If you are at all familiar with my brain sneezes (I could use another word here but this is a respectable blog :) then you know I am always rabbiting on about Linux. I am always Linux this and Linux that. This gets some people upset and they claim that it should be GNU/Linux or perhaps more accurately Linux/GNU. There is a word in the English language (which I hope I am using) called context. In other words, I use the word Linux in the context of a complete Linux based distribution and believe that my readers understand that context.
The Egyptian Linux Users Group organizes an event every now and then in order to raise the awareness of the masses of Free Open Source Software (FOSS). They help distribute Linux CDs for free, help people in installing Linux on their machines, and give awareness sessions and brief introductions to FOSS-related software and technology.
UNISSA (Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali) and the Brunei Open Source Software Community (BOSSC) will be holding a networking event today from 2pm to 4.30pm at the basement of the UNISSA library.
THE Brunei Open Source Software Community (BOSSC) kicked off a successful networking event highlighting examples of Open Source Software (OSS) as a major tool in national development.
At an event held at Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali (Unissa) Library, the Brunei Open Source Software Community (BOSSC) held four presentations hosted by Unissa’s Centre for Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning.
Many computer users are not aware of the wealth of free software that is available to the public; one of the most prominent being browsers like Mozilla Firefox. “Raising awareness and evangelizing open source software and its benefits is part of the mission of our group,” adds Turland. “If someone is interested in using open source software and isn't sure how to get started, we're more than happy to help them out.”
Today the BBC has reported about a study from South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute, which warned that the Red Star software is designed to increase government control over its citizens and their access to technology and the Internet. What? In North Korea?
According to researchers at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), North Korea's Linux-based "RED Star" software is mainly designed to monitor the Web behavior of its citizens and control information made available to them.
However, the computer operating system does represent North Korean efforts to advance its computer technology, which lags as a result of the country's isolation, relying on Linux and other open-source software, said Kim Jong-seon, a STEPI researcher.
North Korea is expanding the use of its Linux-based operating system "Red Star" developed in 2002, into diverse areas and it is currently using its software to monitor citizens' Web behaviour, said a researcher for the South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute.
Of course the operating system wouldn’t be complete without numerous programs that allow North Korean authorities to watch what users are doing and of keep outsiders from getting in.
1. Live CD - Live CDs are bootable CD images that you burn to a CD or DVD, place in your CD/DVD drive, reboot your computer and enjoy a full Linux-based system without installing, partitioning or altering your current system. Everything runs from CD. Some things don't work well, or at all, but you'll have a first-hand Linux encounter that's easy to use, acceptably fast and fully loaded.
Open source isn't just a license or a coding methodology, to many it's a religion. And the central prayer of that religion is an ode to Linux. In the spirit of such love, Linux has begun to sprout up everywhere. Here's a compilation of some of the more surprising places you'll find this beloved operating system.
Rank Company site OS Outage hh:mm:ss Failed Req% DNS Connect First byte Total 1 www.memset.com Linux 0:00:00 0.012 0.586 0.129 0.260 0.260 2 DataPipe FreeBSD 0:00:00 0.016 0.065 0.027 0.056 0.083 3 iWeb Technologies Linux 0:00:00 0.016 0.134 0.083 0.165 0.165 4 ReliableServers.com FreeBSD 0:00:00 0.016 0.250 0.083 0.197 0.337 5 INetU unknown 0:00:00 0.021 0.702 0.073 0.158 0.301 6 Swishmail FreeBSD 0:00:00 0.021 0.159 0.086 0.173 0.438 7 www.singlehop.com Linux 0:00:00 0.021 0.258 0.104 0.429 0.962 8 Hosting 4 Less Linux 0:00:00 0.025 0.116 0.091 0.186 0.474 9 Kattare Internet Services Linux 0:00:00 0.029 0.153 0.093 0.187 0.443 10 www.dinahosting.com Linux 0:00:00 0.029 0.121 0.130 0.258 0.258
IBM has announced a range of Power7 servers for the i and AIX user communities. (These machines support Linux, too, but that doesn't define their markets.) Mainframes based on the z11 (which will share some components with the Power7 chips and which could end up with a different name) are expected to debut before long.
PowerVM runs on Power5, Power5+, Power6, Power6+, and Power7 systems, and can be used to provide logical partitioning for OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4, and i 6.1; AIX 5.2, 5.3, and 6.1; Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5; and Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and 11. I went through the pricing for PowerVM when the new pricing was announced as part of the Power Systems convergence back in April 2008, and you can check that out here.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that CUBRID is its newest member.
CUBRID provides an open source database system that is optimized for web services to support mission-critical Internet applications. The company is joining the Linux Foundation to gain access to exclusive networking opportunities and face-to-face collaboration with members of the Linux community.
The test system used for these experiments was a stock CentOS 5.3 distribution but with a 2.6.30 kernel and e2fsprogs was upgraded to 1.41.9. The tests were run on the following system:
* GigaByte MAA78GM-US2H motherboard * An AMD Phenom II X4 920 CPU * 8GB of memory * Linux 2.6.30 kernel * The OS and boot drive are on an IBM DTLA-307020 (20GB drive at Ulta ATA/100) * /home is on a Seagate ST1360827AS * There are two drives for testing. They are Seagate ST3500641AS-RK with 16 MB cache each. These are /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc.
We've covered the Linux Foundation's "We're Linux" video contests before, and there's another underway right now. This year's prizes include a trip to LinuxCon in Boston later this year, a chance to win a fully-loaded Linux laptop, and bragging rights for submitting the best "We're Linux" video from all the entries.
Beloussov: Since Parallels was founded in 2000, we have been a strong contributor and supporter of Linux – in fact we did not support any other platforms until 2005.
So here we are, Songbird is no more supporting Linux platform, so we decided to create our own version, supporting Linux first, but also Windows and Mac OS X later… We had a long debate for the name of our project, and it’s now chosen : Nightingale.
The popular open-source XBMC media player has had VDPAU support for more than a year now to offload some of the video decoding work during the playback process onto the GPU (primarily NVIDIA GPUs) using this robust Linux/Unix graphics API. However, for graphics hardware / drivers that do not implement NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix, the XBMC mainline code-base now has working support for VA-API.
I really like KeePassX and it fills my needs well. The only complaint I have is that I wish you could set a “master” database to replicate/sync to, because I still sometimes add or edit an account on my “travelling” copy. It’s never more than a minor inconvenience to patch things up, but I have to complain about something.
I’d also be interested in hearing if you have a password management solution that you think is preferable or comparable to KeePassX.
Linux's acceptance as a viable desktop OS, is then reliant on the availability of key application for it, and companies won’t be willing to port their applications to Linux till until enough people adopt a Linux desktop. This is the reason why it is easier to find applications such as MATLAB, Pro/Engineer, and Maya for Linux, as they users of such software have a larger presence on Linux.
When I was updating my system I realized there were a lot of gnome packages to be upgraded, my enthusiasm immediately rises, gnome 2.30 was out.
That's pretty quick and in my view, one of the quickest turnarounds yet from Oracle with their version of RHEL. Oracle has been releasing its own version of Linux with OEL, based on RHEL since 2006 and they've been updating OEL as Red Hat updates RHEL.
Red Hat urges governments to implement cloud computing founded on both open standards and open source as de facto. Open Source technology by its nature, provides a robust and interoperable foundation for many of today‘s cloud computing deployments. Moreover, it obviates the problem of vendor lock-in that has prevailed for decades.
Red Hat has the enabling open source technology that governments can already leverage today to implement robust, high performance clouds that are reliable, available and scalable.
All of these features are marked as 100 percent ready and approved by the Fedora technical steering committee for the Fedora 13 release.
Anaconda StorageWorks Filtering – The last part of the Anaconda-publicized code of the storage configuration.
Automatic Print Driver Installation – Necessary packages will be installed on hardware that requires these packages when found by the system.
So, to sum up, Debian is one hell of a Linux distribution. Perhaps not as newbie-friendly as some others, but it's still pretty easy to use. Whatever criticism I've heard so far is simply wrong, as I've met none of the problems described. I can see myself using Debian for the next few years to come, at least until I decide to fiddle with Gentoo...
Linux distributions don't simply appear on mirrors and BitTorrent networks fully formed. A great deal of work goes on behind the scenes before a release sees the light of day. Linux users who aren't involved in the production of a Linux distribution may not fully appreciate all of that work. Take, for example, the work done by Debian's ftpmasters team.
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Debian is, as Jaspert alluded to, "not getting smaller" and managing the number of new packages is a "kind of Sisyphean task." The Debian archive contains thousands of packages, and the NEW queue can have hundreds of packages awaiting approval. NEW packages are those entering Debian for the first time, which do not have source packages in the archive, or those adding new binary packages. New versions of existing packages are moved automatically into the pool.
Take a good hard look at your screen and ask yourself if it is possible to accidentally close an application while reaching for the File menu. In most cases the answer is a clear no, but for users of Ubuntu, it has become a very real and dangerous use case.
All the fuss began in March when the decision was taken to refresh Ubuntu's look and branding, which included a set of new default themes that moved the trio of minimise, maximise and close buttons from the PC standard right-hand side to the left side of the title bar. Suffice to say that despite the positives of the updated Ubuntu look, users overwhelmingly detested the movement of the window buttons — as shown by the over 630 comments, the vast majority of which are intensely negative, on this bug report.
While still in Beta, Lucid Lynx is humming along quite nicely two weeks after I installed it on my Acer laptop. Sure, there are the little annoyances linked to using a Beta product from Ubuntu, for instance, the large daily updates of software and the occasional application crash. For the most part, though, Lucid Lynx is quite usable and I'm growing to like it.
StarDot Welcomes CyberVision Inc. as Their New NVR Partner with full Support of StarDot’s New Line of Dual Codec H.264/MJPEG Cameras
The Drobo FS includes Gigabit Ethernet, five hot-swappable hard drive bays, and dual core processor running a Linux kernel. It supports mixing hard drive sizes and types, can auto-restore data to replacement drives should one fail or be replaced, and offers Time Machine backup support, too.
SPB Software, a leading mobile applications and games developer announces the release of SPB TV for webOS. This is the very first application from SPB Software for this eye candy Linux-based mobile operating system.
This handset come blessed with Linux-based Maemo platform and offer multiple ways to remain connected with the world via Internet. Users can remain online with friends and relatives residing in any corner of th earth.
Nokia has since teamed up with Intel in an effort to build an industry-standard Linux platform called Meego that will work across a wide range of mobile form factors and support both the ARM and x86 architectures. MeeGo incorporates some of the best elements of Maemo and Intel's Moblin netbook operating system. The path towards converging Maemo and Moblin is still at a relatively early stage, but a significant portion of the source code is already available.
Set to hit this fall, Kumar offers little else in the way of details. However, he does allude to Nokia's partnership with Intel and the company's new MeeGo operating system that's based off of Linux. Announced in mid-February, the OS is a mash-up of Nokia's Maemo OS and Intel's Moblin. Nokia and Intel have said the open source OS will run on both smartphones and netbooks, with support for ARM architecture and Intel's line of Atom CPUs.
Whereas Nokia’s high-end smartphone line is heading toward the Linux-based Maemo for its standard operating system, the new tablet could potentially run MeeGo, the new mobile operating system the company is developing with Intel.
Plans for a tablet may be incidentally supported by Nokia's alliance with Intel for MeeGo, a hybrid of Maemo and Moblin Linux
If the company should enter the market, SlashGear predicts that any slate-format device would likely run the hybridised Maemo/Moblin Linux distribution MeeGo, based on work carried out between Nokia and Intel.
In order to overclock the Nokia N900, one would have to reflash it with another kernel. The following kernels are available: 825MHz, 800MHz, 750MHz, 700MHz, and 600MHz.
Running with Linux based Maemo 5 OS which will offer the experience as real desktop offers.
What’s interesting about Motorola is the company has released Linux-based handsets in the past and is the distributor of more than a few mobile operating systems.
The TVs will soon be using Linux-based Opera technology to able users to surf the web on their living room TVs and power widgets and interactive HbbTV services. HbbTV is a new standard that combines traditional TV viewing with interactive apps.
Remember Android? Don’t worry. You’ll remember next week once this whole iPad thing blows over. Anyway, a Swedish company called, inexplicably, People of Lava has announced what they’re calling and Android-based TV. The TV, called the Scandinavia, comes in a 42-inch configuration that costs about $2,500.
Android is not just for smartphones anymore -- in fact, a Swedish company has just unveiled the first Android-based TV. "This highlights the continued use of Linux and open source for embedding software in all kinds of devices, from mobile phones -- where Android is having traction and impact -- to set-top boxes and, as we see here, in TVs and other electronics," added Jay Lyman, an analyst with the 451 Group.
Mobile Music Making just got a lot more popular this weekend with the debut of the Apple Ipad. But how does it stack up to the original Indamixx portable studio and touchscreen tablet?
They’re likely to produce netbooks architecturally similar to Apple’s -- ARM-based processor, Solid State memory, and a Unix-based O/S (Linux, Android, Chrome). Not Intel (INTC), Seagate (STX), and Microsoft.
We’ll spend more time detailing the “why” in the future, but the bottom line is simple: lower cost. ARM/Linux is a small fraction of the cost of WinTel. Solid State Storage is more expensive (for now), and manufacturers will have to make up for this cost increase somewhere.
The other open source alternitive comes to us from Spain. It was developed at the University of Cordoba and runs a customized Linux OS optimized for the touch screen. Below is a YouTube (again no real audio, just music this time) that shows what it looks like and has.
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
OfficeSIP Communications makes its two enterprise VoIP SIP clients officially open-source. OfficeSIP Softphone and OfficeSIP Messenger are now publicly available, and their source code published under the GPL license. The two products complete with the source code are available for immediate download at the company's Web site, officesip.org.
So this week I had the opportunity of setting up a little lab to test both of these firewalls. Before this week I had no idea these firewalls even existed, and the only open source routing/firewall software I even knew of at the time was Vyatta; which is really only for routing purposes.
Open Source solutions are becoming even more popular by the day. But that doesn't mean they are any more easier to install and set up. BitNami offers a number of new virtual appliances though that should do the trick.
The result could be misleading, Christie suggests. “I think we may have asked the question the wrong way.” His company, Catalyst IT, was part of the survey; “and we provide those services”, he says. But someone in the company clearly did not think so.
The open source community spends a lot of time kicking around the idea of an open Web and how best to develop open and non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies. Creating a plan is one thing, but communicating the importance of an open Web to non-technical computer users is another. Mozilla has taken the reins in an attempt to form an understandable explanation and wants your help.
Dries Buytaert, founder of the popular Open Source CMS Drupal product, says that cloud computing has done an ‘end run’ around the Open Source community. His point is that while SaaS and Cloud computing is offering up a totally new delivery model, it is echoing the practices of traditional closed-source vendors.
GroundWork Open Source and Eucalyptus Systems have paired up to offer integration between Eucalyptus' open source private cloud offering and GroundWork's monitoring software for cloud application management.
Basically the two open source firms announced they have established a technical partnership. They are not producing products together, but they are ensuring their software will work together. Eucalyptus produces Eucalyptus 1.6.2, which provides the basics of establishing a self-provisioning cloud, one whose API functions, such as the directive, "run this workload," are compatible with Amazon's EC2.
Part of the reason for Sakai's success at the 2,200-student college--which self-supports Sakai internally, in contrast to many smaller schools--was approval of the move to open source, according to Instructional Technology Consultant Mary Glackin. She was a member of the original Sakai implementation team and is on the college's current Sakai management team.
The Community Edition of Pentaho Data Integration 4.0 is free. The Enterprise Edition of the software, which starts at USD 2,000 includes support services as well as additional security and development features.
GCC 4.5 has been running a bit behind schedule due to outstanding regressions, but last week the last of their highest severity regressions were addressed, which paved the way for a release candidate. Today the release candidate for version 4.5 of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has arrived.
The Horde open source messaging and groupware project is gearing up for the first major release of its application suite and development environment in years with version 4, which is due to arrive in mid-2010.
The LGPL licensed framework and plugins are available to download. An example plugin is also available.
“A coordinated approach to ICT web services seems to be missing in New Zealand” says event director, Tim Knapp. “Many of the government departments I’ve spoken to are in dire need of an organisation that can provide independent advice on open source web technologies, particularly as there’s so many to choose from. Australia are far ahead of us on this front, where they’ve setup the Open Source Business Cluster to fill this need”.
Mr Knapp goes on to say “Plone is particularly suited to government as it is an enterprise-level content management system, exceeds the E-government standards for government websites, and therefore was officially sanctioned by the State Services Commission back in 2005ââ¬Â³.
Experts agree that electronic medical records can lower costs and improve care. Yet just 10 percent of U.S. hospitals keep any computerized records, according to a survey in the New England Journal of Medicine last year. The biggest reason is cost: depending on the size of the hospital, the price of a digitized record system can run from $20 million to $100 million.
A while ago, we received a request to take a look at an open letter on the compatibility of the Eclipse Public License (EPL) and the GNU General Public License (GPL). This led to a number of conversations with the Free Software Foundation (FSF) on the topic. What we have learned and the conclusions that we have drawn are outlined below. You can also find the FSF’s summary and conclusions on their blog.
Osmosoft will be hosting the first meeting of OSHUG, the Open Source Hardware User Group on April 29th. OSHUG's first meeting will include presentations by Professor David May and Alan Wood. May, currently CTO of XMOS Semicoductor, architect of the transputer and author of occam, the concurrent programming language, will be introducing the XCore XS1 microprocessor architecture. Wood will be discussing Amino, a "networked creator tool for hardware and software production" which his company, Folknology, are developing.
Zuckerman story has been covered by various reporters. He relayed to me that the most common question he gets asked is, “Why would someone who is almost 40 do this without any compensation, what’s going on here?” His motivation, he admits, is multi-faceted. “It was driven by self-interest in the sense that I was bored and needed to be proud of something I created.” On the flipside, there is the “joy I get from helping people.” But the unexpected consequence of Zuckerman’s tool library is how his idea of sharing and kindness is spreading to affect the lives of dozens or maybe hundreds of other people he does not know or has never met.
At the end of the process, estimated to take approximately two years, a collaboratively-edited electronic document will be released on the web. A more closely-edited print book composed of selections from this process — edited by Ken Goffman aka R.U. Sirius (that’s me!) with Morgan Russell — will be published. Finally, the video footage might be rolled into a Mondo 2000 film documentary.
With that vision in mind, we identified a number of high-value improvements which Subversion should gain in coming releases.
Environmentalists are often criticized by conservatives for embracing the science of climate change because it fits neatly with their ideological positions on conservation and sustainability. I think there is certainly some truth to that. But I'd argue that there is even more truth to the opposite position: Energy company executives and the politicians who carry their water reject science and oppose energy legislation because it conflicts with their ideological belief that anything that interferes with private profit-making is evil government intrustion.
Today, the Real Economy Project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released an assessment of the total cost to taxpayers of the Wall Street bailout. CMD concludes that multiple federal agencies have disbursed $4.6 trillion dollars in supporting the financial sector since the meltdown in 2007-2008. Of that, $2 trillion is still outstanding.
CMD's assessment demonstrates that the Federal Reserve has provided by far the bulk of the funding for the bailout in the form of loans amounting to $3.8 trillion. Little information has been disclosed about what collateral taxpayers have received in return for these loans. CMD also concludes that the bailout is far from over as the government has active programs authorized to cost up to $2.9 trillion and still has $2 trillion in outstanding investments and loans.
“While we continue to pray for the speedy recovery of the President, permit me to emphasize the policy continuum of governance and to insist on the imperative of this team to roll up its sleeves, and to redouble efforts so as to meet the expectations of our people who are yearning for good governance,” Jonathan said today.
Just when you thought you'd had enough of Goldman Sachs running things -- and running them into the ground -- along comes Meg Whitman. Most Californians know she's using her fortune to run for governor. They probably don't know that she was once on the board of Goldman Sachs, and most likely still would be if she hadn't been cited for a practice one law firm describes as "essentially ... an illegal bribe ... to corporate leaders." Then came the Congressional investigation, and the investor lawsuit, and ... well, it was probably best to just leave the board.
The Wall Street press can be pretty tough, but it's nothing like the political press. Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay, and now a candidate for governor of California, is finding that out now. Her opponents no doubt are only too happy to have her relationship with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) aired in the media. The firm, by the way, has been embroiled in a controversy about whether it advised clients to short California muni bonds that it helped underwrite.
As reported by Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, with arguably the most vexing image issues, came in 56th out of 60. Citigroup (NYSE: C) came in 57th. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) came in 52nd and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) came in 53rd. American International Group (NYSE: AIG) came in at 59 and Fannie Mae at 58. Freddie Mac, now a ward of the government, came in dead last.
John Whittingdale, the committee’s chairman, said that local media was facing “unprecedented challenges” from the recession and the internet. “This has led to the closure of a large number of newspapers, many commercial radio stations becoming loss-making and the possible end of regional news on commercial television,” Mr Whittingdale said. “This has serious implications for local democracy.”
The committee wants the Government to press ahead with changes to cross-media ownership recommended by Ofcom, the media regulator. These include relaxing the rule that no local newspaper publisher with more than 20 per cent of a market may also own a Channel 3 regional television licence.
In case you have not seen it yet, Wikileaks has released a video of an American helicopter crew opening fire on a group of men in Iraq, and later firing on a van that was trying to retrieve the wounded. I have been debating with myself whether to embed the video here. It is seriously disturbing, and I am concerned about potentially tasteless juxtaposition between the seriousness of the subject matter and the light-hearted nature of this blog, but I have decided that this is important enough that it requires all of the promotion it can get.
After being pressed to release its version of the WikiLeaks clip, U.S. CENTCOM says it can't locate the footage
Having recovered from inhaling an amount of tear gas, I accompanied Robert González - the executive secretary of the Oil Workers' Federation (Federación Petrolera) - as he was being interviewed by TVS Maracay (a regional TV channel). While he spoke to the journalist, a group of more than 30 police surrounded us. As soon as the TV cameras switched off, they pounced on us and, pushing against us, bundled us into the van. Amidst the tussle, they seized and broke my anarchist banner, which read, "FOR LIBERTARIAN AUTONOMY AND AGAINST THE REPRESSION OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS". Twelve people in total were packed into the police van, including two members of the Workers' League for Socialism (LTS). They didn't tell us what our charges were, or where we were headed.
Net Neutrality is the principle of keeping web content equally accessible regardless of its provider, origin or destination. According to the Free Press Action Fund's Savetheinernet.com campaign, net neutrality is threatened by the major conglomerates in the telecommunications industry who wish to provide themselves with an advantage by slowing down sites that aren't associated with their companies and don't pay a fee for the faster service.
So here’s my position: There is no future in a paywall. No salvation in digital razzle dazzle.
Question Copyright's first Minute Meme is a response to messages that have tried to convince people that copying information is the same as stealing property, when it's an entirely different (and generally positive) thing. Until the air is cleared on that point, it's hard to have any kind of useful conversation about copying, sharing, copyright, or licensing.
1) Price your copies near the cost of pirated copies. Maybe 99 cents, like iTunes. Even decent pirated copies are not free; there is some cost to maintain integrity, authenticity, or accessibility to the work.
2) Milk the uncopyable experience of a theater for all that it is worth, using the ubiquitous cheap copies as advertising. In the west, where air-conditioning is not enough to bring people to the theater, Hollywood will turn to convincing 3D projection, state-of-the-art sound, and other immersive sensations as the reward for paying. Theaters become hi-tech showcases always trying to stay one step ahead of ambitious homeowners in offering ultimate viewing experiences, and in turn manufacturing films to be primarily viewed this way.
3) Films, even fine-art films, will migrate to channels were these films are viewed with advertisements and commercials. Like the infinite channels promised for cable TV, the internet is already delivering ad-supported free copies of films.
Nintendo has issued a cease-and-desist notice to the creators of the open source Pokémon MMO Pokenet, requiring that they take down their website and surrender the pokedev.org domain name used for the game, claiming unauthorized use of Nintendo trademarks, according to Joystiq.com.
InternetNZ and the New Zealand Open Source Society have released their submissions to the Ministry of Economic Development’s consultation on this month’s ACTA negotiations, with the two organisations taking different, but equally critical tacks on the issue.
Internet New Zealand has strongly opposed the signing of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by New Zealand in a submission to the Ministry of Economic Development.
In the Internet Community, we do not believe that it is even theoretically possible, short of instituting an entirely undesirable Orwellian police state, to effectively prevent music and films from being shared over the internet in non-commercial ways. We expect that any efforts by governments are any other party to stop this will fail, although they will surely be harmful side-effects, like for example the notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA in the USA are already being abused by enemies of the freedom of speech. (By contrast, the appropriate handling of copyrighted digital assets in commercial contexts is a solvable problem, as the international standard ISO/IEC 19770-1 on Software Asset Management proves. In my opinion, enforcement efforts should focus on that area where it is actually possible to achieve progress.)
The New Zealand Open Source Society has made a submission on ACTA to the Ministry of Economic Development. The submission explores the relationship between legislation of the United States passed in 1998 called the DMCA with provisions in the Copyright Amendment Act 2008 and the leaked provisions in ACTA. The NZOSS does not wish to see a regime where citizens will be disconnected from the Internet based only on notices from rights holders, but rather maintain a position where proper judicial oversight and process will be maintained. Video here.
Two photographs. Nearly a century apart. Of people watching a sports game without paying.
The question is, were they stealing? Would you call it stealing? I wouldn’t. But I know some people who would.