• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Geekbox

  Taking a break from Mumbuntu blog posts. I mentioned this on the latest epsiode of the Ubuntu Podcast that we released yesterday. I see Fab from Linux Outlaws has blogged about his geekbox.

• Sony VAIO VPCEC1M1E/WI review

  Three hotkeys are fitted on the chassis, just above the keyboard. The Assist button helps you diagnose and solve any issues you may have with the laptop, while the Web button lets you boot up a secondary, Linux-based operating system for browsing the web without starting up Windows 7.

Server

• London Stock Exchange creates virtual Turquoise access ahead of Linux big-bang

  An “ultra-fast” link between the datacentres of the London Stock Exchange and Turquoise has gone live, gearing the dark pool trading venue for a big-bang Linux migration.

  Traders with hosted systems at the LSE are now able to access Turquoise on the free fast link, ahead of Turquoise’s migration to the Millennium Exchange platform, which is Linux and Sun Solaris Unix-based, with Oracle databases. Turquoise currently runs on the Java-based Tradexpress platform from supplier Cinnober.

• State of Linux in the Indian enterprise

  Today large ERP implementations are running on enterprise Linux. ERP applications by their nature are mission-critical as enterprises depend on ERP applications for their business models. Many enterprises right from Verizon, Hilti, Banco Pastor, YPF globally to Indian Express, Carnation, Great Offshore, Hikal and Sheela Foam in India run their SAP, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft etc. on Linux.

• ARM dips toe into server chip design

  According to Drew, the website for the ARM Linux Internet Platform is “running on a Marvell-based very small cluster of chips”.

  “We switched it in about six months ago — it’s going OK,” Drew said. “It’s one of these things where you don’t know what you don’t know until you try it.”

  The trial is giving ARM an idea of the performance, power management and cooling implications of running a website off the company’s low-powered architecture, Drew added. He noted that “a lot more” had to be done on creating a LAMP (Linux Apache MySql Perl/PHP/Python) open-source software stack for the architecture.

• CloudLinux Partners with R1Soft

• CloudLinux Announces Compatibility With R1Soft, The Leading Backup Software For Linux Servers In The Cloud

Kernel Space

• Benchmark of Windows 7 vs Ubuntu comparision may be flawed under uneven environments

  The benchmarks may be flawed due to the following assumptions which is not ideal setup for Ubuntu

  Reasons

  1. Compiz is enabled by default in Ubuntu, whereas the games in Windows disable Aero to gain that extra FPS. I doubt if the games in Ubuntu disable compiz before running

  2. Biggest flaw is cpufrequency is controlled by Ubuntu to run as ondemand instead of utilizing full processor power. The ideal Ubuntu Setup would be to run all the cores with cpufrequency governor performance. Windows 7 by default runs in full gear and kudos to it. But that does not answer this question, why the benchmarks were done when running ondemand governor in Ubuntu Lucid?

  How do I assume cpufrequency has something to do with performance, well I will try to prove it ( though you may try for yourself by changing cpufrequency to run with different performance governors and check simple benchmarks)

• Kernel Development Statistics for 2.6.34 and Beyond

  As of this writing, the current kernel prepatch is 2.6.34-rc6. A couple more prepatches are most likely due before the final release, but the number of changes to be found there should be small. In other words, 2.6.34 is close to its final form, so it makes sense to take a look at what has gone into this development cycle. In a few ways, 2.6.34 is an unusual kernel…

• Latest Datalight Flash File System Brings 20 Millisecond Mount Times to Linux Through Kernel Versions 2.6.33

  Datalight announced support for Linux version 2.6.33 with its flash file system. The software offers improved mount times and faster writes over standard Linux flash file systems such as UBIFS, YAFFS, and JFFS2.

• LinuxCon keynote speakers announced

• LinuxCon 2010 keynotes announced

Instructionals

• Scaling NSClient++ with Nagios

• Put Your Servers in the Cloud with Amazon EC2 and Ubuntu

• Fix the Firefox Slow Problem in Ubuntu 10.04

• Use An Ubuntu Live CD To Test Your PC’s Memory

• TechSpot: Run Ubuntu 10.04 from a bootable USB flash drive

• The Keyboard Shortcuts of Ubuntu 10.04

Games

• Pay What You Like, Say Indie Game Makers

  A group of independent game developers are selling the “Humble Indie Bundle” until Tuesday, May 11, allowing buyers to set their own price on the five-game package. The bundle includes World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Aquaria and Penumbra Overture. All games are available for Windows, Mac or Linux, and are DRM-free.

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• KDEPIM on Mobile – What’s going on?

  Anyone following the commits in the kde svn repo will notice that there has been some action on the mobile front in KDE PIM over the last few months.

  [...]

  This project is the result of a collaboration of KDAB, (my employer) with Intevation, crypto specialists G10Code, and interaction specialists Apliki known to KDE for recent usability testing work on KMail icons.

• Kraft helps small businesses manage their work

  German developer Klaas Freitag says Kraft is aimed at small companies, driven by a boss and maybe a few people. He started working on the software in 2005 after having worked on similar applications for many years. He says, “The KDE platform under C++ is the most effective platform to build native GUI applications I have ever worked with, and KDE has a strong, friendly, open, and helpful community that’s fun to work in.”

• Konsole’s user interface changes

  Konsole is the app that probably almost every KDE developer uses on a daily basis, but there hasn’t been much development on the user interface front during the last releases. The two brave souls Robert Knight and Kurt Hindenburg are busy triaging and fixing bugs. So to say Konsole is more maintained than developed due to a simple lack of manpower. Nonetheless some recent changes may be worth blogging about.

• Plasma Media Center Status report and introduction

  On startup, you are presented with a big upper part which contains icons for the available media modes, right now: local music, local pictures and local video. The bottom part is covered by a thin panel which holds an exit button (do not ever touch this or god will kill a ladybug and you will cry in shame!) Also, this panel shows you small icons for modes that are currently active in the background. Clicking on these will fast forward you to that mode.

Distributions

• More Community Classes, Please

  Not sure how to run a class? The Fedora wiki has a few suggestions. Classes are a good way to provide a question and answer session on everything from how to file bug reports, to explaining how to package software or do testing.

• PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE Edition addresses bugs

• Ubuntu

  • Free Getting Started with Ubuntu Manual Helps Out Linux Rookies

  • First 24 Hours with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx

    Last word is ubuntu 10.04 is refined product with three year LTS support from ubuntu its seems a great option for home and even Enterprise. Its neatly packaged and is amazingly fast you also have the standard compiz 3D Desktop affects which adds the glamour and the standard administration and configuration options which are fairly easy to use. Overall undoubtly the best Linux desktop ever.

  • Ubuntu 10.10 Will Not Have GNOME-Shell

  • Variants

    • Ultimate Edition 2.6 Is Based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

      Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has just been released and, with it, the big number of distros based on it start pouring in. Ultimate Edition is an Ubuntu-based release that aims to be, well, ultimate, packing in as much functionality and apps as possible. Ultimate Edition 2.6 bundles proprietary drivers, to get things running out of the box, and plenty of packages for the power users. If you like flashy themes, as many Compiz effects as your graphics card can handle and having everything plus the kitchen sink pre-installed, then this is the Linux distribution for you.

    • Easy Peasy 1.6

      My overall impression of Easy Peasy has been very good. It installed quickly and easily on a very old netbook, it left me about 1 GB of free space out of a 4 GB disk, and it seemed to work flawlessly. The combination of EasyPeasy and the original EeePC reminded me of what netbooks were really all about when they first appeared. While 1 GB of space is not a lot, it would be easy enough to put a 4, 8, 16 or whatever GB card in the SD slot for your own documents, files, photos and such. If you still have one of these laying around somewhere, it might pay you to dig it out, load a very nice modern Linux distribution on it, and use it as a very small, very light, very portable netbook.

Devices/Embedded

• QNAP Security’s new Network Video Recorder models to take the forefront at IFSEC 2010

  QNAP Security, a world class manufacturer of Linux-embedded, stand-alone Network Video Recorder (NVR) solutions is pleased to announce its participation at IFSEC 2010.

• Broadband users urged to protect Wi-Fi connections

  According to various reports in the media, there has been a rise in the number of Wi-Fi-cracking kits being sold online in China, which include USB adapters, a Linux operating system, password-breaking software and a detailed instruction booklet.

• Nokia

  • Nokia`s shift to services from hardware

    January 2010 — Opens a version of its software store for its flagship N900 model which runs the Linux operating system. The Linux Maemo operating system is seen as key in its rivalry with the iPhone.

    February – Says to merge its Linux Maemo software platform, used in its flagship N900 phone, with Intel’s Moblin which is also based on Linux open-sourced software.

• Android

  • Goggles turns Android into pocket translator

    The mobile application for Android got updated today with the ability to snap a picture of some words and instantly translate them into the language of the owner.

  • Google: Android 2.1 is catching up

    It’s not too surprising that Android 2.0 and 2.0.1 numbers have begun to shrink, especially considering the fact that Motorola recently released the 2.1 update for it’s popular Droid (also known in Europe as the Motorola Milestone) devices – one of the few phones to include the 2.0.x branch of Android. By comparison, the first smartphone to use Android, the T-Mobile G1, will not officially run versions later than 1.6 for technical reasons. Although Google says that it simply doesn’t have enough internal memory, unofficial releases of Android 2.1 are available online.

  • Android running on iPhone 3G

    Wang said that next up is audio support: “We’ve already laid the groundwork for audio support on the 3G and gotten it working in our homemade bootloader, so support for audio in Linux/Android will be coming in a few days.”

• Sub-notebooks

  • Where is the Linux ‘smartbook’?

    But first, let’s try to define the smartbook. By some definitions it is simply a Netbook that runs Linux and uses processors based on a design from U.K.-based ARM, as opposed to Windows software and Intel chips, respectively. By another definition, it is all of the above but also an always-on, always-connected device, just like a smartphone. The latter definition is the one we’ll use here because it’s the original definition as provided by Qualcomm–a major smartbook player–and the closest match to most first-generation smartbooks. (Another definition includes tablets but we’ll leave that out of this discussion.)

    Indeed, smartbooks remain a murky product category because no major device maker has announced one yet in the U.S.–at least as defined above. And on Wednesday, Ian Drew, the chief marketing officer at ARM, expressed dismay at the lack of products, according to a report from ZDNet UK. That report cites, among other reasons for the delays, the current lack of Adobe Flash optimization for smartbook operating systems.

Calling all geeks workshop

Drupal is a free and open source content management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It’s used as a back-end system for many different types of websites, ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate and political sites, such as whitehouse.gov. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

GNU

• Emacs 23.2 released

  The Emacs 23.2 release is out.

• GNU Smalltalk 3.2 released

  Main features of the new release include downloading of remote packages (for projects hosted on smalltalk.gnu.org), a new browser based on GTK+, a callgraph profiler and incremental garbage collection. This version can also run the Iliad web framework (http://www.iliadproject.org/).

• glibc 2.12

Open Access/Content

• Universities, Congress push Open Access Research law

  For the last several years, the US’ National Institutes of Health has implemented a Congressionally mandated open access policy. Within a year of the publication of any work that’s derived from NIH funding, the papers have to be sent to the NIH in digital form so that they can be made available online for anyone to examine. Although there have been sporadic attempts to reverse the policy, it has been considered so successful that the US Office of Science and Technology Policy requested public input on an extension of the rules to all federally funded research. Now, a consortium of US research institutions is putting its weight behind an effort to turn the potential OSTP policy into law.

Standards/Consortia

• HTML5 apps

  Right now nobody’s interested in a mobile solution that does not contain the words “iPhone” and “app” and that is not submitted to a closed environment where it competes with approximately 2,437 similar mobile solutions.

  Compared to the current crop of mobile clients and developers, lemmings marching off a cliff follow a solid, sensible strategy. Startling them out of this obsession requires nothing short of a new buzzword.

  Therefore I’d like to re-brand standards-based mobile websites and applications, definitely including W3C Widgets, as “HTML5 apps.” People outside our little technical circle are already aware of the existence of HTML5, and I don’t think it needs much of an effort to elevate it to full buzzwordiness.

• [HTML5 Video Player Demo Powered By Ogg Theora]

Science

• Americans ‘bombarded’ with cancer sources: report

  “The American people — even before they are born — are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures,” they wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama at top of the report.

  “The panel urges you most strongly to use the power of your office to remove the carcinogens and other toxins from our food, water, and air that needlessly increase healthcare costs, cripple our nation’s productivity, and devastate American lives.”

  A White House spokesman indicated he had not yet seen the report and the National Cancer Institute declined comment.

Environment

• Web tool tracks Gulf oil spill effects

  A web tool originally set up to keep track of political violence in Kenya is being used to monitor the fallout from oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Finance

• New regulations likely as stock dive probed

  But more than a day after a nearly 1,000-point drop in the Dow, the government had not publicly pinpointed the reasons.

• 296 ‘funked up’ stocks — trades canceled

  After one of the most wild days on Wall Street, Nasdaq canceled trades of 296 stocks whose prices fluctuated the most.

  At around 2:45 p.m. ET on Thursday, trades of a number of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange were slowed for about a minute due to excessive volatility. During that short time, those stocks were opened up to electronic markets like the Nasdaq.

• NYSE, Nasdaq Play Blame Game

  The finger-pointing continued Friday between the Nasdaq Stock Market and the New York Stock Exchange in the wake of Thursday’s 1,000-point intraday stock market plunge — despite calls from both sides for a stop to all blame-finding.

• The Feds vs. Goldman

  What Paulson jammed into Abacus was mortgages lent to borrowers with low credit ratings, and mortgages from states like Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California that had recently seen wild home-price spikes. In metaphorical terms, Paulson was choosing, as sexual partners for future visitors to the Goldman bordello, a gang of IV drug users, Haitians and hemophiliacs, then buying life-insurance policies on the whole orgy. Goldman then turned around and sold this poisonous stuff to its customers as good, healthy investments.

  Where Goldman broke the rules, according to the SEC, was in failing to disclose to its customers – in particular a German bank called IKB and a Dutch bank called ABN-AMRO – the full nature of Paulson’s involvement with the deal. Neither investor knew that the portfolio they were buying into had essentially been put together by a financial arsonist who was rooting for it all to blow up.

• Our view on the world economy: Greek debt crisis offers preview of what awaits U.S.

  The situation is particularly acute in Greece, where massive debts have forced the government to propose widely unpopular cuts in salaries, bonuses and pensions coupled with significant tax hikes. Interest rates have soared, and deadly riots have broken out in Athens.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• N.Y. Courts Tackle Electronic Defamation

  Blogs and personal web pages, such as on MySpace and Facebook, provide a broad stage to spread potentially defamatory statements. Thus, care must be taken when posting content on social media. Postings can take just seconds to compose and frequently little thought is given to what is being stated and its consequences, especially where such communication may reach an audience of millions, virtually instantaneously.

• No, I don’t want to store my data on your site

  Flickr. Diigo. Evernote.

  Everybody wants me to work on my machine but then synchronize my data to their site for safekeeping and social functions. I can understand this for situations where I want others to see my photos or my links, but what happens when I have ten or twenty of these services, all of which have separate interfaces, separate logins, separate passwords, and separate liklihoods to still be around in 5 years?

• Media groups voice concern over Fifa restrictions

  The South African media’s concerns about Fifa restrictions on coverage of the World Cup have gone unheeded by the soccer world body for two years, veteran newsman Raymond Louw said on Friday.

  Media groups Avusa, the Independent Group and Media 24 are now trying to “engage in a constructive way” with Fifa, through their lawyers, over the terms and conditions for accreditation.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• FCC Reclaims Powers Over Internet Access Companies

  Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski claimed power to regulate companies that provide Internet access, opening a fight with cable and telephone companies and sparking opposition from Republicans.

• Digital Restriction Management = bye bye Pippi Longstocking

  First of all I will continue to boycot DRM’ed devices. The main motive for Digital Restriction Management promotion is financial. If we do not give them money, they will have to stop to threat us like that. I am a customers, not a prisoner. Secondly I will continue to explain people why they should not give money to people who want to control their data.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Google Asks Judge to Declare RapidShare Search Links Legal

  The company was sued by independent record label Blue Destiny Records last year, which claimed that Google — along with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) Bing — was violating copyrights by linking to unauthorized content hosted on RapidShare.

• Google Lawsuit: Our Links Don’t Violate Copyright

• ACTA

  • Google attorney slams ACTA copyright treaty

    An attorney for Google slammed a controversial intellectual property treaty on Friday, saying it has “metastasized” from a proposal to address border security and counterfeit goods to an international legal framework sweeping in copyright and the Internet.

    The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, is “something that has grown in the shadows, Gollum-like,” without public scrutiny, Daphne Keller, a senior policy counsel in Mountain View, Calif., said at a conference at Stanford University.

    Both the Obama administration and the Bush administration had rejected requests from civil libertarians and technologists for the text of ACTA, with the White House last year even indicating that disclosure would do “damage to the national security.” After pressure from the European Parliament, however, negotiators released the draft text two weeks ago.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux lasershow Cool!

One of the coolest things you can do with linux is control a show laser.

Linux on my Macbook Air

During the last three years, my Macbook Air has been kinda depressed. Every time i tried to install my free GNU programs using ports it has silently played this tune for me.

Ballnux

• Second round of pictures from the FLISOL Venezuela

  Continuing with another round of pictures from the Venezuelan FLISOL, i bring here a small recopilation of pictures from galleries of the main site, Caracas, where openSUSE has presence like in the other 19 sites.

• FLISOL Nicaragua 2010

• SELinux and openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 6

  I just installed milestone 6 to test our SELinux functionality… it works!

Applications

• Compiz master testers needed

• Scripty2 in Action

• EiskaltDC – a Direct Connect (DC) client for Linux

  One of the good things about EiskaltDC is the flexibility it provides for manipulating GUI according to your needs. It gives you 7 different themes to choose from, you can even go for a sidebar instead of a tool bar.

• VRMS: Your Virtual RMS Detects Non-Free Software on Your Machine

• Proprietary

  • Wine Announcement

    The Wine development release 1.1.44 is now available.

    What’s new in this release (see below for details):
    – Many more new icons.
    – Support for 32-bit prefixes with a 64-bit Wine.
    – Many additional msvcr80/90 functions.
    – Improvements to Bidi handling.
    – More complete mmdevapi (Win7 audio) support.
    – Improved handling of MSI patches.
    – A number of fixes for desktop menus.
    – Optimizations in OLE storage.
    – Various bug fixes.

  • Desktop Wallpaper Changer Wally

    Wally is an easy to use program with an incredible functionality. It might be the ideal program for you if you are looking for a desktop wallpaper changer that supports local and remote sources.

• Chrome

  • Chrome 5: Faster and better

    The first thing you’ll notice with Google’s new beta of its Chrome Web browser is that it’s faster — much faster — than the last version. You don’t need any fancy tests to see that. All you have to do is use it, and you’ll see that it blows other browsers away.

  • Google Chrome Automatically Installs Google Repository in Ubuntu

    This is something I have never heard of. I was trying to install Google Chrome in Ubuntu and in the download page a small note came into my notice. It goes something like this “Installing Google Chrome will add the Google repository so your system will automatically keep Google Chrome up to date”.

• Instructionals

  • Hacking (downgrading to libvirt 0.7.0) libvirt/virsh/virt-manager/virt-install at Xen 4.0 Dom0 (2.6.32.12 pvops kernel ) on top of Ubuntu 10.04 Server

  • Compiling and Running Handbrake in Ubuntu

  • Blender 2.49 Scripting: Animating the Visibility of objects

  • Turn Google Chrome Tabs to an Ubuntu Hub

  • Turn any Linux computer into SOCKS5 proxy in one command

  • Fix ATI vsync & video tearing issue once and for all!

  • How to Accelerates the Performance of PHP Scripts – XCache

  • Howto Fix ureadahead problem after upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04

  • boot ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” in text mode

  • How to protect a password file in linux

  • Installing fonts in Ubuntu 10.04

  • Fastest way to install the media essentials in ubuntu

  • Upgrade Fedora 12 to Fedora 13 using YUM

  • AMD64 Ubuntu 10.04 and Flash

  • Ubuntu: Migrating from Grip to Audex

  • Compiling and Running Handbrake in Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu 9.10 schroot in 10.04

  • How To Build A Standalone File Server With Nexenta 3.0 Beta2

  • HTML5 On Ubuntu 10.04

  • Dist Upgrade Or Clean Install – Here Is What I Prefer And Why

  • Installing and Managing Multi Master Replication Manager(MMM) for MySQL High Availability

• Games

  • The Humble Indie Bundle: Pay-What-You-Want for Games and Help EFF!

    Wolfire Games is running an innovative pay-what-you-want promotion for five great indie video games with some proceeds benefiting EFF! Normally the five games would be valued at $80, but from now until Tuesday, 5/11, you can pay what you want for the entire game bundle including:

    * World of Goo
    * Aquaria
    * Gish
    * Lugaru HD
    * Penumbra Overture

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • KDE Finance Apps Group Spring Sprint

  • A Blog on Sourceforge

    A little more than two weeks ago we released Kraft version 0.40, the first version of Kraft based on KDE 4 software platform. The release went fine as far as I can tell, no terrible bugs were reported yet. Some work went into the new website since then, but in general I need a few weeks break from Kraft and spend my evenings outside enjoying spring time.

    Today, Sourceforge posted a blog about Kraft after they kind of mail-interviewed me. It’s nice, it really focuses on the things also important to me. This might be another step towards a broader user base for Kraft. I say that because one could have the impression that the number of people actually really using Kraft could be larger. A high number of users is one of the fundamental criteria for a successful free software project and thus I am constantly trying to understand whats the reason for the impression or the fact.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Marketing Hackfest: Day 1

    * GNOME 3.0 Website: there’ll be a specific GNOME 3.0 website to introduce this new version of GNOME, and get people excited about this new version. In the long term, the content will be moved to the main website, but we feel a separate website is the best way to build momentum for the 3.0 effort. The target audience is existing GNOME users and there is already a good sitemap. Work is ongoing for the exact content and design, and the hard work will be the creation of videos. If you’re interested in helping there, raise your hand

  • Preparing To Let Go Of GTK+ 2.x For GTK+ 3.0

    As we have mentioned with the first of the early GNOME 3.0 development packages getting checked-in (such as the improved Totem Movie Player), the first GNOME 2.31 development milestone is this week in the road to GNOME 3.0 (a.k.a. v2.32) that will be reached this September. Joining this round of new GNOME development packages that are looking for testing is GTK+ 2.21.0, which is leading up to the 2.22 release of the de facto standard tool-kit for the GNOME desktop.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • RHEL 6 – your sensible but lovable friend

    Another big change in the RHEL 6 beta is the wide selection of disk formatting options, including ext4. You know a Linux feature has arrived when it makes its way to the conservative enterprise releases like RHEL and such is the case with ext4 file system, which is now the default filesystem format in RHEL 6. In addition to ext4, the XFS filesystem is now supported.

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 13 Expands Linux Virtualization

      Virtualization technology has long found a home in Red Hat’s Fedora community Linux distribution. Ever since Fedora 4 emerged in 2005, virtualization technologies have continued to advance in the distro and that remains the case with the upcoming Fedora 13 release set for later this month.

• Ubuntu

  • Users want a Linux port of uTorrent?

    Its possibilities like this which I have always held as a reason why I don’t want mass migration away from Windows to the Linux platform. If Linux is to get a wave of disillusioned Windows users, we have to keep in mind that they will bring their demands (and their voting power) to a platform near you which has been going quite happily without Windows users turning up after finally working out that PC does not just mean Microsoft. Now please don’t get me wrong, I am happy that anyone would want to come to Linux after a Windows experience, but what these people need to remember is that Linux/FOSS is != Windows/Microsoft, Linux should never be looked as the OS of choice only for it to still depend on 3rd party Windows apps. Linux and FOSS are unique (and for me) better in their own right, why should we lust over anything Windows offers either natively or via 3rd party apps?

  • 5 lessons for other Linux distros from the success of the Lucid Lynx

    3.Try to become an answer

    Ubuntu Studio, Lubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu server among others are part of what I call the Canonical suite which helps to gain more users in that it is able to meet more needs. Do not narrowly focus on being just an OS, try to be an answer to more specialized needs.

    4.Clearly define the role of your community

    It is necessary to clearly define the role your user community will play in the growth and development of your OS. The faux pas that happened following the change of the window buttons from right to left in the Lucid Lynx could have had a devastating consequence had it been a smaller distro.

    5.It does not hurt to apply marketing to Linux

    If there is any one Open Source company that does marketing right, it is Canonical. And as is clear now, it does not hurt at all to invest some time and if possible some money to marketing your distro, it really pays.

  • Variants

    • Linux Mint Scarf

      In January I received a call from a friend: Her laptop hard drive had crashed leaving her in a bind. I was able go install a new one and reload Her OS that evening. She was very grateful and wanted to do something for me. The one thing I had been wanting was a scarf with the Linux Mint logo. So it was agreed She would do this for me. I most admit that I got the better end of the bargain, it only took me a few hours one evening and my part was done. The knitting of this scarf took much more time.

Devices/Embedded

• Linux-ready, open-platform ARM9/DSP SBC costs $89

  Four distributors have begun shipping the open platform, Linux-ready Hawkboard single board computer (SBC) for as low as $89. Based on the Texas Instruments OMAP-L138 system-on-chip (SoC), which combines an ARM9 core and a DSP, the community-driven Hawkboard project is structured on the TI-sponsored BeagleBoard project, and is similarly designed for hobbyists and general testing.

• Phones

  • Open source solves the mobile app dev dilemma

  • Android

    • UK Motorola Milestone Gets Android 2.1

      UK customers with Motorola Milestone owners take notice. Your Android 2.1 upgrade started rolling out today!

    • ARCHOS 7 Announced, First Large Screen Android Tablet Under $200

      The ARCHOS 7 home tablet comes preloaded with select Android apps including eBuddy, Aldiko, and DailyPaper. Archos’ own AppsLib is also installed allowing for users to customize their tablet with even more applications.

    • Motorola acquiring Azingo, kissing off Android?

      Motorola is acquiring LiMo-linked middleware and Web 2.0 app software company Azingo, according to several reports. Several hundred India-based software engineers would be focused on lessening Motorola’s dependence on Google, suggests The Register, while GigaOM speculates that Motorola is building its own OS and SFGate sees a China connection.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Ubuntu Netbook Remix a Winner

    Ubuntu Netbook Remix (reviewed version 10.4) is Linux like you’ve never seen before. It has a smooth, attractive, interface that works very well with the netbook form factor. It is a clear winner, as good as if not better than operating systems from enormous corporations. There was a gotcha on my HP Mini installation in an otherwise great work. Digg this article

• Tablets

  • Google Android tablet runs Flash on Tegra 2 SoC

    Adobe has demonstrated a prototype Nvidia Tegra 2-based Android tablet from Google running Adobe’s Flash, say industry reports. Meanwhile, Samsung is preparing an “S-Pad” Android tablet, and Bill Gates tips new Microsoft tablet projects, say other reports.

  • 10 Reasons the T91MT is better than the iPad

    This is no doubt the Year of the Tablet computer. As such I began searching some months ago for a tablet I could add to my ever growing list of gadgets, I researched and played with many different devices before deciding on my Asus T91MT. I have had my tablet for a couple of weeks now and it amazes me how many people do not even know they exist when they released almost a year ago! The iPad on the other hand got more press than you can shake a stick at and everyone under the sun knows what it is after just a few weeks.

    The following is my list of reasons why Asus’s T91MT tablet/netbook hybrid is better than Apple’s iPad:

    #1 – It is also a Netbook
    Touch screens are fantastic, don’t get me wrong but honestly some things are much quicker to do with a physical keyboard and a mouse. Having the option to flip my T91MT around and use it as a netbook is a wonderful option to have. Plus I personally feel my device’s screen is much safer when I can “close” the screen instead of just sliding it into a case.

  • Android Prototype Tablet Makes Flashy Debut

    Android smartphones are giving Apple’s iPhone a run for its money and may soon overtake it. If Android tablets follow suit, will Flash get its mojo back?

Rockin’ FLOSS Manuals: The CiviCRM book sprint

If you use open source software, and aren’t a programmer, you may wonder how you can give back to the community that provides you with such marvelous tools at no-to-little cost. At the same time, maybe you’ve run into a problem running some piece of open source software, clicked F1 or otherwise looked for some help in doing something—and found little or no help on offer. There’s a way to solve both these problems: Check out, and get involved with, the FLOSS Manuals project.

Closed source software hurts GUI development

AS OPERATING SYSTEMS increasingly become visual feasts, those who want to create useful interaction enhancements are having to bend over backwards thanks to closed source software in order to bring innovation to the user’s environment.

Two bright young men from the University of Washington recently presented Prefab, a technology which they say will facilitate the implementation of “advanced behaviours in graphical interfaces”. That in itself isn’t particularly new but the route Prefab takes to implement well documented graphical user interface (GUI) techniques are a clear example of the lengths engineers have to go to circumnavigate the limitations posed by closed source software.

Server

• WSO2 Launches Newest WSO2 Web Services Application Server, WSO2 ESB, WSO2 Governance Registry and WSO2 Identity Server Versions

• OW2 Consortium Launches Open Source Cloudware Initiative Lead by Strategic Members Bull, France Telecom and INRIA

• New Enterprise Search Solution Based on Apache Solr Released by Comintelli

• Lucid Imagination Launches Global Partner Program

  Lucid Imagination, the commercial company for Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, today announced the launch of its Global Partner Program, a channel sales and support offering which enables VARs and Integrators experienced in selling search technologies to reach new customers and markets through Lucene/Solr open source search. The program’s inaugural participants have all previously sold and supported traditional commercial enterprise search products. With the help of Lucid Imagination, they are now extending their offerings portfolio to meet the demand for Lucene/Solr.

Databases

• New CouchDB case studies posted, and we want to hear your story!

• Ingres Corporation Announces Strategic Partnership with Bendigo Partners, LLC

Oracle

• FSF launches free software extension listing for OpenOffice.org

  The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced a project to assemble a replacement extension library for OpenOffice.org, which will list only those extensions which are free software, at http://www.fsf.org/openoffice.

  “OpenOffice.org is free software, and an important contribution to the free software community. However, the program offers the user a library of extensions, and some of them are proprietary. Distributing OpenOffice.org in the usual way has the effect of offering users the nonfree extensions too,” said FSF executive director Peter Brown.

• Nexenta Leverages OpenSolaris and ZFS for Enterprise Storage

CMS

• Midgard2 10.05 “Ratatoskr” released!

  The Midgard Project has released the first release of Midgard2 10.05 “Ratatoskr” LTS. Ratatoskr LTS is a Long Term Support version of Midgard2 Content Repository.

Education

• Moodle Milestone: 2.0 Beta Preview

  Those who’ve been waiting for the release of Moodle 2.0 are getting their open source just rewards this week. The release, which has been met already with several delays, is a “beta preview” — which is to say, not yet a stable release, but a functional template of what’s in store for early adopters (note that Moodle HQ will be releasing weekly updates as the code matures as a series of beta previews leading up to the stable release¹).

Business

• Recipe for a successful business: One part openness, two parts trust

  I’m reminded of an article Dana Blankenhorn wrote a few years back, where he noted that trust lies at “the heart of open source.” Trust is what motivates software coders to open up their projects to communities of strangers. It drives a CIO to choose an open source vendor, who won’t lock them into a particular technology or brand. And it is broken when a social networking (and advertising) business repeatedly strongarms its users into pushing their private information out to the world.

• BIRT Generates Over $45 Million Across 450 Paying Customers, Used by Over 750,000 Developers Worldwide

  BIRT is an Eclipse Foundation open source project that was founded by and continues to be co-led by Actuate. It is used by about 750,000 developers worldwide and has become the de facto open source environment for presenting compelling data visualisations on the web.

SpringSource

• SpringSource to Acquire GemStone Systems Data Management Technology

• SpringSource To Acquire GemStone Data Management

  Another week, another important announcement. The SpringSource division of VMware today announced that we have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GemStone Systems, a leader in data grid technology.

Releases

• Rapid-I revolutionises business intelligence processes with RapidMiner 5.0

  Rapid-I, a leading provider of open source solutions for predictive analytics, data mining and text mining, is launching RapidMiner 5.0: The new version allows enterprises to map and manage the entire business intelligence process chain from analytical ETL, data mining and predictive reporting with a single solution. The fully revised user interface offers a significantly simplified operation, meaning that even newcomers to analysis can be given vital support with tasks that come up frequently.

Government

• VistA Modernization Report Features Open Source

  A Veterans Affairs requested VistA Modernization Report is now available. The good news: it prominently features and recommends open source and discusses the prospect of VA VistA as a national standard.

  [...]

  Among the reports issues, it calls the GNU General Public License ‘restrictive’. Restrictive of what? Restrictive of the ability of proprietary vendors to establish and maintain vendor lock-in at the great expense of taxpayers and patients? The report at times treats open source and proprietary EHR software as equals instead of proprietary EHR software as a destructive invasive species. The report probably understates the number of private sector VistA deployments as measured by the 2008 AMIA Open Source White Paper. Finally, it makes the common error of subdividing open source vs commercial when open source is certainly commercial. They probably mean open source vs. proprietary.

Economist

• The Economist and Launchpad

  Economist logoThe online team at The Economist recently set up a Launchpad project, using a commercial subscription. I asked Mark Theunissen, from The Economist Group, about their plans.

  Mark: We’re migrating the existing Economist.com stack from Coldfusion/Oracle to a LAMP stack running Drupal. At present, we’re about half way through — if you visit a blogs page, channel page, or comments page they will be served from Drupal, but the home page and actual articles are still served from Coldfusion. There’s a migration and syncronisation process happening in the background between Oracle and MySQL.

• The Economist To Go Open Source

  The world renowned Economist Magazine is migrating its infrastructure from proprietary to an Open Source stack. According to this blog post on Launchpad, The Economist is migrating its existing stack “from Coldfusion/Oracle to a LAMP stack running Drupal,” says Mark Theunissen from the Economist Group.

Programming

• Yehuda Katz on Merging into Merb

  In December of 2008, the Ruby on Rails community was at a crossroads. The mainline Rails project was losing ground to Merb, an alternative open source MVC framework for building Ruby applications. The community was fragmenting. Yehuda Katz was the creator of the Merb framework, and rather than continue on with that project, he and his fellow contributors decided to merge Merb and Rails. The decision sparked a number of Rails homecomings for other outside projects, and in February the first beta of an integrated Rails 3.0 arrived. We sat down with Katz to discuss the past, present and future of Ruby on Rails.

Law & Order

• Spammers ordered to pay tiny ISP whopping $2.6m

  The judgment was awarded by Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte of the US District Court in Northern California. It comes in a case filed against the principals of a business called Find a Quote. A four-employee ISP in Garberville, California, Asis said it receives about 200,000 junk messages per day and spends about $3,000 per month to process them.

• Teacher Caught On Video Stealing From Lockers

  A school spokesman said it’s possible the student who recorded the cell phone video could get in trouble as well because students are not supposed to use their phones during the day.

  School officials said they are not allowed to record video in locker rooms because of privacy.

• Italy: Prosecution Advances in Red Light Camera Fraud Scandal

  The investigation into the fraudulent use of red light cameras in Italy last week concluded with prosecutors preparing charges against thirty-eight public officials and photo enforcement company executives. Prosecutors claim that three photo enforcement companies formed a cartel that operated in collusion with public officials for the purpose of generating revenue. The officials accepted bribes in return for approving lucrative contracts and shortening the duration of yellow lights at intersections equipped with red light cameras.

• Voters turned away from polling stations in UK general elections

• Search neutrality? How Google became a “neutrality” target

  If ISPs should be subject to “net neutrality,” should companies like Google be subject to “search neutrality”?

  When we wrote recently about the idea of “search neutrality,” some readers seemed to believe that we had coined the term, but nothing could be further from the truth. “Search neutrality” now fills the FCC filings of companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T, all of whom see no reason why their businesses should be picked out for regulatory scrutiny while Google goes about its business unmolested.

• Downloaded software presents legal woes

  A court decision ruling that the supply of software through a digital download mechanism is not a supply of “goods” has been upheld in the Supreme Court of NSW, setting a precedent that software downloaded via the internet is not protected by the Sale of Goods Act.

Science

• Neanderthals live on in DNA of humans

  There is a little Neanderthal in nearly all of us, according to scientists who compared the genetic makeup of humans with that of our closest ancient relatives.

• NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils

  NASA’s Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.

Security/Aggression

• AMU teachers demand removal of CCTV cameras from campus

  A teachers’ body at the Aligarh Muslim University has demanded immediate removal of CCTV cameras installed at the campus, calling the measure as an “unacceptable encroachment” into privacy of people at the premier institute.

• Miami airport screener accused of attack after jeers at genitals

  A Miami airport screener, agitated at continued ribbing after colleagues saw his body parts in an imaging scanner, attacked a colleague, police said.

• Suspicious Package: TSA Worker Jailed After Junk Joke

• Best Use for This Gadget Is Spying on a Pet: Rich Jaroslovsky

  Unlike some systems, the Vue doesn’t use a Wi-Fi network to carry its signals. Instead, it creates its own network between the gateway and cameras, like cordless telephones communicating with a base station.

Environment

• Gulf oil spill reaches Freemason Island as BP prepares to lower giant funnel

  Over the next few days cranes will attempt to lower the 100-tonne contraption around 5,000ft (1,500 metres) to the sea floor and position it over a leaking pipe that has been gushing 210,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf.

• Slick Operator: The BP I’ve known too well

  I’ve seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon’s name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was … British Petroleum. That’s important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

• Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Obama attempts to limit political fallout

  White House lists actions taken to contain the disaster as BP says robot submarines have blocked one leak

• BP is getting more political, and that may help weather oil-spill storm

  John Browne, the former chief executive of energy giant BP, used to brag about his company’s relative lack of political involvement, saying the London-based conglomerate purposely shied away from spending too much on lobbying and campaign contributions.

• NYT Has No Space to Tell You It’s an Oil Industry Group Saying That Spills Aren’t So Bad

  So it’s not exactly surprising that the executive director of such a group would have a nonchalant view of the impact of oil spills on the Gulf. What is maybe a little surprising is that the New York Times would present a coalition of offshore drilling interests as neutral experts on the environment.

• Secret Copenhagen recording reveals resistance from China and India

  Der Spiegel captures standoff between Obama, Sarkozy, Brown and Merkel and developing country negotiators

Finance

• Payday lenders pressure borrowers to get political

  The lenders, notorious for high fees and interest rates, have been pressing vulnerable customers to help them kill the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

• The Bullshit of Government Statistics

  There are now two stories based on two completely calculations munged together into one sound bite. The explanation will likely turn into “more people are looking for jobs now.” But why is the denominator shifting around? Weren’t those people already jobless (unemployed), even though they weren’t looking for jobs? Oh – wait, if we include the people not looking for jobs in the historical unemployment calculation, the unemployment rate goes up, maybe by a lot. Eek – wouldn’t that be more scary.

  It’s a simple game the government is playing with the numbers. Occasionally I’ll run into a company that does this – usually around revenue vs. gross margin dynamics, or bookings vs. revenue, or GAAP accounting vs. actual cash flows (where what really matters is cash flows.) Picking the better number vs. dealing with reality is disingenuous at best; presenting them in conflicting ways that obscure the message is bullshit.

• Market Fragmentation May Get Review After Stock Drop

  Federal regulators reviewing yesterday’s stock plunge will try to determine if the fivefold increase in the number of American equity exchanges has left them unable to manage the biggest surges in volume.

  The selloff erased $700 billion from U.S. markets in eight minutes after actions by the New York Stock Exchange to slow trading increased volatility on other platforms, said Joe Ratterman, chief executive officer of the five-year-old alternative exchange Bats Global Markets Inc. NYSE Euronext Chief Operating Officer Larry Leibowitz said the Big Board prevented a bigger decline.

• Did A Stock Market Circut-Breaker Backfire?

  Almost 24 hours have passed since the stock market had its momentary freakout, and it’s still unclear what happened to trigger the sell-off.

• Fears intensify about Greek crisis’ impact on US

  The stock market’s slump this week reflects a widespread concern among many economists that the European debt crisis could slow the U.S. economic recovery.

• Regulators look into market plunge, weigh changes

  The SEC and CFTC have ultimate oversight of financial markets, but they generally rely on the markets to write and enforce their own rules.

• Al Franken: The rating agencies had ‘a reason to be stupid’

  You could say let’s just not have any rating agencies. But we’d have a problem if we didn’t have rating agencies at all. I think what you want are rating agencies that do a good job.

• AIG Fires Goldman Sachs (Payback is a Bitch)

  This smells like a little payback for Goldman’s role in the AIG collapse.

• AIG DUMPS Goldman Sachs As Its Top Adviser: NYT

• Why did Goldman Sachs chair fumble answers to Coburn’s questions?

• Where Was Goldman’s Supplementary Liquidity Provider Team Yesterday? A Recap Of Goldman’s Program Trading Monopoly

• Under Fire, Goldman Sachs Hosts Shareholder Meeting

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Iranian civil rights protester is spared deportation

  Bita Ghaedi, who feared her life was at risk if returned to Iran, wins interim reprieve

• The Facebook Privacy War: What is Personal Data?

  There is a current campaign on the internet for users to not log into Facebook for a whole day on June 6th, 2010. This comes in response to the recent changes made by Facebook to their privacy settings, especially to the one leaving the default “on” instead of “off.” Basically it became quite apparent that Facebook is in fact, a business, and that your so-called “personal” data was for sale. To economists and investors, this was no surprise at all. They all expected Facebook to make a genuine attempt to make money at some point, and what better way than demographic targeted advertising?

• Stealth installs and adware come to Facebook

  As noted earlier by PC World, the social networking site silently adds apps to profiles whenever a user is logged in and browses to certain sites. Facebook displays no dialogue box or notification window asking permission, and there is no easy way to opt out of the process.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Canadians Get To Pay More Money For The Same Broadband

  To be clear: this shouldn’t be confused with pure “billing by the byte.” The low cap and high overage model (which Time Warner Cable tried — and failed — to impose in the U.S. last year) simply jacks up prices “thousands of multiples beyond what the costs are” on top of the already high flat rate price — ensuring that consumers wind up paying significantly more money for the same service.

• FCC Gives Hollywood The Right To Break Your TV/DVR… Just ‘Cause

  That logic is backwards. Basically, Hollywood is saying that it held the public hostage until the FCC let it break your TVs, and because the FCC caved in and Hollywood will release the movies it easily could have released before, consumers win. When someone is taken hostage and the family pays up, that’s not a “win” for the family. As Public Knowledge points out, this appears to be the FCC doing this just as a favor to Hollywood.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Copyright law must be relaxed, says new group

    Librarians, digital activists, ISPs, music managers and other associations and trade bodies have called for the relaxing of copyright law in the EU to allow more people to access and re-use copyrighted material.

  • Canadian Writers Guild Wants ‘You Must Be A Criminal’ Tax On Both Distribution And Storage Of Content

    Canada has long had a blank media levy on things like blank CDs, which is a sort of “you must be a criminal” tax on things. Of course, what it really does is drive down the usage of blank CDs by making them ridiculously expensive — such that, in some cases, it accounts for 90% of the price of a blank CD.

  • UNESCO’s bizarre World Anti-Piracy Observatory

    Particularly notable: WAPO’s “collection of national copyright laws”, where each country’s page is linked to a “Disclaimer” in which UNESCO claims copyright on the content of the collection and restricts its use to educational, non commercial purposes – even though in most cases, they simply downloaded the copyright law from the official site, renamed the file and re-uploaded it on the UNESCO server.

  • A Copyright Violation???

    So, the question is do we not use Brittany’s painting, the piece that 18 months of design work have been crafted around, because the Manager of Intellectual Property of a famous Pop artist who also appropriated from the same source image says we can’t? Brittany’s painting certainly appears to be an appropriation of the uncopyrighted(?) graphic novel piece as opposed to an “adapted…Roy Lichtenstein image” as Ms. Lee has stated. We haven’t pressed the album yet, so we just need to know whether or not we CAN use the image based on its appropriative properties. What IS the answer here??????

  • How Many Bad Assumptions Can You Make In A Single Article About Content Creation And Copyright?

    That’s simply not true. McArdle is making the same mistake that many politicians and reporters make, despite it being pointed out as an error time and time again: she’s confusing the recording industry with the music industry. The music industry is actually doing quite well when you look at the numbers. Switching back and forth between the two, as McArdle does throughout the piece, and pretending they’re the same thing at some points, and different at others is really weak reporting. Yes, the numbers for the recording industry are worse, just as the numbers for the horse buggy industry got worse and worse each year as the automobile industry ramped up.

  • Library Group And Others Issue Declaration For Consumer Friendly Copyright In Europe

    Stuart Hamilton from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) alerted us to the news that his organization, along with “a broad based coalition of European groups, representing consumers, creators, libraries, civil society and technology companies” have put together a declaration in the EU Parliament for Copyright for Creativity — with the goal being to reform copyright law to bring it back to its original purpose, while updating it for the internet age so that it “fosters digital creativity, innovation, education, and access to cultural works.”

• Ofcom rattling ahead with Digital Economy Act letters regime

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Under The Spotlight As We Prepare For A Chaos Bound National Elections

The photo caption reads: “A Smartmatic worker inserts one of 76,000 CF cards recalled for glitches and formatted in its warehouse in Laguna.” He is clearly using Ubuntu Linux so I wondered if the system used by Smartmatic Inc. is entirely based on Linux and other Free and Open Source software.

I once wished for an Open Source and Linux-based automated voting system in order to help minimize election fraud, but since our corrupt politicians will do whatever they can to cheat and win, I’m losing hope. Before I’ll go, I would like to quote this comment from our reader:

“All electronic systems do is add another layer of potential fraud, which is harder to spot than before. Also it’s far harder to identify who has committed the fraud than when paper votes are used. What’s the point? Linux would do best to stay well clear – why get tarred with that brush eh?”

JeOS: Death of the operating system?

With the rise of virtualization and the concept of a lightweight, Just enough Operating System (JeOS), the traditional OS could become a thing of the past.

JeOS is stripped down to the bare essentials necessary to run a particular application — a perfect fit for virtualization, which allows many operating systems to run concurrently on a single host. The actual components in a JeOS implementation may vary from one guest to another, but the concept remains the same: If it does not serve the needs of the application, it doesn’t need to be in the OS.

Audiocasts

• The Linux Link Tech Show #352 5/5/10 [Ogg]

• FLOSS Weekly 119: The Mars Rover Drivers

  Randal and Aaron talk with Scott Maxwell and Paolo Bellutta about driving the Mars rovers.

Kernel Space

• The Phoronix Ubuntu Lucid Lynx benchmarks- what is that really?

  I am not against their conclusion whatsoever. What I have a problem with is the way the story is titled. I find it very unfair to title a story this way only to have conducted a series of game tests on the two OS to reach such a conclusion. Would it have been so difficult to title it to reflect the fact that the conclusion is based on a series of tests in a gaming context.

  I would be woefully unfair to Windows 7 should I claim Ubuntu 10.04 has more eye candy than the former without making it known afore-hand that I have Compiz running. It should be made clearly known that there is no way Windows 7 can be faster than the Lucid Lynx (yes I am sticking my neck here) in a general purpose context.

• The People Who Support Linux

  How do you use Linux? At work? At home?

  Fernandez: I had dabbled with Linux in school, but I really only got into it at university. With the exception of my partner, very few things excite me as much as open source software; and Linux, as an open source operating system, struck a chord with me. These days I use Linux on several machines at home for development, email and web browsing; as a server; as a media center; and on my phone.

  You recently joined The Linux Foundation as an individual member. Can you share with us why you joined and what you hope to get out of membership?

  Fernandez: I joined because I’ve been using Linux for years. I find it an inspiring community and I had $99 to spare! Kernel development is something I’d like to get into eventually and The Linux Foundation provides some great resources for learning more about the kernel and the developer community. Membership with the Foundation (from my few weeks of experience) is a great way to stay on top of new developments in Linux and connect with the Linux community. To be honest, more than any of these reasons, I joined to give something back to a community that has made such a big difference in my daily life.

• Graphics Stack

  • DRI2 Sync & Swap For ATI Finally Comes About

    Last year a new set of DRI2 extensions came about for sync and swap support of display buffers to better reduce potential “tearing” that may appear on displays in some composited environments. This work that’s exposed to the client through OpenGL/GLX extensions also can lead to improved performance, video memory savings, and other benefits as talked about extensively on the Composite Swap Wiki page. A new GLX swap event extension also came about out of expressed needs by the Clutter/Mutter developers.

Applications

• Neformal: A simple, casual audio player

  Sometimes you want an application with a ton of options, and sometimes you just want to simplify. Many audio players, for instance, come with equalizers and visualizations, but if all you want is just to play the music, all you need is Neformal. Neformal doesn’t support playlists, podcasts, or other cool modern stuff. It just plays the files, one after another, in a selected directory.

• Instructionals

  • Install KDE 4.4.3 on Kubuntu 10.04

  • Quick Tip:Fix for Ugly Plymouth themes in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

  • Upgrade To Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx: No internet, no problem

  • Using Ubuntu as a thin client

  • Gnome hacking

  • PXE dust: scalable day-to-day diskless booting

  • Boot From a USB Drive Even if your BIOS Won’t Let You

  • Simple Steps with Puppet

  • Split and Merge files using GNOME Split

  • How to disable shutdown notification in Ubuntu 10.04

  • Ubuntu on ASUS UL30VT

  • Manual fan control with /proc/acpi

  • Game fixes after upgrading to Lucid Lynx

  • A professional quality Non-linear video editing suite for Linux (KDE) – Kdenlive

  • Setting up MySQL Replication for High Availability

  • How To Integrate ClamAV Into PureFTPd For Virus Scanning On OpenSUSE 11.2

  • How to Upgrade Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Desktop

  • Ubuntu 10.04: Check IMAP with Nagios

• Games

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent pre-order discount!

    Frictional Games, which produced the successful Penumbra Game Series have announced recently, that since the Humble Indie Bundle is such a great success (close to 50000 contributions so far) they offer Amnesia: The Dark Descent for pre-order at 50% discount (which amounts then to 10$) until May 11.

  • GNU/Linux Users Contribute Twice As Much As Windows Users !

    One of the companies behind The Humble Indie Bundle, Wolfire Games reports that GNU/Linux users contribute twice as much as Windows users !

    This is not the first time the GNU/Linux gamers prove that they are excellent costumers, a while ago I posted that when 2dboy the developers of World Of Goo which BTW is also a part of the Humble Indie Bundle, made the birthday sales week, GNU/Linux users chose to pay more the the Mac and Windows users.

  • Alien Arena 2010 released today.

    Alien Arena 2010 has been released today!

    The latest edition of this open sourced, freeware FPS has been updated with new levels, several new weapon models, and a host of bugfixes, gameplay tweaks, and client improvements.

  • Alien Arena 2010 Has Arrived With Changes

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• I want visualizations back in Linux

  But ever since Amarok discontinued the visualizations all the other media players seem to have followed their lead. I do not understand this.

  [...]

  If I find a decent Media player that is stable and has nice visualizations I will drop Amarok in a heart beat.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 & CentOS 3 end-of-life announced

    The company advises all users to upgrade to a later release. Under the standard 7 year life-cycle, RHEL 5, for example, will be supported until March of 2014. The next version, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, is currently in development and is available as a pre-release beta. The latest stable release is version 5.5 from the end of March.

  • Nearing The Release Of Fedora 13

    Last week marked the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, this week there was the releases of PCLinuxOS 2010.1 and a new openSUSE 11.3 milestone, and planned for unveiling in just over a week is the final release of Fedora 13. This week the Fedora 13 release candidate is available via their compose system as all hands are on deck to prepare for the release of Goddard.

• Ubuntu

  • Does Ubuntu Capture the “Mac Vision And Spirit” Better Than Mac OS X?

    A week ago, on April 29, Linux distro Canonical released Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) in Desktop, Server and Netbook editions. It featured a new look that some rate more attractive and up-to-date than Snow Leopard’s. “Lucid Lynx’s” new graphics card drivers and other consumer-oriented innovations front a Linux-based operating system package containing all the essential productivity applications you need, all for free: a web browser, office suite, media apps, instant messaging and much more, and is being pitched as an open-source alternative to Windows and Office or Mac OS X and the iApps. Ubuntu’s core applications are all free and open source.

  • Ubuntu Lucid almost shines

  • Top 5 Changes You Should Make On A Fresh Lucid Install [Linux]

  • Ubuntu One Music Store Starts on the Wrong Foot

  • Why you should use Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.4

  • Lubuntu Review: A Lightweight Ubuntu Variant

    If you are looking for a lightweight alternative to install in your old PC or netbook, Lubuntu is a great choice. You won’t get any eye candy or special graphical effects, but what you get is fast speed at a low cost. It’s time to put your old PC back to work.

Devices/Embedded

• Pandora Radio on the N900 – pyPianobar

Riverbed and the Open Source Flamebox

We also talked about the open source model and how it applies to a proprietary networking vendor like Riverbed.

Development/Documentation

• Too Many Forges, Too Little Time

  Those days are long over, and I wonder if that’s a good thing. SourceForge, for all its flaws (and it had plenty), set some expectations for projects that other services do not. For example, SourceForge provides Web hosting, mailing lists, bug trackers, and most of the tools that projects need to grow and succeed. In short, not just the development tools, but also the community tools needed to discuss and promote the projects. For many projects, that set an expectation of using those tools.

• New documentation project for blind Linux users and all the others

  When he realized that custom documentation for Free Software is needed for vision-impaired users, Tony Baechler offered to launch a dedicated service. I asked Tony what exactly he hopes to set up and how it should work.

  [...]

  Stop: When I first read Tony’s offer, I decided to contact him because I thought that such a good idea deserved as much exposure as possible. After reading this plan and the rationale behind it I’m even more convinced and also have one more reason to invite all readers who want to know more or could help in any way to contact Tony or visit audio.BatSupport.com, the website on which he will host these tutorials: follow Tony’s guidelines and you’ll produce audio tutorials very useful for all potential Linux users, not just those with vision problems!

Mozilla

• Firefox 3.7a5pre: Tabs on Top, New Add-on Manager

  Firefox 3.7a5pre now has an option to place the browser’s tabs on top of the controls, similar to Google Chrome. This is likely part of Mozilla’s plans to redesign Firefox for version 4. The new option can be found in the right-click menu as “Tabs on Top” below “Navigation Toolbar” and “Bookmarks Toolbar”.

• Education for an Open Web

  The Mozilla Foundation and the Shuttleworth Foundation support dynamic leaders with new ideas that drive openness and innovation. In particular, we share an interest in how open technologies and open education can foster creativity, participation and fresh thinking that improves the world. For this reason, we have decided to jointly offer an Education for the Open Web Fellowship. This is the call for proposals.

Oracle

• Ex-Sun exec Padir turns focus to startup’s open-source software

  Karen Tegan Padir is an evangelist. Her gospel is open source software, and she recently changed denominations when she left Sun Microsystems Inc., where she was in charge of running the departments that determined the future of such ubiquitous Internet software as Java and MySQL.

• VirtualBox Continues To Gain Under Oracle

  VirtualBox 3.2 Beta 1 brought experimental support for Mac OS X guests, memory ballooning, CPU hot-plugging, new hypervisor features, RDP video acceleration, and much more. With VirtualBox 3.2 Beta 2, Oracle has introduced Java bindings for VirtualBox, numerous GUI enhancements, fixes for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS guests, new icons, performance optimizations, and various other fixes.

Business

• How Do You Make a Pentaho?

  Daley told me that it has around 45,000 “active” members – that is, people that do something rather than just visit. The community also contributes to the overall project – mostly QA, but also bug-fixes.

BSD

• Bordeaux 2.0.4 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD Released

  The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 2.0.4 for FreeBSD and PC-BSD today. Bordeaux 2.0.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a number of small bugs. With this release we have changed the Bordeux UI from a GTKDialog to a GTKWindow, the “OK” button has also been re-named to “Install”. We have upgraded our Wine bundle from 1.1.36 to 1.1.41, updated to the latest winetricks release, added support for the new Steam UI, and changed the progress bar back to Zenity.

Releases

• Data Leak Prevention Finally Gets an Open Source Alternative

  OpenDLP runs on an Apache Web Server using a MySQL database. This version only works on Windows computers via an installed agent. The project is hosted on Google code and is licensed under the GPL v3.

Government

• Open source is NASA’s next frontier

  The challenges to government’s adoption and participation in open-source communities is often thought to be a simple culture clash, but in reality it goes deeper than that, according to NASA’s newly-appointed chief technology officer.

  “The issues that we need to tackle are not only cuture, but beyond culture,” said Chris Kemp, formerly chief information officer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “And I think we need new policy and support from the administration and Congress to help us tackle” them.

  [...]

  And open source is a key element of Kemp’s strategy. “We’re actually creating a new Open Source Office under our Open Government Initiative under the Chief Technology Officer’s office,” he said. “We’re really taking this seriously, and we’ve never had this sort of visibility and interest from headquarters before.”

• EU Parliament calls for internet rights charter

  The Parliament has adopted a new digital strategy called 2015.eu which outlines its ambitions for internet policy for the next five years and beyond. It has passed a resolution adopting the plan and demanding that the European Commission make it work.

Openness

• Honeywell Goes Open Source, Grabs Akuacom

  The smart grid shopping spree keeps going this week. Building automation giant Honeywell said on Friday that it has bought demand response firm Akuacom, for an undisclosed price. The news comes days after Swiss electrical giant ABB said it plans to throw down more than $1 billion for smart grid software player Ventyx (The Smart Grid Acquisition Tally . . . So Far).

• Open Access/Content

  • PLoS ONE and botanical pioneer helps to bring open-access taxonomy a step closer

    There are several thousand new plant species described every year, published in a range of plant taxonomy journals and other venues. Publishing another description might not be seen as a particularly earth-shattering event but we are enormously proud to be able to publish Sandra Knapp’s new paper on four new vining species in PLOS ONE today as it represents a turning point for PLoS and for botanical nomenclature. The paper is a botanical pioneer: it is the first to be published in an online-only journal whilst adhering to the strict botanical code that sets out how new species can be named.

  • Copyright: a Conditional Intellectual Monopoly

Standards/Consortia

• The future of the Internet is here: non-English extensions hit the Web

  Kim has already written a quick blog post on the launch, highlighting the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and IT, which is at the end of one of three top-level domains that have gone live.

  It is hard to describe the importance of this step. It has been years, literally years, of conversation and discussion and engineering to get to this point. And that point is: the Internet’s core infrastructure can now deal with non-ASCII language. Which means that the Arabic-speaking world, the Chinese-speaking world, the Hindi-speaking world, in fact the majority of people on the planet can finally use the Internet natively without this strange American structure that makes you puts, for example, “.com” at the end of every domain.

• The Future of Reading is Open

  Today, Scribd is changing the way you read documents online. Over the next few weeks and months, Scribd will convert our entire content corpus — tens of millions of documents, books and presentations — into native HTML5 web pages so that we can offer the best online reading experience. Scribd documents in HTML5 load instantly, support native browser functions (zoom, search, scroll, select text), and deliver an impressive reading experience across all browsers and web-enabled devices, without requiring add-ons or plug-ins.

Presidential panel report: to avoid cancer, eat organic, filter water, avoid plastic food containers

After reading the report, I was inspired to throw out (recycle!) all of the pthalate and BPA-laden cheapo plastic food storage containers from my kitchen, and order replacements made from glass with silicone seals. I already buy mostly organic foods, and drink mostly filtered water. I don’t microwave my food at all, but if even storing cold leftovers in certain types of plastic containers might up your risk, this seems an easy and cheap enough change to make. Can’t hurt.

Business Models

• From Business Models to ‘Betterness’ Models

  I’d like to advance a hypothesis. Maybe, just maybe, business isn’t why companies exist anymore. Maybe 21st century companies are no longer just in business, but in “betterness.” Here’s what I mean.

  A fool and his wallet, they say, are soon parted. Consider yours truly. Recently, I ordered furniture from IKEA. It’s just for a spare room, I thought, and I’ll save a few bucks. What I forgot? The hidden costs. Comically torturous self-assembly with hilariously absurd diagrams, to begin with. But I never even got that far.

• Wikipedia Now Lets You Order Printed Books

Hardware

• PC Building: Intel’s Turbo Boost vs AMD’s Turbo Core

  Intel’s version of the technology is called Turbo Boost, while AMD’s is called Turbo Core.

• Hypervisor

  A hypervisor is a software technology used in virtualization, which allows several operating systems to run side-by-side on a given piece of hardware.

Science

• The Internet anticipated in 1964

  When the New Scientist’s 1964 series of predictions for “The World in 1984” was published by Penguin Books the following year, I added tables at the end. They summarized what seemed to me the main expectations of the scientists and scholars (about 100 of them) who contributed to the project. The first table concerned “Major Technological Revolutions” and I reproduce its contents below, reformatted to fit the page but otherwise unmodified in any way. The question marks denoted explicit disagreement or implicit controversy on important points.

Security/Aggression

• Why Aren’t There More Terrorist Attacks?

  As the details of the Times Square car bomb attempt emerge in the wake of Faisal Shahzad’s arrest Monday night, one thing has already been made clear: Terrorism is fairly easy. All you need is a gun or a bomb, and a crowded target. Guns are easy to buy. Bombs are easy to make. Crowded targets — not only in New York, but all over the country — are easy to come by. If you’re willing to die in the aftermath of your attack, you could launch a pretty effective terrorist attack with a few days of planning, maybe less.

• Video of SWAT Raid on Missouri Family

  Radly Balko of Reason posted this video of a SWAT raid on a family in Missouri. The officers found a small amount of cannabis, and so they arrested the parents on a charge of child endangerment, naturally.

Environment

• ‘Iron hand’ to help realize green goals

  Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday vowed to realize the country’s green goal to cut energy intensity by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010, amid the strong economic recovery.

  In a nationwide video and teleconference, Wen told governments at all levels to work with an “iron hand” to eliminate inefficient enterprises.

• Republicans won’t be nudged into cutting home energy

  It was hailed as a breakthrough in the fight to cut carbon emissions. In 2007, researchers found that heavy electricity users cut their consumption after being told that they used more energy than their neighbours. Almost a million US households have since received similar feedback and have cut electricity use by an average of 2.5 per cent.

  But a new study has identified a wrinkle in the plan: the feedback only seems to work with liberals. Conservatives tend to ignore it. Some even respond by using more energy.

• Future temperatures could be too hot to survive

  Researchers from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia, have for the first time calculated the highest ‘wet-bulb’ temperature that people can tolerate – and have found that it could be exceeded for the first time in human history under reasonable worst-case climate change scenarios.

• EU vows to tackle overfishing with policy overhaul

  European Union ministers on Wednesday vowed to overhaul their 840 million euro-a-year fishing subsidies policy by next year to avoid overfishing and make the industry more sustainable.

• US carbon emissions plunge—not just because of lousy economy

  Residential and commercial energy use have remained pretty flat for the last three years, but transportation started a gradual decline in energy consumption in 2007. Although 2008 saw a huge decline in driving due to fuel prices, the cost of fuel dropped in 2009. As one might expect, total miles traveled rose, although only by a small fraction of a percent. Nevertheless, total fuel consumption was down from 2008 for every month of the year, spurred in part by an increase of 1.5mpg in the average fleet fuel economy. Given that the fuel economy is set to rise rapidly through 2016, this sector is likely to continue to improve.

• Europe’s green delusion

  The European Union likes to think of itself as the unrivalled champion of eco-governance but, argues Derrick Sutter, it is far from living up to its image.

Finance

• Low interest rates didn’t cause the bubble, economists say

  Economists have spent the past 70-plus years trying to figure out what caused the Great Depression. They’re likely to spend the next 70 analyzing the causes and lessons of this decade’s devastating boom and bust.

• Senate Nod to Fed Audit Is Expected

  The Senate on Thursday rejected an effort by liberal Democrats to break up some of the biggest banks, defeating an amendment to financial regulatory legislation that would have imposed new limits on the size and scope of financial companies.

• Congress wants review of market plunge

  Lawmakers are trying to learn the causes of the drastic stock market sell-off to ensure that high-tech trading is monitored and average investors are protected in the wilds of Wall Street.

• As Homeowners’ Dreams Die, He’s the Undertaker

  Hardly any. Legally, they have already lost ownership. If they do not respond to the carrot the lenders offer — as much as $5,000 in cash in exchange for leaving the house in good order — he employs the stick: the county sheriff, who evicts them.

• Steven Pearlstein: Greek crisis exposes cracks in Europe’s foundation

  It is easy to dismiss Thursday’s 30-minute, 1,000-point boomerang on the Dow Jones industrial average as a freak event that resulted when everyday human error collided with high-speed, high-volume computerized trading.

• Glassman Says It Was ‘Stupid’ to Criticize Senators

  James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said it was a mistake for him to call members of a Senate panel ignorant and to call for “grownups to step in” to the financial reform debate.

• Financial firms’ roles toughen legislative task

  But whether it should be the law is the subject of debate on Capitol Hill as the Senate prepares to vote on legislation to overhaul financial regulation. It is also one of the key issues underpinning the recent controversy regarding Goldman’s role in the financial crisis.

• Unwashed Masses 1, Fed 0: Sanders Scores

  The effort to audit the Fed got a big boost last night when Senator Bernie Sanders reached an agreement with Chris Dodd, the chair of the banking committee. Under the deal, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) would undertake a full audit of the special facilities created by the Fed since December of 2007. GAO would make the findings from its audit available to the Congressional leadership. It would also make most of the details of the Fed’s transactions available to the public.

• Democrats defeat GOP alternative on consumer agency

  Senate Democratic leaders cleared two major obstacles Thursday to winning passage of a Wall Street reform bill, beating back a Republican effort to curb the reach of a new consumer agency and striking a compromise on a watered-down bill to shine a light on Federal Reserve activities.

• A.I.G. Said to Dismiss Goldman

  As its legal troubles mount, Goldman Sachs is losing a big corporate client: the American International Group.

• Thank you, Goldman Sachs

  Has Congress suddenly grown a collective spine? Between the SEC case, the recent hearings held by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and the current turmoil in the euro zone (exacerbated, some say, by derivatives deals), even Republicans can read the writing on the wall now: the public wants action against Wall Street. Will there be—mirabile dictu!—an actual bipartisan vote in favor of financial reform?

• Roubini Urges Goldman Sachs Breakup, Possible CDO Ban: Books

  Break up Goldman Sachs Group Inc., he says. Consider banning collateralized debt obligations. And why not compensate traders with slices of their own exotic securities instead of with cash or shares?

• Goldman braces for shareholder fury

  Goldman investors are converging on lower Manhattan for the firm’s annual shareholder meeting. Typically a rather mild-mannered affair, the gathering is poised to turn contentious given the scrutiny Goldman has been under in recent weeks.

• BP And Goldman Sachs: Gambling With Your Money

  Just like Goldman Sachs, BP acted irresponsibly by recklessly pursuing profits at the expense of the American people. Both companies gambled, both companies lost, and both companies expect the taxpayer to clean up their mess. It’s time both companies are held accountable.

• Goldman Sachs SEC Settlement Could Hit $5 BILLION: Fox Business Network

  Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business Network is reporting that the SEC’s highly publicized civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs are likely to be settled for $1 billion to $5 billion.

• What Any Goldman Settlement Might Entail

• Whitman’s lead over Poizner plummets

  Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman’s lead in the Republican race for California governor has shrunk dramatically as the billionaire candidate has been battered by her ties to Goldman Sachs, new Republican and Democratic polls suggest.

• Calpers Votes to Split Chairman, CEO Roles at Goldman

  The California Public Employees Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, voted to split the roles of chairman and chief executive officer currently held by Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

• Lloyd Blankfein Should Resign From Goldman Sachs

  Under Mr. Blankfein, Goldman’s reputation has gone from Teflon to Velcro. Criticism that used to beguile other firms without nicking the Goldman now seem to only stick to Goldman. Once the pinnacle of banking, Goldman is now the butt of jokes across Wall Street and Main Street.

• A steel dome will be lowered over Wall St to contain the red ink

  A drilling platform at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway exploded and sank today with sticky red ink spreading across the land. It is impossible to estimate the damage this will do as it begins to wash up on Main Street. Senator John Kyle of Arizona denied that any Republican in the Senate ever favored more financial drilling, “Some candidate may have had said something two or three years ago like ‘the fundamentals of the economy are sound’ but that was never our policy”.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Commissioner Malmström launches censorship arms race

  Commissioner Malmström has been explaining to the European Parliament and to the press that her Internet blocking proposals are “only” about child abuse websites and “only” the kind of blocking that is in place in countries such as Sweden. At the same time, however, her officials have been convincing the EU’s national home affairs ministries to agree in principle to measures to develop legal powers to destroy web resources outside the EU anywhere in an area covering the majority of the northern hemisphere.

• Brazil’s Proposed Internet Regulation–an Update (That’s Actually Good News) (Guest Blog Post)

  Some fantastic news: in response to the waves of criticism toward the proposed notice and takedown regime that might have curbed online speech in Brazil – see my prior blog post – the Brazilian Ministry of Justice has announced a completely different system for online service provider liability and content removal.

Intellectual Monopolies

• WIPO Traditional Knowledge Committee Moving Toward Legal Agreement

  A World Intellectual Property Organization committee tasked with finding an international instrument to prevent the misappropriation of traditional knowledge, folklore, and genetic resources has begun in earnest text-based discussions and is now working to find an agreement on extra meetings intended to speed the process towards creating an international legal instrument.

• Copyrights

  • Copyright for Creativity – A Declaration for Europe

  • Google to Record Label: Linking Is Not a Crime!

    In what seems like a role reversal, Google has filed a lawsuit against Blue Destiny Records in an attempt to assert that it has not infringed the record label’s copyrights. Blue Destiny Records had previously sued Google but then withdrew the suit, saying that it would refile at a later date.

  • Soccer Schedules Copyrightable Says British Court

    The British High Court ruled Friday that “fixtures” (a fancy British word for schedules) showing when and where soccer matches are being played can properly be subject to copyright.

• ACTA

  • Border detention of counterfeit and/or “counterfeit” pharma products

    So what is this 60 page document (which you can download here) all about? As ICTSD’s website explains:

    “The detentions of generic medicines in transit as a result of the implementation by certain countries of border measures, which go beyond the minimum standards set by the TRIPS Agreement, have attracted international attention. At the same time, such measures are often considered, by these countries, as instrumental in the fight against the circulation of “counterfeit” medicines [The Kat thinks these countries, in so far as they are personified, are concerned with counterfeits, not "counterfeits". The agenda of specific rights owners may be a different matter]. Clearly, the border measures in question raise complex legal and technical issues under the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

  • Written Declaration 12/2010 signatories list

  • European Parliament Passes Resolution Calling on Canada To Support Moving ACTA to WIPO

    In the aftermath of its success in promoting release of the ACTA draft text, it is interesting to see the European Parliament becoming increasingly vocal about the ACTA negotiations. Canada has remained generally silent on these issues and the EP resolution may help coax out a response.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Symbian development using Linux on real life…

I’m sure that Symbian development on Linux is near, and it will be massively adopted when those tools became part of QtCreator for linux. For those who can’t wait, or think that VIM is the best IDE ever, I hope those tips can help you. =)

The GNU/Linux Code of Life

One reason I chose this area was the amazing congruence between the battle between free and closed-source software and the fight to place genomic data in the public domain, for all to use, rather than having it locked up in proprietary databases and enclosed by gene patents. As I like to say, Digital Code of Life is really the same story as Rebel Code, with just a few words changed.

Philippines 2010 Elections and Ubuntu

The Philippines 2010 Election will be using an electronic counting machine for the first time. The Linux-powered machines were provided by Smartmatic and the ROMs are managed by (and supposedly programmed in) Ubuntu.

Desktop

• 10+ mistakes Linux newbies make

  1: Assuming they are using Windows

  Although this might seem way too obvious, it’s not. The average user has no idea there are even different operating systems to be had. In fact, most average users couldn’t discern Windows XP from Vista from 7 (unless they are certain Windows 7 was “their idea”). Because of this, new users might believe that everything works (or doesn’t work, as the case may be) as it does in Windows. Make your end users aware that they are using a different operating system — and that it works differently.

• Who Cares About Linux on the PS3?

  I could build my own computer with truly kick ass components and enjoy Linux far more than with Sony’s already aging and relatively puny videogame console. And I could easily swap out older components for newer components, thus making a DIY box last far longer than a silly videogame console.

Kernel Space

• EXT4 File-System Looks To Do Well Against NTFS

  While EXT4 has regressed a fair amount (as we have talked about in countless articles) since it was deemed stable in the mainline Linux kernel, it’s looking like it’s still able to hold its ground against Windows 7 and NTFS at least with this synthetic disk benchmark. It will be more interesting to see how Apache, SQLite, PostgreSQL, and other real-world applications perform between the two operating systems — especially as that’s where EXT4 has had a challenging experience with recent kernel releases that try to improve data safety at the cost of speed.

• Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.34 (Part 3) – Graphics

  Having renamed Linux kernel 2.6.34-rc5 Sheep on Meth, late last week Linus Torvalds released the sixth pre-release version of Linux 2.6.34. The rate and scope of changes is, as usual at this stage in the development cycle, slowly declining, but, apart from a vague suggestion that 2.6.34 is close to completion, Torvalds has given no indication of when it will be released – expectations are that it will be out in one to three weeks.

• The kernel column #86

• Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 “Lyngen” Beta 2 Is Here

  For those looking to run any sort of automated benchmarks on Linux, Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, BSD, or even Windows 7 x64, the beta 2 release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.6 “Lygen” has been released this morning.

Applications

• The Scribes experience: It’s all about productivity!

  When a text editor’s catch phrase is “Scribes: It’s about the experience, not features.” you have to wonder what you are in for. However, Scribes is a very different editor. Scribes is all about making you productive. In fact, the developers of Scribes declare you will become exponentially more productive when using their tool. Why? Because they have implemented only features that focus on productivity. That is why you won’t find a collection of features that, in the grand scheme of productivity, do nothing.

• Instructionals

  • Install Ubuntu Linux over the network with the help of a Mac

  • Installing CRUX from a CD-ROM

  • 16 GB encrypted candy file

  • Bg, Fg, &, Ctrl-Z – 5 Examples to Manage Unix Background Jobs

  • Enable larger persistent data for Linux Live on SolidState or USB devices

  • Hudzilla Coding Academy: Project Ten

  • How to fix function keys (FN) issue after upgrading to ubuntu 10.04(Lucid)

  • How to Restore Grub 2 As The Main Bootloader

  • How to Install XAMPP on Ubuntu Linux

  • Linux Beginner: How To Browse Folders In openSUSE With Full Root Access

  • Improving battery life time in Linux

  • switching from gnu screen to tmux

  • Diagnose PC Hardware Problems with an Ubuntu Live CD

  • Best Practices for Contributors: Getting Started with Linux Distro Development

  • Compiling and installing gcocoadialog in Ubuntu

  • How to enable a second monitor NVIDIA

  • 5 Things You Didn’t Know VLC Could Do

  • Harnessing UML in Ubuntu

  • Koala to Lynx Almost Flawless

  • Ubuntu: Unexpected upgrade difficulties

  • Compiz Keyboard Shortcuts in Ubuntu 10.04

• Games

  • The MMORPG Ryzom goes Free Software!

    Winch Gate Properties Ltd, the developer and publisher of massively-multiplayer online science-fantasy role playing games, is proud to announce the release of the source code and artistic assets of the popular MMORPG Ryzom to the Free Software Development Community.

  • Ryzom MMORPG Released As Free Software

    Ryzom, a popular massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG), is being entirely open-sourced and even the artwork is going to be provided freely too. The Ryzom game is being put out under the GNU Affero GPL and the artwork is going under the Creative Commons.

  • Investigating The Steam Linux Client Continues

    The Steam Linux client still appears to be heavily in development, but the real breakthrough came on May Day when members within the Phoronix community managed to get the Steam Linux client running up to the point of showing the log-in window. This came after several independent enthusiasts were tracing the calls made by the closed-source content delivery program and making modifications to fix certain issues to get the client running further along.

  • Game of the Day – Quake Live

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• Pomodoro and KDE

  Am no follower of the Pomodoro technique nor do I know its specifics but before you go ahead and try out those multiple Adobe AIR applications or use the GNOME-oriented Workrave, please try out this software called RSIBreak which was built for KDE specifically.

• Krusader Team Celebrates 10th Birthday and Seeks New Contributors

  Ten years ago a simple twin panel file manager was released. It had a few small glitches like showing rrr instead of rwx for permissions, had some compatibility issues with Debian and Solaris, did not save keyboard settings, but it was, in spite of many bugs, sort of usable for everyday work. Ten years ago Krusader started on the path to becoming a top file manager for a large range of operating systems and users.

• Taking Choqok to the Next Level

  I am Mehrdad Momeny, a Persian Free Software enthusiast and the developer of Choqok, currently serving conscription. I am 24 years old and live in Mashhad, Iran, east of Tehran. I’m also one of the developers of Blogilo (KDE Blog client) and MDIC (a simply dictionary application).

Distributions

• priorities

  Which is why I feel that those who push for and praise distribution differentiation through distinct visual branding are engaged in an act of sabotage against F/OSS. What makes this tragic is that this is not their intention in the least and the act is, in that sense, completely innocent. The effect, however, is no less for that innocence. The question is: can our eyes be opened?

• Slax: Clean, cute and quick to customize

  For tinkerers, one of the coolest and slickest distros out there is probably Slax. I don’t mention Slax much, because it’s one of those things I have to actively veer away from — it’s too entertaining to modify and adjust and tweak and realign and … and that takes up a godawful amount of my time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun — but I become focused and lose track of events while adding this or subtracting that. One must know one’s limitations.

• KahelOS (050110)

  KahelOS has much to offer but only for intermediate or advanced users. Beginners should steer clear of it until the install routine is improved significantly. That’s a shame because, once you get past the install, KahelOS can be used quite successfully as a desktop operating system.

• New Releases

  • WeakNet IV Linux, a Great Distro for Security Experts

    WeakNet Labs has just released the latest version of its highly customized WeakNet Linux, a penetration testing Linux distribution packed with goodies for security experts and sysadmins, but not only. WeakNet Linux IV brings the first release of the custom WeakerThan Linux kernel with built-in support for packet injection and a faster boot time. It also comes with a lot of tools for testing a network’s strength to attacks and other types of security-related testing.

  • Tiny Core 2.11

  • Clonezilla 1.2.5-10

  • Monomaxos 5.0

  • Other OSes

    • NexentaStor 3.0.2 Community Edition Released

      NexentaStor 3.0.2 Community Edition is now available. The major change is inclusion of many fixes to OpenSolaris b134 from later releases. These include many ZFS fixes.

    • DragonFly 2.6.3

• Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • PCLinuxOS 2010 Enlightenment Screenshots

    PCLinuxOS 2010 is available with the Enlightenment E-17 Desktop which focuses on providing plenty of eye candy without all of the bloat.

• Ubuntu Variants

  • Kubuntu 10.04: Another Average KDE Distro

    Kubuntu is an official derivative of Ubuntu, which focuses on using the KDE desktop rather than GNOME, and applications built with Qt over GTK. In the past, Kubuntu was new and fresh, and had that extra bit of attention paid to it that made a real difference. In fact, Kubuntu is mostly responsible for my giving up the GNOME desktop and preferring KDE, because Kubuntu implemented it right, though later on quality of this distro fell through the cracks. I tested the latest release on my Dell Latitude D630 laptop, an oldie but still one of my favorite machines.

  • Peppermint: Ask and they deliver

    To me, Linux is still largely about community, and my experiences with Peppermint and my interactions with the team of individuals responsible for putting it together have done nothing if not reinforce that.

Devices/Embedded

• Android

  • Is the Android truly open source?

    Verizon, one of the biggest cell service providers (and not a member of the Alliance, which says something in itself) is dropping the Nexus One. HTC, which is an Alliance member, isn’t sharing the code for its custom Sense UI layer for Android, as would normally be expected in, you know, an open source alliance.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Operating Systems on the AAO

    Linux Netbook Manglement:

    Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Moblin were very responsive, offered great battery life (about 2 hours with everything kicked on, and no noticeable draining of the battery unless viewing video or something similar), were insanely stable, and supported all of the hardware out-of-the-box. My issue with Moblin was in the interface, and the same with UNR. I felt a little bit nerfed on these systems, and both seemed geared toward single tasking.

• Tablets

  • 100$ Android Tablet from China: Eken M001

    What you’re seeing to the left is Eken’s Chinese release of their new 7″ Android based tablet. Why’s that noteworthy, you ask? Because it’s coming to the states via air shipment for about 130$ USD, shipped.

Need desktop access over the Web? Try some Guacamole

A new open source project dubbed Guacamole allows users to access a desktop remotely through a Web browser, potentially streamlining the requirements for client support and administration.

Guacamole is a HTML5 and JavaScript (Ajax) VNC viewer, which makes use of a VNC-to-XML proxy server written in Java.

GIMP Resynth vs. Photoshop Content Aware

Just after Adobe released videos showing off the content-aware feature of Photoshop CS5, the GIMP community answered by showing the resynthesizer plugin, which has been available for some time and can do a similar job.

LOVEFiLM’s love affair with open source

LOVEFiLM has stuck with open source throughout the company’s growth, but there have been changes along the way.

Interview with Cory Fields of XBMC

I recently had the honor of spending time with Cory Fields, the Public / Business Relations Manger for XBMC. XBMC is the premier free and open source, cross-platform home entertainment system. XBMC was originally created for the first-generation Xbox, but has evolved to now be primarily available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. As proof to their success, the XBMC project has recently been accepted by the SFLC as clients. A perfect way to test XBMC is to download the live CD.

Browsers

• New Chrome beta takes the speed crown

• Chrome vs Midori

  CelticKane has designed and provided a Javascript test, which I ran both browsers through. The results? Midori beat out Chrome in all but 3 categories, some by huge margins. Chrome scored a 388, Midori a 441. I ran this test a whole bunch more times, closing all the tabs, going over and over. Midori kicked the crap out of Chrome every single time, without fail. If you want to take a look at his test, click that link up there, and I think it pretty well explains itself.

• Beef up Firefox Privacy Features

  Whether you want it or not, your Web activities are tracked and analyzed in many different ways. But you don’t have to put up with this, especially if you are using Firefox as your primary browser. There are a few handy Firefox extensions that can beef up your favorite browser’s privacy features. Here are my three personal favorites.

CMS

• Red Hat and Drupal Announce New Support/Training Offerings

  There are a lot of open-source solutions that would be perfect for enterprise use, if only you had a reliable support and training partner to back up your development efforts.

Government

• Agency that initiated open gov process ranks near last in open gov study

  The agency tasked with spearheading the White House’s open-government efforts ranked nearly last in a survey of open-government practices, according to a new report.

  In an audit of those plans, which all federal agencies released in April, the group OpentheGovernment.org found that the Office of Management and Budget assembled one of the poorest open-government strategies across the entire Obama administration.

Licensing

• Opera moves Dragonfly to Apache for patent promise

  Opera has switched its Dragonfly open source debug tool to an Apache 2.0 license to include a promise that users are protected from patents owned by Opera or any other contributor to the project.

  Dragonfly – similar to Mozilla’s Firebug tool – completed its open sourcing in February, when it was moved from Opera servers to BitBucket. It was originally under the BSD license.

• What Do Open Source Surveys reveal?

  * 60% of respondents use open source in mission-critical environments;

Programming

• [Perl] Package BLOCK for 5.14

Science

• ‘Wet’ Asteroid Could Be a Space Gas Station

  The recent discovery of an asteroid wrapped in a layer of water ice has revived the possibility that some space rocks would be great potential pit stops – as well as destinations – for manned or robotic exploration missions.

Security/Aggression

• Army to be sued for war crimes over its role in Fallujah attacks

  Iraqi families who believe their children’s deformities are caused by the deployment of the weapons have now begun legal proceedings against the UK Government. They accuse the UK Government of breaching international law, war crimes and failing to intervene to prevent a war crime.

• Why your garden is now on a state database

  Naturally I am opposed to the snooping and the creation of yet another enormous state database; but even worse is that it is being done simply to wring more money out of us.

Environment

• No climate bill with new offshore drilling

• Toxic Oil Dispersant Used in Gulf Despite Better Alternative

  British Petroleum and government disaster-relief agencies are using a toxic chemical to disperse oil in the Gulf of Mexico, even though a better alternative appears to be available.

  As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill spreads, BP and the U.S. Coast Guard have conducted tests with Corexit 9500, a chemical designed to break oil slicks into globules that are more quickly consumed by bacteria or sink into the water column before hitting shore.

• Halliburton May Be Culprit In Oil Rig Explosion

  Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the “cementing” process — that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon.

• Secret Erik Prince/Blackwater Tape Exposed

  The reclusive Blackwater founder tries to ban journalists and recorders from his speeches in front of friendly audiences. This time he failed.

• Deepwater Horizon oil spill: turtle deaths soar amid fight to save wildlife

  Jackye Carroll was walking along the beach that runs outside her home in Pass Christian, Mississippi, early this morning when she came across a curious sight. The sun had just come up and the white sand beach was looking at its most beautiful, but there, just above the gently lapping sea of the Gulf of Mexico was a grey-brown mound of flesh about two to three feet in length.

  She put on the gloves that she had brought along in anticipation, and turned the mound over to find that it was a Loggerhead, one of the five threatened species of sea turtle found in this region. The sand around it was being stained red by blood seeping from its nose and underbelly. It was dead.

• Study suggests decline in UK fish stocks more severe than thought

  Records of fish landings dating back to 1880s show UK trawlers, then fishing closer to port, landed twice as much fish in 1889 as today

Finance

• Bold Stroke May Be Beyond Europe’s Means

  Europe may need a broad cure to its debt crisis, but the increasingly awkward pairing of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund makes such action unlikely.

• ‘Bone-tired’ David Obey ready for final fight

• Wonkbook: FinReg deal; Obey tired of explaining the Senate; Republicans take on Fannie and Freddie

• Senate Liberals Push for Strict Financial Rules

  Liberal Democrats in the Senate, emboldened by a wave of populism, are trying to make financial regulatory legislation far tougher on Wall Street, potentially restricting or breaking up the biggest banks and financial companies.

• Geithner, Paulson to address meltdown probe

• Senate Democrats block GOP measure to limit financial reform

• A Bank’s Ads, Dressed Up in Historical Garb

• 2 Votes Break Logjam on Financial Overhaul Bill

  The Senate on Wednesday approved two amendments to the financial regulatory bill that both Democrats and Republicans claimed would end the prospect of taxpayer-financed bailouts for companies deemed “too big to fail.”

• Break Up the Banks: By the Numbers

  It’s past time to break up the big banks. They take on too much risk and endanger the financial system. They benefit from unfair subsidies and the assurance that the government will bail them out in times of trouble. They have far too much political influence and threaten our democracy.

• Liveblogging The Bear Stearns Hearing

  Angelides is ripping Cox for claiming that the SEC’s law enforcement operations were effective.

  “To suggest that the SEC was effective in those enforcement actions, frankly, is ludicrous,” Angelides said.

• Greek protesters storm the Acropolis

  World markets plunge over fears that Greece’s economic crisis will spread to other countries despite austerity measures

• Goldman, Naked

  In an interesting side note to the much more publicized businesses involving John Paulson, Greece, and whatever else Goldman is currently getting tarred and feathered for, the bank was quietly slapped on the wrist by the SEC for violations related to naked short-selling.

• Iceland arrests ex-chief of collapsed bank Kaupthing

  The former chief executive of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing has been arrested, authorities say.

  Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson is suspected of embezzlement, trading irregularities, and other breaches of banking laws, the special prosecutor’s office has said.

• David Prosser: Britain’s banks must tell us how much Greece owes them

  Outlook It is the dreaded vote of confidence so feared by football managers worldwide. The markets will have shuddered when Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said: “Default is, for me, out of question, so it’s as simple as that.” Increasingly few people accept that Greece can escape this crisis without restructuring its debts. Mr Trichet’s attempt at reassurance thus has the opposite effect: his categorical vote of confidence in Greece yesterday simply left him looking out of touch.

• UK budget deficit ‘to surpass Greece’s as worst in EU’

  Whoever wins the election must make sorting out the public finances the top priority, the European commission warned on the eve of the poll, as it predicted the British budget deficit would swell this year to become the biggest in the European Union, overtaking even Greece.

  [...]

  Economists warn that if the next UK government drags its feet in reducing the deficit it could spark a downgrade from one or more of the ratings agencies that have been so swift to reassess Greece and Spain’s creditworthiness. The commission’s forecasts fanned those fears.

• ‘Very real’ threat that Greek contagion could spread to Britain

  The UK was warned yesterday that it is among the European Union states that faces the risk of contagion from the Greek crisis, with “very real, common threats” to its financial systems.

• Leading article: Europe’s leaders are still not doing enough

  The eurozone’s leaders have finally woken up to the fact that, in the Greek debt crisis, they have an existential challenge on their hands. Yet for all the drama of this week’s plea by Angela Merkel for the German parliament to sanction the Greek financial rescue package and yesterday’s vote in Athens on a new round of cuts, the signs are that Europe’s leaders are still not on top of the situation.

  The €110bn IMF-eurozone funding package to remove Greece from the international capital markets for three years is better than nothing – but it is still not enough. It is becoming increasingly clear that Greece will need some form of debt restructuring to ease the burden of its borrowings.

• Fitch Cuts Goldman Sachs’ Outlook To Negative

• Goldman Sachs: Berkowitz In! Blankfein, Out? (GS)

  The size of the Berkowitz stake in Goldman Sachs depends upon where you read. StreetInsider.com called it a ‘giant stake’ in the firm. Morningstar.com noted that “details were scarce, including the type of investment taken, the size, and when Berkowitz bought shares…”

• How Long Will Lloyd Blankfein Last?

  This talk is going on in private, among partners, managing directors and other current and former executives, and there do not seem to be any immediate plans to change management, the newspaper says.

• Fraud-Tarred Finance Firms’ Trail May Mean Blankfein Keeps Job

  Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein may take comfort from Wall Street’s legal history: Even after being sued for fraud by regulators and paying multimillion-dollar fines, the biggest financial firms rarely depose their leaders.

• Bigdough sues Goldman Sachs over copyright, data

  The owners of the bigdough.com.inc institutional investor database sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) on Wednesday, accusing the company of theft of information and copyright infringement.

• Goldman Sachs: Villains or victims?

• Oregon Congressman Calls Goldman Sachs ‘Gambling Addicts’ On House Floor

• Blankfein Should Explain Why Clients Buy ‘Crap’: Caroline Baum

  Anyone listening to members of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations drill representatives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last week had to wonder which of the two teams was the smart money.

  It wasn’t so much that subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, wouldn’t let go of the question on the appropriateness of Goldman betting against securities it was selling to clients; or that Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein repeatedly failed to give the right answer, defined as the answer Levin wanted. What was remarkable was the failure of either party to the Q&A to convey an understanding of the market mechanism at the root of our economy.

• Fabrice Tourre, Goldman Sachs

• ‘Main Street’ Sues Goldman Sachs

  First, the Securities and Exchange Commission files a civil suit, citing fraud over mortgage securities deals. Then, the Senate publicly scrutinizes the firm’s executives, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein, in a heated hearing. Next, the Justice Department and the state of New York announce they are launching a criminal investigation into the the deals. Now, Goldman Sachs has disclosed that six lawsuits have been filed by its own shareholders in the wake of the fraud allegations. And these plaintiffs aren’t limited to big-name investors.

• Goldman Sachs’ 8 Most Questionable Practices

• Patty Murray and Goldman Sachs

  The upshot of the analysis by McClatchy D.C. Bureau reporter Les Blumenthal is that Murray did take $28,000 from the firm and a total of $515,000 from the securities and investment community, but not in the current election cycle.

• Goldman Sachs Testimony a Boost for Financial Reform

  The characters were prepped and suited, the props—thick binders holding embarrassing insider E-mails—were set prominently in place, and the cameras went live as what MSNBC proclaimed to be the “hearing of the century” played out on Capitol Hill. Last Tuesday’s 11-hour showdown between senators and top officials of Wall Street icon Goldman Sachs may not have quite lived up to that billing, but it was dramatic political theater (with a certain expletive bleeped out for TV viewers). And it did produce some quick political fallout: Senate Republicans dropped their opposition to opening debate on the Democrats’ proposed financial regulatory reform legislation.

• Goldman Sachs Reveals Slew of Shareholder Suits

  General counsel Gregory Palm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. late Monday made a rare filing with the government, revealing at least six shareholder suits against the company over its dealings in the subprime mortgage market, and one highly critical letter from an institutional shareholder.

  The filing made no direct reference to a rumored Justice Department criminal investigation. But it did say the company anticipates that additional shareholder actions “and other litigation may be filed, and regulatory and other investigations and actions commenced, with respect to offerings of collateralized debt obligations.”

• Goldman clients staying put

  It has been nearly three weeks since the federal government stunned Wall Street by bringing civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Are video codecs sexy?

  The bottom line: the patent holders on parts of video compression technology are trying to use their patents to tell us what we can do with content we create using their recording devices.

• Parliament sets SWIFT conditions

  Don’t these conditions sound reasonable, conditions for sharing SWIFT financial transaction data with the United States for anti-terrorism purposes…

• Facebook Glitch Brings New Privacy Worries

  On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations.

• I’d like privacy, Mr Facebook …not a stalker in my kitchen

• Does Storing Your Documents In ‘The Cloud’ Mean The Gov’t Has Easier Access To It?

  What’s interesting is how little attention these issues seem to be getting — even though they can have a pretty large impact. And, even though this may seem like legal details, it applies well outside the legal field as well. While it won’t be the key focus, we’re even going to include a short section on these kinds of legal issues in the cloud in our upcoming webinar on cloud security (register here). While this might not seem directly like a security issue, if you’re in charge of keeping data secure, it’s pretty important to know what it means when the feds knock on your door… or the door of the third party “cloud” provider to whom you outsourced your company’s data.

• You, your doctor and the Internet

  Should a caregiver ever Google a patient? Would you ask your physician to be a Facebook ‘friend’? Ethical questions abound, and the doctor-patient relationship is at stake.

• Judge Rules Post on Cop-Rating Site is Protected Speech

  A federal judge has struck down a Florida law prohibiting the publication of a police officer’s name, phone number or address, calling the statute an unconstitutional restraint on speech.

  The decision leaves Arizona, Colorado and Washington state with similar laws on the books. Florida authorities said Wednesday they were mulling whether to appeal.

• Lawmakers unveil online privacy bill

  Two U.S. lawmakers have released a draft bill that would require companies that collect personal information from customers to disclose how they collect and share that information, but several privacy and consumer groups said the proposal would legalize current privacy violations online.

  The draft legislation, released Tuesday by Representatives Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, would apply to information collected online and off.

  The bill would require companies collecting personal information to allow customers to opt out of the collection, and would require companies to get permission before sharing customers’ personal information with third parties.

• Report blames IT staff for school Webcam ‘spying’ mess

  The IT department of the Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using their school-issued laptops took the brunt of the blame in an independent report released Monday.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• AT&T settles suit over improper DSL speed caps

  And, if you were an AT&T DSL subscriber, but the company’s records show that nothing improper was done to your line, you can still get money. The proposed settlement says that those who “believe that your DSL Service has not performed at satisfactory speeds” may still be eligible for a “one-time payment of $2.00.” Yes—$2.00.

  In addition, AT&T will dole out $3.75 million to charity and has agreed not to contest attorneys’ fees of up to a whopping $11 million.

• New U.S. Push to Regulate Internet Access

  In a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks.

  The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Survey: Hollywood Won’t Compete With Piracy Until It’s Gone

  Commenting on the results of a new survey which found that most people who download movies, music and TV shows would do so legally if they were available via a reasonably-priced and convenient platform, the boss of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft says that the industry won’t compete until rampant online piracy is seriously reduced. And so the deadlock continues.

• Copyrights

  • PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks

    Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill. As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach. Consistent with earlier comments on the need for a forward-looking, flexible approach, Clement argued for changes from C-61.

  • Canadian Prime Minister promises to enact a Canadian DMCA in six weeks

    What a goddamned disaster. The Tories have shown — yet again — their utter contempt for public opinion and Canadian culture and small business when these present an invonvenience to more windfall profits for offshore entertainment giants.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 95

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 95

Linux Fund UK Business Credit Card Available Today

Business Credit Card allows UK Businesses to support open source with every purchase

OPC UA Software Opens Up Linux Possibilities

Integrator Kyle Chase has begun to experience first-hand the benefits of OPC Unified Architecture (UA). Designed to allow for cross-platform compatibility, OPC UA delivers on the promise of performance and reliability. Chase explained that, although a fan of Linux, until now he could never use it in automation control systems because OPC relied on Microsoft’s Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM).

BlueWave Security Chooses Lantronix to Reduce Development Costs, Speed Time to Market and Improve Customer Satisfaction

BlueWave Security selected XPort Pro, ‘The World’s Smallest Linux Server,’ to future-proof its next-generation security product line with best in class networking capability, and to enable secure, remote access to equipment behind firewalls.

Desktop

• Thurrott, I Live in the Windows Future, and you’re in the Pleistocene.

  The only difference with this change is I’m using Linux with Oracle’s VirtualBox as my hypervisor, which in your own response to my column you agree has a superior security architecture and is less vulnerable to attack than Windows.

• Wi-Fi Key-cracking Kits Sold in China Mean Free Internet

  Wi-Fi USB adapters bundled with a Linux operating system, key-breaking software and a detailed instruction book are being sold online and at China’s bustling electronics bazaars. The kits, pitched as a way for users to surf the Web for free, have drawn enough buyers and attention that one Chinese auction site, Taobao.com, had to ban their sale last year.

• Open source challenge for Simply Computers

  Tony and Vicki Houlbrooke are Linux evangelists, but it seems the Whakatane couple’s customers are far from sold on the platform.

  The company claims to use Linux more extensively than other businesses by using it on desktops and servers. “Our heart is very much in open source software,” says Tony, adding he also promotes Gentoo for servers and Ubuntu for desktops.

  [...]

  The bulk of the work comes from repairing problems associated with Windows, but Tony is optimistic about the prospects for Linux growth alongside cloud computing; saying the cloud could free customers from being chained to particular operating systems.

Server

• London Stock Exchange creates virtual Turquoise access ahead of Linux big-bang

  An “ultra-fast” link between the datacentres of the London Stock Exchange and Turquoise has gone live, gearing the dark pool trading venue for a big-bang Linux migration.

  Traders with hosted systems at the LSE are now able to access Turquoise on the free fast link, ahead of Turquoise’s migration to the Millennium Exchange platform, which is Linux and Sun Solaris Unix-based, with Oracle databases. Turquoise currently runs on the Java-based Tradexpress platform from supplier Cinnober.

• Cloud.com takes on virty infrastructure

• Cloud.com software stack goes open source

  Cloud.com describes CloudStack as “an integrated software solution that enables enterprises and service providers to quickly and easily build Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) clouds.”

• Stacking up the hypervisors

  It was initially offered by many companies including major Linux distributors such as Red Hat and Novel, Virtual Iron (bought by Oracle), Oracle and Citrix but there’s been some consolidation in the market. Red Hat and Novell steered away from Xen and committed to rival open-source KVM while Oracle-Sun-Virtual Iron and Citrix stuck with it.

  The Linux players still have to support their own operating system distros – the main part of their businesses – so that’s what they wanted to focus on. The development effort around Xen didn’t leverage the development of their OS products as much as they liked. Their mainline Linux development diverged from the hypervisor too much and they wanted to bring that back together.

  KVM makes more use of operating system developments than Xen, which is more focused on the hypervisor. So it’s useful for Oracle where the operating system is a secondary business.
  If your interest in a pure hypervisor is more important than Linux per se, Xen is more relevant.

  But if you’re more interested in Linux, that’s where KVM comes to bear.

Google

• Will the Chromium OS remain open source?

IBM

• IBM Wants Linux’ KVM To Compete With VMware

  One of IBM’s current goals is to “accelerate the maturation of KVM as a world class hypervisor.” That may not sound like much to the uninitiated but IBM has picked its targets well in the past. Of course it’s now ten years ago that it announced its backing for Linux.

  Dan Frye, IBM’s VP of open systems development, commented on IBM’s commitment to help mature KVM during his address to the Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco April 14. KVM is the hypervisor first produced by the Israeli company, Qumranet, and added to the Linux kernel in February 2007; Qumranet was acquired by Red Hat in 2008.

Kernel Space

• Jon Corbet QA: Upstream Contributions Influence Direction of Linux Kernel

  Jon Corbet is a highly-recognized contributor to the Linux kernel community. He is a developer and the executive editor of Linux Weekly News (LWN). He is also The Linux Foundation’s chief meteorologist, a role in which he translates kernel-level milestones into an industry outlook for Linux. Corbet has also written extensively on how to work within the Linux kernel development community and has moderated a variety of panels on the topic. Today, he gives us an update on the Linux “weather forecast,” why sharing your code upstream is critical, and the state of virtualization in the kernel.

• Linux Foundation Announces LinuxCon Keynotes, Mini-Summits

• LINBIT takes over Heartbeat Code Maintenance

  Philipp Reisner, CTO, LINBIT notes that LINBIT continues to boost its dedication to open source and High-Availability by adopting Heartbeat: “Apart from DRBD, LINBIT now also maintains another important component of the Linux-HA stack. In the past, LINBIT has repeatedly contributed to other parts of Linux-HA including Pacemaker. One can say that if you are relying on Linux-HA, you are also relying upon LINBIT. If you want to achieve High-Availability in Linux, it’s impossible without LINBIT!”

• Research

  • Yale Scientists Explain Why Computers Crash But We Don’t

    The hierarchical organization of the transcriptional regulatory network of bacterium E. Coli, left, shows a pyramidal structure compared to the Linux call graph, which has many more routines controlling few generic functions at the bottom.

  • Why E.Coli Bacteria Is Better Than Your Computer

    I suppose the prevailing question is this: Why the hell would anyone compare Linux to a rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded organisms? According to study author and Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics Mark Gerstein, there was little or no alcohol involved in coming up with the idea.

  • Regulation and evolution in bacteria and Linux

  • Linux vs. Genome in Network Challenge

  • Linux vs. E. Coli

Applications

• Proprietary

  • CloudLinux Announces Compatibility with R1Soft, the Leading Backup Software for Linux Servers in the Cloud

  • eScan introduces antivirus protection for Linux based systems

    eScan has recently unveiled its latest version of antivirus solution for the Linux platform.Called eScan for Linux version 3.0, the antivirus software is designed for both Linux desktops and file servers.

  • eScan Launches Antivirus Solution for Linux Users

  • eScan to Release Linux 3.0 Version

• Instructionals

  • How To Triple-Boot Your Mac With Windows And Linux, No Boot Camp Required

  • Using Third-Party 802.1X Clients on Windows, Linux or Mac

  • Open Source Software Investigation — Stty Settings, Backspace and Delete

  • MySQL Open Source Backup and Recovery Alternative: Xtrabackup

Distributions

• Puppy Linux founder releases Quirky 1.0

  In a post on his blog, Puppy Linux founder Barry Kauler has announced the release of version 1.0 of Quirky. Kauler says that, while the Quirky Linux distribution is in the same family as Puppy Linux, it’s a “distinct distro in its own right.”

• New Releases

  • SystemRescueCd 1.5.3 Is Out

    SystemRescueCd 1.5.3, a live CD/USB Linux distribution based on Gentoo, has been released with updated kernels and a few updated packages. It also includes the NetworkManager GUI network configuration tool to make it easier to set up network connections. This should help a great deal, especially with wireless connections that should be detected automatically and be easier to manage.

  • Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 2 arrives

• Red Hat Family

  • OpSource adds storage to compute cloud

    The Mezeo storage-cloud management tools run on Linux and Apache with databases controlling file access stored in PostgreSQL.

• Ubuntu

  • Launchpad PPA Upgraded to 2 GB

    Although Launchpad has provided sizes larger than 1 GB on special request earlier, this move ensures that you will get 2 GB from the very beginning. Existing PPAs larger than 2 GB will remain unchanged.

  • Cory Doctorow: Persistence Pays Parasites

    But even armed with this intelligence, I’ve been pretty cavalier about my exposure to net-based security risks. I run an up-to-date version of a very robust flavor of GNU/Linux called Ubuntu, which has a single, easy-to-use interface for keeping all my apps patched with the latest fixes. My browser, Firefox, is far less prone to serious security vulnerabilities than dogs like Internet Explorer. I use good security technology: my hard-drive and backup are encrypted, I surf through Ipredator (a great and secure anonymizer based in Sweden), and I use GRC’s password generator to create new, strong passwords for every site I visit (I keep these passwords in a text file that is separately encrypted).

  • Variants

    • Linux Mint 9 RC arrives

      The Linux Mint development team have announced a release candidate for what will become Linux Mint version 9, code named “Isadora”. Linux Mint aims to be user friendly and to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including support for DVD playback, Java, plug-ins and various media codecs. It is also the third most popular distribution on DistroWatch.com behind Ubuntu and Fedora.

    • DEFT Linux 5.1 Comes with Sleuthkit 3.1.1 and Autopsy 2.24

      DEFT Linux is a highly specialized Linux distribution aimed at forensic computing. It comes with a number of dedicated tools and is a computer investigator’s best friend. The latest release, DEFT Linux 5.1, is a small maintenance update, which brings some newer packages and fixes a couple of bugs. The project’s leader, Stefano Fratepietro, announced the release earlier today and the distro is available for download from the link below.

Devices/Embedded

• Iomega releases lower-cost storage array for SMBs

  The array comes with EMC’s LifeLine software, a management utility based on Linux and designed for cross-platform support of Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX computers and is HCL certified for use with VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

• ESC – Sourcery G++ improves embedded application performance

  Granite Bay, Calif. – At ESC San Jose, CodeSourcery announced the release of Sourcery G++ for ARM, ColdFire, IA32, MIPS, Power Architecture, Stellaris and SuperH processors. The latest release features enhancements that boost application performance and make it easier to get started with GNU/Linux application development.

• Top 10 drivers for embedded Android

  Business requirements, especially in the context of technology available under an open-source license, can be compelling for both technology managers and corporate executives. This list is not meant to reflect all Android drivers but certainly some compelling reasons for choosing embedded Android.

• Robotics

  • Random Robot Roundup

    While not exactly an embedded processor, the little box can run GNU/Linux and is powered by 12V, making it handy for certain types of robots.

  • RobuBOX-Kompai Now Open to Outside Development

    Robosoft out of Bidart, France is releasing the open source software version for its RobuBOX-Kompaï at-home assistance robot. The mobile platform includes navigation and communication capabilities and is now open to tinkering around by developers trying to extend the potential tasks the robot can perform.

  • Getting robots to do the laundry and the dishes

    Willow Garage will offer 11 research teams free use of its PR2 robots for two years. The robots, built with an open-source software platform, can be programmed to do many tasks.

• Intel

  • Intel pushes Atom into mobile arena with “Moorestown”

    Despite Intel’s encouraging announcement, devices slated to show off Moorestown are not expected to hit production until the second-half of 2010. One such device will be the recently delayed LG GW990, a smartphone that features the “MeeGo” operating system. Also the foundation for Moblin, MeeGo is a heavily optimized Linux variant built specifically to take advantage of the Atom platform.

  • Atom for smartphones brings 10-day standby battery life

    Moorestown, like all Atom processors, is based on the x86 architecture, and is expected to run MeeGo or some other Linux variant, meaning devices can be more versatile than current smartphones.

    “These devices are handheld computers that can also make calls,” Kedia explained. With a 1.5GHz core speed, they’re fast, too: Intel demonstrated the Linux version of Quake III running unmodified at over 100fps on a Z600-based prototype smartphone. In another demonstration, an animated 3D graphical scene played in one window while a second streamed 1080p video.

  • Intel Atom chip for smartphones unveiled

    The chipset is set to be compatible with Google Android and Nokia’s MeeGo OS, while support for Moblin Linux based systems and other operating systems look likely to follow.

  • “LG GW990″ will not ultimately marketed

    Unveiled at CES in Las Vegas, the first mobile phone based on an Intel chip Moorestown will remain finally at the stage of concept. LG will not commercialize GW990 ,the hybrid terminal halfway between a MID and a telephone.

    Preview at CES in Las Vegas, then at MWC in Barcelona, the GW990 will not ultimately marketed. We hope that LG will reuse this prototype as a basis for the development of future smartphones.

• Phones

  • Beating Apple, Google and Microsoft: Smaller Companies Team Up

    Thanks to the open sourced nature of Linux, apps created by this major cross-company team up will be made available across various platforms –which means that developers would have a reason to create apps for the systems: because the market is possibly larger than anything else available.

  • Motorola acquires linux OS company Azingo

    Azingo says its next-generation Linux platform and engineering services ‘significantly reduce development costs and shorten delivery schedules for chipset and handset manufacturers, integrators, and operators’.

  • Nokia

    • Nokia N900 mobile phone now with Firefox 1.1

      The Nokia N900, a sophisticated gadget from Nokia is based on the Linux-based Maemo platform. It is also observed to be dubbed as a pocket computer. This advanced gadget is helpful for the users in a number of ways as it comes loaded with multifarious features and technologies

    • Nokia N900 on Maemo platform supports Firefox 1.1

    • Nokia N900 Firefox Update

    • Nokia strikes back with the N900

  • Android

    • Viewpoint: Top 10 drivers for embedded Android

      2. Source code: Android provides a comprehensive set of source code, specifically created by the Android team, that leverages existing open-source projects to provide a complete and cohesive software stack. There are currently more than 200 separate Git trees in the public Android repository. Not only is there source for the core packages, but many hardware-component vendors have decided to provide source code for specific drivers. This source is also actively managed by a vibrant community. Clearly, this is a benefit for anybody wanting to optimize these components for a specific target.

• Tablets

  • Intel Releases Smartphone and Tablet Chip

    The Atom chip also delivers impressive performance and is supposed to render web pages faster than other chips do. The Atom chip is also supposed to support different operating systems, including Intel’s Moblin, Nokia’s MeeGo, and Google’s Android. The first two operating systems mentioned are Linux-based.

CONNECT event draws a range of coders

convened recently at Florida International University in Miami. The Federal Health Architecture’s open source development event drew a range of participants, demonstrating the growing interest in CONNECT.

Twiki Inc. Announces OpenID Integration for Seamless Login with Google, Yahoo or AOL OpenID Accounts

Hyderabad: The New Training Destination For Open Source Enthusiasts

Open source is the ‘buzz’ word in the IT fraternity these days. From bigwigs like Google or Yahoo! to SMEs, everyone is embracing open source with open arms. The main stumbling block is a severe talent crunch for most players. Shortage of enterprise-ready professionals who can be put on the job from day one and keeping the current resource pool up-to-date on the latest technologies are the twin issues faced by open source adopters. To tide over this problem, Taashee Linux Services, an open source software and training company, has opened a new Red Hat Training facility at Hyderabad, a city that is poised to become the next IT and electronics hub of India.

Liberia will need Open Source Software Solutions instead of costly Proprietary Solutions

The global financial crisis that began a few years ago has had an impact on every industry, organization, government, etc. ICT departments facing this crisis have had to seek low cost alternatives and solutions to ensure business continuity. Because of its unique model, costs-saving and robustness, Open Source software has become the alternative that ICT executives have turned to. Since it is flexible and provides several capabilities, Open Source software has made way into the enterprise so fast that its impact has been felt significantly on economies, especially during the recent financial crisis. Because of this, it has become ubiquitous in the ICT industry.

[...]

Open Source Software provides a multitude of options that can be used in the enterprise. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PostGre, Java, PHP, etc., are a few of the many low cost software options that Open Source provides to enterprises. Proprietary software like Windows, Internet Information Server, SQL, Microsoft.Net are software with prohibitive cost that a nation like Liberia, still struggling to build an ICT sector, should consider implementing after exploring more cost-effective options.

Events

• Moodlerooms to Launch Four-Part Webinar Series Sponsored by Dell and Intel

  Moodlerooms, Inc., trusted provider of managed open-source solutions wrapped around the world’s most widely used open-source learning management system, Moodle, has today announced an upcoming four-part webinar series sponsored by Dell and Intel.

• Open Source CRM to an Event Near You: SugarCRM Announces Tour Schedule

• Bay Area Hypertable and Open Source Users Meetup

SaaS

• Diaspora: Freedom in the Cloud?

  One of the key thinkers in the free software world is Eben Moglen. He’s been the legal brains behind the most recent iterations of the GNU GPL, but more than that, he’s somebody who has consistently been able to pinpoint and articulate the key issues facing free software for two decades. Recently, he did it again, noting that cloud computing is a huge threat to freedom.

  Even if you don’t use social networks like Facebook, your children probably do (or will). And the push to move practically *everything* “into the cloud” means that the issues are not just about personal information: businesses, too, will find that they are essentially placing key competitive information about themselves on somebody else’s computers a long way away, with little real control over what happens to it once it’s “there”.

• A Little More About The Project

• Morphlabs Launches Cloud Appliance

  Morphlabs is able to provide the EC2 compatible APIs by piggy-backing on the work of two open source projects: Eucalyptus.org, which issues the APIs in code under the GPL, and Open Nebula, which issues them under a BSD-style open source license allowing greater latitude of for-profit implementation, said Damarillo.

• WROP: The Telco Cloud is Open! The First Commercial Open Source Vendor-Independent Access and Service Management Platform

• What’s Needed For Open Source Cloud Computing to Succeed?

  We’ve taken note of the up-and-coming players in open source cloud computing numerous times, as have our buddies over at GigaOM. We’ve also talked extensively with the folks over at Eucalyptus Systems, one of the most promising open source cloud startups.

• OW2 Consortium Launches Open Source Cloudware Initiative Lead by Strategic Members Bull, France Telecom and INRIA

CMS

• WordPress: A Brand to be Managed

  This conference is a cross between a training session and a user community support group, and this year had over 600 attendees. (@technorin tells me 800.)Moreover, it is only one of 45 already scheduled to be held this year all over the world. Last year, there were 48 all year; they’ll pass that number this year for sure. People gather around WordPress

• TheNation.com Gets Open-Source Overhaul

  The site has also gone open-source with a content management platform called “Drupal”: The Nation explains the far-reaching implications:

  “Open source” software code is published and made freely available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute it without paying or earning royalties or fees. It’s like a song that a musician can sample or remix for free. This creates a community of global web programmers who can share and improve the platform. The idea is rooted in community: One person creates, another person improves, and the knowledge is widely shared. If he understood open source, Glenn Beck might well denounce it as a socialist practice.

  The remaining updates are more conventional. The new site introduces verticals — “Politics,” “World,” “Books & Arts,” etc. — to categorize stories and make them easier to find. The site also features tighter integration with Twitter, enhanced multimedia offerings and an improved mobile user experience.

• Top 5 CMS Executives – 35 Years Old and Younger

  Buytaert (31) is the main driver behind the wildly successful open source Drupal CMS and the CTO of Acquia.

  Place of Birth

  Antwerp, Belgium

  Education

  I’m a techie. I obtained a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Ghent. Prior to my PhD, I got a Licentiate in Computer Science from the University of Antwerp.

  Professional Highlights (What are You Proud of?)

  Being invited to the White House (which now runs on Drupal).

Business

• Open Source offers more to CIOs

  “Quality. Price. Service. Pick any two,” said a very succinct placard in Damodar’s tailor shop. Back in the days when clothes were tailored, Damodar was one of the best in the business and he definitely knew what he was talking about.

  However, in the software industry, the emergence of open source software (OSS) has turned this dynamic on its head. It is no longer about, “Pick any two,” but “Pick ALL three.”

• Further Evaluating Commercial Open Source

  As we all know measures of success are subjective. I believe commercial open source is proving to be a viable and successful model based on its ability to deliver real value to both customers and investors.

  [...]

  So we are constantly asked about why we put our software out as open source. The advantages of the commercial open source approach for the vendor, users and business community have become clear and include:

  • Users can try the product before buying, eliminating much of the sales activities of ordinary enterprise software

  • Lower cost of development through use of other open source components and contributions

• Open-Xchange Intros Simplified SaaS Partner Pricing

  The new OXrate pricing program has five SaaS partner levels based on the providers’ customer base which ranges from less than 1,000 to more than 250,000 customers. Each level offers two options of pricing, flat rate and guaranteed revenue.

• Panasonic Announces Digium(R) Asterisk(R) Certification for Its New TGP500 Series SIP Cordless Phone System

• Metasploit’s HD Moore from (almost) rags to (not quite) riches

  Last week, I got on the phone with HD Moore to ask him how things have been going since he sold Metasploit to Rapid7, sending the open source security world into a frenzy some six months ago. Rapid7 had just released the commercial version, dubbed Metasploit Express, of Moore’s much beloved open source penetration testing tool.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Enjoy your participatory panopticon with “SnapScouts”

  “SnapScout and SnapScout Reports are produced and developed by MiniTru, LLC. Created in 2008 by George Parsons and Winston O’Brien, MiniTru LLC leverages modern technology to address the timeless threats to democracy and freedom. Using a transparent, open source approach — all applications will eventually be released under a GNU license, and all content is copyrighted via Creative Commons — we empower real Americans to connect and share the mini-truths we can’t always say out loud, but keep America the greatest country in the world.”

Releases

• OpenDLP aims to detect potential data loss

  A new open source project, OpenDLP, aims to detect data loss in organisations by automated scanning for potentially confidential information. The system consists of a management server, written in Perl, and an agent, written in C, which is deployed to users’ systems to carry out the scanning.

Government

• Election special: Liberal Democrats discuss tech manifesto

  V3.co.uk: How does the Liberal Democrat party plan to increase open-source take-up in the sector?

  John Thurso: The Labour government spends £16bn a year on IT, but has a very poor record on IT procurement and has regularly been criticised by the National Audit Office. The Liberal Democrats will improve government IT procurement, investigating the potential of different approaches such as cloud computing and open-source software.

  Does the party believe that open-source is a better alternative to proprietary software, and if so why?

  Open-source software can be cheaper than proprietary or bespoke software and we believe that government should consider open-source solutions in all IT procurement. The Liberal Democrats will conduct a full review of IT procurement procedures, and work with industry to improve cross-government working practices and save money.

Licensing

• Lower compliance costs with open source tools

  These are just a few of the many open source tools that help with compliance. I also like RANCID for network device configuration management and Nagios for IT infrastructure monitoring. Don’t forget about the many IT policy resources, such as the templates available from SANS.

Openness

• Could open source technologies help us solve climate change?

  The growth of the internet, with all the associated changes it has brought to our lives, has been driven in large part by freely available, non-proprietary technology. The ethos of sharing, formalised by carefully worded open source licenses, has allowed inter-connectedness to flourish in ways that we once never dreamed of. Could adopting a similar approach for carbon-mitigating technologies have the same effect in tackling climate change?

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• FCC will reclassify broadband as a telco service

  ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN RUMOURS that the FCC was going to walk away from reclassifying Internet access as a telecommunications service, it looks like that strategy will go ahead.

  By classifying Internet service providers (ISPs) as telecommunications services, the FCC can make them subject to tougher net neutrality rules. The telcos will go into a spin over this plan and have already been spending shedloads on lobbyists to prevent it from happening. They are terrified that net neutrality rules will stop them from throttling traffic or selling higher quality service to some content providers, and could mean that they will have to spend money to upgrade the bandwidth on their networks. It might also mean that they will not be able to charge people extra to get the bandwidth they promised.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux As a Religious Experience

All this rant was just to say… be nice, be kind, be considerate when discussing your favorites and beliefs regarding operating systems and software.

Even Gates and Ballmer can’t live without Linux.

Many network routers and adsl modems use Linux as their operating systems. When you go to print a page there is a big chance that your printer is running on Linux. What about that big game that you recorded on your Tivo or equivalent? That is running on Linux. Have a satellite link for your TV? Some of those also use Linux. Even some of the latest model televisions have Linux running them.

My Wallpaper changer search

6. Wally – From the website: “Wally is a Qt4 wallpaper changer, using multiple sources” – Sounds good, so I downloaded the .deb file. (be careful to select your disto here) After a few painless seconds to install, I found Wally setting in the Apps menu. So I clicked on it, and the settings menu came up. And as you can see from the image below, it’s very easy figure out, and yes it lets you download from Flicker and about a dozen other on-line sources. Heres the screenshot:

Linux Brands: Desired and Distracting at the Same Time

There were other, more subtle clues for the trained observer. When I would attend LinuxWorld conferences, I could usually tell what distro someone was running by the color scheme. Green was SUSE Linux or openSUSE. Blue usually indicated Fedora, with red reflecting, well, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. And if was brown, you knew it was Ubuntu.

Server

• Opera Acquires Australian E-mail Service FastMail.FM [Opera Hopes To Expand Its Own E-Mail Client For Wider Availability]

  Melbourne-based company FastMail.FM has been around for 10 years. Founder Jeremy Howard, a former management consultant with McKinsey and A.T. Kearney, launched FastMail.FM with a school friend Rob Mueller. It was an innovative e-mail solution that was built on open source platforms such as Linux, MySQL and Apache.

Google

• BumpTop Swallowed by Google

  Not to mention the fact that it looks slick and futuristic as the only other features similar to it are only available for Linux.

• Your next TV may run Android OS

  Sony (SNE) will build both Blu-Ray players and TVs with the Linux-based Android ‘Dragonpoint’ platform built-in. Until now, Android has mostly been built to run with ARM chips on touch-based mobile devices. TVs and BluRay players will demand more horsepower to drive 1080P screens and and won’t be so limited by battery requirements of small form factor phone devices.

• Google to Introduce Android-Based TV Software

Kernel Space

• LinuxCon keynotes feature Linux insiders — and outsiders

  The Linux Foundation announced keynote speakers and panels for LinuxCon, scheduled for August 10-12 in Boston. The show will feature keynote speakers including Virgin America’s Ravi Simhambhatla, GNOME’s Stormy Peters, the SFLC’s Eben Moglen, and Forrester’s Jeffrey S. Hammond, and hosts a Linux Kernel Roundtable with Ted T’so and other kernel insiders.

• Ceph: A Linux petabyte-scale distributed file system

  Linux® continues to invade the scalable computing space and, in particular, the scalable storage space. A recent addition to Linux’s impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data.

• Hardware

  • AMD Radeon HD 4290 On Linux

  • Finally a graphics card for Linux that works flawlessly with compiz and is lightning fast

    So far I have only tested the nVidia proprietary drivers version 195.36.24 and the performance is impressive when turning on all compiz effects. If you have the card or you are thinking about getting it and happen to try the open source drivers before I do, please, let me know of your findings!

Applications

• Rhythmbox Knows the Words and the Tune

  As a music-playing application for the Gnome Desktop, Rhythmbox really has its bases covered. Besides playing back music, it can fetch lyrics and art, load up many kinds of media players including iPods, access online music stores and support a wide variety of plug-ins. The only area in which Rythmbox is deficient is in ripping, but there are many other programs that take care of that.

• Easy to use Lucid themed Conky bar

• Instructionals

  • How to Register and Update an Oracle VM Server from the Oracle Unbreakable Linux Network

  • Mousepad: A variation on the Leafpad theme

  • Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx – Gasp What’s Wrong With ALSA ?

  • How to Triple-Boot Your Mac with Windows and Linux, No Boot Camp Required

  • Minitube 1.0 Released – Play YouTube Videos Without Flash [Ubuntu .deb Download]

• Games

  • 24 Extra Hot Free Linux Games (Part 3 of 3)

  • Osmos for Linux…prepare to be assimilated

    So when Dave Burke from Hemisphere games emailed me to let me know that his game “Osmos” had been ported to Linux, it got my attention. As requested, he sent me a link to download it and give it a try. And as most always with Indie guys, it comes with no form of DRM.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • KDE Software Compilation 4.4.3 Released: Codename “cuality”

    KDE Community Ships Third Translation and Service Release of the 4.4 Free Desktop, Containing Numerous Bugfixes and Translation Updates

• GNOME Desktop

  • Welcome to the Fer and Xan weekly comic

    After the presentation Kal from the Evince hall of fame, proposed me to create with Xan a weekly comic strip about GNOME.

Distributions

• Arch Linux + KDE 4.4.2

  After about an hour or so of automated downloading and installing in pacman, I was rewarded with a beautiful state-of-the-art desktop that nearly puts Windows 7 to shame. Its file management and multimedia applications have all the function and polish of Mac OS X, and its desktop widgets are in a class all their own. From a side-scrolling menu, you can select widgets to view folder contents, CPU load, network connections, battery status, and more. Additional widgets can be downloaded by clicking a button from the widget browser.

• Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • PCLinuxOS 2010 – Familiar taste of radical simplicity

    I find PCLinuxOS to be the big small distro. While it has a modest development team, the final product has always felt quite solid and polished, beyond the normal expectations of limited resources. What more, the distribution managed a fine balance between speed, usability, familiarity, and luring in new users, not an easy task.

    [...]

    By all standards and benchmarks, PCLinuxOS is a great success. It’s a beautiful, polished, simple, easy to use distribution, with great performance and stability, especially on older machines, a well balanced array of programs, and no big problems at all. Subtle yet important improvements from previous versions are evident, with fewer wizard windows bugging you on your way into the live session or during the installation. Let’s not forget old problems, which were solved in this release, a critical sign of progress.

  • PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE 4 Edition now available for download

    PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE 4 Edition now available for download. Linux kernel updated to 2.6.32.12-bfs. Linux kernel-2.6.33.2 also available from our software repository, KDE SC Desktop upgraded to version 4.4.3. Added support for Realtek RTL8191SE/RTL8192SE WiFi cards. Added support for Microdia webcams. Added vim console text editor. Added udftools. Fixed cdrom ejection when using the Copy to RAM feature. Fixed KDE new widget download. Updated Nvidia (195.36.24) and Ati fglrx (8.723) drivers. Updated all supporting applications and libraries from the software repository which include security updates and bug fixes.

  • PCLinuxOS 2010.1 KDE – Update Review

    Those of you who did install PCLinuxOS 2010 KDE, go ahead and update, totally recommended!

• Debian Family

  • Yoper Linux 2010 Launched

    Yoper Linux 2010, codenamed ‘Dresden,’ is finally here after a significant amount of testing. The custom-built Linux distro focuses on speed and the latest version is no different. Yoper Linux 2010 comes with an optimized Linux kernel 2.6.33 aimed specifically at desktop users. It’s available in four desktop environment flavors, for all tastes and systems.

    [...]

    Yoper Linux 2010 comes with four desktop options, all of the popular choices with the notable exception of GNOME. You can get Yoper Linux 2010 with KDE4, KDE3, LXDE and XFCE. There are five ISOs available, one for each desktop environment and an SLIM CD version that doesn’t come with a graphical interface.

  • Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) – packed with goodies.

      Download, burn, boot (a nice, fast boot!), and 20 minutes later I had a perfectly working Acer Aspire 4736Z running with Lucid Lynx. Sound, resolution, internet (including wireless!), webcam, and pretty much all my peripherals working out of the box. Well done. Kudos to the fact that I didn’t actually install it, but left it to my rather technologically illiterate mum.

    • The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

    • From Karmic to Lucid: Distribution Update Screenshots

      In line with its newbie-friendly tradition of providing a way to do everything via a graphical user interface, Ubuntu provides a way to do a distribution upgrade by clicking a button at the top of the Update Manager. Since version 10.04 was released on April 29, it was once again time to see how well the upgrade went. Here are screenshots of the entire process. (Click the images for larger versions.)

    • Upgrading your distro should come with a warning

    • Mark Shuttleworth: No GNOME-Shell in Maverick

      A condensed selection of highlights follow.

      * Maverick will not be coming with the GNOME Shell interface by default but will be available to download via the repos.
      * RGBA transparency will more than likely be enabled by default
      * Missing those indicator tooltips in Lucid? Well, they won’t be returning for the Meerkat.

      [...]

    • 16 Slick Ubuntu Lucid Wallpapers From Around The Web

      Ubuntu 10.04 LTS codenamed “Lucid Lynx” is released and is easily the best Ubuntu release ever. With its groundbreaking innovations and improvements, Lucid has become the distro of choice for many. We have already seen how to install 13 stunning Bisigi themes in Ubuntu Lucid. Here is some more eyecandy coming your way. Collection of 16 beautiful made-for-lucid wallpapers from around the web.

    • Variants

      • Mint 9 features new software manager, backup tool

        The other key improvement is a new Backup Tool, which offers features like incremental backups, compression, and integrity checks, says the Mint team. Users can now identify installed software, save the selection as a list, and then restore the selection on a different computer or on a new version of Linux Mint, says the team.

      • Lubuntu release 10.04 “final stable beta”

        Lubuntu 10.04 uses Chromium as its default browser and is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS which was released last week. Other lightweight applications included in the distribution are the Sylpheed email client, Gnumeric spreadsheet, Abiword word processor, Pidgin instant messaging and Leafpad text editor. The developers do point out that although Lubuntu 10.04 is based on the LTS (Long Term Support) release of Ubuntu, it is not an LTS release. Full details of the applications used and release notes are available and Lubuntu can be downloaded directly (ISO image download, 530MB) or via bittorrent.

Devices/Embedded

• Intel’s Moorestown Atom launches — without Windows

  While all the above was expected, the shocker is that the Z6xx has been launched with support for three flavors of Linux — Android, Moblin 2.1, and MeeGo — but nary a mention of Microsoft Windows. This arguably represents the biggest rift in the “Wintel monopoly” since the IBM PC was first launched in 1981 with Intel’s 8088 CPU and Microsoft’s MS-DOS/PC-DOS operating system.

• 6WIND Joins eNsembleTM Multi-Core Alliance to Drive 6WINDGate Packet Processing Software Leadership

  Providing a comprehensive Linux networking software solution that delivers a 7-10x packet processing performance improvement compared to standard Linux networking stacks, it allows OEMs to develop multi-core-based products that achieve the best cost-performance, integration and energy efficiency in the industry. Because 6WINDGate is fully compatible with standard Linux APIs, developers can migrate standard Linux applications onto new platforms based on 6WINDGate without having to redesign or rewrite their existing software, thereby easing the transition from single to multi-core platforms.

• Microtronix introduces Scatter Gather DMA Engine for Altera PCIe Hard IP Cores

  “By packaging a powerful Scatter-Gather DMA Engine, a PCIe Bridge with Linux drivers, the Lancero Design Kit streamlines the engineering design task of adding high bandwidth peripherals into embedded systems.” said Norman McCall, president of Microtronix.

• Lantronix XPort Pro Wins EDN Magazine’s 20th Annual Innovation Awards

  The product’s Software Developer Kit (SDK), with IPv6 support, is an integrated embedded hardware and software suite that provides a validated set of Linux-based applications, an extensive software library, a board support package (BSP) and device drivers that allow designers to create custom tailored products.

• Phones

  • Motorola Ming Line May Still Continue

    Motorola has been making Linux-powered smartphones since well before Google Android was conceived. The Linux OS was used on devices such as the Motorola Ming A1200, a powerful device which still has a loyal fan-following. Recent leaks show what may finally be the successor to the Motorola Ming.

  • Nokia

    • Meego gaining traction

      Nokia and Intel’s Meego operating system is gaining momentum but not on shop shelves yet.

    • Nokia N900

      It uses Nokia’s Maemo operating system, which is based on Linux, and it has some clever features – there is a terminal program, which allows you to type in Linux commands, and a TV output cable in the box. It’s designed around applications – it’s easy to add new ones, put them on the home screen and run them simultaneously without the phone slowing-down much.

  • Android

    • Official: Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Will Get Android 2.1 in Q4

      Android 2.1 will go a long way to put the Xperia X10 on the same playing field as other smart phones. However, we can’t help but think it may still be a little too late for most people. Keep an eye out for minor updates in the interim as they’re already scheduled for the next few weeks.

    • Could Android run on the iPad?

      Or perhaps Android will make its lasting mark in a different arena altogether such as playing the role of the embedded brains for household appliances or for industrial controllers? This is of interest to me, personally. Though I have to question that notion about once a day when I pop the battery in my Nexus One due to phone call lockups. Yikes.

    • Slider version of MyTouch 3G adds voice command button

      T-Mobile announced a new version of its HTC-manufactured MyTouch 3G smartphone featuring a QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.1, and an updated T-Mobile UI layer with a voice-command “Genius Button.” The mid-range MyTouch 3G Slide offers a 3.4-inch touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, a five-megapixel camera, and 8GB of preinstalled memory, says the company.

• Tablets

  • Adobe AIR and Flash Running “Flawlessly” on Prototype Android Tablet [VIDEO]

  • Tegra-based Android tablets run 1080p video

    Aigo is readying three Android-based tablets incorporating the Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, led by an HD-ready 7-inch Aigo N700 model, says ChiniTech. Meanwhile, Compal is prepping some uCLinux-based “APA0x” PMPs (portable media players), and all signs point to HP abandoning its Windows 7 “Slate” in favor of tablets that run its newly acquired WebOS platform.

You can’t even drive free software without a license

Today the lack of reporting standards puts a burden on vendors, but the industry is addressing this. I’m co-chairing the Software Package Data Exchange working group of FOSSBazaar, part of the Linux Foundation. We are developing a standard way to describe all of the licensing information that applies to a software package. This will provide guidance to and ease the burden on suppliers, and ultimately make it easier for everyone to do the right thing. More on that in a future blog.

BSD

• Embedded BSD

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU Hurd/ news/ 2010-04-30

  The Arch Hurd folks keep making good progress: their count of available packages keeps increasing, and one of their team reported the first instance of Arch Hurd running on real hardware (and uploaded a photo as evidence).

Releases

• Spacewalk 1.0 strides out to manage systems

  The Spacewalk project has released version 1.0 of its system management software. The software no longer depends on HAL and, in Fedora 12, uses Tomcat 6, which comes with this distribution.

Open Access/Content

• WWW2010: How a big-deal conference does open content

  Last week, Internet luminaries from around the globe descended upon Raleigh, NC for the WWW2010 conference. The theme for 2010 was openness, and that (along with its proximity to Red Hat HQ) made this year’s events particularly exciting.

Parking Official Nabbed as Cops Prowl Craigslist

Naugatuck Police used craigslist to make a slew of prostitution arrests, and one of the men they nabbed is the director of the Derby Parking authority, police said.

Swedish man sues Google for defamation

A small business owner is suing Google Sweden for defamation, alleging that Google has long presented search results to blogs that portray him as a paedophile. Additional Google links have identified his company as one that has engaged in shady transactions.

Science

• Martian Gullies Were Formed By Flow Of Sand

  Martian gullies were once hailed as evidence of liquid water on Mars. Now a new theory backed by experiment explains how they are formed by the flow of sand

Security/Aggression

• Wandsworth cuts £600,000 from CCTV plans

  According to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union (Ojeu) on 23 April 2010, the council has lowered the annual value of lots for network control and camera systems from £100,000 and £300,000 to £60,000 and £220,000 respectively.

• Three images of our surveillance state

  While the top two are the usual pro-surveillance posters intended to reassure but which actually carry a sort of creepy Orwellian ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ feeling to them – the bottom picture is a baffling as it is saddening – and situated, as I am reliably informed by the photographer, in the Campsie Fells in Scotland, several miles from the nearest urban area.

• Home CCTV is given the ‘Pravda’ touch

  Keyholespying As community safety budgets have tightened, there have been numerous stories over the past 12 months about councils and police forces handing-out CCTV cameras to their residents in a bid to stop crime.

• Health records found in Asda car park

  A member of staff has been suspended after medical records belonging to patients at a secure hospital near Falkirk were found in a car park.

  A computer memory stick containing the sensitive information was found by a 12-year-old boy outside an Asda store.

• Airport security must be much better now, right..? Right?

  A further example has emerged to reinforce this point. The Miami Herald points out that the would-be “Times Square bomber” was placed on the “No Fly List” – presumably, given what he’d just tried to do, his presence there was a high-profile priority for law enforcement across the country. But still he was allowed through security and boarded the plane, before he was arrested.

• Arrest Everybody

  Arizona encourages police to emulate “the toughest sheriff in America.”

Finance

• ded Dems fight over Wall St. reform

  Divisions among Democrats emerged Tuesday on the details of Wall Street reform legislation.

  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said White House opposition to his amendment allowing for an audit of the Federal Reserve was inconsistent with President

• Monkey Business on the Fabulous Fab

  I wanted to post this clip from Joel Sucher’s documentary, “A Tale of Two Streets,” showing my friends Eric Salzman and Rich Bennett (of MonkeyBusinessBlog fame) talking about the “French School” on Wall Street. In light of the “Fabulous Fab” story, it’s pretty hilarious.

• Chicago Fed failed to curb speculative loans

  The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago failed to halt speculative real estate lending that led to losses at banks in Indiana and Michigan that were later closed, the central bank’s inspector general said.

• Three Reported Killed in Greek Protests

  Demonstrations against tough new austerity measures in Greece claimed their first fatalities on Wednesday with three people reported to have died inside a bank building set ablaze by protesters. The reports came as workers across Greece went on strike over deep spending cuts and new taxes aimed at staving off economic collapse.

• World stocks slide as 3 die during Greek protests

  World stock markets fell further Wednesday while the euro slid to a fresh 13-month low as three people died in a blaze at an Athens bank during rioting against austerity measures imposed as part of an international bailout package for heavily indebted Greece.

• Crisis Panel to Probe Window-Dressing at Banks

  It’s an open secret on Wall Street that many big banks routinely — and legally — fudge their quarterly books.

• Moody’s warns Portugal of possible debt downgrade

  Portugal, striving to avoid becoming the next victim of Europe’s debt crisis, was put on standby for a credit rating downgrade on Wednesday even as the government managed to raise some euro500 million ($654 million) on the bond markets.

• Is J.P. Morgan’s James Glassman a double agent?

  Last week’s hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations “exposed an unnerving ignorance of fundamental principles of market economics by folks who have a hand in remapping rules of finance that will be with us for a while,” writes James Glassman, J.P. Morgan Chase’s chief economist. Glassman then goes on to bash Michigan’s economy for a while (because Carl Levin is from Michigan, and, ah, what’s the point?) and declare “now that the financial reform debate is in the final innings, it’s time for the grownups to step in.”

• 6 reasons ‘Goldman Conspiracy’ must kill reforms

  Remember Nietzsche? “God is dead.” Let’s translate that 19th century Germanic philosophy into modern economics. In Adam Smith’s 1776 capitalism, God was the Invisible Hand, a mysterious force running the economy from the shadows.

  Flash forward to 2010: Capitalism is dead. The economy has a new Invisible Hand, the Goldman Conspiracy of Wall Street bankers.

• Why a Criminal Case Against Goldman Sachs Matters and Why Charges Could Stick

  Then have a sit down with Warren Buffett and start co-authoring OpEds on why the Glass-Steagall Act separating investment banks from insured mom and pop funds at commercial banks must be restored. If you have any trouble finding an argument for this, just lay all those recently disclosed internal emails end to end and observe the narcissistic, sociopathic culture you’ve created out of the uber-testosterone Wharton School boys.

• Critical Week for Financial Reform!

  The White House and the Federal Reserve are fighting hard against these common-sense measures to cap the size of banks and audit the Fed.

• New York Times Nails the Big Financial Reform Issues

  The Times clearly sets forth the case for immediate efforts to cut the banks down to size, so that their failures will not be able to sink our economy.

• Financial Industry Front Group “Stop Too Big To Fail” Runs New Ads

  Investment banker Sam Zamarripa, spokesman for the financial industry’s front group “Stop Too Big To Fail” (STBTF) announced that his group is funding a third series of television ads set to air in the Washington, D.C. cable media market. The ads try to trick people into opposing the financial reforms currently being considered by the Senate by misleadingly claiming the current legislation provides for “unlimited executive bailout authority.”

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Investment Bank Says Criticism Is Trademark Infringement; Gets Misplaced Injunction Against Web Forum

  So many companies (and individuals) get up in arms over a bit of criticism, assuming that anything they don’t like must be illegal. On top of that, they regularly blame the owners of the websites where that criticism occurs, rather than whoever actually created the criticism. Usually the courts see through this stuff, but sometimes companies are able to get around all of that with some quick lawyering. In a particularly egregious example, the investment bank Houlihan Smith got upset at the websites 800notes.com and Whocallsme.com, both run by Julia Forte as forums where people can discuss telemarketing practices (we’ve pointed out how Forte has been fighting other misguided legal attacks in the past as well). As with many companies that find people criticizing themselves on Forte’s website, Houlihan Smith demanded that she remove comments. She responded by pointing out that company representatives are free to respond to the complaints in the comments.

• EFF fights Facebook bid to outlaw one-stop social apps

  A civil liberties watchdog has challenged Facebook’s legal claims that an unauthorized third-party site that helps users login automatically violates criminal laws.

• Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook’s claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites.

• Groups Call ‘Privacy’ Legislation Orwellian

  Privacy groups gave an overwhelming thumbs down Tuesday to proposed legislation by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) that for the first time would mandate the length of time online consumer information could be kept.

• Privacy groups, business firms firing warning shots on new online ad privacy bill

  Privacy advocates and business groups drew early battle lines on Tuesday in the debate over a new bill to rein in Web advertisements that are based on consumers’ online shopping habits and Internet browsing histories.

• TheDirty.com Exclusive: Pretty Wild Hollywood Hooker And Drug Star Tess Taylor

  Tess, tell your mother that your legal threats do not scare me. You are one step above Lindsay Lohan in my book.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• DRM Day: act to stop BBC DRM

  Already in the UK, satellite and cable companies apply DRM to their proprietary High Definition products, such as recorders and receivers, restricting the supply to the market and what their chosen devices can usefully do for their customers. Now the BBC are making the same plans for their future HD channels.

  Currently, Ofcom are considering whether the BBC should be allowed to apply a form of DRM to the programme guide and subtitles – in order to gain control of the vast majority of UK devices; and to exclude any software or hardware device that does not subject itself to control. Of course, the problems are not just about fair dealing rights in copyright.

• Laissez-faire Republican is battling the Comcast-NBC deal

  That labor unions such as the Communications Workers of America, advocacy groups including the National Coalition of African American Owned Media and competing media companies are making noise in Washington about the impact that cable giant Comcast’s proposed takeover of General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal would have on the media landscape is hardly a surprise.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Canadians drop gloves, punch US in face over piracy list

    Once again, Canada appears near the top of the US government’s 2010 “Special 301″ piracy watchlist. And once again, the Canadians are angry about being classed with China and Russia as the worst places on earth for intellectual property law.

  • Songwriters Guild Claims The Internet Makes It Impossible To Create Content

    The current internet — perhaps the greatest tool for content creation ever is not a tenable delivery system for content creators. Of course, that’s easily debunked, because more content is being created today thanks to the internet and the fact that it’s a very efficient delivery system. The fact that thousands upon thousands of content creators have embraced the internet, used it to help create, promote, distribute and share their music — and as a way to build better, more efficient business models? According to Carnes and the SGA, that’s “not tenable.” Weird. Someone alert everyone else on the internet.

  • News: 50 Cent On The Ailing Music Industry, “We Just Have To Pass New Laws” [Video]

    50 Cent talks about what he believes what will save the music industry’s sales slump in tonight’s Fuse network broadcast of “50 Cent: The Lost Tapes.”

    On the program, 50 talks about battling Internet piracy.

    “I don’t think the music business is dying,” 50 says in the interview. “I think we’re just experiencing technology and we just have to pass new laws, eventually, to change how music is being distributed. There’s no lack of interest in great material, I don’t see people ‘not’ going to the night club or enjoying themselves when the son comes on. It’s just about re-developing what the music business is. It’s easier to download a song that’s three minutes long, probably about three or four seconds for you to download it, it’s easier to steal…The technology is so new and what we’re actually doing on the web that we have to develop that. And those things won’t actually happen, the effective laws won’t happen until it starts to damage film. When you got your blockbuster film doing $120 million in a weekend and then that blockbuster film that they spent $120 million comes out and nobody goes to see but everybody watched it because they could pull it off their computer and see it on HD at home on a theater. They’ll change those laws.” (“50 Cent: The Lost Tapes”)

  • Study Says: Lack Of Innovation, Not File Sharing, Real Problem For Record Labels

    van Eijk, who does a nice job differentiating between the recording and music industries, goes on to note that despite Sweden’s reputation as a piracy hub, total revenues from recorded music, live concerts and collecting societies remained roughly static between 2000 and 2008 (something we’ve pointed out before). The study also touches on how the content industry has set the price far higher on movies and video games than people say they are willing to pay (though what people say they’ll pay and what they’ll actually pay obviously can be quite different). While the recording industry was busily suing customers, exploring nastier DRM solutions and trying to desperately hold on to the past — everything changed around them — and “reinvention of the business model” is now the only way forward, concludes van Eijk:

    “And so the entertainment industry will have to work actively towards innovation on all fronts. New models worth developing, for example, are those that seek to achieve commercial diversification or that match supply and end-user needs more closely. In such a context, criminalizing large parts of the population makes no sense. Enforcement should focus on large scale and/or commercial upload activities. . . Introducing new protective measures does not seem the right way to go…”

• ACTA

  • EFA: Cybercrime treaty an ‘advance party’ for ACTA

    Australia’s sudden decision to sign a European cybercrime treaty could lay the groundwork for aspects of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), according to Electronic Frontiers Australia.

    Last Friday, Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Minister for Foreign Affairs Stephen Smith announced that Australia would accede to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.

  • How ACTA Exports Worst Of US Copyright Law Without Corresponding Exceptions

    And, of course, the rationale for all of this? It’s based on studies that our own government now says were bogus.

  • ACTA written declaration: 223 signatures to go!

    La Quadrature du Net has sent a letter to the Members of the European Parliament who have yet to sign written declaration 12 regarding ACTA, urging them to do so.

• Digital Economy Bill

  • Digital rights and Digital Economy Bill: an election issue

    The politicians that have understood these questions have not been exclusively from one side of the debate. Bill Cash and John Redwood, as well as David Davies, stood up for our arguments; Labour MPs including Tom Watson, Eric Joyce and Mark Lazarowicz took a stand; Liberal Democrats including Nick Clegg have been highly critical, as well as Greens Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Trusting GNU/Linux

I do not think the troll gets GNU/Linux. FLOSS is about sharing and trust. Debian GNU/Linux has a well-defined social contract in addition to the GPL and other Free Software licences used in the distribution. If, after all that a person does not trust a CD marked “Official Debian GNU/Linux” (”Official images are built by a member of the Debian CD team and have undergone some testing to ensure they work. Once they have been released, the images never change – if they turn out to be broken, a new set with a different version number is released..“) one can check the md5sums of individual packages or whole images. If you want to go past that, you can examine all the sources and build your own installation CDs. That is a huge job… Give thanks that Debian GNU/Linux takes care of it.

Get inside Virtualisation

There are many alternatives to VMware’s expensive and proprietary software. Join us as we investigate four of the most prolific tools kickstarting the revolution in open source virtualisation…

When Linux interoperable incompatibilities frustrate

I know I should strip the whole thing down and start again, but my other half has the wildly popular Evince PDF reader installed on it, which we need for testing Adobe CS4 pre-flight rendering of InDesign files before they go to print on a project that we shoulder together. Our client is a Linux purist and wants to ensure people can use Evince as nobody uses Acrobat, right?

Desktop

• Linux users may now tidy their desks

  Minimal Linux is a blog for people who like simplicity and freedom: “This site focuses on ways to streamline your Linux-powered life, making it lighter, faster, and easier. More of what you need, less of what you don’t.”

• A Database Admin/Music Enthusiast’s Linux Workstation

  The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest continues with this entry from Brian, a database administrator (DBA) in a mostly Windows world by day, but off hours a musician/Linux geek. He says that he is also doing some freelance IT work and development for his wife’s company, which gives him more of an opportunity to focus on Linux in a professional capacity.

Audiocasts

• Going Linux 101 May 5- Ubuntu 10.04, Wav, iTunes alternatives

Ballnux

• Samsung Gives Majority of New Smartphones to Android

• Samsung’s “S-pad” to Feature 7-Inch SuperAMOLED Display

Kernel Space

• Linux Foundation Announces LinuxCon Keynotes, Mini-Summits

  Virgin America CIO, open source legal pioneer Eben Moglen and Forrester Research analyst are among the keynotes confirmed for this year’s premier Linux conference; new mini-summits extend developer collaboration

• Managed Hosting Provider ServInt Joins Linux Foundation

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that managed hosting provider ServInt is its newest member.

  ServInt is joining The Linux Foundation to take advantage of exclusive networking events and online and face-to-face workgroup collaboration on Virtualization and Green Linux.

• Performance problem in AMD’s Phenom II X6 under Linux

Applications

• Exaile – The First Linux Media Player I Don’t Hate

  Anyone who knows me will have heard me rant about the poor state of music software, particularly for Linux. There seem to be two types of music players out there: the tiny ones that don’t get in your way but often lack important playlist features or format support, and the monstrous software beasts that drag your system to a halt and insist on “importing” the files you’ve already organized. I had been stewing over this for years, and nearing the point of writing my own, when I found Exaile – a GTK music program originally modeled after KDE’s Amarok. This may be the first music player since Winamp 2.95 that I don’t despise, and here’s why.

• xjed: Text editor with Jedi Powers

• Proprietary

  • Opera betas 10.5 for Linux and FreeBSD

    Opera 10.53 beta for Linux and FreeBSD is the first Unix beta of Evenes, the browser built atop the company’s new Carakan JavaScript engine. “If you’ve been waiting [for] Opera 10.5 to stabilize before trying it on your Linux or FreeBSD system, now is your chance,” writes Opera’s Arjan van Leeuwen in a blog post.

  • New beta of Opera for Linux

• Instructionals

  • Turn Chrome’s New Tab Page into an Ubuntu Forums Powerhouse

  • Managing MySQL with MySQL Workbench

  • How to fix intel video card freezing problem in Ubuntu 10.04

  • Browse Through Your System Information

  • Unable to mount USB

  • How to create a customize Ubuntu distribution – Reconstructor

  • Grub Error code explained

  • PulseAudio and Jack

  • Wacom bamboo CTL-460 in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

  • Complete Guide to Symbolic Links (symlinks) on Windows or Linux

  • Rotating email into your inbox using imapfilter

• Games

  • The Humble Indie Bundle !

    Wolfiregames the developers of the Lugaru that are currently working on Overgrowth have posted about The Humble Indie Bundle – Pay What You Want Program !

  • After Scid row, a new chess app is born

    In the long history of computer-based chess games, one of the earliest open source applications was Shane’s Chess Information Database, better known as Scid. Last year Steven Atkinson, a Unix graduate and hobby programmer from Brisbane, Australia, used the Scid code to create a usability and bug-fix fork called Scid Vs. PC. With it you can play chess online or against numerous chess engines, browse tournaments downloaded in PGN format, and create chess databases.

  • Heroes of Newerth Launch Date

Desktop Environments

• KDE vs. GNOME: DVD Tools and Desktop Design

  DVD tools are more important on Linux than on most operating systems. While Windows or OSX users rarely burn CDs or DVDs except for an occasional backup, for many Linux users, burning a Live CD to investigate a distribution is a common task.

  Similarly, although the users of other operating systems may extract audio or visuals from a CD, all the really large local content libraries I have seen tend to be on Linux. What is an occasional convenience to others are standard tools in the free and open source lifestyle.

  For this reason, DVD tools are well-represented in both KDE and GNOME. On both desktops, earlier tools like X-CD-Roast that are formidable in their options have been replaced with more user-friendly default tools: K3b for KDE, and Brasero for burning and Sound Juicer for audio ripping for GNOME.

  All these tools perform their basic tasks well enough for most users. However, what is striking is how clearly each of them demonstrates the design philosophies of the desktops with which they are associated.

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • i don’t need no stinking nepomuk .. right?

    Nepomuk is being used more and more to track, coordinate / orchestrate and index non-”files on my disk” data. Let’s take two examples: Akonadi and the Plasma Desktop.

    Akonadi is using it to provide search for email, contacts, events, etc. which is one step away from the “file indexing” idea. Instead of building its own search database (and all the overhead that implies), Akonadi is able to lean on Nepomuk for that and, as a bonus, be able to not only index but map the correlations between those sets of data which, as a human being, we’d expect to be there and have at our fingertips.

    The Plasma Desktop is going even further with Activities. We now have the ability to store, retrieve and mark as “active” which desktop activity you are working on. There is no file anywhere that maps to this. KWin will be gaining the ability to map windows to these activities, and any other application (KDE or not!) can also choose to map internal data and settings to activities and take appropriate action when the Activity context changes. The mechanism that ties this together? Nepomuk. Since we’re using Nepomuk, we get the ability to tie documents and other URL based locations together with Activities as well .. for free.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Collabora joins GNOME Foundatio Advisory Board

    Pauliea writes “UK-based open source software consultancy Collabora is joining the GNOME Foundation advisory board today. A long time supporter of GNOME and member of the GNOME community, Collabora contributes directly to GNOME projects like Empathy, PiTiVi, Totem and Epiphany.”

  • Totem Gains New Features For GNOME 3.0

    The first development milestone for GNOME 3.0 is expected to be reached tomorrow with the release of the unstable GNOME 2.31.1 package set. While Zeitgeist, the GNOME Shell, and Mutter are among the most talked about changes for the GNOME 3.0 desktop, many mature packages are receiving new features and work too. GNOME’s Movie Player, Totem, is one of these packages receiving some attention.

  • Other Highlights For GNOME 2.31.1

    As was mentioned this morning GNOME’s Totem Movie Player is preparing for GNOME 3.0 by picking up de-interlacing support and a-synchronous play-list loading, among other improvements. Other packages are also being checked-in this week for the first GNOME 3.0 development release known as GNOME 2.31.1. Besides the updates to Totem and the major work going on to the GNOME Shell / Mutter / Zeitgeist, there is some other interesting new features too.

Distributions

• Horrors That Are Out There

  I fired up SystemRescueCD to a usable GUI – 1m 30s. Yep. It has a 512 MB cache so is Vista-Incapable. I have seen Celerons with 1MB cache do pretty well with it. hdparm shows 700+ MB/s from the buffers and 58 MB/s from the surface so this thing will be a rocket with GNU/Linux.

• Testing out Funtoo

  The other day I decided to give a try at Funtoo (for those that do not know it yet, a variant of Gentoo). I am very impressed with the improvements that Daniel Robbins has done so far.

• Red Hat Family

  • Test Driving Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

    OFB’s Ed Hurst continues his quest for the perfect UNIX or Linux operating system by looking at a recently released beta of Red Hat’s upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Is it the Linux nirvana? Read on to find out.

    [...]

    For the non-profit computer ministry I’m running, I would say the new CentOS 6 is going to become one of our flagship distros based on what I’ve seen in RHEL 6 Beta. Give it a test drive!

  • The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Kernel: What Is It?

    Sitting at the heart of every Linux OS distribution is a Linux kernel. When it comes to the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 release, the issue of which kernel is being used is not a cut and dried answer, however.

    RHEL 6 is currently in its first beta release, with a feature freeze now in place. Currently, the mainline Linux kernel is nearing its 2.6.34 release, while the most recent stable release is the 2.6.33 release, which came out in February. But instead of either sticking with the 2.6.33 Linux kernel or holding out for 2.6.34, Red Hat is taking a different approach.

• Debian Family

  • Using sidux with the newly updated KDE SC 4.4.3

    I have been following the KDE 4 release with interest for quite some time now. When KDE 4.0 was first released, it was quite clear that it was a development-only snapshot. When KDE 4.1 was released, it was somewhat improved, but until KDE 4.1.4, it was still really only a development snapshot at best.

    [...]

    As far as other applications, the OpenOffice suite is also significantly faster and has stronger compatibility than any release in recent memory with Microsoft Office, so it is a true, capable alternative to MS Office.

  • Countdown to Squeeze

  • Ubuntu

    • Solving an upgrade hitch en route to Ubuntu 10.04

      After waiting until after a weekend in the Isle of Man, I got to upgrading my main home PC to Ubuntu 10.04. Before the weekend away, I had been updating a 10.04 installation on an old spare PC and that worked fine so the prospects were good for a similar changeover on the main box. That may have been so but breaking a computer hardly is the perfect complement to a getaway.

    • Variants

      • The other Ubuntu Linux distributions

        I like the brand spanking new Ubuntu 10.04 a lot. But while I like its GNOME 2.30 interface, I also like other interfaces such as KDE. It would be nice if Ubuntu could also play MP3s, common video formats and Flash from the get-go. You could install all these and other extras from the Ubuntu repositories, but there’s also a wide-variety of Ubuntu spin-offs that come ready to give you the functionality you want right out of the box.

        [...]

        Kubuntu 10.04. Like the name suggests, the big difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu is that the K-Ubuntu runs KDE 4.4.2 instead of GNOME 2.30 for its desktop. But Kubuntu isn’t just Ubuntu with KDE. Instead of KDE’s default Konqueror Web browser, Kubuntu defaults to using Firefox 3.6.3.

      • Linux Mint 9 “Isadora” RC released!

        New features at a glance:

        * New Software Manager
        o 30,000 packages
        o Review applications straight from the Software Manager
        o APT daemon
        o Visual improvements

      • A First Look at Linux Mint 9

        A couple of weeks ago, we talked a little about the upcoming artwork of Linux Mint 9 (codename Isadora) and the plans Clement Lefebvre had for this next major version of the Linux Mint operating system. However, today, we are proud to present a few screenshots and introduce you guys to the main features of Linux Mint 9 (Isadora). First of all, you should know that Linux Mint 9 RC is a development release and it shouldn’t be used on production machines. The final release may be available in a few weeks!

        [...]

        Linux Mint is and will always be an elegant, easy-to-use, up-to-date, 100% free and comfortable Linux operating system based on the very popular Ubuntu OS. It offers paid commercial support to companies and individuals. Also, free community support is available from the forums and the IRC channel.

      • EasyPeasy 1.6 for Netbooks is out ! Screenshots Tour

        EasyPeasy 1.6. is released, the new version comes with many new features…

Devices/Embedded

• TomTom offers drivers the voice of Darth Vader

  TomTom users downloading the voice can also get their hands on free start up screen wallpaper and a Lord Vader map icon.

• Phones

  • Nokia

    • GTK surprises on Maemo

      Sometimes the creation of the contact chooser used on the N900 can be slow so, using callgrind and kcachegrind, I tried to understand what is the source of the slowness. This lead me to find some unexpected, and apparently undocumented, differences between upstream GTK and the Maemo version.

      [...]

      he results seem quite good; now the contact list is fast, scrolling is smooth and the delayed loading of avatars should not be visible in normal cases.

  • Android

    • G-1 to Nexus One: an informal comparison

      My wife thinks it’s significant that the Nexis One is thinner and lighter than the G-1. I don’t, really, but then I have larger hands and larger pockets than she does. She’s probably right that this difference will matter more to the average mass-market consumer than it does to me.

      The biggest surprise to me about the Nexus One is that I’m missing the physical keyboard on the G-1 far less than I thought I would. I found the soft keyboard on the G-1 annoying and difficult to use, but something about the Nexus One version makes it significantly easier. This could be a consequence of the larger display size, or possibly the touch-recognition software has improved, or perhaps it’s both. The effectiveness of the Nexus One’s voice-to-text feature helps here.

      [..]

      Overall, however, the Nexus is indeed a clear improvement on the G-1. It points the way Android is going pretty unambiguously – towards head-to-head competition with the iPhone, rather than simply vacuuming up the market share of dumb phones and lesser competitors such as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

      In at least one respect – the voice-to-text capabilty – Android is already ahead of anything iPhone offers or is ever likely to be able to support. There’s a huge infrastructure of statistical pattern-matching engines in the Google-cloud behind it that Apple won’t be able to replicate easily, if at all.

    • Watch Out iPhone, Android Use Is on the Rise

      Watch out Apple iPhone, Google’s mobile operating system, Android continues to increase its popularity at a growth rate of 32 percent year over year, according to a recent report.

    • Motorola Droid Still Leading the Android Pack

      A new report by mobile ad company AdMob measures the amount of ad traffic sent from different smartphones in March — and the Droid’s blinking red eye is going to be very pleased with what it found.

    • Android Smartphones Gaining Ground on iPhones

      This is according to the latest research out of AdMob, a mobile advertising network in the process of being acquired by chief Android proponent Google. AdMob bases its stats on requests for access to the 18,000-plus Websites and applications in its network.

    • T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide: What You Need to Know

      Late last night, T-Mobile officially announced their next Android-powered handset, the myTouch 3G Slide. Is this just the next release in a line of Android smart phones or does it offer something new? Let’s take a look at some of the features that help the myTouch 3G Slide stand out from T-Mobile’s other offerings.

    • Adobe AIR and Flash Running “Flawlessly” on Prototype Android Tablet [VIDEO]

    • Android 2.2 to get full Flash support

      Google gives the finger to Apple by building support for Flash video into Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’, due to debut next month.

      Flash is coming to Android smartphones, with support for the Web video format to be baked into the forthcoming Android OS 2.2 update.

• Tablets

  • HP eyes webOS iPad rival

    In purchasing Palm, HP intends to build and sell not only a new collection of phones based on Palm’s critically-acclaimed webOS, but a line of webOS tablets as well.

UNIX/BSD

• HP’s Linux OS Alternative Gets a Face Lift

  Sun’s UNIX ecosystem was thrown into turmoil following the company’s acquisition by Oracle. A big question mark remains over the future of Solaris and OpenSolaris server operating systems. In contrast, IBM and HP, the other two big enterprise UNIX players, have been plodding along steadily, hoping all the while to pick up disaffected Sun customers quicker than they lose their own to Linux implementations.

  Let’s focus on HP (NYSE: HPQ). Linux leaves the company in a rather tricky situation. That’s because HP is a big fan of the open source server software — it’s a phenomenon too big to ignore. But it also sells UNIX, so it has to be careful not to cannibalize its UNIX sales by promoting Linux too hard. In other words, HP’s UNIX and Linux staff must push their respective lines of business without unduly dissing their opposite numbers.

FOSS community, FOSS business, and the nature of allies

Nothing I have pointed out is meant to detract from the genuine service that FOSS-oriented companies have done for the community. Besides the frequent addition of code, FOSS-oriented companies have made free software better known that it ever was before their involvement. Furthermore, Canonical in particular has dragged the community collectively screaming into discussions of usability that the community had previously ignored.

Apache

• The Apache Software Foundation Announces New Top-Level Projects

  The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) –-the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of 143 Open Source projects and initiatives– today announced the creation of six new Top-Level Projects (TLPs), setting an all-time record of the most new TLPs launched in a single month.

• Apache moves on traffic server, machine learning projects

  The Apache Software Foundation, developer of open source software, on Tuesday is announcing the creation of six Top-Level Projects, including the Apache Traffic Server for caching and Apache Mahout, implementing machine-learning algorithms atop the Apache Hadoop distributed computing platform.

• Six new Top-Level Projects at the Apache Software Foundation

Events

• Red Hat Open Your World forum

• Announcing the Open Your World Forum

  The opensource.com team is excited to announce our first-ever live event, the Open Your World Forum. The forum, held via webinar on Thursday, May 27, 2010, will feature presentations by leading open source thinkers in the fields of business, education, law, government, healthcare, and music. The event is free and entirely online–so join us for the whole day or any part that interests you, from your desk, your sofa, or anywhere you like.

• A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Linux Forum

  If you’re looking for a friendly community of geeks, tech weinees, and all-round great folks, stop on by for a visit. Tell ‘em Urmas sent you. Heh! I’m not getting involved.

Mozilla

• The Mozilla 2010 T-shirt – Vote Now!

• Firefox and the open web

  Firefox is the most popular and widely used free software application and boasts more than a billion downloads and more than 350 million users. The H discusses its history, present and future with Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation.

Oracle

• James Gosling praises Oracle’s Java technology updates

  Although Java founder James Gosling has left Oracle apparently under less-than-cordial circumstances, he still can be found championing Java technologies now sponsored by Oracle.

CMS

• TurnKey Linux

  Ever wanted to instantly have Drupal, Moodle, OTRS, MySQL, WordPress, Zimbra, Bugzilla, phpBB or a slew of other open source software packages up an running in a hassle-free manner to try out or available for rapid deployment? TurnKey Linux gives you just that.

Education

• Introducing Open Source to A Middle School

  Finally, on January 8th, we were ready to roll. The first class was a bootcamp-style introduction to Inkscape – we went through various essential basic Inkscape tasks one-by-one, such as panning the canvas and grouping objects, and then had the students immediately try them out through small exercises. Walter came in and talked about T-shirt printing technologies at the second class, and we also taught the students about vector paths and how to work with the pen tool. By the time we got to the 4th class, the students were coming up with band names and starting to develop logotypes for their bands. Class sessions #5-7 were primarily work periods for the students, with only the first 10 minutes of the class devoted to explaining a new technique. At the end of session #7, we had designs ready to go for Walter to produce, and we handed out the T-shirts at the final session, #8. After the excitement of the new shirts died down a bit, we took the rest of the last class period as a fun exploratory time: we introduced the students to OpenClipArt.org and we also showed them how to convert photos taken with their webcams into ‘cartoon’ versions via the Inkscape trace bitmap tool (a technique that proved to be very popular!)

Open Access/Content

• Governor Schwarzenegger Announces Results of Free Digital Textbook Initiative Phase Two Announces 17 New Standards-Aligned Free Digital Textbooks Available for California’s Classrooms

  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the results of the second phase of his first-in-the-nation free Digital Textbook Initiative to provide California’s students and teachers with free, high-quality open educational resources. Seventeen free digital textbooks for high school history, science and higher-level math were reviewed against California’s rigorous academic content standards and are now available for use in California’s classrooms.

• The Future of Open Data Looks Like…Github?

  I’m sure there are others. Still, the future to me in this area seems clear: we’re going to see transformation of datasets incorporated into the marketplaces. As the demand for public data increases, the market will demand higher quality, easier to work with data. With that demand will come supply, one way or another. There’s little sense in having each individual consumer of the data replicate the same steps to make it usable. The question will be which one of the marketplaces learns from Github and its brethren first.

Government

• Australian Federal Government Commits to Open Access

  Big news from the Australian Federal Government on the issue of access to public sector information (PSI).

  CCau followers will remember the Government 2.0 Taskforce report released in December last year, which gave Creative Commons a very big tick as the licensing model of choice for Australian PSI. The Federal Government’s official response to the report was released yesterday and is generally positive, with the Federal Government agreeing (at least substantially) to 12 of the 13 recommendations to come out of the report.

• Government Response to the Report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce

  Government 2.0 or the use of the new collaborative tools and approaches of Web 2.0 offers an unprecedented opportunity to achieve more open, accountable, responsive and efficient government.

• Video: The DoD makes it official: open source IS commercial software.

  Towards the end of 2009, the office of the DoD CIO issued a memo clarifying their position on open source software. There were some misconceptions, misunderstandings, and just plain FUD surrounding their stance previously, and they wanted to make it clear that they considered open source just as viable for development as any other type of software.

Storage Technology for the Home User

For anyone looking to get a handle on all of their personal data, there are several products on the market right now aimed at the average home-or-desktop user. This wide range of new products available offer excellent storage density, management and performance — and Linux compatibility. While a good friend always tells me, “technology is meant to be owned” sometimes the bank account doesn’t always support that philosophy. So the products discussed in this article are for a range of prices from $20 to thousands of dollars. But the focus is on products and technologies that can be used in desktops to really boost performance or ease storage management.

Execs to serve jail time for LCD price-fixing

The former president of Chi Mei Optoelectronics has agreed to pay a fine and go to jail for his role in a scheme to fix prices for TFT-LCDs (thin-film transistor-liquid crystal displays), the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday.

Google’s Taxpaying Habits Scrutinized In Australia

Google’s practice of channeling its revenues through Ireland is getting the company into trouble yet again. This time, onlookers in Australia have taken note, and although no government officials have become involved, people are definitely unhappy that Google may be shirking its tax obligations.

Oregon Goes Google (Apps)

Google scored a big win today, and by all accounts, the state of Oregon made out well, too. This is because the Oregon school system will begin using Google Apps for Education, saving it a boatload of cash while allowing Google to increase its market share.

Land grabs threaten Anuak

Ethiopia is one of the main targets in the current global farmland grab. The government has stated publicly that it wants to sell off three million hectares of farmland in the country to foreign investors, and around one million hectares have already been signed away. Much of the land that these investors have acquired is in the province of Gambella, a fertile area that is home to the Anuak nation. The Anuak are indigenous people who have always lived in Gambella and who practise farming, pastoralism, hunting and gathering. Nyikaw Ochalla, an Anuak living in exile in the United Kingdom, is trying to understand what this new wave of land deals will mean for the Anuak and other local communities in Ethiopia.

Science

• A gallery of stunning Hubble images from new book

  These images are featured in the stunning new book Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time by Edward J. Weiler, published by Abrams in collaboration with NASA. All images: Courtesy NASA.

• Earth from Mars

• STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine

  Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I’m not so cautious. In fact, I’m more like the people who built Stonehenge. I’m obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I’d even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.

  To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do – at the fourth dimension. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length.

  But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension.

• Color Survey Results

Security/Aggression

• Former CIA worker’s arrest comes weeks after trouble in neighborhood

  The former Central Intelligence Agency employee was wanted on a federal charge of Sexual Deviance in connection with offenses he supposedly committed while serving in Algiers.

• Ministers spend £61,000 on mugs and pens to promote database

  Critics question why so much money was spent promoting controversial Contactpoint children’s database

• Full-body scanners are waste of money, Israeli expert says

  A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install “useless” imaging machines at airports across the country.

  “I don’t know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747,” Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada.

• New Labour’s Complicity in Torture – Truly Evil

  I have now obtained under the Freedom of Information Act a heavily censored copy of one of my telegrams from Tashkent protesting at the use by the UK government of intelligence obtained under torture.

• Police investigate electoral fraud claims after journalist is beaten up

  The Metropolitan Police said it had received 10 separate allegations passed to it by Tower Hamlets Borough Council that addresses in closely-fought wards had acquired multiple new occupants shortly before the electoral register closed last month. Four of the claims are now the subject of a police inquiry.

Environment

• Chemicals Meant To Break Up BP Oil Spill Present New Environmental Concerns

  The chemicals BP is now relying on to break up the steady flow of leaking oil from deep below the Gulf of Mexico could create a new set of environmental problems.

  Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world’s supply. If the leak from 5,000 feet beneath the surface continues for weeks, or months, that stockpile could run out.

• The Last Four Minutes of the Deepwater Horizon

• The Gulf oil spill blame game

  A “setback” for offshore-oil drilling advocates, a profound opportunity to say “we told you so” for environmentalists, the Deepwater Horizons oil spill is above all a big huge mess. If you are searching for the perfect metaphor to describe humanity’s 21st century plight — an energy-hungry and energy-dependent civilization occupying a resource-constrained planet — then you need look no further than at a satellite photo of the giant spreading oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. That massive hydrocarbon stain is our collective scarlet letter, the price we pay for a lifestyle of extraordinary affluence and comfort — at least as compared to most of the humans who have ever lived.

• Industry Leaders Seem to be Showing More Openness to Energy Descent Issues

  There were a few of us academics as well. At this retreat, I introduced ideas relating to peak net energy, and the possibility of major changes in the years ahead. I found industry leaders much more open than I had expected to listening to and understanding our energy predicament, and talking about what may be ahead. In this post, I would like to tell you about my experience.

• Wind’s latest problem: it . . . makes power too cheap

  Implicit in the article, and the headline (which focuses on lower revenues for RWE) is the worry that wind power will bring down the stock market value of the big utilities – which is what the readers of Bloomberg et al. care about.

• Your tuna is too cheap

  We need to support the Maldivian pole-and-line fishery. We need to develop similar operations elsewhere too. Many of the Pacific Island Countries are in prime position to limit foreign fishing operations and develop locally owned and operated sustainable pole and line fisheries instead. And we need to clean up purse-seining, and support those who are leading the charge on that, too. Illegal fishing needs to be totally stamped out, and bycatch needs to be eliminated. With the UK’s evident appetite for guilt-free fish, it’s clear that these are things we care about.

• EU: Stop Spain’s overfishing!

  We are destroying our oceans: around 75-80 percent of the world’s fish stocks are already at dangerously low levels. And without urgent action, we may experience a future without fish.

• Paper reveals EU plan to boost GM crop cultivation

  Europe faces a major overhaul in the way it deals with genetically modified (GM) crops, after the European Commission sparked controversy with new plans to circumvent its cumbersome legislative review process.

Finance

• Buffett on Madoff, Greece and other ‘defective systems’

  Commentary: What other ‘business’ practices does the Oracle want to defend?

• From Buffett, Thought-Out Support for Goldman

  Why is Warren Buffett sticking his neck out so far in defense of Goldman Sachs?

• Lobbyists fret over legislation to reshape financial system

  As the Senate dives into the details of far-reaching legislation to overhaul financial regulations this week, lobbyists who represent some of the nation’s biggest banks are feeling on edge.

• Fake Debate: The Senate Will Not Vote On Big Banks

  The financial reform package now on the Senate floor puts surprisingly little constraint on the activities of our largest banks going forward – preferring instead to defer to regulators to tweak the rules down the road (despite the fact that this approach has gone badly over the past 20-30 years).

• Ernst Fehr: How I found what’s wrong with economics

  In that paper, he and his co-authors showed that testosterone, despite its reputation as a promoter of aggressive behaviour, actually made people more cooperative when playing economic games. They used female volunteers since previous studies have indicated that women are more likely than men to show behavioural changes if given very low doses of the hormone. “In the end we had six referees. Some had legitimate points, but one was really irrational and emotional,” Fehr says. “The referee suggested that maybe we had done a more general study and then decided only to report the effects in women, basically accusing us of being dishonest.”

• Goldman Sachs now hit with 6 shareholder suits

  Goldman Sachs said Monday that six private lawsuits alleging “breach of fiduciary duty, corporate waste, abuse of control, mismanagement and unjust enrichment” have been filed against the bank since the government charged it last month with committing fraud.

• What a Criminal Inquiry Portends for Goldman

  The disclosure of the Justice Department’s inquiry into Goldman Sachs substantially alters the calculus for how the firm and its employees should approach the civil fraud charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  Even though a criminal investigation is only in its earliest stages at this point, the mere revelation that the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan is involved shows the powerful impact such information has on the firm, as Goldman’s shares dropped almost 10 percent in response to the news.

• Goldman Sachs fined, censured over ‘naked’ short sales

  Regulators have fined Goldman Sachs $450,000 and censured the firm’s market-making division for violating rules governing short sales in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ collapse in 2008.

• Goldman Sachs Pays $450,000 to Settle NYSE Finding (Update1)

  The company clears an average of 3 million trades a day, said Canaday, who added that an automated system began in May 2009.

  NYSE said that from around Dec. 9, 2008, to Jan. 22, 2009, the Goldman Sachs unit failed about 68 times to close out positions after short sales had failed to settle. Goldman Sachs also didn’t notify customers that short sales in particular stocks had failed to settle on time, the exchange said.

• Goldman Sachs Pays European Bankers Average of $670,000

  Goldman Sachs International, the European unit of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., paid its 5,500 employees average compensation of about $670,000 last year.

• Goldman Sachs makes the case for financial reform

  They’re greedy. They’re unethical. They’re clever in a borderline nefarious way.

• Full Disclosure And The Goldman Sachs Investigation

  Gretchen Morgenson, who covers the world financial markets for The New York Times, discusses the investigations into Goldman Sachs by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Justice Department and a Senate subcommittee — and reflects on the role Goldman Sachs played in the financial crisis.

• Humorous poke at Goldman Sachs

• NYT’s Goldman Scoopster, Louise Story, Joins Bloomberg TV As Contributing Editor

  Louise Story, one of the two New York Times reporters who broke the news on April 16 about the S.E.C. suing Goldman Sachs for fraud, has joined Bloomberg TV as a contributing editor.

• The Would-Be Governor From Goldman Sachs

  In 2002-04, Meg Whitman was the poster child for a fraudulent practice known as “spinning.” She received preferential allocations of scarce IPO shares in technology and other hot stock issuances, very likely to shoot up in price after the offering, assuring that profit making for stock recipients would be identical to shooting fish in a barrel. New York investment bankers, particularly those at Goldman Sachs, hopeful of receiving eBay’s future investment banking business, controlled those hot issues and made the allocations to Whitman. Ms. Whitman has denied any knowledge of the wrongdoing although Goldman bankers funneled shares to her accounts in over 100 instances. After being sued, Ms. Whitman disgorged several million dollars, tacitly admitting that any opportunity in being awarded favorable treatment by investment banks belonged to the corporation (eBay), not to the CEO.

• SEC’s fraud case against Goldman generates shareholder suits

  Other suits pile the new problems with the SEC on top of previous complaints against the company. A union pension fund filed an amended complaint to an earlier lawsuit complaining about the structure and size of Goldman’s executive bonuses, alleging now that those bonuses led to unethical behavior at the company.

• A Call to Separate Top Goldman Jobs

• The Criminalization of Wall Street: Will Any Exec at Goldman Sachs Go to Jail?

  Will Goldman survive the assault? Will the threat of criminal charges being pursued against the world’s leading investment bank spill over onto others on Wall Street? Is the criminalization of the crisis underway, or is all this just a maneuver?

• Cox Says Blankfein’s Defense of Goldman `Not Credible’: Video

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Tobacco firms take aim at Bangladeshi, Asian women

  angladeshi chest doctor Kazi Saifuddin Bennoor has seen many misleading cigarette advertisements, but the one that suggested smoking could make childbirth easier plumbed new depths.

  Advertisements telling smokers they are smarter, more energetic and better lovers than their non-smoking counterparts are a familiar sight across Bangladesh — something unimaginable in most other countries.

• 50th Anniversary of The Pill: Triumph and Controversy

  As the pill turns 50 this May, it is worth remembering the positive impact this tiny pill has had on women’s advancement out of the domestic sphere. It is also worth noting the history of campaigns that attempted to block women’s access to it, and the continuing efforts to block women’s access to contraceptives.

  In Wisconsin, a prosecutor in the Juneau County District Attorney’s office is urging schools not to follow a new state law that requires school sex education programs to tell students about the proper use of contraceptives. He warned that teachers face “possible criminal liability” for teaching youths how to use contraceptives. Only about half of Missouri hospitals have a written policy requiring rape victims to be counseled about emergency contraception — the so-called “morning-after pill.”

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Panelists: Democracy Would Suffer If Google Left China

  Analyzing the quarrel between Google and China raises questions of how the Web helps an oppressed country develop democracy, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology panel discussion.

• Google: “Internet censorship getting worse, more sophisticated”

  Last month, during the main annual session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, UN Watch worked with a global coalition of 25 human rights groups to organize a conference focused on the countries that rank as the world’s worst violators. Our Geneva Summit for Human Rights featured leading dissidents, attracted hundreds of activists, and was covered in the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and La Stampa. Internet freedom for human rights defenders was a key theme. Below is an edited transcript of the most news-making speech.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Microsoft’s Position on Net Neutrality ‘Evolves’

  According to EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet.com, Microsoft, which has appeared to stay out of the net neutrality fray until now, took advantage of every last second to formulate its response, filing it just before the comment period ended. And apparently, the company has changed its tune at least a little since the early days. Even though Microsoft stands to be significantly affected however the FCC acts, the company did not recommend either extreme. Instead, Microsoft recommended a third approach – a middle ground, if you will.

  From the filing:

  [B]roadband is a powerful engine for innovation and investment in America in part because the Internet is an open platform…At the same time, the adoption of unnecessary or insufficiently tailored regulations, such as a prohibition on all types of discrimination, could have the unintended consequence of limiting innovation and investment going forward.

• Take Action: Tuesday May 4th, is the Day Against DRM

  Today is about taking time out of your usual routine to speak out in favor of a DRM-free society. We do not have to accept a future where our interactions with computers and published works are monitored and controlled by corporations or governments.

• About the Day Against DRM

• iQuenching your iThirst

Intellectual Monopolies

• To be the best, learn from the rest

  YOUR plane crashes and you find yourself stranded in the middle of a vast jungle. How would you work out which fruits are safe to eat and where to find clean water? You could muddle along on your own for a while, but you would probably end up sick and very hungry. Far better to find some friendly locals and learn how they do things.

• Copyrights

  • Murdoch newswire sues over ‘hot news’

    News agency Dow Jones Newswires is suing an online news distributor based on US law’s controversial ‘hot news’ doctrine. The court-created right came into being in 1918 and has recently been revived in internet cases.

  • Fox News, Rupert Murdoch… All Pirates

    Fox News, a prominent media outlet owned by copyright evangelist Rupert Murdoch, is blatantly infringing on the rights of an individual photographer. The irony, or hypocrisy, is that Murdoch himself is going after Google, the BBC and many other companies that he believes are infringing on the rights of his news empire.

  • RapidShare Not Liable For Pirating Users, Court Rules

    RapidShare is not liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users, a German court ruled yesterday. The Dusseldorf Court of Appeals overturned the earlier decision of a local district court in a case brought by the movie outfit Capelight Pictures.

  • The Rise of Self-Publishing

    In analog times, one sign that it was time to retreat was if a big talker, having declared himself an author, produced his “book” and something about the book just wasn’t . . . booky. Maybe the pages carried a whiff of the Xerox or mimeograph machine. Or maybe the volume — about Atlantis or Easter Island — looked too good, with engraved letters, staid cover, no dust jacket. After a casual examination of the spine or the title page, realization would dawn: self-published.

  • Exclusive: The Big Debate – Jeremy Silver on ‘That Piracy Thing….’

    Considering that he has a criminal conviction hanging over his head, he didn’t seem so bad, the Pirate, even though we all condemn what he was part of. He didn’t seem like a malicious human being out to subvert the very moral framework of our lives. He seems like a nice, well-educated middle class tecchy, with some impish delight and without much sympathy for an industry so fragile that he could deflate its balloon with his tiny needle.

  • Pirate Bay Operator Dimisses Tale of New Acquisition

    A new buyer for the domain name thepiratebay.org has come forward, even as the legality of a previous attempt to buy the name is still in dispute.

  • Songwriters: piracy “dwarfs bank robbery,” FBI must act

    The Songwriters Guild of America has a message for the government: start prosecuting file-sharers, both criminally and civilly, because file-sharing is much worse than bank robbery.

  • File-sharers are content industry’s “largest customers”

    Drawing on a major study of Dutch file-sharers, Prof. Nico van Eijk of the University of Amsterdam concludes, “These figures show that there is no sharp divide between file sharers and others in their buying behaviour. On the contrary, when it comes to attending concerts, and expenses on DVDs and games, file sharers are the industry’s largest customers… There does not appear to be a clear relationship between the decline in sales and file sharing.”

  • Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore: The iPadLock Minister?

    Since his appointment as Canadian Heritage minister in 2008, James Moore has carefully crafted an image as “Canada’s iPod Minister.” Young, bilingual, and tech-savvy, Moore has expressed regular support for the benefits of the Internet and is always ready with a quick “tweet” for his many followers. Yet as my op-ed in the Hill Times notes (HT version (sub required), homepage version), according to the scuttlebutt throughout the copyright community, Moore may be less iPod and more iPadlock. As the government readies its much-anticipated copyright package, Moore is said to be pressing for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, the most anti-consumer copyright proposal in Canadian history.

  • Viacom v YouTube is a microcosm of the entertainment industry

    As Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube inches through the US judicial system, YouTube’s chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, posted a bombshell to the company’s weblog: writing after the release of previously sealed documents, he said that even as Viacom was suing YouTube for allowing infringing copies of its content to be posted by YouTube users, Viacom was also using at least 18 marketing agencies to secretly upload its videos to YouTube. It even had the agencies “rough up” the clips before uploading, wrote Levine, so that they’d appear to be illegitimate, smuggled copies, imbued with forbidden sexiness. He claimed that in a moment of Pythonesque petard-hoisting, Viacom even sent copyright complaints to YouTube over some of these videos, which it subsequently followed up with sheepish retractions when it became clear that the infringer in question was another arm of Viacom.

  • Ahoy there!

    In this sense the pertinent parallel is not with music or films but with newspapers and magazines. These days print piracy is a trivial issue, since most general news articles are given away free. If newspapers and magazines begin charging people to read their output, the pirates are likely to turn up, and quickly. So it may be with television.

  • Copyright in money?

    An interesting case of art ownership and moral rights is taking place in Costa Rica at the moment. The new 2,000 colones bill will enter into circulation soon. However, there has been a dispute because the author of the portrait of educator Mauro Fernández (pictured) has claimed that he was never asked for permission to use his painting in the bills.

  • The rewards of non-commercial production: Distinctions and status in the anime music video scene by Mizuko Ito

    Anime music videos (AMVs) are remix videos made by overseas fans of Japanese animation. This paper describes the organization of the AMV scene in order to illuminate some of the key characteristics of a robust networked subculture centered on the production of transformative works. Fan production that appropriates commercial culture occupies a unique niche within our creative cultural landscape. Unlike professional production and many other forms of amateur media production, transformative fan production is non–commercial, and centered on appropriating, commenting on, and celebrating commercial popular culture.

  • Inside The Bulgarian BitTorrent Crackdown

    Last month we reported on the media announcement by Bulgarian police that they would shut down the country’s two largest BitTorrent trackers, Zamunda.net and ArenaBG. As with any story, there always two sides. TorrentFreak caught up with someone with inside knowledge of the trackers and the scene in general, for their take on the situation.

  • ACTA

    • Indian Official: ACTA Out Of Sync With TRIPS and Public Health

      All the “noble announcements” made by EU and US officials about respect for the Doha Declaration on intellectual property trade and public health when negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) does not match the ACTA text, warned Ashutosh Jindal, adviser at the Embassy of India to the EU at a hearing organised by the Green Party Group in Brussels yesterday. The much-debated agreement that has only recently been made public would be very hard on countries like India that are trying to balance competing public policy issues, IPR protection and public health. Jindal pointed to provisions like ex-officio actions by border personnel on all types of IP rights infringements, including not only trademark infringement. The bar for searches and seizures is proposed to be lowered to a mere suspect of counterfeiting. ACTA seems to be an attempt to force developing countries to much harsher IPR protection measures, he said.

    • Help sign the Written Declaration 12/2010 about ACTA

      The Written declaration 12/2010 was initiated by the Members of European Parliament Françoise Castex (S&D, FR), Alexander Alvaro (ALDE, DE), Stavros Lambrinidis (S&D, GR) and Zuzana Roithová (EPP, CZ). It expresses concern about ACTA by declaring that the negotiated agreement must respect freedom of expression, privacy and Net neutrality (by protecting Internet actors against excessive legal liability). It calls on the Commission to publish all the texts under negotiation.

    • ‘What is the point of ACTA?’ asks French collecting society

      The French audio-visual collecting society, SACD, says the dispute over ACTA transparency is “ a dialogue of the deaf”. The SACD, which lobbied heavily for the copyright enforcement provisions in the Telecoms Package, now seems to be suggesting that there is no point to ACTA (Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement). We should ask why they might say this?