Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 24/2/2011: Firefox 4 Days Away, Assange Loses Case, PayPal Cuts Service to Manning





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Desktop training harder than you'd think
    Curiously, it may be Web 2.0 that gets around this problem. As web apps get more complex, you won't need as many apps at the local OS level. You'll just need a browser and whatever platform underneath. That's the space Linux will ultimately live in, and training--at least at the OS level--may be a moot point.

    But will it be what we could call "desktop Linux"? That remains to be seen.


  • Fun with Linux: How to wipe out Windows to install Ubuntu, then decorate with a penguin
    If you've got some non-geek friends and relatives that need to be convinced to give Linux a try, here's a how-to video to help. It will walk them through how to install Ubuntu to any Windows machine, to set up the fun stuff like the music store and using a dual-monitor setup -- and even how to uninstall and go back to Windows (though, who would do that?). Once you've made them a convert, they can print out and enjoy this cute mascot penguin cut-out, too, courtesy of Aberdeen.


  • A Miniature Linux Office Solution (Mini ITX)
    In this case I chose Mandriva as it is my personal favorite and the end-user needs a relatively easy to use and configure Linux distribution.


  • Leaving Flickr Behind: Why You Should Host Your Own Photos and Why Linux Makes It so Damn Easy
    I’ve left Flickr. After many years as a loyal Flickr user, I decided not to extend my pro account and leave the popular photo sharing service altogether. Why? For starters, I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer to a rather simple question: What would happen if Flickr fails? It may be difficult to imagine that Flickr would disappear, but remember that Flickr is just a business — and not a profitable one at that. And even if Yahoo! will continue supporting Flickr, what will happen if I wake up one morning and discover that my account has been deleted without any prior warning? Not that it has never happened to anyone before.


  • Desktop

    • Switching to Ubuntu 10.04 from Windows XP
      I’ve been a long-time Windows fan like the vast majority of computer users, having been introduced to the world of computers through the Microsoft marvel. But with the growing popularity of Linux flavors, aren’t open source operating systems worth giving a try?

      Ubuntu 10.04 is among the plethora of Linux distributions that you can choose from, touted to be very user-friendly and robust, especially the 32-bit version. It brings along a wave of benefits to those embarking on Operation Open Source. It’s fast and mostly reliable – it will help you out by suggesting commands to run if you’re missing an application. The installation is quick, and the boot up and shutdown are blazing fast. And importantly, like most Linux flavors, it provides a hostile environment for viruses to survive.




  • Server

    • Goodbye MS Exchange: Good Linux Email Servers
      Don't pay top dollar for Microsoft lard when you can get the best mail servers for free. The Linux world is full of great servers, both free and with commercial support options.




  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space

    • Embedded Linux file system rev'd for performance
      Datalight released a new version of its Reliance Nitro file system aimed at embedded Linux devices. Reliance Nitro SDK for Linux 2.0 offers improved read and write performance, fast boot times, solid reliability, and a wide assortment of validation and testing tools, says the company.

      The Reliance Nitro SDK for Linux 2.0 is the latest in a number of Linux-compatible file system products from Datalight, including the Datalight Flash File System announced in early 2008. That product combined the Linux version of the Reliance file system with DataLight's FlashFX Pro flash media manager and block device driver, an earlier version of the FlashFX Tera software mentioned farther below.




  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • digiKam Tricks 2.0 Released
        Readers who already purchased the book will receive the new version free of charge. If you haven’t received your copy, please send me your order confirmation as proof of purchase to dmpop@linux.com and I’ll email you the latest version of the book.


      • How to Remotely Control KTorrent
        The KTorrent web interface is very basic but gets the job done. First, open your web browser, go to the IP address or hostname of the computer running KTorrent, and add the port number to the end. For example:




    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3 Almost Ready, or is It
        GNOME 3 Shell is nearing its projected released date and development snapshots have been coming from openSUSE and Fedora. GNOME Shell 2.91.6 was released today with lots of listed improvements. But not everyone is thrilled.






  • Distributions



    • Bayanihan 5 Kalumbata - A glimpse into the past


      Bayanihan is somewhere between Pardus and CentOS 5.X, when it comes to being easy to configure and use. It's modern and archaic at the same time, a unique quality. Combined with some weird bugs and a strange choice of programs and features, Bayanihan manages to be neither the old, nostalgia-infused distro with all the functionality you need nor the ultra-modern, bleeding-edge vessel of technology adorned with retro looks and programs.

      As such, Bayanihan invalidates itself as an alternative to popular distributions you see in the top ten list on DistroWatch. Kalumbata is a weird mix of old and new that caters to no one really. I can appreciate the effort and the noble cause, but not the outcome.

      With regional-only repository, a legacy palette of programs, plus some technical voodoo difficulties with hardware and software, Bayanihan has all the relevancy of a typical 2007 distribution. Hardly a competition in the modern arena of Linux distributions.

      If you ask me, honestly, Bayanihan is a no go. It's a thing of the past. Sweet and cuddly, KDE 3.5 is a nice touch, the programs might make you shed a tear of sorrowful joy, but overall, it's outdated. There's no critical incentive you should use it, for either technical or ideological reasons. Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, PCLinuxOS, a bunch of others, they are all several years ahead.

      So it seems there is a good reason why you don't see Bayanihan in the spotlight. It's a dying star of a different era. And while it may serve you well and true, it's time to you moved on to younger game.


    • Red Hat Family



      • Fedora

        • Beyond FUDCon with Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Program Manager
          Robyn Bergeron: I've been a Linux user for a long time, though it hasn't always been my primary OS. I remember running Slackware back in 1995, 1996, and was an on-again, off-again tinkerer through the early 2000s. My first real involvement with contributing to F/LOSS was a few years ago, when I volunteered to help out with editing papers and compiling the proceedings for the Ottawa Linux Symposium, which I did for two years before becoming involved with Fedora.






    • Debian Family



      • A response to DistroWatch "Introducing Debian GNU/Linux 6.0"
        I'm quite pleased that Mr. Smith took the time to give Debian 6.0 a real workout before writing his review. And I even understand his reservations about " by being so general, so universal, I felt Squeeze didn't excel at anything."

        Maybe, Squeeze excels at being general and universal?


      • Ubuntu: there was never any love to start with
        It's funny that seven years and a bit after Ubuntu came to life in October 2004, people still write about the project in a dreamy wide-eyed way, even mentioning the word "love" in doing so. Naive is the description that immediately springs to mind.

        Or is it that such people are willing to use any, and every, means to attack Shuttleworth simply because they don't like him? Separating the personal from the professional has always been a major problem for those who claim to be part of the FOSS community. Especially when marketing droids are trying to pose as journalists.

        Shuttleworth is a shrewd businessman; Canonical is registered in a known tax haven, the Isle of Man. He made a few hundred million dollars by first nurturing, then building up, and finally selling a very successful business, Thawte.


      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • An Interview with Jane Silber
          I’m Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical. I live in London and hold dual American/British citizenship. I spell like a Brit, speak like an American, and wave my hands about like an Italian. I grew up In Springfield, Illinois and have lived in Washington DC, Nashville, and Yokohama, Japan. I moved to the UK in 2002. My background includes jobs in start-ups and large companies, in domains ranging from health risk appraisal to artificial intelligence to military command and control. I hold degrees in Math/Computer Science from Haverford College, Management of Technology from Vanderbilt University, and an MBA from Oxford University. Outside of work I enjoy holiday travel, live performances, engrossing books, good food, witty people, and new experiences.


        • Loving Ubuntu Linux
          A short list would include Debian’s continued jealousy getting in the way of co-operation between the closely related Linux distributions; countless accusations that Canonical/Ubuntu is all about promoting Ubuntu and not Linux; and that Ubuntu doesn’t contribute its fair share to the Linux kernel and other up-stream open-source programs.

          But this, this is all old news. Ubuntu has long endured these criticisms. So have the other Linux distributions.


        • Over 50 Ubuntu Based Distributions – Wow!
          Ok so I wanted to know more about the distributions that were based on Ubuntu and the Wikipedia list is pretty long.


        • First look at Ubuntu "Natty" and the state of Unity
          Though buggy and incomplete, the implementation of Unity as it stands now looks interesting. It's unlikely to appeal to GNOME 2.x stalwarts, but it's unclear whether GNOME 3.0 will either. It's an interface that may appeal to non-Linux users, if Canonical can find hardware partners to ship it pre-installed.








  • Devices/Embedded

    • OSADL preps for real-time Linux conference, launches book series
      OSADL (Open Source Automation Development Lab) is calling for papers for its 13th RealTime Linux Workshop (RTLWS13) in Prague on Oct. 20-22. Also announced were an "OSADL Academic Works" book series -- starting with Roland Kammerer's "Linux in Safety-Critical Applications" -- and two new academic partners, ZHAW's InES lab in Winterthur, Switzerland, and the RealTime Systems Laboratory (RETIS) in Pisa, Italy.






Free Software/Open Source



  • Open Source with the Home Office and the British Computing Society
    The System Integrators are perfectly happy to work with Open Source. The customer just has to ask for it. All the SIs on the panel said this. They already provide Open Source solutions to other countries, they already use Open Source software where they are providing just a service (cuts their costs and gives them more control). They just pitch proprietary stuff at procurement contracts because that is what wins them here.


  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome

      • Chrome alone?
        One of the most interesting projects announced last year, for my money at least, was Google Chrome OS. This was, as you probably know, Google’s signal of intent that it was going head first into the operating system market, having found a niche in which it figured it could make an impact.

        Its thinking was smart, too. It targeted the then burgeoning netbook market, coming up with a fast, quick-booting operating system that stored everything you needed in the cloud. When it was first demonstrated, and Google showed a portable machine booting to a working desktop in under ten seconds, I wanted to get cracking with the OS right there and then.




    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4 beta 12 now expected Monday or Tuesday
        Developers continue to fire away on new and existing bugs before issuing the first Firefox 4 Release Candidate.


      • Update: Firefox update will patch CSRF bug, Mozilla says
        Mozilla said late Wednesday that it will ship security updates to Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 next week that will include a patch for a bug that can be exploited using a malicious Adobe Flash file.

        (Editor's note: An earlier version of this story, published before Mozilla responded to a request for comment, said company meeting notes suggested that the Firefox security updates would not include the patch.)

        Firefox 3.5.17 and Firefox 3.6.14 will now appear Tuesday, March 1, Mozilla disclosed in meeting notes published today.


      • With Firefox 4 Days Away, Mozilla is Updating an Online Bug List Counter
        Mozilla has made a lot of changes to its procedures for shipping new versions of the uber-popular Firefox browser, including following a new, rapid release cycle, and now, the company has adopted an online bug list countdown to help mark how close the much-delayed new version of Firefox is to final form. Mozilla has targeted February for shipping Firefox 4, but a peek at the canweshipyet site shows, in real-time, that there are 13 bugs standing in the way of shipping the new version. The counter has bounced between about 22 bugs and 13 bugs for the past day or so, but the counter itself is a sign of how seriously Mozilla now takes Firefox development.






  • Databases



  • Programming



    • Cussing in Commits: Which Programming Language Inspires the Most Swearing?
      As any programmer can tell you, programming will make you swear. But did you know that writing C++ will make you swear considerably more than PHP or Python?

      Developer Andrew Vos was looking for a weekend project when he decided to grab some one million commit messages from GitHub and scan them for swear words. He limited the swearing to George Carlin’s seven dirty words and then broke down the results according to programming language. To make sure that the popularity of one language over another didn’t skew the results, Vos grabbed an equal number of commit messages per language.






Leftovers



  • Hardware



    • ARM Ships Billions of Chips but IDC Doesn’t Count Them
      With ARM shipping billions of units annually and approaching 100 million personal computing devices, I should think ARM will be having an impact on personal computing in 2011.


    • Samsung promises 20nm chips before 2012
      In an announcement from Samsung's Ana Hunter, the company confirmed that it would be building 20nm chips by the second half of the year - and claimed that the process shrink will bring major improvements.

      A drop from the current 32nm and 28nm fabrication nodes used by the company will see the high-k metal gate (HKMG) technology, used to replace the traditional silicon dioxide gate dielectric in smaller nodes to reduce current leakage, introduced with the 32nm process size employed to allow the distance between components to shrink still further.


    • First Tegra 2-based Qseven module spins HD video on 5 Watts
      MSC Vertriebs announced an ARM-based Qseven module that appears to be the industry's first such device using Cortex-A9 cores. The MSC Q7-NT2 is built around a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 290 processor, supports 1080p video, offers interfaces ranging from gigabit Ethernet to I2C, consumes only five Watts, and offers extended temperature support, says the company.




  • Health/Nutrition

    • Is co-existence possible for organic and GM food producers?
      In December 2010, organic farmer Steve Marsh from Kojonup, 250km south east of Perth in Western Australia, says he found canola plants on his property.

      Tests confirmed they were genetically modified canola.

      The discovery prompted his organic certifier, the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia to suspend and subsequently remove organic accreditation from over 300 hectares of Mr Marsh's property.

      Mr Marsh says as a result his livelihood has been ruined because he is no longer eligible for premium organic grain prices.

      He claims the plant material blew onto his property from a swathed GM canola crop grown by his neighbour, Michael Baxter. Mr Baxter has declined requests for interviews from the ABC, but it is understood that he has vowed to defend the allegation.

      Mr Marsh has engaged Perth lawyer Richard Huston to begin legal action against Mr Baxter.




  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Libya: “Full Range of Options”
      Let me suggest some options the USA, Canada and other countries could take:

      * Secure the borders of Libya to prevent mercenaries from entering Libya, * close the airspace over Libya to prevent everything but relief flights, * “bomb” hospitals in Libya with GPS-guided parachuted medical supplies, * secure beach-heads all along the Libyan coast to permit rapid influx of material and equipment for any eventuality, * secure airports in Libya or build landing strips as appropriate, * secure other critical infrastructure that might be destroyed by any “scorched earth” policy: communication, transportation, utilities and petroleum infrastructure, * supply communications equipment so that citizens can call directly for action in the face of violence and reporters can inform the world what is happening in Libya, * distribute food, water and medicines to citizens so they can remain close to home rather than going into danger, * resupply former units of Libya’s military to prevent the post-regime chaos seen in Iraq, and * dispatch forward elements to mark targets and pull the teeth of the tyrant: mercenaries, “loyal” military units, and propaganda machines.




  • Cablegate





  • Finance

    • It's Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs
      Maude Barlow, with the Council of Canadians, once said that Chantel Hebert was the only progressive voice on Canadian television. The last thing I ever heard Hebert say was that she felt that Jim Flaherty was the most underrated politician on Parliament Hill.

      I have never listened to another word from her and avoid her columns. If she told me the earth was round, I would have to rethink my position. But was her remark the result of lazy journalism, or was she, like most Canadians, simply brainwashed by the millions and millions of dollars in taxpayer funded advertising?


    • Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and "The Swoop and Squat"
      At the height of the housing boom, Goldman Sachs was selling billions in bundled mortgage-backed securities, while also betting against those same securities. In other words they were going to have their cake and eat it too. Cashing in on one end and cashing out on the another, under a deregulation gold mine called the credit default swap.


    • Taibbi: Why Wall Street Isn't In Jail - Video Interview
      The US government cannot effectively deal with the financial crisis and the required credible reforms because in fixing the problems they would necessarily expose the underlying fraud, and endanger the very powerful status quo that funds them and their political campaigns.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

    • The Biggest Issue for Canadian Digital Policy
      As public frustration with the state of telecommunications services such as Internet access and wireless competition mounts, a relatively obscure government consultation on spectrum deserves far more attention. Last November, Industry Canada released a Consultation on a Policy and Technical Framework for the 700 MHz Band and Aspects Related to Commercial Mobile Spectrum. While the title alone is likely enough for most to look elsewhere, no issue will have a greater impact on the next 10 years of Canadian digital policy.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Trademarks

      • Trademark Wars: ChaCha, XOOM Taken to the Gauntlet
        It’s nothing new to hear about patent and trademark infringements in the Android market. Whether it be OEMs or developers, someone’s registered patent or trademark is always being infringed upon. Even Google “stole” Android at some point. That’s been settled with some ridiculous amount of money, of course.










Clip of the Day



WikiReader



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Comments

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