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Links 4/8/2010: MeeGo 'Leak', GNU/Linux Skills High in Demand



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source





  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Google Search in Firefox Bar Alone Is Bigger Than Bing, Yahoo; Bidding War Coming Soon
        That little search bar at the top right of your Firefox browser is driving 9.18% of searches, according to research by advertising network Chitika, Inc.

        That's a huge chunk in a market where Google handles more than 80% of searches and its competitors Bing and Yahoo! handle just 8.56% and 6.69%, respectively - suggesting a huge bidding war may be brewing for November 2011 when Google's contract with Mozilla is up.



      • Fresh Candy for Firefox: Tab Candy Makes Tabs Managable
        I’m writing this column about Tab Candy while I also have my Webmail open, Twitter and Identi.ca, a page showing flight information and travel plans, and the Linux Magazine backend open. That’s a light load, because I’m traveling. In my home office I usually work on three or four writing projects at a time, plus social media sites, mail, and so on.












  • SaaS







Leftovers





  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Ecuador pledges no oil drilling in Amazon reserve
      Ecuador has agreed to refrain from drilling for oil in a pristine Amazon rainforest reserve in return for up to $3.6bn (€£2.26bn) in payments from rich countries.

      Under a pioneering agreement signed with the United Nations, the oilfields under the Yasuni reserve will remain untapped for at least a decade.

      The money is about half of what Ecuador would make by selling the oil.








  • Finance

    • Beyond State Capitalism
      Although peopleʼs rights to their commons are often recognized and validated in smaller communities, scaling these lessons to the global level will require a new dimension of popular legitimacy and authority. The world community is rapidly evolving a sense of social interconnectivity, shared responsibility and global citizenship, yet the sovereign rights of people to the global commons have not been fully articulated. In declaring our planetary rights for these commons, we shall be confronting many decisive questions:

      (1) Are modern societies prepared to create a framework in which the incentives behind production and governance are not private capital and debt-based growth, but human solidarity, quality of life and ecological sustainability?

      (2) How soon — and how peacefully — will the subsystems of the Market State integrate their structures of value-creation and sovereign governance with the greater biophysical system of ecological and social interdependence?

      (3) Can the global public organize effectively as a third power to develop checks and balances on the private and public sectors and establish the resource sovereignty and preservation value needed for a commons economy?








  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • DRM and Other Forces Overriding the Three Laws of Robotics


      Globally, consumer rights and even human rights are eroding as some vendors infect their consumer electronics with Digital Restrictions Management mechanisms and as DMCA -- the law that tries to protect DRM -- is being secretly negotiated by a few strong countries and to be forced upon the rest of the world as treaties (ACTA 1, 2). These strong forces are overriding the three laws of robotics (if there ever will be at all) with something else.

      As Asimov pictures it, a robot should give highest priority to (L1) protecting human beings (L2) obeying human orders (L3) protecting itself, in that order, above anything else. Any robot in Asimov's Sci-Fi is equipped with a positronic brain that will go nuts, so to speak, if it ever breaks these laws. This is to a society heavily dependent on robots what a fuse is to an electronic device. Imagine the threat one faces living in a world full of robots without these laws.








  • Intellectual Monopolies





    • Copyrights





      • Digital Economy (UK)

        • A Guide to the Digital Economy Act - Part 5
          Summary

          * The measures on copyright infringement will not come into effect until January 2011 at the earliest. * All these measures will involve (initially) is sending letter to those accused of infringing. * ISPs are under no obligation to monitor their subscribers' Internet use. * Technical measures cannot come into force until further consultation has been done and the regulations have been approved by Parliament. * It is up to the copyright owner to prove the infringement happened and an IP address was used. * It is up the the accused to prove that they did not commit the infringement if "their" IP address was allegedly used. * The government could put in place a method whereby websites and content could be blocked by ISPs due to alleged copyright infringement.
















Clip of the Day



Android Multi-Touch Pinch-To-Zoom



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