Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 17/4/2011: MIPS and Android



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • Zorin Unveils New Linux-Based PC
      According to Zorin, its PC has a rotatable touch screen display that is optimized for electronic note taking and drawing. Zorin tailored the hardware and software to work 100 percent with Linux and is available in three editions: Home, Educational, and Business.


    • MultiSystem: Live USB MultiBoot
      I was directed to this great program from a random stranger on identi.ca. I had posted a dent asking thoughts on a good Linux OS to run on a live USB. One of the replies asked, "Why run just one? Check out MultiSystem." A quick search revealed the MultiSystem web page. The page http://liveusb.info happens to be in French, but fortunately for me there is a Google translator gadget.


    • Is Linux Antivirus Worth It? Part 2
      A few weeks ago I mentioned friends-in-the-biz who don't put anti-virus software on their PCs.






  • Kernel Space

    • Linux’s Twenty years of Achievement and Success
      If you think about it, most of us have grown up using Linux. Linux was not how software was done, 20 years ago. There was only paid software, as Stallman so famously said in 1983 and went on to lay the foundation of the Free Software Foundation with the GNU Project that was compatible with all available software. However, the GNU took its time to evolve and had basic structures-compilers, text, Unix shell etc. but elements daemons, device drivers including the kernel were stuttering to completion.


    • Linux 2.6.38.3


    • Graphics Stack

      • Where The Open-Source AMD Driver Is At For Modern GPUs
        Earlier this week Sapphire launched the Radeon HD 5830 Extreme using the well-supported "Cypress LE" graphics processor at a very competitive price relative to the NVIDIA competition and the Radeon HD 5830 graphics cards from other AMD partners. With it being part of the HD 5000 series and not one of the newer HD 6000 series graphics processors, the Linux support is already spot-on for both the official Catalyst Linux driver and within the open-source stack. In this article are the open-source Gallium3D benchmarks for the Radeon HD 5830 along with other recent ATI/AMD GPUs to show where the latest Mesa/Gallium3D code is at today.







  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • First Calligra Sprint
        Over the April 1st - 3rd weekend, the first Calligra sprint took place at the KDAB office in Berlin. With a total of 31 people from 14 nations, the room was crowded to the bursting point! It was a very successful sprint, and the first KDE sprint for many of the attendees.

        While hacking continued unabated at all times, a sprint is primarily an opportunity to meet face to face, create new bonds, and discuss current and future issues. As usual, Friday was free-form, with hacking and chatting until it was time to go out to dinner. After dinner we crashed the breakfast room of the hotel because the lobby was too small, and continued hacking.


      • New KDE project aims at tablets, mixed UIs
        The new Plasma Active and Contour projects were developed for a new user experience for tablets, smartphones and set top boxes.




    • GNOME Desktop





  • Distributions



    • Clonezilla’s Multi-casts, Overcasts Norton Ghost
      Would you believe that at NCHC 41 computers cloned 5.6 GB simultaneously in 10 minutes? Multicasting or what? Clonezilla is a new age multicasting and unicasting solution from OpenSource Clone system for massive and large-scale cloning. Cloning content is an essential process of computing where contents from one computer hard disk need to be transferred/imaged/cloned to another or multiple computer hard disks. Rebooting, restoring, new computer provisioning, hard disk upgrades, full system backup , system recovery and transfer to other users are some of the main areas/reasons where cloning is used.


    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family



    • Red Hat Family

      • CentOS 5.6 Screenshots


      • Red Hat Submits New Data Caching Spec to Java EE 7
        Red Hat thinks so, and today submitted a new request to the Java Community Process (JCP) to push their data caching ideas forward into Java EE 7. The JCP approved JSR 342 last month, getting the ball rolling for the full creation of the Java EE 7 specifications.

        "The themes of Java EE 7 are all about continuing to ease development and making Java cloud ready," Craig Muzilla, vice president of Red Hat's Middleware Business Unit told InternetNews.com.

        Muzilla noted that the new data caching specification is being submitted in the same spirit of cloud enablement that is at the core of Java EE 7. He exp


      • The rationale for Ceylon, Red Hat's new programming language
        Red Hat engineer Gavin King, the creator of Hibernate, is developing a new programming language for enterprise software development. His team at Red Hat has apparently been working on the grammar in secrecy for two years and is finally opening it up for scrutiny.

        The new language, which is called Ceylon, is intended to remedy what King views as fundamental shortcomings of the Java programming language. It's more succinct and expressive but is designed to be easy to read and learn. It will run on existing Java virtual machines and draws on many of Java strengths while addressing some key limitations.




    • Debian Family





  • Devices/Embedded

    • MontaVista registered for Carrier Grade Linux 5.0 spec
      MontaVista Software announced that MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 6.0 has been registered as compliant to the Linux Foundation's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 5.0 specification. MontaVista appears to be the first Linux distro to have registered for CGL 5.0, which was announced at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit last week, offering advancements in everything from streaming media to security.


    • Texas Instruments Announces OpenLink Project


      Texas Instruments (TI) announces the OpenLink project which focuses on providing a wide range of wireless connectivity solutions for Linux.


    • EPIC module powers robotic shadow plays
      Habey announced an EPIC-format SBC (single board computer) that features a 1.1GHz Intel Atom Z510P processor, 512MB of onboard memory, plus PC/104, PCI, and Mini PCI expansion. The EMB-4650 also includes CompactFlash and SD slots, dual video outputs, and eight USB 2.0 ports, according to the company.


    • Electric vehicle offers Android tablet as dashboard IVI system
      T3 Motion announced a two-passenger electric vehicle that comes complete with a detachable Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet in its dashboard. The Galaxy Tab will act as the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) computer for the three-wheeled R3 series plug-ins, offering navigation, entertainment, and vehicle diagnostic monitoring, says the company.


    • MIPS launches developer site for Android and Linux
      MIPS Technologies has launched a developer community website designed for Android and Linux developers working on MIPS-based hardware, including handsets and tablets. Developer.mips.com features open access to MIPS-tailored Android and Linux source code, an Android native development kit, debug and development tools including MIPS Navigator, plus resources including tutorials and support forums, says the company.


    • MIPS creates community for Android developers
      MIPS Technologies has launched a developer community for software developers working with the Android platform.

      The online community will also be relevant for anyone developing Linux operating system based applications on MIPS-based hardware.

      “This new community demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the vibrant open source effort around the MIPS cores and architecture,” said Art Swift, v-p of marketing and business development at MIPS Technologies.


    • Phones



      • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo



      • Android

        • Google holds back Android Honeycomb; Asus releases the source code
          As if to back up the contention by Google's Android boss that the tablet version of Android isn't being penned in so Google can keep control, PC-maker Asus released part of the source code yesterday.

          Asus posted a link on the product page for its Eee Pad Transformer tablet that lets readers download a 97MB file with the source code for v8.2.2.6 of the Android kernel.

          Google released the software developers kit for Android v3 in February, but only to a few OEMs and selected other partners.


        • 50 Android Apps to Manage Your Phone (and Your Life)


        • CyanogenMod 7 brings Gingerbread to 28 phones, two tablets
          Doing its part to fight Android fragmentation, Cyanogen and his band of mobile hackers have released a modified version of Android 2.3.3 optimized for some 30 devices still awaiting carrier updates. CyanogenMod 7 (CM7) adds to Gingerbread with power-user features found in the previous Froyo version (CM6), and supports its first two tablets: the ViewSonic G-Tablet and Barnes & Noble Nook Color.


        • Android tablets tipped from Motorola, Archos
          Motorola is reportedly preparing a ruggedized, seven-inch Android tablet, while an Archos division in China has tipped the Archos 7c Home Tablet and an updated capacitive version of the Archos Arnova 10 -- both running Android on the ARM Cortex-A8 Rockhip RK2918 processor. Meanwhile, Amazon is offering a 10-inch, $500 Viewsonic gTablet in a "deal of the day."


        • Intel paying bounty to favor Android on Oak Trail tablets? B
          Intel is planning to pay a $10-per-device subsidy to encourage the creation of Android tablets using its "Oak Trail" Atom processor, a DigiTimes report has claimed. And a relevant port of Android 3.0 ("Honeycomb") will be available later this year, a company executive has been quoted as saying.

          The Apr. 14 DigiTimes report by Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai says Intel wil "pay a subsidy of $10 for each Intel CPU-based tablet PC to attract first-tier notebook vendors." It will promote the Android 3.0 platform "to save costs from Windows licensing fees for downstream vendors," the story further adds.


        • [Release] Android Gingerbread 2.3.3 -- N11 "Vostok" For the N900
          You can download the latest build from here and follow these installation instructions to get it running on your phone.










Free Software/Open Source



  • VMware Launches Open Source Cloud Foundry
    VMware is accelerating its cloud efforts today with the announcement of its new Cloud Foundry project. Cloud Foundry is an open source application platform for the cloud.

    "Cloud Foundry is about expanding a PaaS engine across multiple clouds, frameworks and application services," Jerry Chen and his title is Senior Director of Cloud and Application Services at VMware told InternetNews.com.

    Chen noted that with Cloud Foundry, VMware (NYSE: VMW) is aiming to lower the barriers to adoption for the cloud.


  • Is Cloud Foundry something we need?


  • MIPS launches developer site for Android and Linux
    The new Turnkey Linux Hub 1.0 web service provides flexible Amazon cloud hosting and backup capabilities for web application software appliances, says this eWEEK review. The Ubuntu-based software is said to offer an "excellent" backup and restore utility that makes it easy to migrate appliance instances.


  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Flock 'Social Media' Browser is No More
        Flock Web Browser was once a darling of the web. It was among my favorite web browsers out there until a few years ago. But then Google Chrome happened which raised the bar much higher eventually changing the whole internet space once and for all. Mozilla Firefox suddenly became *old* and had to re invent itself to survive[read Firefox 4.0]. Unfortunately, that was not the case with Flock 'Social Media' Browser.






  • SaaS

    • Open Cubed: Meet the New Cloud Stack
      The recent announcements of Facebook’s Open Compute and VMware’s Cloud Foundry address the hardware architecture and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) layers, respectively.




  • Databases

    • SkySQL Builds MySQL Reference Architecture
      Deploying a MySQL database today to meet modern infrastructure demands isn't as easy as it used to be.

      In an effort to help enterprises deploy the open source database, MySQL services vendor SkySQL is launching a new MySQL reference architecture that includes services and components. A decade ago, MySQL was typically deployed as part of the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack, but that's not enough anymore.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • Education

    • Instructure Canvas LMS: Go open source, get serious investment capital
      Back in February, I wrote about Instructure’s risky move open-sourcing their Canvas LMS. The product was great, an easy-to-use, robust LMS with solid social features and a spectacular user interface. It was highly scalable and suddenly anybody (or at least anyone with a bit of Ruby on Rails experience) could fire it up on their own server. The question was, would anybody pay for Instructure’s hosting and support when they could host the LMS themselves?

      The answer turned out to be an overwhelming yes. As Devin Knighton, Instructure PR Director told me, “Instead of the hundreds of leads their sales team was expecting from the announcement, we received thousands.” See, Oracle? You can make money from open source!




  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Farewell, Groklaw, and thanks!


      You can read the announcement on Groklaw. I personally read the site regularly to help keep abreast of legal news related to free software. PJ's especially good about posting articles that may not directly discuss the latest issue, but provide useful context for the more focused material. And the site's collaborative research has been so helpful to free software developers that Groklaw won the FSF's Award for Projects of Social Benefit in 2007.




  • Project Releases

    • First stable Blender 2.5 series arrives
      After several years of redesign and development work, the Blender Foundation and its associated online developer community have announced the arrival of version 2.57 of their open source 3D content creation suite, the first stable release in the 2.5 series. According to the developers, this major milestone is not only stable because it's "mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1,000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published."


    • GIMP 2.7.2 Arrives, But Still Far From Belated GIMP 2.8


    • [Audacity 1.3.13 released]




  • Programming

    • Optimizing Your Development Process
      In my last blog entry, How Effective Is Your Software Development, I discussed the three pillars of development effectiveness: Process Optimization, Quality Optimization and Technology Optimization, including architecture, leveraging the cloud, social media, smart devices, etc. This post will focus on Process Optimization.






Leftovers

  • Mainstream Failure
    The media’s telling of the Japan story has been inexcusably bad. I can’t count the number of pieces about confinement breaches and radiation surges; where they are not information-free they are wrong, and where they are not wrong, they bypass what matters. Here are a few specifics.

    * The real story in Japan, by any objective measure, is the sustained post-tsunami desperation among those whose lives were swept away, and the narrative about the rescue and cleanup workers all over the Northeast. Read much of that? Me neither. * Bloggers and other flavors of lone wolf are publishing heart-wrenching photo-essays from the front line of the recovery effort. Newspapers and TV networks? They’re writing about the temperature of the water in some part (they don’t specify which) of some damaged reactor, illustrating it with video screen grabs of machinery they don’t understand enough to explain. * People across oceans from Japan should fear radiation? Um, what was the half-life of 131I again?




  • Finance

    • BRICS credit: Local currencies to replace dollar
      Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - the BRICS group of fastest growing economies - Thursday signed an agreement to use their own currencies instead of the predominant US dollar in issuing credit or grants to each other.

      The agreement, the first-of-its-kind, was signed at the 3rd BRICS summit here attended by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, China's Hu Jintao, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, Russia's Dmitry Medvedev and South Africa's Jacob Zuma.


    • Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. goes on an anti-tech rant, blames the iPad for U.S. job losses
      Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. appears to think technology gadgets — including tablet computers like the iPad — are the reason this country is shedding jobs. Really? The Illinois Congressman went on one of the more outrageous anti-technology rants on Friday on the floor of Congress. We transcribed the remarks below, since we couldn’t really believe what we were hearing.




  • DRM

    • The biggest PR clanger in history of the WWF
      With a list of controversies like that you start to wonder how they survived. Well, very easy: by having a very good PR department. Whenever a controversy pops up WWF acts like a turtle. It minimizes communication as much as possible and hopes the whole thing blows over. It tries to silence, marginalize or intimidate its critics, but in such a clever way that it doesn't make too many waves. Disputes between its chapters are kept indoors as much as possible. Bluntly lying - if required - is an accepted practice.

      Being one of the opponents in their latest controversy - the infamous WWF format - I experienced these tactics first hand. This is my story.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Monopoly Lawyers Shouldn’t Write Monopoly Laws
        A problem with monopoly laws, such as the copyright monopoly and patent monopoly, is that their text is usually written by the lawyers that maintain them. This creates a vicious circle with circular proof that the laws work as intended.


      • Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry
        On a rational basis, the music industry's concerns would be dwarfed by those of the computer world, which is not just far larger, but vastly more important in strategic terms. But instead, the former gets to make all kinds of hyperbolic claims about the alleged "damage" inflicted by piracy on its income, even though these simply don't stand up to analysis.

        But that throwaway comment also raises another interesting idea: how about if Google *did* buy the music industry? That would solve its licensing problems at a stroke. Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little.

        How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. - jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?


      • Righthaven’s Secret Contract Revealed: Will Its Strategy Collapse?
        Angered at Righthaven’s behavior, a Las Vegas federal judge unsealed the company’s heretofore confidential agreement with the Las Vegas Review-Journal late on Friday. The contract reveals that the controversial copyright-enforcement company and LV R-J parent company Stephens Media are splitting their net earnings from suing hundreds of bloggers on a 50-50 basis. It also shows that the LV R-J is still largely in control of Righthaven’s litigation strategy—a fact that could end up being ruinous for Righthaven’s campaign of copyright lawsuits.










Clip of the Day



Penguin being tickled



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Universities Became Bad Places for Work
What happened to academia?
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 11 Out of 200: Cannot Censor His Spouse, Accusations Are Repeated Today
He already has a history of threatening to sue gay people in America; he cannot take criticism too well
 
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 12 Out of 200: Months Ahead of Serial Strangler From Microsoft Who Helped Double the Lawsuits (Funded by Third Parties) as 'Revenge' for Exposing Crimes
In 2024 I sat down and wrote about what had been done to me and to my wife
Crime Comes in Many Forms
apparently the SRA is OK with stranglers of women in America bullying the media in the UK
commandlinux.com, linuxteck.com, linuxiac.com, and linuxsecurity.com are Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Domain Name
once readers realise they read slop they immediately lose interest
Links 14/03/2026: Adoption of Slop Has Killed BuzzFeed, Russia Sees "Economic Gain From Iran War"
Links for the day
Patriotism is Conditional, If It's Unconditional, Then It's Like a Cult
My love for Software Freedom is only as strong as my love for Freedom of the Press
Links 14/03/2026: Mass Layoffs at Facebook ('Meta') and Sweeping Layoffs at Twitter (xAI), Social Control Media and Slop Are Only Debt
Links for the day
Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Digg)
Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian can relaunch Digg.com, but we doubt it'll work "this time for real!"
Reporting New and Suppressed Information is What Journalism is All About
In the domain of Free software, there are very few sites out there that offer exclusive coverage on community affairs and there are many gagging/censorship attempts
The Limits of Speech and the Rationale of Limitations
it seems to be part of an international trend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/03/2026: Goodness, AD534 Multiplier Module, and Extroverts Online
Links for the day
Atlassian Corp: We're Doing Layoffs Because of "Hey Hi"; Wall Street: Atlassian Corp is Just a Failing Business
Don't ask "the media"
Price of Storage, Price of Energy... What Next?
EPO workers are going on strike because their salaries don't keep up with price increases and tech companies without connections in "the channel" face long delays, low availability, and high prices (no "bulk" purchases), which further solidifies monopolies.
Don't Forget Red Hat's RTO (Return-to-office) Layoffs
How many people still remember that Red Hat did the same thing?
Reminder: Microsoft silent Layoffs by RTO (Commute Time and Lack of Comfort/Work Satisfaction) Already in Effect This Year
It's difficult to measure how many employees have already "left on their own" due to the RTO policy
Founder of IBM Ventures Has Just Quit IBM
Some people leave IBM and many people 'leave' IBM
Signs of Impeding Mass Layoffs - Not Just Quiet Layoffs - at Microsoft
Beneath the surface there are waves of layoffs and even entire teams are let go
Career Science and Academia as Corporate Propaganda 'on Tap'
article about surveillance
Veteran GNU/Linux Journalist Jack Wallen Tries Geminispace and Likes It
It'll turn 7 some time soon
Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
There will be similar work early next week
"Alternative to Microsoft Office" Must Use Free/Open Standards/Formats for Real Sovereignty
It would make sense for the EU to invest in its own workers and its own software projects, more so now that there are hostile countries both to the east and to the west
IBM Has No Clue How to Integrate Companies Like Red Hat
IBM is failing to respect this company's culture
Fake Articles From Sites With "Linux" in Their Name/Domain Name
we can at least hope that linuxteck.com made a decision to quit slop
Links 13/03/2026: New US Weapons for Taiwan, Pakistan Air Strikes Hit Kabul
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/03/2026: Exhaustion and Smartphone Addiction
Links for the day
Friday the 13th & Debian Developers afraid to nominate in DPL elections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 13/03/2026: Chatbot "Pentagon Contract" (Bailout) and Secret Service Ditches Slop Pusher
Links for the day
When Everybody Has a Right/Access to An Attorney/Lawyer (But Some Get Funding From Malicious American Corporations to Spend a Million Dollars on Many Lawyers and Several Barristers)
And send about 75 KG of legal papers to the residence of the "opponent"
European Qualifying Examination (EQE) Being Reduced to Pieces of Papers One Can Buy, Patent System Rapidly Losing Its Legitimacy
Welcome to the "new Europe"
Priorities in 2026
2026 is an interesting year
Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Producing More Propaganda for EPO "Cocaine Communication Managers"
The Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) has this new paper about Willis Towers Watson (WTW) and its annual EPO-sponsored propaganda, pretending all is well when things are clearly dire
Head of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 360 is Leaving Microsoft Amid Problems and Mass Layoffs
Microsoft is like a "legacy" company
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 12, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 12, 2026
Gemini Links 13/03/2026: "Someone to Take Over Antenna" and Random Seed/RNG
Links for the day
By Expanding to Advocacy of Ponzi Schemes and Bill Epsteingate (Sex Trafficking), Linux Foundation Revenue Grew to $220,730,594, But Salary of Linus Torvalds Not Even in Top 10 Anymore!
true!
In the Name of Transparency, Today We Show Our Defence and Counterclaim
already uploaded by the other side
IBM Cannot Even Do Payroll, Now a "Legitimate Target" of Iran
Missiles or not, it seems like IBM systems will be targeted more by cybercriminals
Links 12/03/2026: Heating Bills to Soar, "Banks in Gulf Evacuate Their Offices"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/03/2026: On Phone Anxiety and Bjorn "Looking for Someone to Take Over Antenna"
Links for the day
Cultification: best candidates avoiding Debian leader elections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman (RMS) et al Cited in 'Nature' (Journal/Site) Today, "CODE beyond FAIR"
Under Open Access
The Register MS, on Verge of Collapse, Keeps Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for China
Publishers that participate in this simply don't care about their readers
Overview of False Narratives and Lies Used to Lower Salaries at the European Patent Office (EPO), Abandoning Patent Quality and the EPC
Many of the latter slides are the same as Munich's
Links 12/03/2026: Atlassian Layoffs, GAFAN Covering up Slop-Induced Outages, "Age-verification in Operating Systems and the Internet"
Links for the day
The EPO's President, Who Covers Up Cocaine Use, is Trying to Suppress Communication Between EPO Staff Under the Guise of 'Privacy' (and in Defiance of a Court Ruling)
Why does Europe's second-largest institution: 1) curtail communication among staff (including union) and 2) go out of its way to avoid obeying a court order from ILOAT in Geneva?
Exactly One Week Before Next EPO Strike, Media Intentionally Not Mentioning EPO Strikes
One form of propaganda technique/s involves the systematic suppression of certain topics, or of particular "narratives"
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 10 Out of 200: Showing Public Tweets is Not a Privacy Violation, But This Isn't About Justice, It's About Censorship
It's time to put a stop to this abuse of process (which is what the Judge deemed it to be last year)
Suicide of disgruntled employee? Bus fire at Kerzers / Chiètres, Switzerland, at least six dead
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 11, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Gemini Links 12/03/2026: "on Urbit" and the True Cost (or Criticism) of "Social Control Media"
Links for the day