great detail what was precisely objectionable, but in “Girl on Fire,” the singer appeared to quote the intonation of the prior hit in singing the words “lonely girl.” Compare the two songs (here and here).

      The complaint was filed late last year, and the litigation didn’t get very far for a judge to rule any which way.

    • Forget online drives, sync directly with BitTorrent Sync

      If you do not trust online storage drives for file syncing across your devices or are frustrated with storage limits, there is another player in town. BitTorrent has released a new alpha version of its Sync software, which supports syncing folders across the Internet without going through an intermediary like Dropbox, Cloud Drive, or iCloud.

    • Chairman Goodlatte Announces Comprehensive Review of Copyright Law

      Technology continues to rapidly advance. Contrast how American citizens kept up with the latest news in Boston last week to when Paul Revere rode nearby to warn the local communities of the British advance in 1775. Our Founding Fathers could never have imagined a day in which citizens would be able to immediately access the knowledge and news of the world on their smartphones as they walk down the street.

    • Second Circuit Victory for Richard Prince and Appropriation Art

      Today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a long-awaited decision in favor of fair use in Cariou v. Prince. Reversing the district court’s finding of infringement, the Court held that Richard Prince’s use of Patrick Cariou’s photographs in 25 of his 30 Canal Series paintings was a fair use. The decision affirms an important tradition in modern art that relies on the appropriation of existing images to create highly expressive works with new meaning.

    • Authors, composers want 3.4% of every Belgian’s Internet bill

      Content owners in nearly every country have tried various strategies to get compensation for losses due to piracy. But copyright owners in Belgium have a bold new tactic: go after Internet service providers in court, demanding 3.4 percent of the fees their customers pay for Internet service.

    • Pirate Site Blocking Legislation Approved By Norwegian Parliament

      Norway has moved an important – some say unstoppable – step towards legislative change that will enable the aggressive tackling of online copyright infringement. Proposed amendments to the Copyright Act, which will make it easier for rightsholders to monitor file-sharers and have sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked at the ISP level, received broad support in parliament this week and look almost certain to be passed into law.

    • Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators

      US District Judge Otis Wright has no love for the lawyers who set up the copyright-trolling operation that came to be known as Prenda Law. But Wright at least acknowledges their smarts in his long-awaited order, released today. Wright’s order is a scathing 11 page document, suggesting Prenda masterminds John Steele and Paul Hansmeier should be handed over for criminal investigation. In the first page, though, the judge expresses near admiration for the sheer dark intelligence of their scheme—it’s so complete, so mathematical in its perfection.

    • Why weren’t the Prenda porn trolls stopped years ago?

      Two years ago, in March 2011, I first saw Prenda Law’s John Steele in person—and he was getting bawled out by a federal judge in downtown Chicago.

      Impeccably dressed, Steele walked into Judge Milton Shadur’s wood-paneled courtroom to defend his approach to porn copyright trolling, then in one of its earlier iterations. Steele was representing CP Productions, the unfortunately named Arizona porn producer behind a film (well, a “film”) called Cowgirl Creampie. Steele found a long list of IP addresses sharing Cowgirl Creampie using the BitTorrent protocol, so he went to court. He sought subpoena power in order to turn that list of IP addresses into real names. Steele got it, partly by assuring the judge that the case was related to the state of Illinois.

    • http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/look-you-may-hate-me-90-minutes-with-john-steele-prenda-porn-troll/

      After years of fine-tuning a business model built around copyright lawsuits over pornographic movies, prolific anti-piracy lawyer John Steele is now on the receiving end of a devastating sanctions order by a federal judge in Los Angeles, who has recommended a criminal investigation of Steele and his colleagues. For “copyright trolling” critics ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to anonymous anti-troll blogs, this week’s order has been sweet vindication—and it elevated the Prenda Law situation to the attention of the national press. But all Steele sees is injustice.

    • Orphan Works – the new law in the UK

      My social media feeds have been full links to alarmist stories about a recent change to UK copyright law that allows for the licensing of orphan works. Photographers have been particularly concerned after one site (which I won’t dignify with a link) used the headline “ALL your pics belong to everyone now”. So much alarm has been created that the UK’s intellectual property office felt moved to publish a PDF debunking some of the myths that have arisen. I was waiting until the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 was published on the government’s legislation website before making my own comment.

    • “Fair use” takes center stage at Google Books appeal

      Google and the Authors Guild resumed an eight-year battle on Tuesday morning before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges pressed both sides to provide a straight-up answer as to whether Google’s decision to scan millions of books amounted to “fair use” under copyright law.

    • Google Framed As Book Stealer Bent On Data Domination In New Documentary

      “Google And The World Brain” is a new documentary about Google’s plan to scan all of the world’s books, which triggered an ongoing lawsuit being heard today. The hair-raising film sees Google import millions of copyrighted works, get sued, lose, but almost get a literature monopoly in the process. It’s scary, informative, and worth watching if you recognize its biased portrayal of Google as evil.

      The film is getting wider release as Google continues to fight the Author’s Guild in court today. The organization is demanding $3 billion in damages from Google for scanning and reproducing copyrighted books. Google is asking the court to prevent the group from filing a class-action suit.

    • Book Review — William Patry, How to Fix Copyright

      I review William Patry’s book How to Fix Copyright. The book is noteworthy for its ambitious yet measured effort to diagnose where copyright law has gone astray in recent years. It is less successful with respect to proposing possible changes to the law. Most interesting are parallels between How to Fix Copyright and an earlier comprehensive look at copyright law in the digital era: Paul Goldstein’s Copyright’s Highway: From Gutenberg to the Celestial Jukebox. William Patry and Paul Goldstein each have a lot of faith in the power of consumer choice in the cultural marketplace. That faith leads the two authors to very different views of copyright law.

    • 9th Circuit: No Relief for Copyright Troll Righthaven

      The Ninth Circuit appeals court today turned down copyright troll Righthaven’s last ditch effort to salvage its failed business model, upholding the federal district court’s decision to dismiss its bogus copyright case on the grounds that it never actually held the copyrights it was suing under.

      In one of the two cases decided together, EFF represents Tad DiBiase, a criminal justice blogger who provides resources for difficult-to-prosecute “no body” murder cases. Righthaven sued DiBiase in 2010 based on a news article that DiBiase posted to his blog. Instead of paying them off, DiBiase fought back with the help of EFF and its co-counsel at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati, and helped drive Righthaven out of business.

    • Copyright Trolls Threaten to Call Neighbors of Accused Porn Pirates

      It is no secret that copyright trolls tend to use rather threatening language as they try to convince defendants to pay settlement fees, but the recent actions of the Prenda law reincarnation “Anti-Piracy Law Group” have reached a new low. In a letter sent to people accused of pirating pornographic material, the lawyers threaten to inform neighbors about the illegal conduct, and inspect defendants’ work computers.

    • Apple Inc. (AAPL) Could Be Subject To ‘Culture Tax’ In France

      Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone and iPad could be taxed in the near future in France. Pierre Lescure, former chief executive officer for Canal Plus, was asked by the French government to come up with a new way to fund cultural projects in the country. The economic downturn has caused a lack of funds for the country’s cultural programs. Lescure suggested that since consumers spend more money on popular electronic devices than content, they should charge a one percent sales tax on all internet-compatible devices.

    • The Copyright Pentalogy: Technological Neutrality

      Last month, the University of Ottawa Press published The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law, an effort by many of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy. As I’ve noted in previous posts, the book is available for purchase and is also available as a free download under a Creative Commons licence. The book can be downloaded in its entirety or each of the 14 chapters can be downloaded individually.

    • We Beat Them to Lima: Opening a New Front Against Secret IP Treaties

      I’m Danny O’Brien, EFF’s new International Director. Five years ago, I worked on the EFF team that identified the threat of ACTA, a secret global intellectual property treaty we discovered was being used to smuggle Internet control provisions into the laws of over thirty countries. Together with an amazing worldwide coalition of activists from Europe to South Korea, we beat back that threat.

05.17.13

Links 17/5/2013: 0.9 Billion Android Activations, New Devices, Android Studio

Posted in News Roundup at 11:01 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Is Everywhere – 12 Awesome Devices Powered By Linux

    Besides well known devices like Google’s Android, Amazon’s Kindle etc, Linux is powering some of the most amazing devices around the globe and in the sky.

  • Google Demos Linux Running on Hacked Glass

    Although Google is offering a limited set of developer tools for Glass — and more are on the way — the company doesn’t want to stop hackers from tinkering even further.

  • Google Glass rooted and hacked to run Ubuntu live at Google I/O
  • Google Glass Hacked To Run Ubuntu At Google I/O
  • New tablet boots Ubuntu Linux, Android, and Windows

    We’ve seen several Linux tablets emerge over the past year or so, but examples with triple-boot capabilities are much less common.

  • Ekoore tablet can be used to run Android, Windows and Linux
  • This tablet boots Android, Windows 8 and Ubuntu

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Podcast Season 5 Episode 8

      In this episode: There’s a critical vulnerability in the kernel. But relax, it’s been fixed. The International Space Station is switching from Windows to Debian. But not Debian 7, which has just been released. The beginner’s programming environment, Scratch 2.0, is out and the Raspberry Pi gets a super-light camera module. As always, hear our discoveries, our reports on the challenge and your own opinions in the Open Ballot.

  • Kernel Space

    • The Iron Penguin, Part 2

      Linus, has dived in to save the day. Where did the robot come from? What is it’s purpose? Can the Iron Penguin stand against it?

      Find out next time. Same penguin-time, same penguin-channel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • The apps of KDE 4.10 Part V: Kopete

        What does KDE offer for instant communication with your co-workers and friends? Kopete steps up to be your all-in-one IM solution.

      • Porting Krita to OpenGL 3.1/ES2.0
      • Amarok 2.7.1 Released!

        Hi there, while we’ve been working very hard on the next Amarok feature release, the 2.8, we also haven’t forgot the majority of our users using the stable versions.

      • Calligra 2.6.3 Released

        The Calligra team has released version 2.6.3, another bugfix release of the Calligra Suite, and Calligra Active. This release contains a number of important bug fixes to 2.6.2 and we recommend everybody to update.

      • Return of the bird, Colibri 0.3.0
      • digiKam Software Collection 3.2.0 is out..

        digiKam team is proud to announce the 3.2.0 release of digiKam Software Collection. This version include a new album interface display mode named list-view. Icon view can be switched to a flat item list, where items can be sorted by properties columns as in a simple file manager. Columns can be customized to show file, image, metadata, or digiKam properties.

      • Qt 5.1 enters beta

        The Qt developers at Digia are moving at a pace – just over a month after releasing the Qt 5.1 alpha, they have announced the first beta of Qt 5.1. Mostly, the beta continues to deliver the features of the alpha – Qt Quick Controls, Qt Quick Layouts, a serial port module for hardware and virtual serial posts, an updated Qt Creator, support for static Qt builds, and official support for the Qt sensors module. The Android (Qt Quick 1 and 2) and iOS (Qt Quick 1 only) support has been refined in the beta release, though it is still at the level of a technology preview.

      • KWin running in Weston

        This week I decided to do some research for the Wayland porting of the KDE Plasma workspaces. One of the features we will need in future is a Wayland session compositor which runs nested on a Wayland system compositor. Of course one could think of setups without a system compositor, but overall I think that a nested compositor simplifies the setup and allows to have all the low level technologies in one place without duplication in all the various compositors. +1 for working together.

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

  • Distributions

    • Screenshots

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Still Figuring Out How To Handle Hybrid Graphics

            While NVIDIA Optimus and other multi-GPU/hybrid laptop graphics systems have been available for years, in the Linux world support for these capabilities is still in the early stages.

          • Unity 7, Compiz To Be Polished For Ubuntu 13.10

            As mentioned already this morning, the plan with Ubuntu 13.10 is to have an experimental Unity 8 desktop powered by Mir for those wishing to toy around with Canonical’s next-generation work. The default, however, will be Unity 7 in an X.Org environment. Even so, the Unity 7 desktop along with the Compiz window manager will receive some refinements for the next Ubuntu release.

            Discussed just now during the virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit were bug-fixes and enhancements for the desktop Unity version in Ubuntu 13.10. Unity 7 improvements being planned for the October release include presenting new Unity indicators, more Unity scopes, the in-dash payments method, and selected design bugs will be addressed.

          • Asus 1015E 10 inch notebook with Ubuntu coming soon for around $215
          • Ubuntu Linux Community: Canonical to Close ‘Brainstorm’ Web Portal?

            A few days ago, Canonical reiterated its commitment to restoring the Ubuntu “community” Web portal to front-and-center of official Ubuntu websites. At almost the same moment, news hit that the Ubuntu Technical Board has decided to discontinue the Ubuntu Brainstorm site, another part of ubuntu.com that has served in the past as a vector between developers and community members. Bad timing or cognitive dissonance? Here’s a look at the details.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 15 Most Ambitious Release Ever

              Clement Lefebvre, Mint founder and lead, recently announced the public release of Linux Mint 15 Release Candidate. Mint 15 brings lots of fixes, two new tools, and several new features. In fact, Clem said, “Linux Mint 15 is the most ambitious release since the start of the project.”

            • Linux Mint 15 “Olivia” gets release candidate

              The Linux Mint developers have announced a release candidate for the upcoming version of their distribution, Linux Mint 15. The release, which is code-named “Olivia”, is being built on Ubuntu 13.04 and is billed by Linux Mint founder Clement Lefebvre as “the most ambitious release since the start of the project.”

            • Tea and cookies for your new team members

              What does every development team want? New contributors!

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Hackable SODIMM-style ARM9 COM has onboard display

      Crystalfontz America has announced availability of an SODIMM-style COM (computer-on-module) with an optional onboard 128 x 32-pixel OLED display. The tiny CFA10036x module is built around Freescale’s 454MHz ARM9-based i.MX28x SOC (system-on-chip), includes 128MB or 256MB of RAM, and houses its open-source embedded Linux OS in a microSD slot.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android Studio opens its doors

          Few of the announcements at Google’s I/O conference have involved open source software, but one announcement did: Android Studio, a new IDE environment for Android application development. Although Android Studio is only an early preview at the moment, Google is looking at it to eventually become the default development environment for Android applications, replacing the current solution of the Eclipse IDE and ADT Plugin.

        • Why There Was No New Hardware At Google I/O

          The challenge with a conference like Google I/O, where the announcements arrive one after another, is to see both forest and trees. Analysis of individual announcements – such as Google’s new Pandora/Rdio/Spotify competitor All Access, or the granular pricing for its compute infrastructure – is relatively straightforward. What’s more important, however, is perceiving the larger pattern.

        • Google says it has 900 million Android activations

          The company also launches new APIs to improve Android apps

        • Making Linux and Android Get Along (It’s Not as Hard as It Sounds)
        • Sonic the Hedgehog Arrives on Android & iOS!
        • White Nexus 4 and Android 4.3 coming June 10th

          Rumors suggested that a white Nexus 4 might appear at Google IO, and they were right. We obtained the elusive white Nexus 4 and we can confirm it’s a carbon copy of the previous Nexus 4, just with a different color casing. That might not be the most exciting news, but we also learned the white Nexus 4 would hit the Google Play store on June 10th and it would be accompanied with Android 4.3.

        • Archos intros 3G-ready 80 Xenon tablet

          Archos has announced its latest Android tablet, the 80 Xenon, will be available in June with a $199 price tag. The 8-inch tablet is 3G-ready (SIM unlocked HSPA), runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and features the gull Google Play Store experience.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • XO Tablet Supposedly Becomes Available on June 1

        Three weeks ago I mentioned that OLPC Association has been remarkably quiet about the Android-based Walmart XO Tablet which it had introduced at CES 2013 in early January. Since then things have progressed a little bit with the Web site receiving a bit of a facelift.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • Open Cloud Take Two: The CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2013

      The last year has been a whirlwind of activity for Apache CloudStack. Citrix proposed CloudStack for the Apache Incubator in April of 2012, and just over a year later we’re gearing up for a second collaboration conference – this time in Santa Clara, CA, from June 23-25.

  • Web Browsers

    • Opera quietly settles lawsuit
    • Opera and ex-employee settle £2.2m lawsuit

      NORWEGIAN SOFTWARE COMPANY Opera has settled the £2.2m lawsuit against ex-employee Trond Werner Hansen.

    • Chrome

      • Google Touts Big Share for Chrome, and New Voice Search Plans

        At this week’s Google I/O conference, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome, announced that Chrome has reached the milestone of 750 million monthly users. This number is being misinterpreted by some to mean that 750 million people are using the Chrome browser on desktop computers.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla postpones default blocking of third-party cookies in Firefox

        Mozilla has postponed blocking third-party cookies by default in the Beta version of Firefox 22, “to collect and analyze data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies.”

        The nonprofit organization is, however, not softening its stand on protecting privacy and putting users first, Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s CTO and senior vice president of engineering, wrote in a blog post Thursday.

      • Ubuntu 13.10 may ditch Firefox for Chromium

        For years, Ubuntu and Firefox have strolled the open source countryside hand-in-hand. That could change with the release of Ubuntu 13.10, however, as Canonical is thinking about dumping Firefox for Chromium.

      • Ubuntu 13.10 may ditch Firefox for Chromium

        For years, Ubuntu and Firefox have strolled the open source countryside hand-in-hand. That could change with the release of Ubuntu 13.10, however, as Canonical is thinking about dumping Firefox for Chromium.

      • Mozilla Plans to Renumbers Open Source Firefox Security Updates

        Ok, I know… the ‘E’ in Firefox ESR does not stand for ‘Enterprise’, but it should. The ESR – Extended Support Release is an effort to help organizations stay with a secure version of Firefox for longer period of times than the current fast track six-week release cycle of Firefox.

        I rely on Firefox ESR and I recommend it to lots of people because it’s a much safer version of Firefox to use with custom apps that sometimes – break – with the fast release cycle of Firefox.

        The most recent Firefox mainline release is version 21, while the current Firefox ESR is 17. The next Firefox ESR is currently schedule to coincide with the Firefox 24 mainline release.

  • Business

    • Colosa Announces ProcessMaker 2.5 Open Source BPM Software

      Back in April, during SugarCRM’s annual SugarCon Conference, the company announced it would integrate ProcessMaker into it’s suite of cloud-based services, allowing seamless use of business process management tools directly from the Salesforce interface. About the same time the company also announced the new SugarCRM mobile application powered by HTML5 and offering a fast, easy way to access SugarCRM’s powerful features on mobile devices.

    • Open Source Workflow Platform ProcessMaker Unveils New Features
    • VIDEO: ONF Chief on the Future of OpenFlow SDN

      The OpenFlow protocol stands at the center of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) revolution, and at the center of OpenFlow stands the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). As the revolution progresses, however, vendors are attempting to look beyond OpenFlow. Where does that leave the ONF?

    • Semi-Open Source

      • Talend 5.3 focused on Hadoop usability

        Talend’s data integration platform is being aimed at solving the complexity issues that surround deployment of Apache-Hadoop-based solutions. The developers have been focusing on creating Apache Pig developer tools and creating code in Pig Latin, which is said to remove the need to learn about MapReduce, the fundamental architectural element behind Hadoop. Users work with Talend’s Big Data graphical tools and that generates Pig Latin code which is then run on the Hadoop cluster; to optimise its running, a graphical mapper can be used to rework the data flow and mapping within the cluster.

  • Funding

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Fraunhofer FOKUS institute releases Fuzzino fuzzing library

      Researchers from FOKUS (Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems) in Germany have released the Fuzzino data fuzzing library as open source software. The library allows existing test tools to be prepared for fuzzing and aims to make the development of new fuzzing tools unnecessary. Fuzzing is the process of testing a system for hidden weaknesses by presenting the system with random and sometimes erroneous input data.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • A directory for open data projects

        Open (government) data as it is understood nowadays can still be considered a new concept. It started to gain traction worldwide since the Obama memo in early 2009 and the launch of data.gov a few months later. Following successful leading examples of the US and UK governments we have seen open data flourishing all over the world over the last three years. About three hundred open data catalogues have been identified so far.

      • Location, location, location

        The rapid rise in the number of mobile devices has led to a concomitant rise in the amount of location data available. Proprietary services are emerging to take advantage of that data, but open source has a strong foothold in the form of OpenStreetMap.

  • Programming

    • Google previews PHP on App Engine

      PHP is the latest addition to the range of languages supported on Google’s App Engine. The PaaS (Platform as a Service) already supports Python, Java and Go and, like the languages before it, PHP is being introduced first as a limited preview experimental feature.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google pushing for quick adoption of their new open source VP9 video codec

      VP9 is an open source and royalty free video compression technology under active development by Google with which they hope to replace the popular H.264 standard. The development of VP9 begain in late 2011 with two goals in mind, to provide a 50% reduced bit rate compared to the older VP8 codec while maintaining the video quality, and also optimizing it to the point that it becomes superior to the latest High Efficiency Video Coding (H.264) standard as well. We have to keep in mind that H.264 is pretty old now and the same standard is getting an update to H.265 which as much as doubles the data compression rate compared to the older H.264 standard.

    • Google’s open video proposal closes door on software freedom

      Google/MPEG-LA deal showed promise, but Google’s requirement for user licenses may bring a backlash

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • RIPE: Attacks on domain name systems are on the increase

      30 million open resolvers in the domain name system and a 200 per cent increase in the number of attacks in 2012 – these alarming figures were discussed by administrators at the 66th meeting of the RIPE IP address registry in Dublin this week. A panel discussion revolved around how to motivate the black sheep to implement long overdue security measures before large-scale attacks call the regulators to action.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Stephen Harper’s administration has increased spend from $9m to $16.5m in the last year

      Canadian government doubles advertising spend on tar sands

    • Scientists Agree (Again): Climate Change Is Happening

      Public opinion on the topic of climate change is notoriously fickle, changing — quite literally sometimes — with the weather. The latest bit of evidence on this: Yale’s April 2013 climate change survey, which found, among other things, that Americans’ conviction that global warming is happening had dropped by seven points, to 63 percent, over the preceding six months. The decline, the authors surmised, was most likely due to “the cold winter of 2012-13 and an unusually cold March just before the survey was conducted.”

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • America’s greatest threat: Unsafe work conditions

      If I told you that government officials possessed ironclad proof that an imminent threat to this nation had the capacity to create a 9/11′s worth of injuries and deaths every year at an annual economic cost of a quarter trillion dollars, ask yourself: Would you say we should do something about it?

    • We made it! – Global Breakthrough as Retail Brands sign up to Bangladesh Factory Safety Deal

      Geneva 16 May 2013 – The world’s leading retail labels commit to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh before the midnight deadline. The Accord now covers more than 1000 Bangladeshi garment factories. Implementation starts now!

    • CCC calls for action after another deadly collapse

      Clean Clothes Campaign is calling for immediate action from all international brands following today’s collapse of the Wing Star Shoes factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The collapse of the ceiling cost the lives of at least two people, and injured seven. The workers were stitching sneakers for sportsbrand Asics when the ceiling caved in on top of them.

    • Lead the World on Internet Rights, Web Inventor urges Brazil

      Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, addressed a press conference on 16 May 2013 at the WWW Conference in Rio de Janeiro. Berners-Lee used his address to state his support for the Marco Civil da Internet, (Marco Civil) a landmark draft Bill in Brazil that many have called ‘a Constitution for the Internet’.

    • Tipping law enforcement to possible terrorist activity is purpose of 13-county program

      Sheriffs in 13 Northeast Florida counties announced an online system Thursday for residents to report suspicious activity they think may be terrorism-related.

  • DRM

    • One Step Closer to the Open eBook Tipping Point: O’Reilly Joins the EPUB 3.0 Ecosystem

      Anyone who reads eBooks is aware that a number of content vendors are using proprietary platforms in an effort to lock you into their content libraries: most obviously, Amazon, with its Kindle line, Barnes & Noble with its Nook devices, and Apple with its iPads and iPhones. But there are many non-content vendors that would love to sell you an eReader as well, such as Kobo, and Pocketbook, not to mention the smartphone vendors that would be happy to have you use their devices as eReaders, too.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • IsoHunt Will Take DMCA Safe Harbor Fight to the Supreme Court

        In March, the Ninth Circuit declared that Canada-based BitTorrent search engine isoHunt is not entitled to protection under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA due to its conduct many years ago. IsoHunt filed a petition for a rehearing before a jury, but yesterday a Ninth Circuit panel unanimously rejected it. Isohunt lawyer Ira Rothken informs TorrentFreak that the right to a jury trial is protected by the constitution and isoHunt is now in the process of requesting a Supreme Court review.

      • Why are Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle Backing the Fight *Against* the Blind?

        One of the more disgraceful examples of the inherent selfishness of the copyright world is that it has consistently blocked a global treaty that would make it easier for the blind and visually impaired to read books in formats like Braille. The thinking seems to be that it’s more important to preserve copyright “inviolate” than to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

        You can read the disgusting details of how publishers have fought against the “proposed international instrument on limitations and exceptions for persons with print disabilities” for *30* years in an column I wrote back in 2011.

« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Chat iconIRC Channels: Come and chat with us in real time

New to This Site? Here Are Some Introductory Resources

No

Mono

ODF

Samba logo






We support

End software patents

GPLv3

GNU project

BLAG

EFF bloggers

Comcast is Blocktastic? SavetheInternet.com



Recent Posts