Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 28/8/2010: Diaspora Coming Within Weeks, SFLC Now in India Too



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Open source scores
    Microsoft is laggard in everything except desktop operating systems, Office and gaming. Internet Explorer has not been able to pass the Acid 3 test which signifies that it is not standards-compliant.

    What Mr Scott would fear to accept publicly is the rise of the Ubuntu operating system and how the future release (Meerkat) is being adapted to netbooks (where Win 7 has not been ported). Mobile applications have been hammered and its newer version was greeted with a big yawn. It’s difficult to compare search engines in terms of content but Microsoft-funded agencies have been claiming Bing’s "meteoric rise". The fact is that Google does not need to shout about its offerings.

    There is a serious lack of choice from OEMs while buying new hardware. Mr Scott may not be aware that Linux has been ported to almost everything under sun. I run my entertainment servers attached to Wi-Fi that streams music and is connected to the web on 10-year-old legacy systems ported to Unix which does not need a reboot. Windows does not provide "support" to old hardware.


  • Applications



  • Distributions





Free Software/Open Source



  • PixelLight Open-Source Cross-Platform 3D Engine
    It’s built entirely in C++ and already runs on Windows and Linux, with test versions already running on mobile devices and web browsers. Definitely looks like something to keep an eye on.


  • Open-source 3D engine PixelLight released


  • Brazil goes all-digital with 2010 census
    Better known for its beaches and passion for soccer, Brazil also happens to be the world’s second-leading open source country (just behind the U.S.) and boasts an IT services sector that rivals China and India. The South American country is now putting its digital leadership on display by carrying out its first-ever paperless, all-digital population census.


  • Government saving with open source
    Achieving significant efficiency savings and more from IT is possible - Peter Dawes- Huish, CEO, LinuxIT, considers how open source based systems and outsourcing can provide the solution

    I attended a seminar the other day and I was amazed just how much misinformation there was around the adoption of open source based software and the services surrounding it. The reasons, the strategies, the options, the benefits it offers both the private and public sector today.

    I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because open source (OS), by its very nature with such a developer led resource is such a fast moving field, or those within the OS community and providers of Enterprise Open Source, like LinuxIT, just need to work harder at getting across the ability of OS to transform the management and performance of IT environments. Its ability to contribute towards IT innovation, interoperability, reliability, flexibility, return on investment and so on.


  • Web Browsers



  • SaaS



  • Oracle

    • The future of Solaris


      In 2005, Sun released the source code to Solaris, described then as the company’s crown jewel. Why do this? The simplest answer is that Solaris had been losing ground to an open source competitor in Linux. Losing ground was a symptom of economics. Students who had once been raised on Solaris were being inculcated with Linux knowlege. The combination of Linux and x86 were good enough and significantly cheaper; new companies for whom the default had once been Sun/Solaris/SPARC were instead building on x86/Linux. OpenSolaris along with x86 support were specifically intended to address this trend. Indeed, the codename for OpenSolaris was “tonic” — the tonic for Solaris’ problems.




  • CMS

    • Replacing SharePoint with Open Source CMSs
      Probably the most compelling reasons to deploy an open source solution instead are price and flexibility. The licensing costs of SharePoint, plus Windows Server, plus SQL Server and the rest of the bundle are not insignificant. If you’d prefer to avoid becoming too deeply entrenched in Microsoft-based solutions, you’ll find several open source alternatives — and three I personally recommend: Alfresco, MindTouch, and Drupal.

      Why those, and not some of the other open source CMSes? Alfresco and MindTouch are two of the most feature-compatible replacements for SharePoint. Drupal is not a direct replacement for all of SharePoint’s features, but handles many of the use cases for which SharePoint is popular. All three not only enjoy a strong user and developer community, but also have strong commercial support, making them much more suitable for enterprises that choose open source but still seek support and training services.


    • Open-source Diaspora set launch date
      Diaspora, an open-source social network describes itself as “privacy-aware, personally-controlled”, will be launched on 15 September, according to the developers. The project is considered as an alternative to Facebook, but many believe that it is difficult to challenge the world’s largest social network, which has 500 million users and is estimated to be worth $33bn currently. A team of four US students built up Diaspora trying to solve some of the problems appeared in Facebook, when it was criticised for being overly complex and confusing, as well as privacy concerns. “We want to put users back in control of what they share,” Max Salzberg, one of the founders said. Diaspora made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was in intense criticism.


    • Facebook alternative Diaspora eyes launch date


    • Elgg, the open source social networking CMS announced version 1.7.2
      A new version of the popular open source social networking CMS, Elgg has been released! 1.7.2 is primarily a bugfix release.




  • Business



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



  • Government



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Designing culture: The other community plumbing
      4. Don't be Tom Sawyer.

      Here stood the board fence which tom sawyer persuaded his gang to pay him for the privilege of whitewashing. Tom sat by and saw that it was well done.

      Tom Sawyer is interesting because Tom, by being a smooth talker, convinced everyone to do his work for him. Many companies approach their community strategies as having other people painting their fences. The popular term now is crowdsourcing. In this model, a company says "I have a lot of problems. Maybe I can convince a bunch of people to do my work for me." Sometimes it works, like Dell's IdeaStorm. But it works only for big, powerful brands. It doesn't work when a company asks for help, and everyone ignores them. And it doesn't work because as a company, you can't build a community around yourself.


    • Pharma's Future: Open-Source R&D
      The future of pharmaceutical R&D may lie in open-source research, with key data being made available to a number of people, including college students and university researchers, in an open and collaborative process. Open-source drug development would leverage an online community of computer users worldwide.


    • Open Hardware

      • Open Source: A Developing Robotics Industry
        The Menlo Park, Calif-based company, founded in 2006, develops open-source hardware and software for the robotics industry. Its robot PR2 (Personal Robot 2) is being sold as an example of what software developers can do with an open-source robotics platform.






  • Programming

    • Ruby on Rails 3.0 due this week
      Ruby on Rails 3.0, a major upgrade to the popular open source Web development framework, is due in a final release this week, the founder of the framework, David Heinemeier Hansson, said on Tuesday.






Leftovers

  • John Lennon's loo fetches €£9,500 at auction for Beatles fans


    A porcelain lavatory which John Lennon told a builder to use as a "plant pot" has fetched €£9,500 – nearly 10 times its guide price – at an auction today.

    The loo was used by the music legend when he lived at Tittenhurst Park in Berkshire between 1969 and 1972.


  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Walter Reed says it mishandled nuclear material
      The military's flagship hospital acknowledged Thursday it mishandled two packages of radioactive material last spring in an incident regulators said may have exposed staff and patients to elevated radiation levels.


    • MIT researchers unveil autonomous oil-absorbing robot
      The system, called Seaswarm, is a fleet of vehicles that may make cleaning up future oil spills both less expensive and more efficient than current skimming methods. MIT’s Senseable City Lab will unveil the first Seaswarm prototype at the Venice Biennale's Italian Pavilion on Saturday, August 28. The Venice Biennale is an international art, music and architecture festival whose current theme addresses how nanotechnology will change the way we live in 2050.








Clip of the Day



Richard M. Stallman Speech Patents Calgary Canada 2005



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Recent Techrights' Posts

Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
 
Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Google: Your Only Option is Google YouTube (Coming Soon: Mandatory DRM and Attestation?)
Digital Restrictions (DRM) to follow? Only for "approved" (attestation) browsers?
Mastodon Was Always Biased (Just Like Twitter After Abandoning Chronological and Neutral Timelines in Order to Become More Like Facebook)
So bury-brigading and click-farming control what people see
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to Only 0.4% of the Total in Geminispace
Geminispace does not need to outsource trust
The Munich-Based EPO is Still Using a Platform That Promotes the Far Right and Rehabilitates Nazism
Active Twitter account
Links 29/01/2025: Dismantling Public Health in the US, Air Busan Plane Up in Flames (South Korea's Air Disasters Streak)
Links for the day
Announcements and Administrivia
This week we're going out for two days in a row to celebrate an achievement that's very respectable
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Japan, GTD, and More
Links for the day
Sir, Yes, Sir. The Life of EPO Patent Examiners.
If working for the EPO makes it harder to sleep at night, take action
How the EPO Pressures Staff Into Minting More Monopolies (Patents), Even Illegal Ones That Harm Europe and Ultimately Dismantle the Rule of Law
insights into the pressure examiners are under
LLM Slop Machines Are Not a Win for "Open Source" and If They Get Cheaper, It's Even Worse
If some program that claims to be "Open Source" pollutes the Web with fake articles (Microsoft SPAM and fake "Linux" articles), whose win is it?
Links 29/01/2025: Data Privacy Day and Growing Tensions in Europe
Links for the day
Nazi Twitter (aka "X") Became a Troll Site That Lets People Buy a Blue Tick While Its Boss Actively Promotes Neonazi Politicians
the intellectual level of people who infest the Web through "Twitter" or "X"
This is Why They're So Afraid of Richard Stallman (He Tells People the Correct History)
Then they post about it to Microsoft's LinkedIn
Richard Stallman Speech in Bengaluru, "Silicon Valley of India"
62 years have passed since his "young nerd" days and he's still at it
Claim: Facebook Deletes Posts of IBM Red Hat Critics
As always, follow the money (advertisers)
Links 29/01/2025: Climate Crisis and "It’s time for the Xbox to fade away" (Microsoft Lose)
Links for the day
Links 29/01/2025: Buying Groceries During a Trade War, Political 'Retro'
Links for the day
More Illegal Patents at the EPO, Legality of Granted European Patents No Longer Matters to the Office
breaking the law for profit
Network Improvements Tomorrow
"Network maintenance" down in London
Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close
Articles About Free Speech at Facebook
'Facebook vs Linux' story is now receiving a lot more media coverage
We Were Right About stallmansupport.org Making an Error by Joining Social Control Media. mastodon.social Suspends stallmansupport.org.
From what we can guess, accounts can be banned by some oversensitive admin or a mob of users ("bury brigades")
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews Still LLM Slop and SPAM Composed by LLMs (It's Basically a Spamfarm Disguised as a News Site)
Only a fool would visit BetaNews in search of actual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 28, 2025
The EPO's Corruption, If It Remains Untackled, Helps the Far Right and Enemies of European Unity/Solidarity
Do not negotiate with evil
The Web, Including Wikipedia, Gets Filled With Lies About Bill Gates, Added by Bill Gates and His PR Team
Of course Wikipedia is funded by Gates
Facebook Banning Linux Sites (or People Who Link to Linux Sites) is Another Symptom of the Web's Demise
The state of media on the Web is really bad; Social Control Media amplifies the badness, as Facebook serves to show
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Neovim Telescope and Writing Less
Links for the day