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Links 1/7/2010: GNU/Linux as ‘Appliance’, Dell Backs Linux Security, GIMP 2.7.1 Released



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Who gives a fsck about a license?
    As someone who uses Linux I do not care what license it is under. I use it because it suits my computing style. I use it because it does what I want, how I want and in the manner that I want. The computer becomes an extension of me. I cannot achieve that with proprietary operating systems where I have to conform with how they think I should use my computer.


  • Want your files? Use the Force!
    You are a computer user who is fed up with Windows. You heard about the marvels of Linux, you were impressed when someone actually ran this Linux Distro-thing from a CD, and your eyes glittered upon seeing the multiple desktops, the Compiz/Kwin effects, and the quantity of programs included in the OS. So, you are sure that you want it. With conviction, you ask your friend to install Linux and, in the process, several strange questions begin to hit you as karate chops. The most memorable, without any doubt, is: -Do you want a dual boot?


  • The Linux Chronicles, Part 1
    Last Autumn I volunteered to review Windows 7. But in the following weeks, I found Linux to be preferable in many ways. This is pretty significant progress, and outside the 'community' has gone largely unnoticed, too - I haven't seen all that many Ubuntu stories in the Wall Street Journal. But what comes next is going to be pretty challenging for everyone involved – and that's what I'll look at here.


  • Who Should - or Shouldn't - Use Linux?
    Independence Day may come only once a year here in the land of stars and stripes, but the topic of independence is one that's never far from Linux bloggers' minds.




  • 'Appliance'

    • HP’s new Linux enabled emailable printer - questions and answers
      While Sydney has been cooling its heels with some of the coldest June weather on record, the temperature has been sizzling hot here in Hong Kong, both on the thermometer and in discussions over the true usefulness of a printer you can email to.


    • The Turing Appliance
      Oh someone got me started on how “Linux” (whatever that is) is just an appliance operating system, destined for gadgets or clouds and never any traction in the area of desktop or general computing.

      What?

      Lets just define that buzzword for a second, Appliance: a single function machine often involving electricity which is simple to operate. An appliance is a device which is very easy to measure the function and performance. It literally applies to one thing. Does it clean clothes acceptably? does it keep food cold enough to stay fresh but not so cold as to turn your milk into a giant ice-lolly?

      Multi-function machines are like multiple appliances bundled together, it washes, it dries and it leaves a minty pine fresh scent! Computers on the other hand are Turing machines, they’re mathematically speaking NOT appliances, they can run anything and do anything and are only limited by their hardware.




  • Desktop

    • Dell reiterates that Linux is safer than Windows
      It seems however they have not retracted similar statements from the "Linux 101" video on the same Ubuntu page. In the video, a speaker mentions the following comments about Ubuntu:

      "It's safe and secure. Over 95 percent of viruses, spyware and other types of malware are designed and targeted to attack Microsoft Windows. So, by definition, if you're not running Microsoft Windows and if you're running Linux, you just don't have to worry about malware and viruses and spyware."

      "There's a lot of reasons consumers like Linux. No. 1: it's a powerful operating system. It can do lots of things very fast."


    • 5 Little Linux Computers
      This month we take a look at a number of small form factor PCs that either come with Linux or would make a perfect fit for your favorite Linux distro. Each of the computers mentioned takes up very little space, but all deliver plenty of computing performance to handle everything from basic web browsing to watching videos. They make nice little firewalls, basic file/web/print servers, and quiet, low-power media servers. All of these units typically consume a fraction of the power of a conventional desktop and less than many traditional laptops.






  • Kernel Space

    • OCFS2: Unappreciated Linux File System
      It’s common knowledge that Linux has a fair number of file systems. Some of these are unappreciated and can be very useful outside their “comfort zone”. OCFS2 is a clustered file system initially contributed by Oracle and can be a great back-end file system for general, shared storage needs.




    • Graphics Stack

      • nouveau and Liking It
        So yesterday I felt the impulse to give nouveau a shot. For anyone who doesn't know, that's the project with the goal of creating a FOSS for Nvidia graphics cards. Well, as I was installing it -- and even before that, I really had my doubts. After reading endlessly how "2D is in a basic state but 3D is experimental", I predicted that I would have to quickly revert back to the binary blobs before I could get back to my coding work..










  • Applications





  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • KDE SC 4.4.5 released
      Several months ago I put together a REVIEW on PCLinuxOS 2010. Those of you who read it know that I love this distro and that showed in my review. I was thoroughly pleased and surprised with all of its features and found very little weak spots.

      [...]

      BRIGHT FUTURE AHEAD

      A while back I talked about KDE and how I thought it was growing more mature, appealing and an overall better desktop manager. That trend has been maintained since and there seems to be no stopping it. KDE SC is becoming and incredibly good and attractive desktop environment and the old claims that it was slow or resource eating are no longer founded. Moreover, the QT improvements easily translate into KDE and the end result is a better performing and functional product... Can't wait for KDE 4.5!!


    • KDE Software Compilation 4.4.5 Released: Codename 'Ceilidh'
      KDE Community Ships Fifth Translation and Service Release of the 4.4 Free Desktop, Containing Numerous Bugfixes and Translation Updates

      June 30th, 2010. Today, KDE has released a new version of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). This is expected to be the final bugfix and translation update to KDE SC 4.4. KDE SC 4.4.5 is a recommended update for everyone running KDE SC 4.4.4 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Users around the world will appreciate that KDE SC 4.4.5 multi-language support is more complete. KDE SC 4 is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come.


    • Gwenview in KDE SC 4.5
      As usual, I have been busy with too many projects during KDE SC 4.5 development cycle, so I am afraid the new Gwenview does not feature any ground-breaking changes. Still I managed to fix some annoying bugs and integrated a few nice features.


    • An evening with KDE 4.5 on Fedora 13
      I’ve not actually looked at the official feature list of the new KDE release because I wanted to give a use case review rather than just reeling off a list of new features. In conclusion, KDE 4.5 seems like a great release, indeed the best yet if the last few issues are successfully ironed out (which I’m sure they will be). The best reason for upgrading will be the speed increase, which I’m still really impressed with and the visual improvements are also a welcome feature.


    • K3b 2.0 burner software with Blu-ray support arrives
      The K3b development team has released version 2.0 of its CD and DVD creator for Linux. With this version, the developers have almost fully ported the popular burner software to KDE 4 by, for example, using Solid for hardware detection.






  • Distributions

    • 12 of the most interesting, unusual and useful Linux distros
      One of the benefits of open source software that many people are most familiar with is that it's free to download. This means you can grab great applications — such as Mozilla's Firefox Web browser, the OpenOffice.org office suite or the GIMP photo editing program — without paying a cent. However, the other major benefit of truly open source software (some "open source" software licences are more restrictive than others) is that you're allowed to modify a program and redistribute your altered version so other people can enjoy it.




    • PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva's Future Rosy or Rose Colored?
        Mandriva 2010, released last fall, was one of the best releases Mandriva had achieved in some time and many users were looking forward to the updates and improvements to come in 2010.1. Some find little comfort from Laprévote's words during this time while Mandriva is "reinventing itself." Others are guardedly hopeful. Whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, the storm is far from over for current Mandriva customers and users.








    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta 2 Now Available
        Customer and partner testing of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta is in full swing, and we have been very pleased with the strong positive feedback that we have received from our testing community. We are on track to deliver a final product that we expect will meet customer needs for years to come. The first Beta was released in April, and incorporated a wide range of new and upgraded features. Today we have released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta 2, which provides an updated installer, additional new technologies and resolutions to many of the issues that were reported in the initial Beta.




      • Fedora

        • As A Feature, Fedora 14 May Actually Ship On Time
          Red Hat's John Poelstra who is the Program Manager for Fedora and its "feature wrangler" has proposed an interesting feature today for Fedora 14: to actually ship it on time. The goal would be to not only ship Fedora 14 final according to their release schedule, but the alpha and beta releases too.


        • accentuate the positive
          There has been a fair bit of discussion in the past in the Fedora community about how to deal with people who are projecting a community that some don’t find welcoming enough or are sending out negative energy (especially to newcomers) or are just creating a community thats not pleasant to be working in.










    • Debian Family

      • Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 updated
        The Debian project is pleased to announce the fifth update of its stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (codename "lenny"). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustment to serious problems.


      • Debian Opens "Front Desk" for Derivatives
        Many Linux projects use Debian Linux as their code base for developing their distributions. Perhaps as many as 120 distributions are based on Debian and some include SimplyMepis, sidux, KNOPPIX, Elive, and Parsix. Perhaps the most widely known and used is Ubuntu. Ubuntu receives negative comments because many feel its developers don't contribute back upstream.




      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Pictures of Ubuntu: Linux's best photo shots at Windows and Mac
          As for organizing your photos in Linux, the options are not quite so stellar. In the Windows and Mac world, freebie photo apps - like Google's Picasa or Apple's iPhoto - are robust tools that support basic editing and sophisticated organizing options like geotagging and facial recognition, as well as tools to automatically upload your images to the web.


        • Help wanted: Testing programs that use the notification area
          Ubuntu’s own Kees Cook recently ran a couple of massive searches through the source code of the Ubuntu archive, finding the telltale code where a program adds a notification area item. (That’s one of the benefits of most of Ubuntu’s software being open source.)

          The next step is where we’d like your help. We now have a list of dozens of programs that use the notification area. What we need now is a description of how each of them use it. What does the notification area item do when you click it, if anything? If the item has a menu, what does the menu contain? Are there any Preferences items, menu bar items, or other places referring to the “Notification area” or the “tray”? If so, where are they? Once we know these things, we can make proposals on how to fix them.


        • Daily 5: Five Wallpaper picks vying to make it into Ubuntu 10.10




        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 9 Isadora - You betrayed me, dear!
            Linux Mint is a very popular, Ubuntu-based Linux distribution. It's Ubuntu with extra polish and more features for new and less experienced people, making it friendly and usable out of the box. For me, the general sentiment has always run true. Mint has shown good behavior and never fell short of the expectations. Funny though, for an unknown, cosmic reason, I have always tested the even-numbered Mint releases, Daryna, Felicia, Helena. Today, I'll break the rule and have a go at Mint 9, codename Isadora.

            [...]

            Two laptops: T60p, with ATI card, 32-bit dual core, 2GB RAM, RD510, with Nvidia 9600GS, 64-bit dual core, 4GB RAM. On the menu: live CD session, Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, web camera, multimedia, installation, applications, package manager, Compiz, performance, memory usage, suspend & hibernate, problems, and more.
















  • Devices/Embedded

    • Bubba Two WiFi review
      Verdict: 5/5 Servers are not the sexiest hardware category, but the Bubba Two is truly exciting. It’s everything a home/small-business server should be: simple to use, easy to maintain and chock-full of genuinely useful features. If you are looking for a server for your home or business network, get Bubba Two.




    • Nokia/MeeGo

      • Meego's sexy smartphone UI goes on display
        Curious about what the upcoming Meego OS will look like on a smartphone? Well, wonder no more! A handful of images have been posted on the official website for all to see. Above are the home screen, launcher, and task switcher interface (from left to right).






    • Android

      • Symbian-Guru.com Is Over
        As of today, I will no longer be updating Symbian-Guru.com, and will be purchasing an Android-powered smartphone – my new Nexus One should arrive tomorrow. I’ve been a Nokia fanboy since 1999, and a Symbian fanboy since I got my Nokia 6620 in summer of 2004. Since then, I’ve personally owned 10+ different Symbian-powered smartphones, and have reviewed nearly every Symbian-powered smartphone that’s been released in the past 3 years or so. I’ve tried to use all of Nokia’s various products and services to the best of my ability, and I just can’t do it anymore.








    • Tablets

      • Cisco announces Android and Ubuntu-based tablets
        Networking specialist Cisco has announced a new business tablet, called "Cius", that runs Google's open source Android mobile operating system. According to the Cisco, the Cius is "a first-of-its-kind mobile collaboration business tablet" and is HD video (720p at 30 frames per second) ready.












Free Software/Open Source

  • Let the open source way take you outside your comfort zone
    Many contributors have found this investment in boundary spanning has paid off. My observation? When things are done the open source way, this kind of success story is common.


  • An OS for Personal Computing
    GNU/Linux has lots of features for the desktop and the server side. However, there are problems with Linux-based operating systems. Being a monolithic kernel, people often find the system becomes unresponsive when using a GNU/Linux system. Another major problem, especially for new users, is choosing between various distributions. They end up installing a distribution that has more apps and services than they actually need (or that their hardware can support) for their day to day use, which also serves to slow down their systems.

    This article introduces you to an operating system called Haiku, which serves as a good starting point for aspiring students and those interested in hacking on operating systems.




  • Web Browsers

    • The New, Need-Driven Browser Choice Model
      The new need-based model for choosing browsers has come about through incremental changes that have been going on for years. For one thing, many more people are using web applications as opposed to the local-only apps that dominated the scene for years. If you live in web applications all day, you're very likely to get a big efficiency boost from top Javascript performance. Javascript is central to how many web applications work, and Google Chrome, in particular has been acing most Javascript benchmark tests for a long time now.




    • Mozilla

      • IBM names Firefox its default browser
        Firefox has become the default browser for nearly 400,000 IBM employees, a big coup for the open-source project during a time of increasing browser competition.

        "All IBM employees will be asked to use it as their default browser," Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux at IBM's Software Group, said in a blog post Thursday. "Firefox is enterprise-ready, and we're ready to adopt it for our enterprise."


      • IBM declares undying love for Mozilla's Firefox


      • Saying it out loud: IBM is moving to Firefox as its default browser
        Firefox has been around for years, of course. Today we already have thousands of employees using it on Linux, Mac, and Windows laptops and desktops, but we’re going to be adding thousands more users to the rolls.










  • Oracle



    • Better multimedia support for OpenOffice.org on Unix systems
      Playing back audio and video content on Unix system was and is still a matter of choices.

      On the one hand, this is a good thing for the user. It offers a wide range of frameworks that best suit his/her needs. But on the other hand, this also brings a developer of a multi platform, general purpose Office productivity suite like OpenOffice.org (OOo) into the situation to make a choice. The choice needs to be made just to ensure that we don't have to provide a different backend for all multimedia frameworks that already exist. This just doesn't work for resource reasons. So, a framework needs to be chosen that meets the needs of a group of users as large as possible.

      [...]

      By choosing GStreamer as our favorite framework for an up to date multimedia backend, we hope to serve as much Linux and Solaris OpenOffice.org customers as best as possible. Creating this backend is also our answer to a lot of feedback we received from SOHO as well as enterprise customers in the past. Please have fun using this new multimedia solution and don't hesitate to give us feedback.


    • Well, It Looks Like Oracle Fails At OpenSolaris In 1H
      Once upon a time the successor to OpenSolaris 2009.06 was supposed to be OpenSolaris 2010.02 and then it became OpenSolaris 2010.03 with a release date in March and then who knows what happened. There hasn't been an update to the OpenSolaris operating system now in a year nor has there been any communication at all to developers or end-users by Oracle about their plans after taking over Sun Microsystems. All indications were that Oracle would at least deliver an OpenSolaris update in 2010'1H, but it looks like that won't happen.


    • Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice
      Typing documents, use of spreadsheets and slideshows are essential tools in the life of almost every professional. The largest of the problems found in Microsoft Office according to the vast majority of users is its price, quite high in the opinion of many. This obligation on having to pay for an Office application suite has stimulated the development of OpenOffice, completely free and open source. Therefore, in addition to the constant improvement in its development, free version divides increasingly user’s opinion about who is the best. We put these two opponents in the ring and help you choose the champion!

      [...]

      We have pointed out some of the biggest arguments used by advocates of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice, in a battle in which by far the biggest winner is you. Competition creates the need for improvements and innovations in smaller timeframes, always with the user’s preference in focus. Do you have something to add about the applications mentioned? Be sure to participate and agitate for further dispute!






  • SUN

    • Simon Phipps: An Open Source Evangelist Forges On
      Simon Phipps is a man with a mission… Well, a new mission. The former open source evangelist for Sun Microsystems has always been kind of missiony. His new cause: proving that "open source continuity" is a reality. His vehicle for that mission: ForgeRock, a company formed by erstwhile Sun execs to provide "reliable stewardship" for OpenSSO, an open-source access management and federation server platform.

      OpenSSO was a Sun-sponsored open-source project, the stewardship of which went to Oracle when it was acquired. But Big O has shown little interest in the technology. Earlier this year, the company declared that OpenSSO was "not strategic," and later removed OpenSSO Express as a download.

      Enter ForgeRock, which was founded in February by Lasse Andresen, former CTO of Sun's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, Herman Svoren, former Sun Sales exec (EMEA). Phipps joined the company in May.




  • Open Core

    • What lies beyond the open core debate?
      Simon Phipps rose to the challenge, in doing so also countering some recent statements in favor of the open core approach from Marten Mickos. While Simon makes some very valid points, and Compiere’s strategy was undeniably open core, it does not necessarily follow that all open core strategies are doomed to fail (as Jorg himself stated “execution is everything”).


    • Open Source Needs To Have An Unfair Advantage To Succeed
      Simon has some great points in his posting yesterday, reminding us all that the non-open features or services a company provides to its customers may lead to lock-in and reduction of freedoms for the customer. He also comments that open core businesses "stand to benefit massively" from this. It seems that he is arguing that this is a bad thing. My main point is the opposite: by having vendors in the open source space that benefit massively, we will have a stronger world of free and open source software (FOSS).

      To have many companies that benefit massively in the open source space, I believe we have to practice many different business models. What works for Red Hat may not work for MySQL and what works for MySQL may not work for MuleSoft, and so on. A number of open source companies are implementing so called phone home features and other essential benefits of the product that are predicated on an online connection to the vendor's web service. Because a web service is a service and not a piece of software that gets distributed, many FOSS enthusiasts forget that those services are from all practical standpoints as closed as closed source code.






  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC/Freedom

    • Being Free - why it matters
      So pragmatism vs idealism is wrong. You need pragmatism if you want your ideal world, and by only idealism you get - fairly litte. And the FSF has done plenty of pragmatic things, which is why they made a huge difference. The reason I mentioned them is that lately, some actions seem a bit too extreme to me... But there are ppl out there in 'our world' who are FAR more extreme, and hindering FOSS adoption that way. Either by opposing things, stopping others who're doing great, or just being negative and thus giving a bad impression to the outside world.






  • Project Releases

    • GIMP 2.7.1 released
      Shortly after the release of the latest stable version 2.6.9 a new development version 2.7.1 is announced. It’s another step to the next major release 2.8. Good to have a look but be careful since it might be unstable :)






  • Openness/Sharing

    • Economics of Abundance Workshop Notes
      I opened the workshop by introducing the participants to the idea that our present economy is based on the generation of scarcity, and talking about how we can promote individual freedom, social equity, and environmental sustainability by fostering abundance: the condition when all people, now and in the future, are enabled to live life as art. For an explanation of these ideas, please see my earlier contribution to Shareable here.

      [...]

      The summaries above do not reflect the entire discussions in the groups, which were wide-ranging and very animated! Here are a few comments from participants:

      "It was very nice to meet you and everyone else last night. I really enjoyed the evening, our discussions, and the new thoughts that came out of them." -Kelci. M Kelci.

      "I felt very comfortable in the group and appreciate the opportunities I had to exchange thoughts with everyone. I hope that one day you awaken, refreshed from good sleep, to a world where the scarcity of scarcity enriches everyone. May all of the best things happen from us." -Brandon Nash

      "The workshop helped me to better understand how my experiences are constrained and enabled by collective arrangements. This is a rare and helpful perspective. It raises awareness about how our world works and uncovers opportunities for positive change." -Neal Gorenflo


    • Guidelines for Group Collaboration and Emergence
      I’m in the middle of a taking a course on Virtual Learning Environments (syllabus here), and reading a few chapters from Adaptive Software Development by Highsmith. It approaches the team-building and collaboration process from the perspective of complex adaptive systems theory, and contains some interesting insights in evolutionary development and creating environments where emergence can occur. I’ve created a summary of a chapter that I’d like to share, as I think it can be valuable for many of us, and specifically for the community of practitioners around the junto concept.




    • Open Data

      • European Officials Embrace Open Data Policy for GMES Satellites
        The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Parliament have endorsed the idea of free and open access to data from Europe’s future generation of Sentinel Earth observation satellites, with the possible exception of imagery with a ground resolution sharper than 10 meters, European government officials said.








  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Video on the Web: Where Are We Now?
      Back in January 2009, I wrote a post on opening video on the web. At the time, the Mozilla Foundation had just invested $100,000 in the Wikimedia Foundation to use Theora for videos on their sites.








Leftovers

  • {Interoperability} FOSS-related opportunities and priorities
    The potential benefits of a European IT interoperability law are huge. Let's try to achieve as much as feasible. Politics is the art of the possible, and progress has to be made one step at a time. I don't see any other legislative idea in Europe (and this one would certainly have repercussions around the globe) that offers such an attractive combination of being potentially helpful and politically achievable in the near to mid term.


  • Watchdog wants investigation of White House e-mails
    A liberal watchdog has called for an investigation into whether White House employees are using personal e-mail accounts to contact lobbyists in violation of federal law.




  • Science







  • Security/Aggression







  • Finance







  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • ASCAP: John Phillip Sousa Incarnate
      Sometimes you run across something so discouraging you want to just hang your head. That happened today as I received a letter from the folks at Creative Commons stating that The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), one of the groups that supposedly represents artists by licensing their music and paying the artists royalties, had sent out letters to their 380,000 members asking for donations to fight against the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge and Creative Commons (CC). These groups were portrayed as being “against the interests of music creators”.








  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • “Your Freedom” is a failure. How to make it better
      Today the Government launched a new website called “Your Freedom” – designed for members of the public to suggest repeals or modifications of laws they find restrictive or bureaucratic. The name’s a little misguided from the start – after all, laws can be used to guarantee and enforce freedoms as well as restrict them, so merely repealing a law does not necessarily entail “freedom”. But let’s let that pass.


    • With World Watching, Wikileaks Falls Into Disrepair
      Would-be whistle-blowers hoping to leak documents to Wikileaks face a potentially frustrating surprise. Wikileaks’ submission process, which had been degraded for months, completely collapsed more than two weeks ago and remains offline, in a little-noted breakdown at the world’s most prominent secret-spilling website.


    • DMCA Fail: The 5 Dumbest Takedown Notices


    • Finns get a right to broadband – can we repeal the Digital Economy Act?
      Finns now have the legal right to broadband access, as a law passed in October comes into force today. Under the law, telecomms providers are obliged to offer always-on high-speed internet connections to all of the country's 5.3 million citizens, with a minimum speed of at least 1 megabit per second.


    • Google Says Web Searches Are Partly Blocked in China
      Google Inc. said that its Web search service in mainland China was partially blocked Wednesday, less than two days after the company announced changes aimed at keeping its Internet operating license in the country.

      The company said the blockage appeared to affect only search queries generated by mainland China users of the company's Google Suggest function, which automatically recommends search queries based on the first few letters a user types into the search box.






  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Digital rights are crushing open source Internet TV
      EVERYTHING IS TELLY, the smiling participants in an Intel video told the audience but in fact digital rights management (DRM) is locking progress into, well, your telly.

      At Chipzilla's 30 June future of television event the CTO of the BBC led second generation Iplayer Project Canvas, Anthony Rose, told the audience that the TV programme UI to end all UIs will be set-top box only because of DRM. Canvas is described as an open platform using common standards through which viewers will access both free and pay to view programming.








  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • EFF Comments on the ASCAP Letter
      Ever since the story broke that ASCAP was accusing organizations like Creative Commons, EFF and Public Knowledge, of undermining copyright, it set off a firestorm both in creative circles, copyright observation circles and even amongst ASCAP members. Now, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has weighed in.


    • Copyrights

      • Judge "rejected all of the EFF's arguments" on P2P cases
        Can a law firm sue up to 5,000 accused P2P users from across the US at once, and in a single DC court? For now, at least, it can.

        In a 45-minute hearing yesterday before federal judge Rosemary Collyer of the Washington, DC District Court, lawyers from the ACLU, EFF, and Time Warner Cable squared off with Thomas Dunlap of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, the firm behind the "US Copyright Group."




    • ACTA

      • ACTA calls to urgently rethink patents and copyright (open letter)
        Whatever the final text will be after the next negotiation rounds, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will remain an illegitimate agreement, by its elaboration process (beyond any democratic control) as well as its content (further strengthening of an outdated set of legislation). Access to medicine in the poorest countries and protection of citizens' fundamental rights in their usage of Internet and digital technologies are too crucial issues to be left out to the hazards of closed-doors negotiations.












Clip of the Day



CLUG Talk 13 October 2009 - Splunk (2009)

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Rewards and compensation for staff have long fallen, resulting in many experienced colleagues leaving and causing further declines in quality and compliance
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: NNCP, Declutter the Web, Cost of Community
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Supermicro Plummets 33%, Block and Dropbox Mass Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 31/10/2024: Environmental Anxiety, Profound Changes in Hardware Market
Links for the day
Links 30/10/2024: TSMC Concerns and North Koreans in Ukraine War
Links for the day
Facebook is for Zombies
Social control media is for fools
Microsoft Now Has $235,290,000,000 in Liabilities, They Grow Over Time in Spite of Mass Layoffs (So Expect More Layoffs)
expect more mass layoffs
Links 31/10/2024: DST Woes, War Updates, Amazon RTO Backlash
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/10/2024: Attention Economy and Gemlogs
Links for the day
Happy Halloween
October is nearly over
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 30, 2024
For the Record: Linux is Controlled by the United States of America
"This is going to make many question the openness and inclusivity of the work done by Linux Foundation"
Microsoft: XBox Hardware Revenues Down About 30% (Ignore the Buzzwords and Activision Activity Dressed Up as "XBox")
For context, in a previous quarter XBox hardware sales were down by about 50%
Cooking the Books With "Cloud" And "AI" Was Not Enough to Fool Microsoft Investors
"Microsoft Shares Drop on Disappointing Azure Growth Forecast"