Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/6/2010: No Android for Nokia; Sidux 2010-01



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Software for Social Networking
    Mοѕt οf thе open source software programs fοr social networking ѕο far аrе free. One thаt charges іѕ PHPizabi bυt despite thаt thеrе аrе still people willing tο υѕе іt. Sοmе οf іtѕ features include being аbƖе tο access іt through уουr desktop, communicating wіth friends іn thе chat room аnԁ maintaining a contact system.


  • Curtin Sarawak ECE Students Shine In Open Source Contest
    Students of Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak (Curtin Sarawak) have won two prizes in the Sarawak Open Source Competition organised by Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS).


  • Open Source EGL Means an RPG Generator Is Possible
    IBM wants to take Enterprise Generation Language open source. Last week at its Rational user conference in Florida, the vendor submitted a proposal to the Eclipse consortium that would place the bulk of EGL--a high-level language intended for Power Systems and mainframe shops that generates Java, JavaScript, and COBOL code--into the public realm.




  • Vuvuzela







  • Events

    • Linux 2010 trade show in Berlin
      As Michael Kleinhenz, member of the extended board of LinuxTag said, “in the long term open source has huge potential for saving costs. Thus it is all the more important to make funds available for research and investment, in order to get even more companies, public authorities and administrations to make use of open source. Open formats which everyone can use free of charge also increase transparency and improve security. More IT decision-makers should take this into account. LinuxTag contributes towards raising awareness of open source even more and thus propelling it even further.“






  • Mozilla

    • Firefox Losing Foothold on Linux Distros?
      When you install the Ubuntu Netbook Edition in October, don’t look for Firefox on the desktop — it won’t be there. Chromium, Chrome’s open source cousin, is going to be taking its place. After years of desktop dominance on Linux, is Firefox losing its foothold or is this an anomaly?








  • SaaS

    • New Open Source Cloud Data Integration Solution Runs on Amazon EC2
      Talend, another open source company, offers a data-integration-as-a-service solution, called Talend on Demand, which launched in 2007. I'd love to be able to tell you the difference between offering a cloud-based solution and a SaaS-based solution, but I'm still trying to figure that one out. Obviously, Jitterbit's solution runs on Amazon EC2, whereas Talend is a subscription service that requires you to download a management product, but beyond that, I'm not sure. I'll have to get back with you on that one.








  • Databases

    • Ingres Shows Faster Queries With VectorWise
      Open source company Ingres has released a vector version of its database, which it claims speeds up database operations enough to reduce the equipment required and greatly extend the use of realtime analytics.








  • CMS







  • Business







  • Openness/Sharing

    • Mendeley, the-Last.fm-of-research, rolls out premium packages to steady customer nerves
      Mendeley offers a secure online database for scientists, academics and researchers to store their research papers in the ‘cloud’, making it easier to share those documents with peers. The system also helps researchers find and connect to like-minded academics in similar fields by looking at and extracting relevant meta-data from the millions of research papers stored in its database.




    • Open Access/Content



      • The return on peer review
        A while ago I took a decision to only publish in open access journals. I recently received two requests to review articles for journals. Peer-review is one of the great unseen tasks performed by academics. Most of us do some, for no particular reward, but out of a sense of duty towards the overall quality of research. It is probably a community norm also, as you become enculturated in the community of your discipline, there are a number of tasks you perform to achieve, and to demonstrate, this, a number of which are allied to publishing: Writing conference papers, writing journal articles, reviewing.


      • What Do I Want from the Publisher of the Future?
        When I took on the role of Editor-in-Chief of this open-access journal, I began, for the first time, to think about scholarly communication beyond submitting my papers and getting them published.












Leftovers

  • High court quashes plan for fast food outlet near 'healthy eating' school


  • $11.7m judgment against Spamhaus slashed to $27,000


  • The Advertiser's Doom
    Advertising (as is traditionally recognised) is inevitably in decline. This is because it resulted from an extreme asymmetry that developed between vendors and customers when vendors became mass producers, and could no longer meet their customers on a one-to-one basis. It was further exacerbated when vendors took advantage of mass communications technology (printing, broadcasting) to communicate UNIDIRECTIONALLY to their customers (current and potential). Very little communication has been possible in the other direction for decades if not a century or more, i.e. customers needing to communicate their wants and prices to potential vendors, especially mass producers.


  • Personnel Today goes online only




  • Science

    • Ancient Mars Had Vast Ocean, New Evidence Shows
      A vast ocean chock-full of microbes may have once covered more than a third of Mars's surface, scientists say.

      The new evidence, from an analysis of dried-up Mars river deltas, adds to growing signs the red planet was once wet.


    • Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation
      Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.


    • New Worlds to Explore? Kepler Spacecraft Finds 750 Exoplanet Candidates
      The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft's observations. "This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened," said William Borucki, Kepler's lead scientist. "The number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have been discovered in the last 15 years."








  • Security/Aggression







  • Environment

    • BP is just a symptom of a dangerous addiction to oil
      President Obama's attacks on "British Petroleum" and its chief executive, Tony Hayward, are deeply unedifying. Not because of the hypocrisy and misinformation involved, though there is plenty of that: BP has not been called British Petroleum for years and its controversial dividend is denominated in US dollars.


    • BP to fund $20bn Gulf of Mexico oil spill payout
      Oil giant BP is to put $20bn (€£13.5bn) in a compensation fund for victims of the Gulf oil spill and will not pay shareholders a dividend this year.


    • We must abandon oil before it's too late
      Conventional oil production has a limited capacity. Most additional demand must be met by unconventional sources, which are abundant. But the capacity for production depends on the effective management of environmental, social and technical challenges that unconventional sources pose. The current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a clear indicator of how these boundaries are being pushed.


    • BP oil spill: Nick Clegg pledges to avoid 'megaphone diplomacy' with US
      Nick Clegg today warned that a row between Britain and the US over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was in danger of turning into a destructive bout of "megaphone diplomacy".


    • BP Cited for Worst OSHA Safety Violations Among U.S. Refiners


    • Scale of BP oil leak revised up to 40,000 barrels a day


    • BP oil spill estimates double
      US government figures show twice as much oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico than earlier estimations suggested


    • UN's 'IPCC for nature' to fight back against destruction of natural world
      World governments voted last night to set up a major new international body to spearhead the battle against the destruction of the natural world.

      With growing concern about the human impacts of destruction of habitats and species from around the world, from riots over food shortages and high prices, to worsening floods, and global climate change, more than 80 governments voted to take action in the final hours of a week-long conference in Busan, South Korea.


    • Chinese government urged to release Tibetan environmental activists
      Human Rights Watch has called on the Chinese government to release three Tibetan environmental activists who have played a major role in protecting the fragile eco-system on the roof of the world.


    • Climate deal blueprint could curb US emissions and poor nations' growth
      A new blueprint for a global climate agreement would force the United States to massively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions but could also limit developing countries' attempts to grow their economies, diplomats at the resumed global climate change talks said today.


    • McLaren F1 design team to roll out green car
      In the boom years of the 1990s, the workshop of Gordon Murray produced the 240mph McLaren F1, one of the fastest and most coveted road cars in the world. This month, the same design team will unveil the next vehicle to roll off the Murray production line, but using a lot less fuel as it does so.


    • Oil companies accused of helping to fuel Sudan war crimes
      Three oil companies were last week accused of being complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan. A report published in Sweden by a group of charities and peace activists called for Swedish oil company Lundin, Petronas of Malaysia and OMV of Austria to be investigated by their national governments.








  • Finance

    • The Coming Financial Meltdown
      The problem is getting worse. Notional amounts of derivatives held by federally insured banks have risen to more than $200 trillion.


    • Obama's Treasury Dept Working To Defeat Derivatives Proposal 'Of Utmost Importance' To Reforming Wall Street
      A Senate proposal to force banks to shed their lucrative yet risk-laden derivatives units -- which is vehemently opposed by Wall Street -- is gaining steam, picking up the support of some regional Federal Reserve chiefs with more on the way.

      Yet President Barack Obama's Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, continues to oppose the measure, Senate aides say, who add that Treasury is supporting Wall Street over Main Street by opposing the measure considered of "utmost importance" to financial stability.


    • Battle Over Reform


    • Sen. Blanche Lincoln's derivatives-spinoff plan gains support in Congress
      An effort to force some of the nation's biggest banks to spin off their lucrative derivatives-dealing operations appears to be gaining traction, as members of a House-Senate conference begin finalizing details of far-reaching new financial regulations.


    • Blanche, back to business as usual
      This one's pretty amazing. So as you know, Blanche Lincoln had this tough primary, which she ultimately won narrowly. Once the seriousness of the challenge became apparent to her, she sidled to the left and toughened up her derivatives language and set out to prove that she was in the pocket of no one except the good people of Arkansas.


    • Watching Obama, yearning for FDR
      President Barack Obama took office more than 75 years after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated, but, to Obama, that chill March day in 1933 must seem like only yesterday, so often has his performance as president been contrasted with that of FDR’s in the halcyon days of the New Deal.


    • Presidents, the Tax Burden, and Economic Growth
      This post also appears at the Presimetrics Blog. It contains some information that has appeared in a few different Angry Bear posts, but I think I’m starting to manage to put it into a more coherent narrative. And as I’m able to do that, I’m able to move slowly to the next part of the story.


    • SEC is hiring more experts to assess complex financial systems
      Today, the Princeton-trained nuclear physicist is investigating for the SEC what was behind the massive flash crash that sent the stock market into a tailspin last month. A specialist at culling conclusions from masses of chaotic information, Berman is in part trying to ascertain whether wrongdoing played a role.

      Although lawyers fill most of the SEC's ranks, the agency has been hiring experts with specialized quantitative skills and those who have worked on Wall Street who are hip to its tricks.


    • New book offers another view of Goldman Sachs's destructive power
      There's been no shortage of books that purport to dissect the financial crisis and all that ails Wall Street. Get ready for another entry: Chasing Goldman Sachs, by Suzanne McGee of Barron's, the latest journalistic effort to get the real story behind the implosion that's still rocking the economy.


    • Goldman Sachs' Ethics Reflect Its Ethos
      Goldman culture rewards hard-nosed aggressiveness and doesn't put the client's interests before those of the firm.


    • The Amazing, Versatile and Unethical Goldman Sachs Code of Ethics
      Now it seems that we were lacking a crucial document: the firm’s internal Code of Ethics, which Goldman Sachs recently made public. Under the provisions of this remarkable Code, what Goldman Sachs did to its clients wasn’t unethical at all; deceptive, conflicted, and unfair, yes…but not unethical, in the sense that it didn’t violate the Ethics Code itself. “Impossible!” you say? Ah, you underestimate the firm’s cleverness.


    • One Crowd Is Still Loyal to Goldman Sachs
      Despite all the bad headlines — the accusations of fraud, the talk of a big settlement, the risk, however remote, of criminal charges — there’s an inconvenient truth that’s been largely ignored: Most of Goldman’s big customers are not bolting.


    • Goldman Sachs Envy Drove Big Boys to Blow Up Money Grid: Books
      McGee, a contributing editor at Barron’s, isn’t out to bury Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or Blankfein, its chief executive officer. Her goal is, rather, to show how Wall Street bankers became preoccupied with their own short-term interests and drifted away from their raison d’etre -- to funnel capital from investors to companies that need it.


    • Latest Assault on Goldman Sachs: Bed Bugs?
      As if a nearly two-year siege of negative attention hasn't been enough of a distraction for Goldman Sachs, now the controversial investment bank appears to be battling a potential bed bug problem.


    • What's Reputation Worth? Just Ask Toyota, Goldman And BP
      If reputational risk wasn't a top issue for CEOs and boards of directors prior to 2010, the watershed events of the first half of this year should make them reconsider their priorities. Of course there's the wrath of the American consumer wrought by BP, thanks to the deadly accident on board the Deepwater Horizon rig and the subsequent Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Before BP, however, two other companies sullied their sterling reputations and are still paying the price.


    • Mr. President, Here's a Rear End You Can Kick: Goldman Sachs'
      Last week, President Barack Obama told us he is looking for someone's "ass to kick." He seems to be still looking for one, so perhaps he could use some suggestions.








  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • US record labels starts fake "citizen's group" to support Canada's DMCA
      A website in support of Canada's proposed US-style copyright law looks to be a work of corporate astroturf, and signs point to the Canadian Record Industry Association (mostly composed of US record labels; many Canadian labels have left to form an independent lobby that opposes much of CRIA's agenda) as the entity behind it. The group, Balanced Copyright for Canada, has bought headline placement on Bourque, and recently took down its member list after TVOntario reporter Jesse Brown announced that it appeared to consist of record execs from CRIA's member-companies.






  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Deep packet inspection soon to be $1.5 billion business
      Deep packet inspection (DPI) hardware continues to sell, with ABI Research now estimating that vendors will move $1.3 billion of the stuff in 2015, up from $207 million in 2008. According to Infonetics Research, DPI will be a $1.5 billion business—by 2013.

      What will DPI devices be used for? According to ABI, "optimizing" mobile networks will be one of the chief uses—and by "optimizing" they mean limiting or prioritizing traffic from data-hungry mobile devices.

      "Brute force won't solve this problem," said ABI's Aditya Kaul. "If you double the number of smartphone users, you can't just spend $10 billion to double the capacity of your infrastructure."


    • Armed police at Merseyside school after FBI warning
      The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation raised the alarm after picking up a threat posted on social networking site Facebook.

      A 19-year-old man was arrested and later released on bail.

      More than 1,000 students, some of them taking their GCSEs, were in the Birley Street school at the time of the alert.

      All entrances and exits were sealed while police investigated.

      'Leaving this world'

      The school said it was the FBI who raised the alarm after internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words.


    • Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns
      But the downside is that everyone who reads the posting will know the user isn't home. On top of that, some services, such as Foursquare, can be linked to Twitter feeds.








  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM







  • Copyrights

    • Massive P2P Conglomerate Backs New TV-Series
      The largest P2P conglomerate ever assembled is supporting today’s launch of the first episode of ‘Pioneer One.’ The show, made for and made possible by the P2P community, is actively promoted by uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV.


    • Geist: Opening up Canada’s digital economy strategy
      The federal government’s national consultation on a digital economy strategy is now past the half-way mark, having generated a somewhat tepid response so far.

      The consultation document itself may bear some of the blame for lack of buzz since the government asks many of the right questions, but lacks a clear vision of the principles that would define a Canadian digital strategy.






  • ACTA

    • WTO Report on TRIPS Council and ACTA
      The World Trade Organization has posted further information on last week's Council meeting where India, China, and other developing countries raised concerns with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.










Clip of the Day



Introduction to the Semantic Web (2006)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Problem is Not Technology, the Problem is Really Bad Things Sold or Imposed as "Tech" (Like a Religion Built Around Technology)
Don't hate technology, hate the corporations that abuse it to promote coercion, exploitation etc.
Resisting IBM and EPO Corruption
Rise up against EPO dictatorship next week
Where Slop Meets Ghostwriting: It's a False Analogy
It's a false analogy
Slop Technica: Ars Technica Seems Like Repeat Offender, a Part-Time Slopfarm
The culprits are repeat offenders, but the publisher will never admit this in public
Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
 
EPO "Productivity" Will Fall Off a Cliff If Examiners Stick to the European Patent Convention (EPC) and Follow the Real Rules
The EPO's "Cocaine Communication Manager" would hate to see the next "productivity" metrics
Links 17/02/2026: Why OpenClaw is Very Sleazy and Ars Technica Exposed as Hub of LLM Slop (Credibility Destroyed Overnight)
Links for the day
Benj Edwards (Ars Technica) Used Fake Articles to Promote Ponzi Scheme for Conde Nast and Its Client (Marketing)
What Ars Technica and Conde Nast do here helps defraud the general public
Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
If statCounter is to be trusted
Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026