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06.21.10

Links 21/6/2010: Debian Community Poll Results

Posted in News Roundup at 11:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

  • Mozilla

    • Browser Speed – Perception IS Reality

      It looks as though the people over at Mozilla Foundation are more than a little fed up with the fact that their software, no matter how it changes, has of late been perceived as slow, especially at start up.

  • Oracle

    • Solaris, OpenSolaris, and the Oracle wall of secrecy

      And perhaps it is also telling that in an article posted on the Oracle website and extracted from the July/August 2010 issue of Oracle Magazine, that Ed Screven, who bears the title of chief corporate architect, never once mentioned Solaris or OpenSolaris.

      None of Oracle’s actions (or inaction) could be construed as being proactive about telling the 50,000-strong Solaris customer base – from which Oracle is trying to extract $2bn in profits – what is going on with the platform.

  • WordPress

    • 400,000 WordPress 3.0 Downloads in 2 Days

      WordPress is one of the best blogging platform. Bloggers and Webmasters were waiting for the release of WordPress 3.0 and now it is available for download. Response for WordPress 3.0 is awesome as it is already downloaded 400,000 times in just less than 2 days of its release. Number is still moving in positive direction.

    • Q&A: Founder of WordPress talks tech
    • WordPress 3.0 Released: The Top 7 New Features

      WordPress custom post types are a feature that could turbocharge WordPress as a content management system — and not in the way of the now defunct Turbo mode. While this may not seem much different than a post category at first glance, this gives developers and theme designers the ability to cause certain types of posts to have a different appearance and functionality than the rest of the blog.

  • Business

    • Linux: “Free” Software vs “You Get What You Pay For”

      Some may ask, “What about those stock holders in a company? Won’t their dividends suffer in a switch that is possibly as disruptive as a switch to FOSS and Linux on the corporate desktop?” Sure, in the short term, a corporation may spend less to stay with proprietary, costly, closed source software and keep dividends up for stock holders. But anyone with the ability to think ahead and plan for long term results can see that down the road switching to in-house support using FOSS and Linux will mean significant savings for a corporation in the long term. It could also mean more dividends for stock holders, those people that Microsoft FUD mongers try to point to as blockades for moving off of Microsoft. Any company that I hold stock in should be thinking in the long term and should be switching to FOSS and Linux.

  • Project Releases

    • Getting Blender 2.5 Test Builds

      Blender 2.5 is still live and in development, but the most recent builds are getting really close to a stable version that can take over for 2.49. I’ve been updating my Blender on a semi-regular basis for some time now, and so far it’s actually been a fairly stable platform, with the occasional crash, mostly in the weird corner cases people who animate with textures and physics run into.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • KLISS: Law as source code

      Over the past couple of days I have received some comments – and some pushback – about my assertion that law is basically source code, so I’d like to explain what I mean. As it happens, explaining that is also a good way for me to start to explain the Legislative Enterprise Architecture that underpins KLISS, so here goes.

    • Open Web Challenged By Misuse of the Word “Open”

      At Google I/O, Messina talked with us about several topics related to the open web, including Facebook’s “Open” graph, which has been heavily criticized for not really being that open.

    • Graham Linehan: The genius behind The IT Crowd

      And he also has a faith in web users and filesharers as fundamentally honest, saying: “It’s probably not been the best thing for people to brand themselves as pirates … the image we should be concentrating on is sharing” – a view that informs his opinion that the media, music and film industries need to stop regarding filesharers as thieves, and accept that trying to patch up their current models is pointless.

    • Something in the Air: the Open Source Way

      One of the most vexed questions in climate science is modelling. Much of the time the crucial thing is trying to predict what will happen based on what has happened. But that clearly depends critically on your model. Improving the robustness of that model is an important aspect, and the coding practices employed obviously feed into that.

    • Open Access/Content

      • 21 Years of Open Access Publishing

        In August 1989, I began my scholarly digital publishing efforts, launching one of the first e-journals on the Internet, The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. This journal, if it was published today, would be called a “libre” open access journal since it was freely available, allowed authors to retain their copyrights, and had special copyright provisions for noncommercial use.

Leftovers

  • ICANN

    • ICANN Day 0: A lot of yakking, a little movement
    • Beckstrom: You are not a pipe

      Answering accusations that the organization is ignoring its own accountability processes, that the staff and Board have insufficient checks on their work, and that he himself had overstepped the mark in comments he made to governments at the last meeting in Nairobi, Beckstrom was unapologetic.

      “Much has been made in the media of ICANN’s consideration of the application for a dot-xxx top-level domain, which the board will address this week,” he acknowledged, before repeating the assertion that caused much of the trouble: that the decision, made by an independent panel, was “non-binding” on the Board.

      [...]

      This defiance is a marked departure from the previous CEO – who is at the conference – who always tried to avoid conflict, particularly in public. It is also a risky strategy in an environment that spends much of its time trying to get people to agree with one another.

  • Science

    • Forth Valley Royal Hospital to use robot ‘workers’

      A hospital in Scotland is to become the first in the UK to use a fleet of robots to carry out day-to-day tasks.

      The robots will carry clinical waste, deliver food, clean the operating theatre and dispense drugs.

    • San Francisco will tell the world about mobile phone radiation

      MOBILE PHONE USERS in the UK and EU will soon be able to tell if their mobile gadget is more or less likely to be toasting their brain cells.

      A law passed in San Francisco will require mobile phone companies to post how much radiation they are pouring into your ear everytime you ring someone up to say, “I am on the train”.

  • Security/Aggression

  • Environment

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying/Fake News

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Google to Commies: We’ll make censorship illegal

      Google is working with the US government to try to make it illegal for countries to censor the Internet by using international trade rules.

    • Indonesia flips over internet rock star smut clips

      An online celebrity sex video is giving Indonesia’s authorities an opportunity to try and restrict internet use.

      Two explicit web clips showing Jakarta rock star Ariel in action with two models/television presenters has upset yet proved strangely enticing to the population, which is mainly Muslim.

    • Australia mothballs Internet controls

      WITH ITS PROSPECTS in the next Australian election not looking that well for the party in power, it seems that the Rudd government wants to avoid bringing in its daft Internet filtering plan.

      The Rudd government has plans to censor the Internet to make it safer for children and right wing born again Christians.

    • Spanish Lawsuit Joins Stack Against Google

      Google’s collection of sensitive WiFi data sent over personal networks will cause the company problems for a long time if a group with a long name has its way. The Association for the Prevention and Investigation of Crime, Abuse and Malpractice in Information Technology and Advanced Communications has filed a lawsuit in Spain.

    • DoS attack stuffs Turkey’s internet censors

      Access to the internet in Turkey is becoming increasingly ragged, as growing state censorship collides with retaliation by anti-censorship hackers, leading to difficulties both in viewing sites and applying key online functions.

  • Copyrights

Clip of the Day

CLUG Talk 11 November 2008 – Homebrew Utilities (2008)


06.20.10

Links 20/6/2010: Droid Raves, Compiere Bought

Posted in News Roundup at 1:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Be a pal; share Linux with your friends and family

    Are you the local computer boffin in your social circle? Tired of forever having to clean off that annoying fake super anti-virus 2010 trojan? Well, friends shouldn’t let friends run Windows. Be a friend to your friends.

  • Why everyone should use Linux

    Yes, everyone. Even the most hardcore Linux hater should run Linux. While this sounds absolutely contrary to simple logic, it aligns perfectly well with cunning logic, as I’m going to elaborate here. We’re not talking politics, ideology, zeal, Borg-like assimilation, or anything of that sort. We’re not talking cutting your costs in dire situation caused by some would-be financial crisis. We’re not talking freedom, free software or replacing existing business models with one that revolves around open-source.

    We’re talking money.

    Oh, you won’t get any money from running Linux, not in most cases, anyway. But you will save money. And not by spending less on Linux. You will spend less on Windows. Sounds tricky? It’s not. Follow me.

  • Applications

    • Turpial 1.3.3 – A native Twitter client for Linux

      The whole package is put together very well. The menu is inuitive and easy to to understand, which (once you have logged in) will be easy to navigate and tailor to your needs. Turpial 1.3.3 appears a stable product and even during busy periods it has not yet offered up any problems.

  • Distributions

    • Fedora

      • I am Fedora

        Back in 1999, my employer, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center put a Red Hat Linux system running an Alpha processor on my desk. From there I was supposed to do write parallel code for a Red Hat Linux beowulf cluster. It was tricky without some basic desktop tools.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Droid/Motorola

      • Improvements to Be Seen in the Wish List of Motorola Droid

        The Motorola Droid has never been an “iPhone killer,” but still one can regard it as a good alternative to the iPhone for Verizon customers.

        But one should admit that the Droid was never a perfect handset. As Motorola is going to offer a Droid sequel this month, I think it would be right to go over the areas that are hoped to be found on board of the new handset.

      • The iPhone 4 faces stiff competition

        The Droid Incredible ($200) is also in great demand. This high-end phone runs Android. It features 8GB of internal storage. You can add up to 16GB of additional storage with a microSD card.

        The Incredible has a brilliant 800×480 OLED screen. This type of screen offers better, brighter colors than other screens. However, it can be a problem outdoors in bright sunlight. An optical joystick button is placed on the front of the phone to help you position the cursor precisely.

      • Smartphone Upgrades: Keeping up with the Droids and iPhones

        A whole seven months ago, back in November of 2009, I bought myself a Motorola Droid. At the time, the phone was considered to be absolutely state-of-the-art, with a high-resolution display, advanced Android 2.0 software, voice recognition, integrated GPS, 600Mhz OMAP processor, and a nifty slide-out keyboard design.

        In those seven months Google’s Android OS has advanced at a pace equivalent to bacterial gestation in a petri dish.

        Seemingly overnight, the platform has exploded, spawning many new phones from all the major carriers and TWO major OS upgrades, “Eclair” (2.1) which debuted on the Nexus One and now “Froyo” (2.2), which was announced at the recent Google I/O conference.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Business

    • Open source not immune to ERP vendor consolidation trend

      In a sense, it doesn’t matter as much as it would if Compiere’s original code base was proprietary. One of the tenents of open source is that no matter what the owner of the code does, the users of the code continue in their rights to use, extend, enhance, and distribute the code. The Adempiere fork of Compiere is evidence of this.

      To my knowledge, this is the first instance of an open source ERP/CRM developer being acquired by a vendor of proprietary software. It will be interesting to see whether Compiere’s users are helped or hindered by this acquisition.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open Access Science ?= Open Source Software

      As a software engineer who works on open source scientific applications and frameworks, when I look at this, I scratch my head and wonder “why don’t they just do the equivalent of a code review”? And that’s really, where the germ of the idea behind this blog posting started. What if the scientific publishing process were more like an open source project? How would the need for peer-review be balanced with the need to publish? Who should bear the costs? Can a publishing model be created that minimizes bias and allows good ideas to emerge in the face of scientific groupthink?

Leftovers

  • Your Browser in Five Years

    What will your Web browser look like in 2015? Five years doesn’t always bring dramatic change to some technologies–today’s desktop PC, for instance, isn’t that different from its 2005 predecessor–but browsers are undergoing major changes that will alter our day-to-day computing lives.

  • The internet: Everything you ever need to know

    In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown. Here are the nine key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age – and where it’s taking us

  • B.C. school yearbooks to be reprinted after teacher cut out student’s photo

    A Vancouver Island board of education has decided to reprint a middle-school’s yearbooks after a teacher took scissors to 150 copies last week and clipped out the photo of a Grade 10 student because of comments he made about the school principal.

  • Security/Aggression

    • Airport security: Intent to deceive?
    • Hot Dog! Stand Back 200 Feet!

      Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement calling for large-type warning labels on the foods that kids most commonly choke on — grapes, nuts, carrots, candy and public enemy No. 1: the frank. Then the lead author of the report, pediatric emergency room doctor Gary Smith, went one step further.

    • Homeland Security cracks down on canoeists

      As someone who believes that our nation has a right to enforce its borders, I should have been gratified when the Immigrations official at the border saw the canoe on our car and informed us that anyone who crossed the nearby international waterway illegally would be arrested and fined as much as $5,000.

      Trouble is, the river wasn’t the Rio Grande, but the St. Croix, which defines the border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. And the threat of arrest wasn’t aimed at illegal immigrants or terrorists but at canoeists like myself.

      The St. Croix is a wild river that flows through unpopulated country. Primitive campsites are maintained on both shores, some accessible by logging roads, but most reached only by water or by bushwhacking for miles through thick forest and marsh. There are easier ways to sneak into the U.S. from Canada. According to Homeland Security regulations, however, canoeists who begin their trip in Canada cannot step foot on American soil, thus putting half the campsites off limits. It is not an idle threat; the U.S. Border Patrol makes regular helicopter flights down the river.

  • Environment

    • Will the post-oil future be bicycle-free?

      U. S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood may soon be nominated for heresy-of-the-year award for an impromptu speech at the 2010 National Bike Summit in March. In that speech he said federal transportation policy will no longer favor automobiles over bicyclists and walkers.

    • OneBusAway: An Open Source Tool for Finding a Bus Fast
    • Steve the Narc
    • BP Oil Spill Crisis Reveals Past/Present ‘Short-Termism’ and Future Opportunities

      To blame or not blame BP is really not the point. BP must take its share of responsibility along with other US private companies involved. But the deeper lessons of the oil spill concern the future of our energy supplies, of regulation, and the shape of our society and economy.

    • Seeing Past the BP Spill

      And oil spills are far from the worst environmental disasters we’ve unleashed and are in the process of unleashing through the routine operation of our economy as currently designed. Climate change will over the next century almost certainly prove far more destructive to the natural systems and human communities of the Gulf than any oil spill ever could, and that’s a problem the Deepwater rig would have worsened if it had worked perfectly, as part of its successful operation.

    • Barriers to news coverage of Gulf of Mexico oil spill remain despite promises

      Journalists covering the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been yelled at, kicked off public beaches and islands and threatened with arrest in the nearly three weeks since the government promised improved media access.

    • BP’s plan: Raise $50 billion, sue business partners

      BP is trying to raise 50 billion dollars to cover the cost of the Gulf of Mexico spill and is preparing to sue its partners in the oil field, British newspapers said on Sunday.

    • Mesocosms set up and running in Svalbard

      Whilst the mesocosms were being set up, more than 30 scientists arrived here from all over Europe, including the Netherlands, UK, Norway, France and Germany. Over the next few weeks, they’ll be working hard, collecting scientific data that will be carefully examined and statistically analyzed during the following months, perhaps for even a year. Eventually, the results from the mesocosm experiments will be published in scientific journals. Only then can we begin to understand in more detail what the effects of ocean acidification from increased CO2 in the atmosphere might be in Arctic waters.

    • A New, Bold Plan for a Carbon-Neutral UK by 2030

      Carbon neutrality by 2030 is the new standard for climate policies, and again the UK is leading North America in the climate debate with a bold national-level proposal about how to get there. The Centre for Alternative Technology just launched zerocarbonbritain2030 (ZCB2030), a collaborative project showing one possible scenario for making the entire UK carbon-neutral by 2030.

    • Group: Climate bill could mean 540,000 new jobs per year

      New rules to cap US carbon emissions and promote clean energy could create as many as 540,000 US jobs a year, a green group claimed Tuesday, as the BP oil spill fueled debate over reform.

  • Finance

    • Financial Reform Bill Will Allow SEC to Fund Itself

      As financial regulatory reform takes its final shape in a conference committee led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., members of the committee have voted to allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to fund itself, according to FOXBusiness.com. The SEChas asked to be self-funded for quite some time because it would allow the agency to step up its enforcement and investigative efforts.

    • Trade war? Bill would ban government from buying Chinese

      The US government would be barred from buying any Chinese goods or services under legislation unveiled Friday by US senators angry at Beijing’s policy of buying only from domestic sources.

    • Bailed-out banker praises capitalism, attacks parasites

      Matt Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist is about mankind’s long-term ability to make things better, not worse. Sounds great!

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Is Copyright Bill C-32 Being Astroturfed?

      Early last week, we wrote a post that offered both some information and perspective about Bill C-32, which, if passed, is slated to revamp Canada’s copyright law.

      As with any contentious issue, the post generated a good number of comments. Yet, as the days went on, it became apparent that some of the pro–Bill C-32 comments were unusually uniform and very…(how do we put this?) “on message.”

      Now, we have learned, it seems possible that the comments were a result of an astroturfing campaign.

      On his blog, law professor Michael Geist points to a site that bills itself as Balanced Copyright Reform. The gist, according to Geist:

      The heart of the site (which requires full registration) is a daily action item page that encourages users to “make a difference, everyday.” [Each] list of ten items is a mix of suggested tweets, blog comments, and newspaper article feedback. Each item includes instructions for what should be done and quick links to the target site.

      As of June 17, the last of the daily action items was “Comment on Torontoist article on Bill C-32.”

    • Copyright astroturfers target Torontoist

      The popular Torontoist blog found that all the comments on its coverage of the new Canadian copyright law were a little…similar. Turns out that Torontoist has been targetted by the astroturf website that the US record-labels started, pretending to be just a group of Canadian citizens worried about copyright.

    • Canadian copyright astroturf site gives marching orders to its users

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Clip of the Day

CLUG Talk – 10 June 2008 – Net Booting (2008)


06.19.10

Links 19/6/2010: Alien Invasion 2.3, Debian 6.0 Squeeze Date, Thunderbird 3.0.5

Posted in News Roundup at 6:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux distribution migration: Planning for efficiency

    Migrating Linux is mostly about migrating services. To do this properly, there are two approaches. You can find out yourself what needs to be done, or you can use tools that analyze this for you. Apart from the services involved, migrating Linux is also about smoothly transitioning from one environment to another environment, without involving double work for your IT environment. If you have the appropriate system management tools in place, they can be very helpful. Finally, depending on the Linux distributions that you were using and that you are going to use, these might be a financial chapter as well. Check this with the new vendor of your choice. This vendor is going to earn your money and may be more than willing to help.

  • When It Comes to Security, Openness Isn’t Always a Virtue – Rebuttals

    So what does it all mean? The transparency of free and open source software is increasingly recognized as an important benefit — even by experts studying software security, and even when they uncover occasional vulnerabilities.

    The “security through obscurity” argument may still be frequently uttered by those on the pro-proprietary side, but — at least, based on this debate — it lacks substance. Indeed, given the financial stakes for those on the proprietary side, one could easily make the case that a certain amount of FUD is to be expected.

    The growing ranks of FOSS proponents, then, should be heartened. When it comes to security, free and open source software has been held up, scrutinized, and declared superior.

  • Server

  • Ballnux

  • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Report from Successful Multimedia and Edu Sprint in Randa

      43 persons (including organizers, designer, bugsquashers, and others) from 17 different countries gathered in Randa from Thursday 20 May to Tuesday 25 May. Why Randa? It is a marvelous place in the mountains of Switzerland where Mario Fux knew a house that would be perfect for KDE developers. Several groups that work on different parts of KDE had a chance to meet and mix in one house. Present were KDE-Education, Amarok, various multimedia people (Phonon, KMix, vlc) and Gluon developers.

    • KDE: you are welcome to contribute!
    • KDE: Week 23

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • SystemRescueCd 1.5.6 Features Linux Kernel 2.6.34

        François Dupoux announced on June 18th the new SystemRescueCd 1.5.6 Linux-based operating system. Being powered by the alternative Linux kernel 2.6.34, and the standard 2.6.32.15 Linux kernel, SystemRescueCd 1.5.6 includes now the popular GParted 0.6.0 application for partitioning tasks with support for drives with sectors larger than 512 bytes. Moreover, the FSArchiver and Memtest86+ apps were also updated. Without further introduction, let’s take a closer look at the changes brought by SystemRescueCd 1.5.4…

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • LinuxCertified Announces its next Linux Device Driver Development Course

      LinuxCertified Inc, a leading provider of Linux training and services, today announced its next Linux Device Driver Development Course class to be held in South Bay, CA from June 28th – 30th, 2010.

    • Remote device servers hardened for industrial work

      Opengear announced three new UCLinux-based remote management device servers, focusing on industrial applications. In addition to the general-purpose, $475 ACM5004-2-I server, there’s a telecom-oriented ACM5004-2-I-SDC version with a 48V DC power supply, plus an extended-temperature ACM5004-2-T aimed at utility networks, the company says.

    • ARM11 dev kit supports Linux, Android
    • Tiny embedded device server offloads Ethernet networking chores

      Lantronix is also known for its XPort Pro embedded networking module, which it touts as the “world’s smallest Linux networking server.” The XPort Pro (pictured at right) measures 1.33 x 0.64 x 0.53 inches, and offers 8MB of SDRAM, 16MB of flash, RJ45 Ethernet and serial ports, a web server, SSH and SSL security, and IPv6 support.

    • Phones

      • Palm confirms new devices, webOS upgrade
      • Fujitsu and Toshiba to Merge Mobile Phone Units

        Toshiba, whose cellphone business has lost money for the last two years, accounted for about 4 percent of the Japanese market.

      • Nokia/MeeGo

      • Android

        • Half of Android users are stuck on old versions

          The good news for developers is that out of the six versions of Android only three, 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1 have widespread use. The figures also show that almost all Motorola Milestone and Droid users have now upgraded to Android 2.1.

        • Google: 50% Android devices now running 2.1
        • Google works on Gingerbread UI, preps Google Music

          Google’s Android team will focus on user interface issues in the upcoming “Gingerbread” release of Android in an attempt to dissuade handset vendors from adding their own UI layers, writes Michael Arrington in TechCrunch.

        • Browser privacy issue with DROID Incredible and HTC Sense UI widget?

          An astute reader stumbled upon an interesting bug with the HTC Incredible. The Incredible, with Sense UI, will periodically store screenshots of the contents of your web browser. The screen captures are a function of the HTC Sense UI bookmark widget

        • Droid X Is Coming To Beat The iPhone 4

          The super-phone war is about to start. The war was triggered back in 2007 when Apple announced its revolutionary iPhone. The market back then was scattered, primarily dragged by stagnated mobile operating systems. Times have changed with the arrival of Gnu/Linux ‘avatar’ in form of Android.

        • New Droid on the Way to Kick Some iPhone 4 Aspirations

          Verizon is elbowing its way into the Apple-dominated tech spotlight with the announcement that it’s going to make a big announcement next week, and it’s a very safe bet that it’s going to take the wraps off a new Droid smartphone. How will the newcomer compare to its popular brother? Bigger and faster, with a belt packed with fancier tools, no doubt.

        • KT brings the Nexus One to South Korea, complete with Froyo

          The Nexus One may have taken a little while to reach South Korea, but it looks like KT is doing its best to make up for lost time — the carrier has just announced that it will not only be offering the Nexus One, but that it will come complete with Android 2.2 (a.k.a. Froyo).

        • Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG spin Android phones

          Motorola is prepping two high-end Android phones for summer release on Verizon — the 4.3-inch Droid X and a keyboard-enabled Droid 2 — say reports. Meanwhile, LG will ship 20 Android phones this year, and Sony Ericsson is readying a mid-range Xperia X8 Android model, say other reports.

        • Which Android? Sony Ericsson May Mix It Up With Xperia X8

          It appears that Sony Ericsson may deliver its Xperia X8 smartphone with Android version 1.6 in some parts of Europe and version 2.1 in others. The older version lacks some speed and performance enhancements, live wallpaper, built-in pinch-to-zoom capability and 3-D photo galleries. Still, many consumers are likely to find it adequate for their needs, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • XO Laptops Revamped for Secondary School Pupils

        Uruguay has already ordered 90,000 of the new XO-HS notebooks, having previously taken receipt of almost 400,000 XO laptops for primary school children. The Uruguayan government is clearly eager to distribute computers among the young generation, and has also ordered 10,000 of the Intel Classmate PC laptops. With 230,000 high school students in total in Uruguay, there is scope for further orders, with delivery of the new PCs scheduled to begin in September this year.

    • Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Zarafa unveils new framework

    On the second day of its 2010 Summercamp in Brussels, messaging and collaboration specialist Zarafa has announced the launch of a new integration framework. The new groupware integration framework is based on SWIG and allows open source and commercial solutions to integrate with Zarafa’s Collaboration Platform, connecting calendars, mail, contacts and tasks to virtually any developer language. The new Python language Messaging API (MAPI) binding provides full MAPI access from Python – documentation is provided.

  • Events

  • Mozilla

  • Healthcare

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 8.1-RC1 Available…

      The first Release Candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle is now available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. Files suitable for creating installation media or doing FTP based installs through the network should be available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Checksums for the images are at the bottom of this message.

  • Project Releases

    • Parrot 2.5.0 “Cheops” Released

      On behalf of the Parrot team, I’m proud to announce Parrot 2.5.0 “Cheops”. Parrot (http://parrot.org/) is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source: A Question of Evolution

      I met Matt Ridley once, when he was at The Economist, and I wrote a piece for him (I didn’t repeat the experience because their fees at the time were extraordinarily ungenerous). He was certainly a pleasant chap in person, but I have rather mixed feelings about his work.

      His early book “Genome” is brilliant – a clever promenade through our chromosomes, using the DNA and its features as a framework on which to hang various fascinating facts and figures. His latest work, alas, seems to have gone completely off the rails, as this take-down by George Monbiot indicates.

    • Open Public Data are so good that it’s hard to start explaining why

      Today I have participated to an international meeting in Madrid on the reuse of Public Sector Information. I came to gather as much information and food for thought as possible for my new research on Open Data for an Open Society and wasn’t deluded.

    • Flickr, stock photography and Creative Commons

      This is where the ethical and practical implications take place. I am not really too concerned about the Getty collection, I really thing that this is a good development. However, I am concerned about the potential negative impact on the take-up of CC licences in Flickr. By stating clearly that any CC licensed picture will be only eligible for the cheaper royalty-free licensing option, Getty has created a disincentive to licence under Creative Commons. While I give the Flickr community enough credit not to answer the siren’s call en masse, this could be a concern on the long run. We could have a two-tier Flickerverse of low-quality CC-licensed images, and high-quality content available only by paying fees to Getty.

  • Programming

    • Managing Subversion repositories in the web browser

      CollabNet, an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) specialist and provider of distributed software development solutions, has introduced Subversion Edge, a distribution of the Subversion SCM (Software Configuration Management) tool. In addition to Subversion, which was initially developed by CollabNet and has since been donated to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the distribution includes the Apache web server and the ViewVC repository viewer, a browser-based directory management system.

    • NetBeans IDE 6.9 Release Adds JavaFX Composer and PHP Tools

      NetBeans is a competitive environment to the open source Eclipse IDE, which Oracle also backs. A new version of Eclipse is due out later this month.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement Triples

      Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months.

Leftovers

  • Oracle

    • DOJ sues Oracle for alleged overcharging

      The U.S. Justice Department has joined a whistleblower suit against Oracle that accuses it of defrauding the U.S. government.

      Filed back in May 2007 under the False Claims Act, the suit claims Oracle overcharged the federal government tens of millions of dollars by failing to offer it the same deep discounts the company offers commercial customers. That’s a real problem, because Oracle was obligated to do just that under the terms of the General Services Administration contract by which it was bound.

    • Oracle spikes HP’s Solaris OEM contract

      HP then went on for a few hundred words talking about how it would be happy to port ProLiant/Solaris customers to Windows or Linux – not just Red Hat and SUSE Linux, but Debian too – and reminding everyone that its Integrity HP-UX boxes exist. (Pity HP-UX doesn’t run on x64 iron, though.)

  • Science

    • Danger, Stem Cell Tourists: Patient in Thailand Dies From Treatment

      A woman with kidney disease has died after receiving an experimental stem cell treatment at a private clinic in Thailand, and a postmortem examination of her kidneys revealed that the treatment was almost certainly responsible for her death. Last week we reported that Costa Rica’s health ministry had closed a stem cell clinic that catered to foreigners, which sparked lively debates around the Internet about whether patients should be able to willingly take on risks associated with experimental treatments. This new case offers a sobering reminder of what can happen when patients travel abroad looking for a miracle cure.

  • Security/Aggression

    • FEMA, DHS Back Disaster Hero Game

      Legacy Interactive has announced plans to create a web-based game designed to teach kids how to prepare for hazards and emergencies.

      [...]

      FEMA claimed to have research which showed that “despite imminent threats and increased media attention, Americans today are no better prepared for a natural disaster or terrorist attack than they were in 2003.”

    • The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks

      On June 6, Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter of Wired reported that a 22-year-old U.S. Army Private in Iraq, Bradley Manning, had been detained after he “boasted” in an Internet chat — with convicted computer hacker Adrian Lamo — of leaking to WikiLeaks the now famous Apache Helicopter attack video, a yet-to-be-published video of a civilian-killing air attack in Afghanistan, and “hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records.” Lamo, who holds himself out as a “journalist” and told Manning he was one, acted instead as government informant, notifying federal authorities of what Manning allegedly told him, and then proceeded to question Manning for days as he met with federal agents, leading to Manning’s detention.

    • Obama internet ‘kill switch’ proposed

      US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US “national asset”.

  • Environment

    • The oily operators behind the religious climate change disinformation front group, Cornwall Alliance

      Defenders of the dirty energy status quo, particularly the lobbyists and politicians associated with the oil and coal industry, have repeatedly trotted out a group of evangelical leaders known as the Cornwall Alliance to counter the growing sentiment in the evangelical community that anthropogenic climate change is a threat to God’s creation. Cornwall declares that true Christians believe “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.” In this repost, Wonk Room exposes the Big Oil funding behind the Cornwall Alliance

    • As oil spews in Gulf, BP chief at UK yacht race

      BP chief executive Tony Hayward, often criticized for being tone-deaf to U.S. concerns about the worst oil spill in American history, took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race off England’s Isle of Wight.

  • Finance

    • China indicates it will allow yuan to strengthen

      China has indicated it will allow the yuan to rise against the dollar and other Western currencies.

      The Chinese central bank announced it would make its exchange rate mechanism “more flexible”, but it gave no details about the timing or extent of changes.

      The yuan has been effectively pegged to the dollar, drawing criticism that China was protecting its exporters.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Internet Freedom under pressure in Denmark

      On 27 May the Danish Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision which obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that may contain – or link to other sites which contain – material which infringes copyrights (the Pirate Bay in this instance).

      The decision has rightly been criticized as a setback for internet freedom in Denmark. The decision attaches undue weight to the interests of copyright holders while ignoring obvious dangers of abuse, restrictions on internet freedom and access to information and the lack of any due process. The decision may lead to the blocking of websites that mainly includes content that does not infringe copyright and thus restrict the free flow of information. Moreover, by forcing ISP’s to police the Internet without due process the decision marks a dangerous precedent that is likely to include other ‘illegal’ or ‘offensive’ material in the future.

    • Does science really still have a problem with libel?

      Are there really still problems being caused for scientists and science writers caused by the English law of libel?

      On the face of it, that seems an odd question to be asked on this of all blogs.

      But it is an entirely serious question, and it is not one which is intended to be unduly provocative.

      Indeed, unless those of us who contend there is such a problem can answer this question in a calm, informed, reasoned, and ultimately persuasive manner, then our influence may be minimal in the upcoming debate on the legislative reform of libel.

    • Technical details of the Street View WiFi payload controversy

      The latest privacy controversy with Google is that while scanning for WiFi access-points in their Street View cars, they may have inadvertently captured data payloads containing private information (URLs, fragments of e-mails, and so on).

      Although some people are suspicious of their explanation, Google is almost certainly telling the truth when it claims it was an accident. The technology for WiFi scanning means it’s easy to inadvertently capture too much information, and be unaware of it.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • ‘No Bullshit’? Have we gone mad? ['No Bullshit' trademarked]
    • Britain’s BPI goes after Google

      The BPI, the RIAA’s UK counterpart, has gone up against the Holiest of Holies, American online advertising conglomerate Google, says Chilling Effects.

      Short for British Phonographic Industry, the BPI contributed to the British government’s Digital Ecomy bill, complete with its ACTA Three Strikes and you’re Off The Net element, with hardly a murmur from the UK lamescream media.

Clip of the Day

CLUG Talk – 08 Jul 2008 – Unicode and Character Sets (2008)


Links 19/6/2010: Zorin 3, Droid 2

Posted in News Roundup at 4:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security/Aggression

    • Plastic bags to be put over Birmingham ‘terror cameras’

      A surveillance operation in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations has been halted after it was revealed the move was linked to counter terrorism.

    • CCTV agreement will boost council funds

      THE head of CCTV in Sevenoaks is set to take charge of cameras in Tunbridge Wells in order to boost council coffers.

      But council chiefs insist the move, which will earn them £20,000 a year, will not impact on security in the town.

    • Town administrator allegedly planted camera in women’s bathroom

      Town Administrator Kyle J. Keady allegedly planted a video camera in the ceiling of the women’s restroom in Town Hall, secretly recorded visitors to his office, and illicitly bugged his assistant and the town accountant, authorities said today.

    • Police in north Birmingham get electric Taser stun guns

      FRONTLINE bobbies in parts of Birmingham have been equipped with 50,000-volt electric stun guns, it has emerged.

      Selected officers across the north of the city have joined colleagues in other parts of the West Midlands to be allowed to carry the Taser on city streets.

  • Environment

    • Spinning the Barrel

      BP and the media express quantities of oil gushing from BP’s leak in the Gulf in different ways. The amount of oil coming out of the leak is most frequently expressed in barrels, but how much is that? Can people really relate to a barrel as a quantity? After all, we buy staples like gasoline, milk, and water by the gallon. To make it even more complicated for the public to understand the quantities being discussed, the amount of liquid in a barrel varies with what is being measured. Barrels of chemicals or food, for example, contain 55 gallons. A whiskey barrel is 40 gallons; a barrel of beer contains 36 gallons; a barrel of ale contains 34 gallons. (And the latter two are imperial gallons, which are two-tenths less than an American gallon.) All these variations in the barrel as a quantity of measure only further confuse the concept of what a barrel of oil looks like. Moreover, since oil companies started shipping oil in tankers they rarely actually ship oil in barrels anymore, so the barrel as a measurement has less practical use.

    • The Other Oil Giants? Just as Unready as BP
    • Cuba braces to contend with BP oil spill

      Havana calls in Venezuelan experts to combat potential environmental disaster as tarballs spotted off island’s coast

    • Read This Before You Volunteer to Clean Up the BP Oil Disaster

      Merle Savage has a wheezy, guttural smoker’s cough. But the 71-year-old former Alaska resident and author of Silence in the Sound never smoked a day in her life. She did, however, spend four months as a general foreman during the Exxon Valdez oil spill recovery project in 1989. And she has a message for anyone working at the BP oil disaster sites: “You’ve got to use your common sense. Breathing crude oil is toxic.”

    • Cutting greenhouse gases will be no quick fix for our weather, scientists say

      UK study predicts increased floods and droughts will continue for decades after global temperatures are stabilised

    • Coalition to announce support for new nuclear power
    • UN considers review of alleged carbon offset abuses

      The UN has confirmed that it is considering a formal review of its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) after a new report leveled fresh criticism at the high profile carbon offsetting scheme.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Changes in cigarette pack colors called not so mild

      In anticipation of a ban against using words such as “light” or “mild” on cigarette labels and ads, tobacco companies have lightened package colors to convey the same message, a move the American Lung Association and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., have attacked as disingenuous.

    • The Copyright Lobby’s Astroturf Campaign in Support of C-32

      The copyright lobby, almost certainly led by the Canadian Recording Industry Association, has launched a major astroturf campaign in which it hopes to enlist company employees to register their support for Bill C-32 and to criticize articles or comments that take issue with elements of the proposed legislation. The effort, which even includes paid placement of headlines on Bourque.com, is still shrouded in some secrecy. A member list, which featured many record company executives, has now disappeared from public view. Requests to identify who is behind the site have been stonewalled thus far, with both ACTRA and AFM Canada explicitly stating they are not part of the site (this is no surprise since most creator groups have been critical of C-32).

    • Copyright Lobby Astroturf Site Adds Mandatory, Uneditable Letter to MPs

      The copyright lobby’s BalancedCopyrightforCanada.ca astroturfing site has added a new mandatory requirement for all users that want to participate in the Take Action items. According to a site user, the site now requires users to send a form letter to their relevant Member of Parliament. There are two letter options – one letter for entertainment industry employees and one general letter.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Italian MEP Wants To Eliminate Anonymity On the Internet
    • DOJ’s surveillance reporting failure

      In both 2004, and 2009, the US Department of Justice provided Congress with a “document dump”, covering 5 years of Pen Register and Trap & Trace surveillance reports. Although the law clearly requires the Attorney General to submit annual reports to Congress, DOJ has not done so, nor has it provided any reason for its repeated failure to submit the reports to Congress in a timely manner, as the law requires.

    • The End of Libel?
    • Pakistani lawyer petitions for death of Mark Zuckerberg

      Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is being investigated by Pakistani police under a section of the penal code that makes blasphemy against Muhammad punishable by death.

      BBC Urdu reports — according to a Google Translation — that Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against Zuckerberg and others in response to Facebook hosting a “Draw Muhammad” contest on its site late last month. On May 19, Pakistani authorities blocked access to Facebook over the contest, and this ban was lifted on May 31 after Facebook removed the page in Pakistan and other countries.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Let’s subsidize open broadband, not journalists

      The FTC can’t do much on its own about making sure broadband works the right way. That’s partly the Federal Communication Commission’s job. But it’s really the job of Congress, which keeps failing so spectacularly at almost everything else it touches these days.

      But the FTC can offer policy recommendations, and sometimes Congress actually listens. So I hope the commission will push for the kind of progress the nation’s founders had the wisdom to see. Let’s create the conditions that help ensure a market of ideas and business models, based on one of the principle America stood on in its early days: widespread contributions and access to knowledge, as a foundation of the future.

    • Propaganda Masquerading As Academic Net Neutrality ‘Jobs’ Loss Assessment

      The writeup is done by Matthew Lasar, who’s usually pretty good to cut through ridiculous claims, but doesn’t seem to challenge this one at all. The report is officially from New York Law School’s Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute, but it was written by Bret Swanson. Remember him? He’s a well known propagandist for the telco industry. He’s not a “researcher.” He’s the guy who coined the concept of the “exaflood” and when that was totally debunked, renamed it the “exacloud.” He’s been AT&T’s go to guy for pure anti-net neutrality propaganda, and he seems to relish in totally making stuff up.

    • Industry Groups Offer Legislative Deal On Net Neutrality

      Under pressure from the FCC, the communications industry is lobbying Congress to pass narrowly focused legislation to blunt two contentious, game-changing proposals championed by Chairman Julius Genachowski, CongressDaily reported.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Stop Trying to Reinvent the Wheel

      Right now, in meetings at corporations around the world, the wise are suffering. They are trapped in rooms where debate rages over how to solve a problem. The rub is that the problem has already been solved, just not by someone in the room—and solutions from outside are ignored. This is the disease known as “NIH,” or “Not Invented Here” syndrome, and it’s alive and well in 2010. Despite our many technological advancements in communication, none have eliminated this perennial waste of time. Why is this problem so hard to shake? Will we always be confronted with people who insist on reinventing wheels?

    • Children’s Hospital ‘Allowed’ To Continue Research Using System It Developed After Patent Fight

      This is a point that we’ve raised before. So many reporters contribute to massive misconceptions about patents by writing sentences like the one above. It implies that patent lawsuits really are about one group “copying” an idea or technology from another, and that the patent holder “owns” the technology itself. This is blatantly untrue in most cases.

    • Palo Alto biotech company grants license to children’s hospital, allowing stem cell research to resume
    • 48 HR Magazine: “CBS Is Being Unreasonable”

      It had been exactly a month since CBS served 48 HR with a Cease & Desist letter for allegedly infringing on the trademark of the network’s long-running TV news magazine of the (almost) same name: “48 Hours.”

    • Copyrights

      • Gov’t Reminds Colleges They Need To Start Taking Money From Students And Sending It To The Entertainment Industry

        It was a clear case of the government creating subsidies for the entertainment industry, by taking money away from students and education. It’s difficult to see how anyone can defend such a law. Universities that fail to do this face the possibility of losing financial aid for students. Seriously.

      • LimeWire faces new copyright suit
      • The NYT doesn’t care about posting primary documents

        I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with Richard Samson, the NYT’s top copyright lawyer; you might remember him from his nastygram to the WSJ earlier this month, or his nastygram to Apple with respect to the Pulse RSS reader, which resulted in the app getting temporarily pulled from the iTunes app store. (He says he’s now “in conversations with the developers”, but that “the fact that they’re charging for it certainly is a concern”.) If you’re a restaurateur, say, who reproduces a NYT review on your website, he’s the person you’re likely to hear from.

      • French Data Regulator Green-Lights Three-Strikes

        The French three-strike ‘Hadopi’ law, which was passed in September 2009, has passed a major hurdle for its actual implementation.

        Data protection regulator CNIL has authorized music rights holders’ requests to automatically track IP addresses of illegal downloaders within the frame defined in the Hadopi law.

      • Documentary filmmakers hopeful for DMCA exemption

        Documentary filmmakers are hoping the U.S. Copyright Office will soon grant them a fair use exemption from a law that bans copying content from commercial DVDs.

        The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal for anyone to bypass the security measures on a commercial DVD to download or copy the content. That presents a problem for documentary filmmakers who want to make legal use of the content, according to entertainment attorney Michael Donaldson.

      • Is ‘Unthinkable’ the hottest new movie that you have never heard of?

        “I’ve been unbelievably torn over the whole thing,” says Chubb, best known for having produced such films as “Eve’s Bayou,” “Dark Blue” and “To Sleep with Anger.” “It’s tremendous to go on IMDB and see that our user rating is 7.3, which is the highest rating of any movies in the current Top 10 there — you have to go down to ‘Iron Man 2′ to find a higher rating. But on the other hand, while everyone is debating all these important moral questions, I want to ask them another important question — hey, guys, what about the morality of watching this movie on the Internet for free?”

      • Senate Oversight Of IP Czar… Only Involves Entertainment Industry Execs

        So, it’s unfortunate, but hardly a surprise that the Senate’s hearing on “oversight” of Espinel’s work involves only people on the entertainment industry’s side. The panel who will discuss Espinel’s performance includes the CEO of Warner Bros., the CEO of the “Global IP Center” of the Chamber of Commerce (whose views on IP are positively neanderthal, complete with some of the most ridiculous studies), the CEO of Carlin America (a music publisher) and the president of the AFL-CIO, who has already done some horse trading to be an official representative of the RIAA’s position.

      • Michael Robertson’s Crowdsourced List Of 1,400 Examples Of EMI Giving Away Free Music; EMI Denies All But 3

        But weren’t we just told by the head of PPL in the UK (home of EMI) that “there is no such thing” as “promotion” when it comes to music, and “for free” should be erased from our vocabulary. Perhaps that explains EMI’s actions. They no longer recognize the concept of free promotion as existing after listening to Fran Nevrkla’s speech.

      • When Recording Everything We See Is Standard, What Happens To Copyright?

        However, if such things become more common, laws are going to have to adjust — and copyright law is no exception. David Levine points us to a story about a guy who lost his eye in a hunting accident, and has replaced it with a prosthetic eye that doubles as a video camera, which can also broadcast what he’s seeing. Levine, in mentioning this, queries what happens when he goes to the movies? Or, what if he goes to a sporting event with an exclusive broadcast right? We recently wondered how long it would be until some enterprising team of folks all attends a sporting event with smartphones and broadcasts an “alternative” stream of the game.

Clip of the Day

CLUG Talk 14 October 2008 – Unison (2008)


06.18.10

Links 18/6/2010: VP8 Optimisations

Posted in News Roundup at 6:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Network Security: Three open-source options

    Free and open-source software (FOSS) is everywhere. Its offerings span far and wide in the technology industry. The networking space is an excellent example of FOSS, with feature-packed firewalls, routers, VPNs and even UTMs, for nearly every need. In this article I will introduce you to a few of the commercially-supported open-source network security options currently available in the marketplace today. With open-source networking you can enjoy the benefits of lower costs, greater security, flexibility, extensibility and full enterprise support. Here are three examples.

  • Digium Expands Channel Partner Program

    Like many of its larger rivals, Digium is launching specializations within the company’s global channel partner program. If the strategy works as advertised, Digium’s open source IP PBX partners will gain deeper expertise in unified communications and VoIP telephony solutions. Here’s a look at Digium’s strategy and the implications for VARs.

  • Mozilla

  • Project Releases

    • Bluecherry releases its version 2 driver (GPL)

      As previously mentioned we have been working hard over the past few months on the driver for version 2 of our Linux hardware compression card. Since version 2 is a complete rewrite of our DVR software we naturally wanted to start with a clean driver, one that was written from scratch. So, we leveraged the Linux kernel’s API for Video (Video4Linux) and Audio (ALSA). This effectively puts Bluecherry as the first company to produce a multi-input MPEG-4 hardware compression GPL driver written around the Linux kernel’s API.

    • Twilio Releases OpenVBX

      Open source telephony service for businesses allows drag-and-drop call routing, text-to-speech, voice transcription and voicemail forwarding.

  • Government

    • ‘Over seventy cases studies on OSOR just the beginning’

      The European Union’s Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu) has so far published 72 case studies. It’s most recent one, on the OSOR itself, was published last week.

      The case study, “OSOR: The more they know the more they share, Introducing Open Source Software communities to Europe’s public sector’, concludes the first phase of the project but the European Commission is about to organise OSOR’s continuation.

Leftovers

  • The New OS/2 Rumours Could Be Interesting

    Some rumours have emerged that IBM is considering an OS/2 comeback and I’m filled with the same mixed feelings that always emerge whenever the subject is raised. Would I want OS/2 back on my desktop now? Not really. Have these rumours got me a bit excited? Absolutely. In fact, I’m willing to take a guess about what the new OS/2 might be.

  • Environment

    • Whale poo helps offset carbon footprint

      Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon footprint by defecating, scientists said on Wednesday, releasing tonnes of iron a year that stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which in turn absorb carbon dioxide.

    • Afghan Minerals — Cure, Curse, or Hype?

      The Pentagon revealed last week that Afghanistan has as much as $1 trillion in mineral wealth, a potential game changer in the ongoing conflict there. Many news outlets have picked up this story, with some simply repeating the official talking points, while others raise serious concerns. Is this ‘discovery’ just hype, or will this truly alter the landscape of the Afghan war? Perhaps more importantly, can this mineral wealth (whether real or illusory) pave the way to a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan, or is it more likely to drive geopolitical feedback loops that plunge the region further into turmoil? Below the fold is a quick look at the as-of-yet unasked questions about Afghanistan’s buried treasure.

    • What Good Are The Patents On Oil-Eating Bacteria Doing Us?

      Of course, you have to wonder if this kind of oil-eating bacteria wasn’t locked up to one provider for many years due to a patent, if much of that research on how to make it both safe and practical would have been done already. Probably could have helped a lot. Instead, we set things up so that living organisms can be patented, limiting the ability to do actual research on the impact of those patented organisms to just one party, greatly limiting our understanding of their practicality and safety. Progress?

    • We could not have stopped Gulf oil gusher, ExxonMobil chief tells Congress

      ExxonMobil would have been as powerless as BP to stop the Gulf of Mexico gusher, the chief of the world’s biggest oil company told Congress today in a contentious hearing into the oil spill.

      The admission undermined attempts by oil multinationals Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell to claim they operated to a higher safety standard than BP in testimony before the house energy and commerce committee.

    • U.S. Scientific Team Draws on New Data, Multiple Scientific Methodologies to Reach Updated Estimate of Oil Flows from BP’s Well
    • Fishermen win first legal battle against BP

      A U.S. District Court has made British Petroleum remove language from a Master Charter Agreement that would limit boat captains’ legal rights before allowing them to help clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher.

      The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana opened Sunday afternoon to receive the petition of commercial fisherman to nullify and strike the offensive language in the British Petroleum volunteer fisherman charter contract.

  • Finance

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • German Publishers Want More Monopoly Rights

      This is a beautiful demonstration of a flaw at the heart of copyright: whenever an existing business model based around a monopoly starts to fail, the reflexive approach is to demand yet more monopolies in an attempt to shore it up. And the faster people point out why that won’t solve the problem, the faster the demands come for even more oppressive and unreasonable legislation to try to head off those issues.

      And make no mistake: if Germany adopts this approach, there will be squeals from publishers around the world demanding “parity”, just as there have been with the term of copyright. And so the ratchet will be turned once more.

Clip of the Day

Writing Better Shell Scripts – Part 1


Links 18/6/2010: Parted Magic 4.11, AT&T Against Linux Freedom

Posted in News Roundup at 12:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • HP: The Linux distributor?

    Hardware companies don’t tend to have their own Linux distributions. IBM uses Linux everywhere, but they don’t have their own Linux. Dell will be happy to sell you notebooks and netbooks with Ubuntu or a workstation or server with RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). But, no major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) has had a house-brand Linux… until now. HP has recently bought not one, but two Linux distributions.

    Surely HP is not getting into the Linux distribution business? Are they!?

    HP first acquired its own Linux distribution bough Palm to get its hand on webOS. For some reason, a lot of people seemed to think that Palm was still using its old proprietary operating system, Palm OS. Nope. WebOS has proprietary extensions but this mobile device OS with its Linux kernel heart has more in common with Android and MeeGo than it does with its proprietary fore-bearers.

    [...]

    The one thing I can’t see HP doing though is releasing its Linux takes to other people as full Linux distributions. Instead, I see HP using its Linuxes to add value to their own offerings, not as something they’d sell, nevermind give away, to other vendors or users. HP will do what it needs to do to keep from running afoul of the GPL, but that will be it.

  • Linux Professional Institute and Government of Tunisia to certify IT graduates

    The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced with the Ministry of Communication Technologies of Tunisia (http://www.mincom.tn) a program to train and certify young graduates in Linux and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

  • First Linux to appear in Flemish comic series ?

    This is something I found via Dag Wieers.

  • Desktop

    • Improving The Linux Desktop? Why, It’s Elementary

      The motivation for elementary started long before project leader Daniel Foré had ever even heard of Linux. Back in those early days he was a Windows user (like many of us), who got caught up in the idea of making Windows look like OS X.

      Later on (I’m proud to say) he discovered Kororaa Linux and was amazed at the power and flexibility of the Linux desktop. This sparked an underlying passion for great computing and a desire to create the most amazing desktop possible. Through these experiences he began his first project, making a Crystal style icon set for GNOME, and shortly thereafter The elementary Project was born.

      There are now many parts to elementary and the project is currently working on several ideas at once. Still prevalent is the ever popular elementary icon set and GTK theme (called eGTK for short), but searching wider than that we find efforts to improve Midori (the lightweight GTK Webkit based web browser) and even Nautilus, GNOME’s built-in file manager. There’s even an elementary Theme Addon for Firefox. The goal for elementary is to improve many individual aspects of the Linux desktop and feed them upstream, while at the same time pulling it all together into a new and exciting desktop experience. Many of their modifications to Nautilus for example came from rejected Bugzilla patches and those that weren’t, have been sent upstream. If their work to-date is anything to go by, this is definitely one project to keep an eye on.

    • Dell joining Acer and HP in Chrome OS hardware

      A list of config files has been spotted within Chrome OS listing not only long-standing likely suspects Acer as hardware partners, but HP and Dell too.

      [...]

      According to Download Squad, a list of files within the .git repository, which look after Chrome’s hardware support in the build process, indicate that the three hardware makers are advanced enough in their preparations to be specified in config files.

  • Old PCs

    • “Smart Reuse With Open Source”

      Fosdick points out that with Linux, computers up to ten years old (basically Pentium III or better) are reusable. Microsoft’s difficult and expensive refurbisher program can only reuse computers up to about five years old.

    • Where in the world?

      Time for a fresh install of Linux! If only I had remembered to pack an installation CD along with my jim-jams and toothbrush… My Dad’s PC is so old, it doesn’t have a CD burner, nor does it boot from a USB stick.

  • Server

  • Ballnux

  • Kernel Space

    • The kernel column #88

      Five years of Git
      Christian Ludwig noted that it’s now been five years since Linus Torvalds – frustrated by the fallout from use of the proprietary BitKeeper software – wrote the guts of the Git distributed revision control system in the space of about a week. A lot more effort has gone in since then, and Junio C Hamano (as well as many others) continue to do an excellent job further developing and maintaining Linus’s original invention. Git (now at version 1.7.1) is used by a vast number of different open source projects, and tools like gitweb, github and others make collaboration between developers easier than ever before. Christian Ludwig has made a fun video showing Git kernel history,

    • Graphics Stack

      • New ATI Linux Video Driver Has OpenGL 4.0 and RHEL 5.5 Support

        Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced last evening, June 16th, another improved version of its ATI Catalyst Linux display driver, available for both x86 and x86_64 architectures. ATI Catalyst 10.6 introduces final and stable support for the Red Hat Enterprise 5.5 Linux operating system, official OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 support, and many 2D performance improvements. The software version was updated to 8.741.

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Epic Moment: Free and fast graphics at last

      So, what’s the epic moment? Well, the epic moment for me was seeing KDE Plasma start up with the Free driver, enable compositing automatically and by that delivering a much more beautiful and functional desktop to me, out of the box.

  • Distributions

    • The fragile balance between fast and reliable

      Being a Distro developer, or a packager if you prefer, is not always that simple. Many people think that our “job” is quite straight forward. All we need to do is to read the INSTALL file and then adapt the instructions into an ebuild format and we are done. Well it is definitely more than that.

      [...]

      Every time a new version is available, a series of tests need to be run to make sure we retain a high level of QA in our tree. Such tests involve multiple compilations with various compilation flags, compilers, use flags, etc etc

    • New Releases

      • Parted Magic 4.11

        The Parted Magic OS employs core programs of GParted and Parted to handle partitioning tasks with ease, while featuring other useful programs (e.g. Clonezilla, Partimage, TestDisk, Truecrypt, G4L, SuperGrubDisk, ddrescue, etc…) and an excellent set of documentation to benefit the user.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • BOSS is Nobody’s Boss!

        Developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), it’s yet another Debian fork with packages more dated than the current Debian stable, Lenny (Remember, Squeeze is close to freezing and is unofficially ready for mass consumption). BOSS’ software stack has all the usual suspects such as – Web server, proxy server, Database server, Mail server, Network server, File and Print server, SMS server, LDAP server, plus all major Indian language packs. However, all these and the underlying kernel, desktop environments and userland is very old. Now, the latest, at version 3.0, it still sticks to linux 2.6.22, xorg 1.3, gnome 2.20, OOo 2.2 and FF 3.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Review: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 – It just works

          Out of the box comes a complete operating system with a full office suite (OpenOffice), FireFox webbrowser, CD/DVD burner, movie editor, IM-client, BitTorrent-Client and so much more. You can practically immediately start working and doing everyday tasks right after the installation. It’s still a complete mystery why the .mp3 support is missing, but it take a few seconds to fix that and start listening to your music collection.

        • Ubuntu 10.04 Upgrade: Best Practices Checklist

          Have you been thinking about upgrading your computer to Ubuntu 10.04? I recently made the leap, at the prompting of my Update Manager. The process went fairly smoothly, but I did have to deal with a couple of minor annoyances. Since you never know exactly what may happen when you decide to upgrade, here are a few tips to get you started.

        • Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat” To be Radical, Promises Shuttleworth

          Canonical chief, Mark Shuttleworth said on his blog recently that the Ubuntu version 10.10 will be focussed on being social and being fast. According to him, the OS is getting faster and faster when it comes to boot times but “the final push remains”. In the mean time, he said that the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.10 will have a revamped UI and it will be the fastest booting and the fastest to network OS for netbooks at that time. Canonical is of course the company that funds and oversees the Ubuntu project.

          In keeping with the alliterative and animal naming scheme — Ubuntu 10.10 is being called “Maverick Meerkat”. Meerkats are social creatures by nature. They are very family oriented. And their name has been adopted to signify the emphasize being laid on being social.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Jolicloud: Ubuntu Linux Touch Screens Meet the Cloud

            Ubuntu Linux will ship on roughly 5 million computers this year, according to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. And that number could grow further thanks to Jolicloud — an Ubuntu-based operating system designed to blend netbooks with cloud computing. Moreover, Jolicloud recently gained touch-screen support, which could position the OS for mobile Internet devices (MIDs). But is Jolicloud ready for partners? Here are some insights.

          • Linux Mint 9 RC Backs Up Your Data and Application Choices

            We’ve previously suggested that Linux Mint, a distant cousin of Ubuntu, might make for a better beginner’s Linux OS. With the inclusion of an incremental backup tool, app selection backups, and a smarter software finder, Mint is hitting its mark.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Low Cost ARM11 Development Kits Runs Main-line Linux and Android

      Witech recently released another Low cost ARM11 development kit, With the price of US$ 139.00 for an ARM11 OK6410 development kit plus a 4.3 inch TFT LCD, Witech pronounce that the OK6410 features the best price-performance ratio to date.

    • Bluecherry releases a Linux MPEG-4 compression card

      OPEN SAUCE security surveillance vendor Bluecherry says it has released the software driver for version 2 of its Linux based hardware compression card.

    • Nokia/MeeGo

      • Nokia S Series – The MeeGo Smartphones We Want To See

        It’s always been expected that the Maemo based Nokia N900 will eventually run MeeGo, but it would be nice to see a whole range of smartphones running this smarter than smart Open Source OS.

      • A Review Of MeeGo v1.0: Is It Good Enough For Your Netbook?

        When I first set out to try MeeGo, I had hoped to boot up the live USB image on my netbook. What I soon discovered, however, is that it would not work. My netbook (an EeePC 1201n) has an Nvidia Ion graphics chipset, which is not supported by MeeGo (along with ATI and Intel GMA 500 chipsets). I further found that my other netbook (EeePC 900) was also not supported because it was a pre-Atom model, and MeeGo only supports Intel Atom processors.

        [...]

        MeeGo seems like a pretty decent operating system. On the surface, however, it does not seem very different from Moblin, which would make it appear to be a one-sided Intel affair. Underneath, however, Nokia has integrated it with the QT widget set and underlying Linux kernel development merged from Maemo. All of this makes MeeGo very fast, which I was not able to accurately test in Qemu.

        Overall, it seems good, but it will need some screen size improvement to work well on netbooks. For tablets, the large tabs at the top will work nicely. Assuming Intel and Nokia plan to support a larger number of devices than they currently do, MeeGo will be a nice addition.

    • Android

      • Droid X vs iPhone 4: The Last Phone Ringing

        Today there are many phones which may give the iPhone run for money if they had a ‘salesperson’ like Steve Jobs. This is no hidden fact that Apple has a fan following and most of its devices sell owing to this following. Apple fans ignore and reject the limitations these devices have, instead of asking for a device that fit their needs, they adopt to the devices.

        [...]

        On the contrary, Android is all about healthy competition. Droid X will have full support for Adobe Flash (Adobe should now release Flash under some Free Software license). Thus Droid X will have marketing backing of Motorola, Verizon and Adobe.

      • Is AT&T Polluting Android Phones?

        AT&T seems be pushing its iPhone philosophy on Android phone. The company is going against the very foundation of Free Software or Open Source on which Android is based.

      • AT&T CEO: We’re Happy Where We Are With Android Compared to Verizon

        Randall also comments on their desire to push Yahoo! Search on most of their devices, stating they don’t like Google’s decision on keeping their own search engine as the operating system’s default. The reason? It’s anti-open-source. I’m not going to go too deep with trying to argue Randall’s statements, but how is being given the ability to change Android’s default search and services experience to whatever you want “anti-open-source”?

      • Android leads growing Linux-based phone market

        A new report by ABI Research says Linux-based smart phones will outpace the rate of growth of the overall smart phone market by 2015. The drivers behind the expanding market share

    • Tablets

      • SmartDevices SmartQ V7 Linux Tablet

        SmartDevices has upgraded their Ubuntu Linux SmartQ 7 tablet and renamed it SmartQ V7 and classified it as a HD MID. The SmartQ V7 is a big brother of the SmartQ V5 has been upgraded to the Telechips TCC8900 ARM 11 CPU that runs at 600MHz and had the RAM doubled from 128MB to 256MB DD2 and runs at three times the speed @330MHz.

Free Software/Open Source

  • TransferSummit – Open innovation in software means Open Source

    Open source projects are very probably the best way to efficiently bring software experts together today. Industry associations and interest groups might fulfil that role in other industries, but developers like to express themselves in code, and open source projects are where that happens today.

  • credativ, LLC and Forest Informatics, Inc. Announce Partnership, Training for Open Source Geospatial Database Analytics, Potential for Massive Cost Savings

    credativ, a global open source consulting, service, and support company, announced today a partnership with Forest Informatics, Inc., a provider of turnkey and custom solutions for forest resource management. Together, they will offer introductory and advanced training on geospatial analytics, initially in San Diego, California.

  • Updating the Open Source PBX Story

    One of the big stories of 2009 was the finding by John Malone of Eastern Management Group, reported first on No Jitter, that open source systems account for 18% of the IP-PBX market. Now John is updating his research, so I encourage you to go take his survey and help as we continue to refine our picture of the IP-PBX user base.

  • Being locked in with proprietary software

    This is why I greatly prefer open source software. It is completely free as in freedom, and we can use it anonymously and that’s just OK with everybody. I don’t like giving away lots of details to vendors about any of my hardware/software. Many times, they don’t need to know anything more than the simple fact that you’ve paid them money, and you own their product.

  • Azul Systems To Open Source Significant Technology in Managed Runtime Initiative
  • Azul Systems Launches Open Initiative for Improving Managed Runtimes

    As part of the launch of the Initiative, Azul is contributing an open source reference implementation based on enhancements to OpenJDK and the Linux operating system.

  • When It Comes to Security, Openness Isn’t Always a Virtue – Con: Joe Brockmeier

    Companies have not shown a tendency to be entirely forthcoming about security breaches unless they have to be. It’s not only impossible to examine the code for vulnerabilities, it’s also impossible to know exactly what is being done with your data. This should scare the hell out of people when talking about their personal data.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • CMS

    • WordPress 3.0 adds multi-site support

      The WordPress development team have released version 3.0 of their popular open source blogging and publishing platform, code named “Thelonious”. The thirteenth major update has more than 2,700 changes, including 1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements.

  • Education

    • Questionmark Supports Moodle Course Management Integration

      The Questionmark Moodle Connector enables instructors to link their Moodle courses to course evaluations, quizzes, tests and exams deployed using Perception. Instructors may specify assessment dates and limit the number of times students may access assessments.

  • Healthcare

    • Alliance develops medical software for smartphones

      The Continua Health Alliance is developing a software library of source code to run medical applications on select smartphones. The work is being done in partnership with Vignet, a medical software developer.

  • Business Intelligence

    • Business Intelligence Alternatives ‘Good Enough’ for Many Users

      While lower upfront cost isn’t the only reason to consider open source software, it’s one that initially gets the attention of many organizations. (I guess most of us are no different. When I’m shopping, I generally head to the clearance racks first. Who wants to pay full price if you don’t have to?)

      In fact, with a continued emphasis on reducing IT costs, organizations are “obliged to at least evaluate open source as an alternative” to traditionally licensed software, said David White, a senior research analyst for The Aberdeen Group, when I interviewed him about his recent report, “Open Source Business Intelligence: The Cost, Utilization and Innovation Factors that Matter.”

  • Finance

    • How to Make Money on Open Source Software

      We are big fans of the open source software movement. We believe that free and open software opens up markets and new capabilities much more quickly than closed and expensive software products. In the comments to my post on another open source effort we are funding, MongoDB, there was a discussion about why a VC firm would want to invest in free and open software. In that discussion, I explained that there are a number of ways to make money with open source software. The most obvious one is the “Red Hat” model of building a services and support business on top of the open source software. Red Hat has revenues of almost $600mm per year and boasts a public market valuation of over $5bn. MySQL, which also used that approach, sold to Sun for $1bn.

    • Open Source VAT software, would you risk it?

      There’s a good deal of debate in technology circles these days as to what point level source software, or indeed free and open source software, can fulfil our needs – especially when business gets mission critical. For individuals, mission critical status comes along when it comes to our health, our family, our house and our money so Tax and VAT certainly come within radius.

  • Project Releases

  • Government

    • Norwegian Free Software Center Opposes Government Pro-FOSS Policy

      I may be missing something, but it looks to me as though the Norwegian Free Software Center is not only abandoning its mandate, but working against it. There is no evidence to justify crying conspiracy, and no doubt Gundersen and Austlid are sincere, yet you have to wonder how they could argue against the very cause they are supposed to promote.

      However, that is not the reason that I have spent time discussing their argument. With all respect, Norway is a single small country, and, living halfway around the world from it, I am unlikely to be affected much by what happens there.

      All the same, Gundersen and Austlid’s arguments are worth examining for their own sake. One day, those of us outside Norway may be lucky enough to hear our own federal, provincial or city governments propose pro-free software policies. If we do, then we will undoubtedly hear similar arguments against the policies, and need to start thinking about how to debunk them.

      Unless I am mistaken, though, the only difference will be that the counter arguments that we hear will most likely come from the critics and enemies of free software — not those who are supposed to support it.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open source brings new meaning to user-generated content

      OpenBlock is the open source software powering the project and is being developed by the nonprofit group OpenPlans. They’re partnering with The Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri and The Boston Globe on two separate, but similar, projects.

  • Open Data

    • Tricky Sea Ice Predictions Call for Scientists to Open Their Data

      With sea ice levels in the Arctic at record lows this month, a new report comparing scientists’ predictions calls for caution in over-interpreting a few weeks worth of data from the North Pole.

      The Sea Ice Outlook, which will be released this week, brings together more than a dozen teams’ best guesses at how much sea ice will disappear by the end of the warm season in September. This year began with a surprise. More sea ice appeared than anticipated, nearing its mean level from 1979-2007. But then ice levels plummeted through May and into June. Scientists have never seen the Arctic with less ice at this time of year in the three decades they’ve been able to measure it, and they expect below average ice for the rest of the year.

  • Open Access/Content

    • Can You Make Money from Free Stuff?

      It’s good to see companies like Getty Images trying to include material that’s licensed under Creative Commons licences, but it will be interesting to see how this all works in practice. It does, in any case, emphasise that making money from free stuff, while perfectly possible, requires careful thought about the licensing. But then you knew that anyway.

    • BCS EGM: It’s Time To Vote For Transparency

      Despite the unbalanced presentation on the official BCS web site (where there is no attempt to represent the views of the loyal and senior members who felt compelled to call the meeting as a last resort – their case is on their own site), the issues the EGM raises are serious and reflect a widespread disquiet among active BCS members. The webcast by the BCS President and CEO on June 10 didn’t make things any better, attacking the messengers further rather than responding to the message, and today I’m left with the same unease as I had when I first saw the EGM was happening.

  • Open Hardware

    • Open source automobiles?

      What is interesting about Riversimple is its business model. To begin with the cars are all leased for a monthly fee, not bought, and secondly, all the technology and design is open source. According to its publicity,

    • Future of Health: The Open Prosthetics Project

      The Open Prosthetics Project is producing useful innovations in the field of prosthetics and freely sharing the designs. This project is an open source collaboration between users, designers and funders with the goal of making creations available for anyone to use and build upon.

Leftovers

  • Security/Aggression

    • MP in talks over Birmingham ‘terror cameras’

      An MP is meeting the crime-prevention group involved a row over surveillance cameras in parts of Birmingham with large Muslim populations.

      Hall Green Labour MP Roger Godsiff is seeking reassurance there will be a “thorough” consultation before the 218 cameras are switched on.

    • The Case for Calling Them Nitwits

      When terrorists do execute an attack, or come close, they often have security failures to thank, rather than their own expertise. Consider Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — the Nigerian “Jockstrap Jihadist” who boarded a Detroit-bound jet in Amsterdam with a suicidal plan in his head and some explosives in his underwear. Although the media colored the incident as a sophisticated al-Qaeda plot, Abdulmutallab showed no great skill or cunning, and simple safeguards should have kept him off the plane in the first place. He was, after all, traveling without luggage, on a one-way ticket that he purchased with cash. All of this while being on a U.S. government watch list.

    • Stalin’s harvest

      A PLAINTIVE siren wails as a government unit, invisible in the darkness, patrols. “We will shoot anyone on the streets. Military curfew. Do not leave your homes,” comes the clipped command in Russian over the loudspeaker. A round of tank-artillery fire rings out. A machinegun crackles a response. This is “calm”, of a sort, after the bloody mayhem of inter-ethnic violence between the Kyrgyz majority and the Uzbek minority that broke out in southern Kyrgyzstan on June 10th. But in Osh, as elsewhere, the wounds that have been opened may take generations to heal.

  • Environment

  • Finance

    • UK deficit and government borrowing – how has it changed since 1946?

      Britain’s budget deficit came in lower than feared last month, the latest indication that the public finances are over the worst of the financial crisis.

      The government borrowed £16bn in May, below last year’s £17.4bn and less than the £18bn expected by City economists.

      However, the nation’s debt has now reached £903bn – equivalent to 62.2% of GDP, the highest since records began in 1993, underlining the task faced by the coalition government in cutting the debt burden.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Why can’t journalists handle public criticism?

      Why do so many journalists find it so hard to handle public criticism? If you’re an athlete, you’re used to it. If you’re an artist, critics will regularly take you down. If you are in government, the pundits and now the bloggers will show no mercy. If you’re in business, the market will punish you.

      In all these cases, the seasoned professional learns to deal with it. But over and over today, we encounter the sorry spectacle of distinguished reporters losing it when their work is publicly attacked — or columnists sneering at the feedback they get in poorly moderated web comments.

      Clark Hoyt recently concluded his tenure as the New York Times’ “public editor” (aka ombudsman) with a farewell column that described the reactions of Times journalists to his work. It seems the process of being critiqued in public in their own paper continues to be alienating and dispiriting to them. Journalists typically, and rightly, see themselves as bearers of public accountability — holding the feet of government officials, business leaders and other public figures to the fire of their inquiries. Yet, remarkably, a surprising number of journalists still find it hard to accept being held to account themselves.

    • HTTPS Everywhere

      HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites.

    • Toxic net filters ‘shelved until after election’

      The internet censorship policy has joined the government’s list of “politically toxic subjects” and will almost certainly be shelved until after the federal election, Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam says.

      Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – already facing a voter backlash over several perceived policy failures – is expected to call the election before the end of the year and the feeling of many in Canberra is that next week will be the last sitting week of Parliament.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Significant Objects Becomes A Book… More Infinite Goods Creating New Scarcities

      Last year, we wrote about a fascinating “art” project, called “Significant Objects,” that involved a bunch of writers buying up random cheap/worthless trinkets, but then listing them on eBay along with a creative (fictional) story about the object. The “story” was given away for free, but the object cost money. What those involved in the project quickly found was that these worthless trinkets were suddenly selling for a lot more than their nominal “price.” It was a perfect example of how an infinite good (the story), when properly attached to a scarce good (the trinket), can make that scarce good much more valuable.

    • Copyrights

      • Police Raids Tear Apart Hungarian BitTorrent Scene

        Through co-ordinated raids across the country, Hungarian police have attempted to decimate the country’s BitTorrent scene. Following the deployment of many officers, dozens of servers were seized and many of the country’s trackers shut down, including the prominent 900,000 peer ‘ncore’ tracker. An ISP, university and many seedboxes were also targeted.

      • EMI Rejig Gives Faxon Control Of Rights-Hungry Label

        The umpteenth restructure at EMI Group, since the Terra Firma takeover three years ago, sees the chief of one of its two divisions upped to group-wide CEO

        EMI is bringing both its EMI Music Publishing and its EMI Recorded Music divisions under the leadership of Roger Faxon, who has led the former unit since 2007 but who is being given an overarching role.

    • ACTA

      • Agenda For Round Nine of ACTA Talks Posted

        The agenda for the ninth round of ACTA talks scheduled for Lucerne, Switzerland from June 28 – July 1st. All the major issues – civil enforcement, criminal provisions, Internet issues, and border measures – are on the agenda. The agenda includes two elements that suggest considerable progress has been made. First, the morning of the first day is devoted to a report on “intersessional work.” This confirms rumours that there have been considerable negotiations (and progress) since New Zealand. Second, the international cooperation chapter makes the agenda for the first time.

Clip of the Day

Marc Welz: CLUG Talk – 26 August 2008 – DNS (2008)


Links 18/6/2010: WordPress 3.0, OLPC for 90,000 in Uruguay

Posted in News Roundup at 3:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • All hail the easy to use!

      This is why I like SimplyMepis. I like Linux Mint. I like PCLOS. I like Sabayon. I like Pardus.

      Oh, I still like Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo too, for nostalgic reasons, but when it comes to choosing a desktop these days, I pick from the first list.

      I know why the bigger commercial distros can’t include all that stuff and why some others don’t. But this is why we hope these smaller projects never give up and go home. They make life easier and these days, we can all use that.

    • Linux Desktop Stigma Draws Ire and Fire

      Stand up and be proud of what you’ve done for Linux. Yes, you’ll draw your share of ire and fire but isn’t every great fight worth it for the freedom it brings to everyone?

  • Applications

    • Scenari – A powerful application to create and publish documents

      This application is most probably going to be of interest to people working in the education field, as I am, but not only.

      I discovered scenari when one of the developers came for a 3 days workshop at my university.
      I create resources and teach online and have been so far doing very poorly regarding online multimedia documents. Mainly out of ignorance and poor taste for multimedia techy stuff, I have given .pdf online and that was about it..

    • Serve Up Your Music with Zeya

      Have you always wanted to set up your own music station to stream your latest music collection to your friends or colleagues? Have you been thinking lately of setting up an always-on music streaming server so that you can just open up your web browser and listen to your favorite tracks? A music server is great in a dormitory, laboratory or office where the file server can double up as the music server! I will show you how using Zeya.

    • Bringing improved PDF support to Google Chrome

      Millions of web users rely on PDF files every day to consume a wide variety of text and media content. To enable this, a number of plug-ins exist today which allow users to open PDF files inside their browsers.

    • Disk Backup With Amanda On Debian Lenny

  • Games

    • Heroes of Newerth – Charge!

      Linux games are many and varied. You can find pretty much anything you need, from simple arcades via racing all the way to expansive and elaborate tactical shooters. Still, one aspect of the Linux gaming scene is underplayed, this being the Real Time Strategy (RTS). For whatever reason, there’s a lack of great strategy games for Linux. You will find some, but not as many as you would hope for.

  • Distributions

    • Pay what you want for Kiddix OS

      From Microsoft Bob to Edubuntu there have been a number of attempts at making computers of various sorts easier and more useful for young people. Another participant in this space is Kiddix, “a complete operating system and software environment for children, built from the ground up with your family’s needs and safety in mind.” Kiddix is built upon Linux, and aims to present things in a very “kid friendly” way. Through the end of June, Kiddix is running a “Pay What You Want” promotion, allowing you to pay any amount to buy their OS.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat @ Year Highs

        Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) booked a new 52 week high today by trading above $32.34, traders are definitely monitoring Red Hat’s price action to see if this move attracts further buying into the stock.

      • New Highs for Shares of Red Hat, Deckers, and Alaska Air (DECK, ALK, RHT)
      • Red Hat Announces Finalists in Fourth Annual Innovation Awards

        The Red Hat and JBoss Innovation Awards finalists are recognized in four separate categories. In addition, a fifth category recognizes a finalist that is deploying a combined solution from Red Hat’s platform and middleware portfolios. Each Red Hat Innovation Awards category winner will be provided with complimentary admission to the 2010 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World, where they will be recognized at an awards ceremony in a general session for both Red Hat Summit and JBoss World attendees.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Canonical’s (Possibly) Excellent Adventure

        Is Canonical taking on Red Hat with its new commercial support service? Canonical’s move “is not as much a competition as an expansion into a growing market,” Pogson opined. “GNU/Linux has taken about all it can from Unix operating systems; now it is time to kick M$ out of servers.”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • OLPC’s New XO for 90,000 Teens in Uruguay

      OLPC has just been awarded an order from Plan Ceibal for 90,000 XO’s for teenagers in Uruguay. Yes, there will be a new XO specially for teenagers. Uruguay already has 380,000 of the original XOs for younger children, and now the kids can graduate to one designed for them as they mature.

      It’s to be a dual boot laptop. Note not triple boot. No Microsoft in this picture at all. GNOME has leaped into the pool to help out. The press release says, “It will feature the learning-focused Sugar user interface together with the Gnome Desktop Environment to provide a dual-boot Linux operating system with office productivity tools.” I wish I were a teenager in Uruguay so I could have one. If they do the partner program, I’m in.

Free Software/Open Source

  • About software forges

    I had the opportunity to talk a little bit with Dirk Riehle at LinuxTag about business models, collaboration and infrastructures, and one of the arguments was about software forges, like SourceForge or GForge. I would like to provide a little bit of overview of our discussion, along with my reasoning about the future of such forges.

  • CMS

    • WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”

      Arm your vuvuzelas: WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten.

    • Clickability FUD on Open Source versus SaaS

      Clickability, a proprietary SaaS platform for content management, has compared SaaS to Open Source. Not only is the comparison inaccurate, it omits the downsides of SaaS and frankly, they are comparing apples to oranges. Open Source is a licensing and development model, SaaS is a software delivery model. Either they are distorting things on purpose, or they don’t understand Open Source at all. In other words, time to look at some good ol’ FUD and to share my take on Open Source versus SaaS.

  • Healthcare

    • From Apache to Health and Human Services

      Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache web server project and the CollabNet cooperative software development company, is contracting now with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the CONNECT software project. CONNECT helps hospitals and agencies exchange medical data, which gives doctors critical information to improve patient care.

  • Business

    • Open Source: The capitalists’ choice

      After all, giving away your “intellectual property” for the greater good may be a nice theory in some ideal world, but it rather flies in the face of capitalism, doesn’t it?

      Rubbish! In fact, I’d argue that Open Source is actually more true to capitalist principles than traditional proprietary software practices. It all comes down to the principle of efficient markets.

      Proprietary software is akin to the privatisation of the railways. It pays lip-service to the perceived efficiency benefits but if you look at it closely, you realise that the fundamental motivation of competition is absent.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Open Data

    • The UK’s public data tsunami gathers speed

      When the British Government said at the beginning of May that they would be releasing a ‘tsunami of public data’ you had to wonder whether reality would match up to the rhetoric. Oh ye of little faith… A fortnight ago, the Government released hundreds of new datasets – including a full list of Government expenditure – and this week, Transport for London announced that they too would be releasing lots of their transport data for free to the public.

    • Victory on FDA Data

      Back in February, we were encouraging participation in the Open Government Directive conversations happening at federal agencies, since they were busy creating their open government plans, and in a uniquely responsive position.

      Sunlight’s Nancy Watzman, submitted a request for the Department of Health and Human Services, calling on them to release a database on drugs, medical devices, and food recalls by manufacturers. Nancy has been writing extensively on HHS and FDA data issues, including our award-winning investigation, Heart of the Matter.

    • Consuming the Transport for London Data

      The following guest post is from Julian Todd, who works on projects such as Public Whip, UNdemocracy, and ScraperWiki. He is also a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Government Data.. The post was originally published on Julian’s blog, Freesteel.

      Yesterday Transport for London made a data dump of various locations and links to their traffic cameras, station locations, and so on.

  • Inhibiting Open Access

    • The EU proposal for increasing access?

      The aim is to restrict the conditions that would permit to increase the number and the range of accessible format works available. The Joint recommendation is about when “there is no appropriate commercial product on offer.” If a book exist in an audio format but not in a indexable format or searchable format, is it “on offer” to people with disabilities?

    • Accountability and Transparency at ICANN? Not looking good

      I’ve been keeping schtum about the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT) for a while for three reasons:

      1. I submitted a proposal along with a team of professional evaluators to be the review’s “independent expert”
      2. I know nearly all the members of the team and I respect them all
      3. They’re working to a tight timetable so you have to give some benefit of doubt

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Security/Aggression

  • Environment

    • EU deal signals ban on illegal timber

      The compromise between the European Parliament, the Spanish EU Presidency and the European Commission is a step towards ensuring that illegally harvested timber and wood products cannot be sold on the EU market.

      It is estimated that 20-40% of global industrial wood production comes from illegal sources, with up to 20% ending up on the EU market.

    • What happens when energy resources deplete?

      One view is that energy prices will rise, substitutes will be found, and prices will come back down again, perhaps settling at a somewhat higher equilibrium reflecting the cost of producing the substitute energy source. The economy will continue to function pretty much as before. The catch is that we aren’t finding reasonably-priced, scalable substitutes, so this isn’t happening. Oil prices are down, but not because of substitutes.

    • The oceans look delicious now.
    • Conservatives to Obama: Leave BP alone!

      Joe Barton says it is “a tragedy of the first proportion” that BP agreed to Obama’s request to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate Americans — and then he apologizes to BP CEO Hayward!

    • [corp-focus] Closing BP’s Escape Routes
    • Stonemirror

      As BP’s boss Tony Hayward is grilled by US Congressional Comittee the results are all too predictable. You’d think Tony Hayward was a politician, with the skills he;’s shown at evading responsibility and dodging questions. It seems however that the politicians grilling him are understandably a tad annoyed at this behaviour. The problem is this; they (the politicians) spend their ENTIRE POLITICAL CAREERS doing the very same.

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Autopsy on wacky Jacqui’s ID astroturfing

      The documents reveal the site bought 50 million adverts on Facebook and other social network sites. These 50 million ads resulted in an awesome 537 people completing the survey on the site. We can only hope the government was paying per click-through rather than for each view of its advert.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • What will Iceland’s new media laws mean for journalists?

      The Icelandic parliament has voted unanimously to create what are intended to be the strongest media freedom laws in the world. And Iceland intends these measures to have international impact, by creating a safe haven for publishers worldwide — and their servers.

    • Privacy of Government Workers Limited by High Court

      The U.S. Supreme Court, putting limits on the privacy rights of government workers, ruled that a California police department acted reasonably when it reviewed personal text messages on an officer’s government-issued pager.

      The justices today unanimously rejected arguments by SWAT team member Jeff Quon that the city of Ontario violated his rights under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government searches.

  • Copyrights

    • Filesharing: Die wundersame Musikvermehrung Filesharing: The wondrous music reproduction
    • Are Bad Copyright Laws Killing Jazz And Harming Jazz Musicians?

      In the face of increasing examples of such copyright policies doing exactly the opposite of what they intend, how is it that our elected officials continue to buy the claims from a few entrenched industries, that copyright needs to be made even more strict? How many more musicians have to have their art and creativity stifled?

    • Google Planning A Paid Content System For Publishers In Italy

      Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which had hinted for nearly a year now that it was working on building some sort of paid content system for publishers, is reportedly launching such a system in Italy, where it has had some of its ugliest confrontations with the news industry. According to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google is reaching out to publishers there to get them to participate in the program, which it is calling Newspass.

    • Internet File-Sharing Service Is Sued by Music Publishers

      A coalition of eight music publishers sued the file-sharing service LimeWire on Wednesday, accusing it of copyright infringement, according to the National Music Publishers’ Association, the industry group that organized the suit.

    • The Economics of Copyright

      There’s no pretending this report is light reading, but I do think it represents an important statement about the need for basing copyright law on empirical evidence. Against the background of blatant lobbying during the passage of the Digital Economy Act, that surely has to be good news for everyone – whether or not they are copyright geeks.

    • Saying information wants to be free does more harm than good

      It’s time for IWTBF to die because it’s become the easiest, laziest straw man for Hollywood’s authoritarian bullies to throw up as a justification for the monotonic increase of surveillance, control, and censorship in our networks and tools. I can imagine them saying: “These people only want network freedom because they believe that ‘information wants to be free’. They pretend to be concerned about freedom, but the only ‘free’ they care about is ‘free of charge.’”

      But this is just wrong. “Information wants to be free” has the same relationship to the digital rights movement that “kill whitey” has to the racial equality movement: a thoughtless caricature that replaces a nuanced, principled stand with a cartoon character. Calling IWTBF the ideological basis of the movement is like characterising bra burning as the primary preoccupation of feminists (in reality, the number of bras burned by feminists in the history of the struggle for gender equality appears to be zero, or as close to it as makes no difference).

      So what do digital rights activists want, if not “free information?”

    • A boost for legally shared media – new TV & movie titles!

      Pioneer One can be found over at VODO, a tracker site for free to download media and a worthwhile visit, since these files will not have a warning letter dropping through your letterbox for sharing them. The pilot episode apparently cost $6000 dollars to shoot and there are 7 episodes in the first series to be followed with a planed 4 more series.

    • Europarl Question: Stronger protection for copyright holders

Clip of the Day

Henny Keyzer – CLUG Talk 28 April 2009 – Microcontrollers (2009)


06.17.10

Links 17/6/2010: Parted Magic 4.11, Haiku R1 Alpha

Posted in News Roundup at 6:44 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 10 great illustrations of Linux humor

  • Desktop

    • That Linux Attitude…

      I might be very passionate about Mandriva Linux, granted. After all, not experiencing a single virus attack for over a year of heavy internet surfing WITHOUT an antivirus can be very motivating. The BEAUTY of the system itself contributes, too. Seeing that a computer can be used safely, simply, and even artistically by people who where formerly paralyzed by fear is what makes me tell others about Linux.

      I want to tell the world : “No more blue screens! No more panic! No more sluggish performance after a while!” That is how I see Linux: as a friendly community, as people who care for others and want to help computer users in need.

      [...]

      So, people should really think about this before starting their trip to TUX Land…Please remember that turning against Windows users or novice Linux users antagonizes the very spirit of Free Software: the COMMUNITY is the POWER OF TUX.

  • Kernel Space

    • Talking About Kernel Mode-Setting

    • Graphics Stack

      • [ANNOUNCE] xorg-server 1.8.99.901

        The X.org X server version 1.9 RC1 (1.8.99.901) is now available. While not including huge amounts of new functionality, this release has seen a number of longstanding development itches cleaned up with the goal of making the code cleaner and easier to understand.

      • AMD Catalyst 10.6 For Linux Brings Changes

        Catalyst 10.6 for Linux offers up RHEL 5.5 production support, official support for OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0, and 2D performance enhancements. AMD was quick to support OpenGL 4.0 on their AMD Radeon HD 5000 series “Evergreen” hardware via their proprietary driver, but now with Catalyst 10.6 that support is officially there. The older R600/700 ASICs only support up through OpenGL 3.3. There is not, however, any early OpenCL 1.1 support in this month’s driver.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

      • KDE Visits FOSS Nigeria Conference 2010

        In 2010 the FOSS Nigeria Conference took place for the second time and, like last year, KDE attended the conference with two speakers. There was however a change in the visiting KDE team: Frederik Gladhorn joined Adriaan de Groot to take the place of Jonathan Riddell who could not make it this year. The venue for the conference was in Kano at the well-regarded Mambayya House, the Center for Democratic Research of the Bayero University. The conference date was moved from March to April, which meant that the weather presented a different face — hot followed by rain instead of the harmattan.

      • Flameworthy LinuxTag Notes

        So KDE has created a very open culture which results in innovation, experimentation and new technology. The user experience, while more of a focus than in the KDE 3.x times, imho still ain’t what it needs to be, might never be the way we currently work. At least, the finishing touch is boring and hard to do in such an open meritocracy.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Using Gnome Shell – Day 3

        I noted on a previous day that you need to ALT+TAB between windows, like any other regular system. The downside to this is that it is the only way to view open windows on a current desktop, where as with any other OS you can view at least which windows are open by glancing at your taskbar/panel.

  • Distributions

    • [Sabayon] Release Name Shuffling (CoreCD/SpinBase/CoreCDX)

      The upstream maintainers of Anaconda have drastically cut back the functionality of the Anaconda installer with respect to console-based text installation.

    • Reviews

      • Zenwalk 6.4 GNOME Screenshots

        Zenwalk is a Slackware-based distribution and this release, Zenwalk 6.4 GNOME, features the Linux kernel 2.6.33.4 and GNOME 2.28.2. This latest version of the GNOME desktop environment brings several improvements of its own to the distro. Other things that have changed in Zenwalk 6.4 GNOME include; new artwork, Gnome-disk-utility is added, Gnome-system-tools added, faster shutdown, bugs have been fixed, and more. View the release announcement for details and a list of packages included.

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Bulls in Charge

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 13 Boasts Many Leading-Edge Enhancements

          Red Hat’s Fedora 13 open-source software can serve in a full gamut of Linux roles, as long as users are prepared to upgrade their systems about once a year.

        • SELF 2010 trip report.

          One of the hardest parts of being FPL and attending a conference is getting a trip report done while you try to catch up to everything you missed while you were gone! But better late than never, here’s my report from this past weekend’s Southeast LinuxFest (SELF).

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 197

        In this issue we cover – Welcome New Ubuntu Members, Kubuntu Council Elections, Ubuntu sparc and ia64 ports, Ubuntu Stats, LoCo-Directory Meeting Feature, Ubuntu 10.04 Release Party at Kanchipuram, Sunday Special: Ubuntu Hour, Día del usuario Ubuntu ROCKED!!!, LinuxTag 2010 Ubuntu Berlin Barbeque, Instructors Confirmed for Ubuntu User Day on July 10th, Reviewing 2000 patches, “Is Linux Secure?” at Southeast LinuxFest, In The Press, In The Blogosphere, Ubuntu In Business, Wine 1.2 Release Candidate 3 Is Out Now, EtherPad: web-based collaborative editor, Canonical Rolling Out Ubuntu Advantage for Enterprise Linux OS, Linaro Tools and Infrastructure Sprint, Severed Fifth Part Two Begins, Featured Podcasts, Upcoming Meetings and Events, Updates and Security, and much much more!

      • Would Mark Shuttleworth use Gentoo had he not founded Ubuntu?

        While Ubuntu lost the “just works on your notebook” unique selling point a while ago (thanks to freedesktop et. al.), we could convince Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to sign our Gentoo slogan “It’s all about choice” — so maybe in a year from now, you might see USE flags in Ubuntu as well. Don’t believe it? Here’s proof.

      • easy to use Lucid-themed conky bar now even easier to use!

        Many of you loved the look of the look of the bar but found the hacking needed to get it to fit your screensize a bit off-putting. Thankfully the developer, Veoduendes, has addressed that issue with the launch of a new configuration wizard which makes using the bar a total breeze.

      • Operation Cleansweep making progress… (updated)
      • Interview mit Ubuntus Mäzen

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Have a Mint

          All in all I’d say the Mint experience was pretty much a wash; there were some things that I didn’t need to do on Mint that I’d have had to do in Ubuntu, and other things I needed to fix in Mint that aren’t broken in Ubuntu. But, and this is the key, I got a good working installation to start with, whereas Ubuntu didn’t give me that this time around. So on that basis alone, I’m sticking with Mint for a while.

        • Spotlight on Linux: Linux Mint 9

          The best thing about Linux Mint is its out of the box capabilities. Nothing says ease-of-use like having browser and multimedia plugins and codecs already included and ready to use. Nothing is appreciated more either, by a lot of users. There is a large community of friendly and helpful users surrounding the Mint project, so be sure to drop by the forums. This version comes with GNOME 2.30, but other desktop versions follow soon after initial release. Any way you look at it, Linux Mint is one of the best distributions available today from any project, no matter the size.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • PocketBook 301+ Comfort review

      The PocketBook 301+ is actually a recent update of the original model released in 2007, itself based on a popular eReader design that’s been sold by various companies. Ukrainian in origin, the original 301 was a variant on the Netronix EB-600 eReader and essentially offered the same basic spec as a very wide range of other eReaders – around seven or eight of them in total. The 301+ improves the specification in several ways, though the quality of the E Ink screen and a sizable increase in internal storage capacity (up to 512MB from 256MB) are two of the key areas here. It features second-generation Vizplex E Ink electronic paper (the same tech as adopted by Sony for its 505 among others), and boasts a resolution of 600×800 pixels on its 6-inch screen. It can cater for 16 shades of grey – which, like its size, is essentially the standard for eReaders at the moment.

    • Android

      • The Flavor of Android’s Open Apps

        It started when I heard that National Public Radio (NPR) had an Android app last week. Actually, I’m sure they had the app earlier than that, but it was the news that this application was being open sourced by NPR that brought it to my attention.

        While I have been grooving on my new phone, I haven’t been downloading things willy-nilly yet, because my current lack of travel plans means that I’m in the home office a lot and therefore don’t need a fully stocked mobile platform yet.

      • Sony Ericsson Shakira to be called X8

        A few days ago I added a news article outlining that Sony Ericsson where to produce a middle sized x10 that would be larger than an x10 mini and smaller than an x10.

      • AT&T CEO: Not Worried About Verizon’s Android Position

        AT&T Inc. (T) Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said he isn’t losing any sleep over Verizon Wireless’s strong current position with Android phones, adding that things will change dramatically over the next six months.

      • Logitech Confirms Companion Box to be Called “Revue”

        Logitech took to their blog today to confirm the “Revue” as their companion box for Google TV. Rather than forking out hundreds or thousands for a new television, Logitech’s add-on peripheral is designed to complement any current HD set. So how did they come up with the name?

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Ubuntu Netbook Edition (Remix) not just for netbooks?

        Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formally netbook remix) is a collection of applications that make Ubuntu more usable on smaller screens. But you don’t have to be running a netbook to benefit. This article looks at how to use the best netbook remix features in a standard Ubuntu 10.04 install.

    • Tablets

      • Hobbyist kit turns BeagleBoard into a tablet

        Open source electronics firm Liquidware has released a kit for attaching a 4.4-inch Liquidware BeagleTouch OLED touchscreen to a BeagleBoard to construct a Linux-based, tablet device. The Beagle Embedded Starter Kit also incorporates a BeagleJuice battery module and a 4GB SD card.

      • Linux on a Touchscreen? Try Jolicloud

        Here is a list of Touchscreen drivers that Jolicloud supports. It is a pretty impressive list, and includes some names that are near and dear to many Mobilitysite reader’s’ hearts. For example, the iPaq H3600 and several versions of the long lamented Jornada could find new lives with Jolicloud.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The one kind of open source, and the other kind

    Consider Linux: early on, it was bashed on quality, security usability, being “only for techies,” and held at arm’s length by the corporate world in general. Yet today it has matured to the point there probably isn’t a big corporation on the face of the earth that doesn’t use Linux in one way or another. Similarly, Lucene reached a tipping point three or four years ago with the introduction of Solr as a full-featured enterprise search server based on Lucene. At that point, still as a community project, it became competitive technically with commercial alternatives. An open source project in this state feeds on itself. More people use it, more people want to enhance it and a juggernaut is created.

  • Symbian faces ‘Titanic’ task to go open source – Funambol

    Nokia’s bid to transform its Symbian mobile operating system into a purely open-source platform has been a huge task, and one that could cost it the smartphone race, warned mobile synchronisation firm Funambol on Wednesday.

  • Impressions – Haiku R1 Alpha 2 – With Screenshots

    Haiku is an exciting new adventure. I love the idea of new Open Source and Free operating systems making their appearance. As a desktop OS there is work to be done as far as the user interface goes. How long before we have a stable final release? I don’t know, it has been in development for the better part of nine years, and development seems to have sped up recently with two major releases less than a year apart.

  • 10 Best Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office

    # Open Office (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux): Open Office is a great solution for those who are looking for a free open source alternative to the Microsoft family. The suite offers a great open source alternative to the Microsoft family of products. The suite has word processing, a database program, a spreadsheet application and a layout program to create most documents.

    # KOffice (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux): There are eight packages in this suite, including a spreadsheet, presentation software, project planning and image editing. It is fast, functional and open source.

  • What Would a More Open Twitter Look Like?

    It might look something like the idea proposed by Dave Winer, inventor of the RSS standard. He’s written often about the idea of “a decentralized Twitter” and how he’d like to see someone develop a Twitter app based on open-source standards, which he compared to the Apache open-source server software that lies behind a majority of the websites on the Internet. More recently, he’s talked about how developers of Twitter clients — whether they be apps, or services such as WordPress (see disclosure below) or Tumblr — could build an “emergency broadcast system” that would function even when Twitter is down.

  • Mozilla

    • Your Firefox in the cloud: Firefox Sync and Firefox Home

      Firefox enables hundreds of millions of people all over the world to each have a Web experience that’s unique. They can make Firefox look and feel the way they want with Add-ons and Personas. And more importantly, Firefox becomes their trusted guide to the Web. It intelligently searches browsing history and bookmarks to help people get to their favorite sites with minimum effort using the “Awesome Bar”. Tabbed browsing allows people to efficiently work with multiple sites at the same time while Password Manager and automatic form fill help them quickly get things done.

  • SaaS

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • “Life of Brian” Played Out In Community

      One of the frustrations of being a software freedom advocate is how many of the attacks that are made on me come from people who most observers would consider to be “fighting for the same side”. My recent call for volunteers to work on revamping the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a case in point. Of the public comments I’ve read, the majority berate me for daring to be positive about OSI rather than castigating it in favor of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as they themselves do. (Fortunately the private e-mails are much more encouraging). But it’s not just a tension between OSI and FSF. For example, in one forum where I mentioned my membership card for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) had arrived, one reply asked if I would also be joining the FSF. Software freedom arouses extreme passions among its adherents.

    • FSF to host GNU social architecture meeting

      Tomorrow at its Boston offices the Free Software Foundation will host the first in a series of GNU social architecture meetings. Confirmed attendees include several GNU social developers, OAuth developer Blaine Cook and Evan Prodromou from StatusNet.

    • GNU social: next steps

  • Project Releases

    • OpenGeo Suite Enterprise Edition 2.0 Launches

      The Suite, which includes a robust geospatial development environment, is also the first to include PostGIS, a powerful spatially enabled database built on top of PostgreSQL, to eliminate lengthy implementation processes.

  • Open Data

  • WebM

    • FFMPEG Now Includes VP8/WebM

      This package is a part of many distros and will give users of GNU/Linux easy access to produce, edit, and decode video better. Use of this format on Youtube should establish it solidly.

    • FFmpeg 0.6 Has Support for VP8, WebM, HTML5

      Dubbed “Works with HTML5,” the brand-new release of FFmpeg brings lots of highly anticipated features. Announced last evening, June 15th, FFmpeg 0.6 improves the support for HTML5 video, has a better Vorbis decoder, and faster Theora and H.264 decoders. The most important feature of this release is the support for Google’s VP8 codec. Moreover, the matroska demuxer has been updated to support the WebM container.

    • Opera 10.6 Beta released
    • Opera 10.6 beta adds WebM video support

      Norway-based browser maker Opera today released a new beta of its Opera 10.browser which it says is 50% faster than its predecessor.

Leftovers

  • Twins fight academic penalties over Facebook remarks about professor

    Identical twin brothers reprimanded by the University of Calgary for making disparaging comments about a professor on their Facebook page want a judge to overturn the penalties.

    Keith and Steven Pridgen, 20, were placed on probation more than two years ago for statements made starting in November 2007 on a Facebook page entitled “I no longer fear Hell, I took a course with Aruna Mitra.”

    Both were initially ordered to write a letter of apology, but the condition was removed when they refused to do so.

  • Fifa acts after ‘ambush marketing’ by Dutch brewery

    Stewards ejected 36 Dutch supporters from Monday’s match between the Netherlands and Denmark midway through the second half in Johannesburg.

  • Internet addicts stage jail-break from rehab centre

    The 14 addicts, aged between 15 and 22, tied their instructor to his bed before making a bid for freedom from the treatment centre in Huai’an, in the eastern Jiangsu province, according to reports in China’s state media.

  • Journalism

    • To save journalism, save the net
    • Behind The Atlantic’s Brand Reinvention

      The Atlantic, a 153-year-old magazine, suffered from a protracted decline in revenues and rising costs starting in the 1960s. A dramatic multi-platform overhaul of the brand starting in 2007 has put it back on track to profitability. In his keynote address today at the FOLIO: Show, Atlantic Media president Justin Smith said The Atlantic is projected to have a profitable fourth quarter and a “multi-million dollar” profit in 2011.

    • UK And U.S. See Heaviest Newspaper Circulation Declines

      UK newspapers have suffered the most dramatic circulation declines of any country outside America since 2007, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

  • Security/Aggression

    • Security: How the Federal Government Could Change Your Internet Privacy
    • Further thoughts on Gary McKinnon

      But it was my liberal inclination asserting itself having dismantled the central elements of the “Free Gary” campaign. I do not want to see Mr McKinnon extradited and I feel desperately sympathetic for his predicament.

    • Identity Documents Bill Committee issues call for evidence
    • Airports with body scanners
    • Italy To Install Body Scanners In All Airports, Train Stations

      Interior minister Roberto Maroni said Monday the Italian government planned to install body scanners, which were tested in three major airports, in all airports and train stations nationwide.

    • Body Scanners government consultation
    • Pilley hunt CCTV camera was broken

      A CCTV camera that could have captured the last known movements of missing Edinburgh woman Suzanne Pilley was not working properly and was missing a windscreen wiper, it was revealed yesterday.

    • DNA sample ‘problems’ at North Yorkshire Police

      The storage of forensic evidence at police stations in North Yorkshire has been criticised by inspectors.

      There were problems with the handling of DNA and other samples at custody suites, said a report by the chief inspectors of constabulary and prisons.

    • More Cyberwar Hype: Gov’t Fear Mongering To Get More Control Over The Network

      And then there’s NPR. It recently ran a whole long article about cyberwar that repeatedly suggests that the way to deal with this is to solve the “attribution problem” so that everyone online can be identified. Privacy? Anonymity? Not important, because of this threat — even though no one can provide any proof actually exists. The NPR piece uses Mike McConnell as a key source, highlighting (as everyone does) his former public service positions: former director of the National Security Agency and later the director of national intelligence. What NPR leaves out? Oh, that McConnell is now a Vice President at defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton — a firm that recently scored contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars around this whole bogus cyber war threat.

    • “There’s No Transparency, and I Find that Inexcusable”

      Meet the 82-year-old ex-cop, World War II vet, and private eye who’s challenging one of the largest police departments in the country.

      [...]

      Beltrante asked me to lunch (disclosure: his treat) last month after seeing a column I wrote on the striking lack of transparency among Northern Virginia’s three largest police departments. He wanted to discuss his new organization, the Virginia Citizens Coalition for Police Accountability (VCCPA), which he says he started in order to fight what he calls the “decades of corruption and secrecy at the police department here in Fairfax County.”

    • Who Owns Public Crime Data?
    • 420,000 scam emails sent every hour

      More than 420,000 scam emails are sent every hour in the UK according to a report by CPP which estimates that Brits were targeted by 3.7 billion phishing emails in the last 12 months alone. A quarter of us admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over GBP285 each.

    • Utah prisoner faces death by firing squad

      Should the execution go ahead, it will be the first in Utah for over a decade and only the third time since the death penalty was restored in 1976 that a firing squad has been used. Both previous firing squads – the execution of Gary Gilmore in 1977 and that of John Taylor in 1996 – were used in Utah.

  • Environment

    • US Congress to tell BP boss: you broke rules, cut costs and it ended in disaster

      BP is being accused by a US congressional committee of ignoring warnings, violating its own industry guidelines, and choosing risky procedures in the hope of cutting costs and saving time in the days leading up to the catastrophic explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

    • More Dirty Details From My BP Mole

      Oh, wait. Not nothing: “They’ve brought in prostitutes.” No one knows who the “they” that brought in the pack of hookers is, but the gals have definitely arrived, and you can buy time with one for $200. It only took someone a whole month even to figure out that it would be lucrative to sell sex to guys earning 44 hours of overtime a week and living in camps and converted 18-wheelers.

    • Who’s Liable for the Gulf Oil Spill? You Are.
    • Imperial Oil
    • BP AdWords cashectomy

      Jump now to BP. According to news accounts everywhere, BP is right now trying to influence public discussion of its wild well spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico by purchasing Google AdWords like “oil spill, ” for which the multinational oil company was recently paying Google $1.48, according to NPR. Web sites about the accident, news from the region, environmental or energy policy, or about oiled-up sea birds should notice BP ads appearing on their pages.

    • The Oil Spill the World Forgot

      For example, Royal Dutch Shell’s drilling operations have been spilling oil into the Niger Delta in Nigeria since 1958. Because Nigeria is an impoverished nation and oil revenues fund a majority of government operations, Shell and other companies have been able to drill and pollute without serious oversight for all these years. It is estimated that 13 million barrels of oil have spilled into the delta, making life even more difficult for the region’s destitute residents. Shell blames the constant spills on attacks from “rebels,” who are in fact minority ethnic groups who feel they have been exploited and displaced by foreign oil companies. But Shell would never consider pulling out of the region or finding ways to avoid ethnic strife. Instead, Shell has proceeded with business as usual, and spilled a record 14,000 tons of crude oil into the delta last year.

    • Food prices to rise by up to 40% over next decade, UN report warns

      Food prices are set to rise as much as 40% over the coming decade amid growing demand from emerging markets and for biofuel production, according to a United Nations report today which warns of rising hunger and food insecurity.

    • Solar plane set for night flight

      A solar-powered plane is getting ready to hit the skies once again – this time, at night.

      It will be the first ever manned night flight on a plane propelled exclusively by solar energy.

  • Finance

    • Europe

      • Debt-ridden Greece gets vote of confidence from China

        Greece’s debt-ridden economy has received unexpected endorsement from China as the two countries announced multibillion euro accords to boost cooperation in fields as diverse as shipping, tourism and telecommunications.

      • Britain to expand central bank’s powers

        Britain’s Treasury chief announced an overhaul of his country’s financial regulatory system Wednesday, one which dissolves the country’s finance watchdog and hands broad new powers to its central bank.

      • Troubled Spain hastens labor reforms

        Spain embarked on shaking up its economy Wednesday with labor market reforms designed to encourage companies to hire, enacting long-awaited structural changes as it struggles to reassure markets and investors who are worried over its public finances and pushing Spanish borrowing costs to new highs.

      • EU leaders to call for European, global bank levy

        European Union leaders are set to back a European levy on banks to help pay the costs of future collapses, according to a draft text seen by the Associated Press that will be made public after a Thursday summit.

    • US

      • After “Financial Reform”
      • Negotiators in Congress to Discuss Rule for Brokers

        Will stock and insurance brokers be required to put their clients’ interests before their own?

      • Fannie and Freddie Told to Delist From Stock Exchange

        The mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were ordered to delist from York Stock Exchange by the federal agency that oversees the two companies.

      • Grand jury indicts mortgage co. chief in TARP case

        A federal grand jury has indicted the head of what was once among the largest privately held mortgage lending companies for allegedly scheming to steal more than half a billion dollars from the $700 billion financial bailout.

      • Bank of America workers across US sue for overtime

        Workers for Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), one of the nation’s largest employers, have sued the company for allegedly failing to pay overtime and other wages.

      • Do You Like to Whip It?

        The good news is, we have made huge gains in recent days! We helped organize a press conference with Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on the issue that got huge press. Listen to the audio here. Then three regional Federal Reserve presidents came out in support of the Lincoln derivatives language going up against Big Ben Bernanke, who is against. Plus, Banking Chair Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) has moved from being opposed to saying that Senator Lincoln is “on the right track.” Take a look at our ever-changing whip list and make a call today to a committee member in your state or to Banking Committee Chair Dodd, or House Finance Committee Chair Barney Frank (D-Mass).

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Razing Arizona

      Because communicating a message to voters requires money, it is well established that direct restrictions on campaign spending violate the First Amendment. Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections Act therefore seeks to restrict campaign spending indirectly.

    • Will the Department of Education Crack Down on For-Profit Colleges?

      Naturally, the response of the Career College Association (CCA), a lobbying group and trade organization of over 1,500 for-profit colleges, has been aggressive. The CCA has even thrown together an astroturf organization of career college students, the “Students for Academic Choice.” The industry’s efforts seem to be paying off, and some analysts believe that the gainful employment regulations will be watered down or shelved.

    • Old “News” About Untapped Afghan Minerals

      One could take the story at face value and believe that this was actually, for once, a positive development in an increasingly unpopular and seemingly unnecessary war, but then “the real news” about the news came out. On the same day, after doing a bit of his own research, Paul Jay, CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network revealed that indeed, because “news” is supposed to be about a new development, this wasn’t news at all, but merely well-timed strategic propaganda on the part of the U.S. government.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Jon Stewart on Obama’s broken civil liberties promises

      Here’s Jon Stewart doing eight minutes on the promises that Barack Obama has broken on civil liberties since he took office — from arresting whistleblowers to maintaining the suspension of habeas corpus to continuing warrantless wiretaps to sustaining extraordinary rendition to authorizing the execution of American citizens without trial outside of combat zones.

    • Toolkit: A Look at the Gear That Experts Use to Spy on Spies

      When companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Liberty Mutual Insurance are worried that someone is bugging their boardrooms or tapping their phone lines, they call Kevin Murray. He heads one of the most sophisticated surveillance-detection firms this side of the FBI.

    • The Government Now Wants ISPs To Link Your Online History With Your Passport

      Last week we were duly shocked by the discovery that the government is looking into a proposal to make ISPs retain a log of every website you ever visit. Now it’s coming out that they may want ISPs to link that information to other personal data like your passport number.

      Ben Grubb over at ZDNet broke the original story, and yesterday followed it up with a deeper insight into the proposed scheme. While the government is denying it would capture individual browsing histories, unnamed sources from ISPs are saying that the original data set sent to ISPs from the government said that they’d require allied personal information, including passport numbers.

    • Fixing the CDA 230 Subsidy While Preserving Online Anonymity

      Anonymous online speech can be powerful and beneficial. You are free to leave anonymous or pseudonymous comments on this site, which encourages free discussion of political issues. Protesters in Iran can spread ideas, corporate whistleblowers can speak out, and the government is deterred from at least one form of intrusion into personal life. On a personal level, you can explore your identity, research controversial causes or issues, or just vent frustration. All of these are good things and worthy of preservation.

    • Terror data handover seriously flawed

      The European Union has redrafted its agreement with the US Treasury which requires Europe’s financial institutions to transfer details of global financial transactions to the US. The revised Draft Agreement is to be put to the European Parliament in July for approval, despite a text containing significant privacy defects and obvious areas of drafting in need of urgent attention.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Does a couch violate Humphrey Bogart’s rights?

      The plaintiff says it has been paid millions of dollars in licensing fees for the use of the “Bogart” name in connection with the Thomasville “Bogart” furniture line. Having another “Bogart” on the market is threatening. The plaintiff wants an injunction and $1 million in damages for the alleged, um, bogarting of the actor’s name and likeness.

    • Langdell Still Claims Control Over The Word Edge; Sues EA For Mirror’s Edge

      Not surprisingly, they play up Langdell’s position, and leave out the abandonment of the trademark, the lack of any likelihood of confusion and other pertinent details along those lines. Trademark law, despite Langdell’s apparent belief, does not give a company full control over a word, especially if they’re not using it. No one is confusing Mirror’s Edge with Langdell’s ancient games.

    • ‘Hurt Locker’ producers drop First Amendment bomb on Iraq War vet

    • Censorship

      • Warner Pulls the Plug on ‘We Con the World’

        Warner Brothers of course, are the second half of the business entity Time-Warner, which also owns as part of its conglomeration of businesses CNN. In 2009, CNN tried to claim a copyright violation over the video shot by an individual of the Tea Partiers grilling then CNN “reporter” Susan Roesgen, until the guys at Founding Bloggers fought for their clip to be restored at YouTube.

        And that’s what a lot of this is all about: by claiming copyright violations real or imagined, Warners and other entities can get clips pulled from the Internet’s largest host of videos for several weeks or months. These videos frequently wind up on smaller sites of course (such as the aforementioned Eyeblast), and those who initiate claims against them often lose their battles, if the video makers are prepared to fight back. But by then, much of the news value of these sorts of clips has dissipated.

      • Rapidshare Countersues Perfect 10 For Being A ‘Copyright Troll’ Who Only ‘Shakes Down’ Others

        Now it looks like Rapidshare has struck back. Eric Goldman points out that Rapidshare has countersued Perfect 10, directly claiming that the company is a “copyright troll.” They don’t mince words:

        Perfect 10 Is A Copyright Troll that Does Not Operate A Real Business

        Perfect 10 is a copyright troll that does not operate a real business and instead seeks to foster the spread of infringing copies of works that it owns over the Internet in order to entrap and shakedown websites and services where copies of its images may randomly end up.

        Perfect 10 does not have the employees or attributes of a legitimate business. Today, Perfect 10 is essentially a paralegal service masquerading as a porn company. It is run by its founder, Norm Zada, out of his Beverly Hills home with the help of full and part time employees who are paid primarily to troll the Internet looking for (but not removing) allegedly infringing copies of Perfect 10 images for use in existing or potential future litigation and to draft declarations and other papers.

        Perfect 10 is so litigious that Judge Matz of the Central District of California, before whom a number of Perfect 10 cases had been consolidated, has made it clear to Perfect 10 that it should not file any more lawsuits, which is why it filed this suit in the Southern District of California even though this district has no connection to the parties or the underlying claims.

      • The Viacom Kerfuffle

        A couple of days ago John Green of Vlogbrothers posted a video about Viacom, YouTube, Spike.com’s video channel, and Jonathan Coulton. In it he discussed the Viacom YouTube suit and used my “Flickr” video to illustrate something. Watch the video for a complete explanation, but in a nutshell he was pointing out that Viacom was serving up my “Flickr” video with ads on while at the same time suing YouTube for serving up Viacom content with ads on YouTube. He encouraged people to email Viacom asking them where my proceeds from the ad revenue were, said proceeds being either $37 or $13,000 depending on how you do the math.

      • Is Forcing IsoHunt To Block Search Terms A First Amendment Violation?

        Given similar rulings, and the judge’s comments so far in the IsoHunt case, I find it quite unlikely that the company has any chance of getting out from under the injunction issued against it.

    • Copyrights

      • US Government Told Piracy Losses Are Exaggerated

        At a hearing yesterday, several experts told the US International Trade Commission that many of the estimates of piracy losses touted by the entertainment industries were inflated or misleading. Others claimed that current enforcement methods aren’t working and suggested they try something else.

      • Director Sam Bozzo On BitTorrent and the Movie Industry

        Last month an early cut of the unreleased movie Hackers Wanted found its way to BitTorrent. As the director’s cut of the movie also leaked out last night, TorrentFreak caught up with director Sam Bozzo who through the prism of 15 years in movie making gives his opinion on how leaks, BitTorrent and file-sharing affects the industry.

      • For Staunch Copyright Defenders, Big Singers From Big Labels Seem To Copy From Others A Lot…
      • Could Collection Societies Help Up-And-Coming Artists With A 20/80 Distribution System?

        It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of music collection societies in general. I tend to think that once they get the right to collect they begin to abuse that power in ways that actually harm musicians and songwriters more than help them. That’s because once they’re given a right to demand payments, they continually look to expand that right: covering more areas and increasing the amount they can demand.

        [...]

        I’m still not totally convinced that this would work, and I’m also not convinced that the collection society setup is even worth saving at all. But if such societies are going to be around (and it’s almost certain they’re not going anywhere), then we might as well look at ways to make them actually help more musicians, rather than simply propping up the top of the top, while holding back new comers.

      • Industry Minister defends the Canadian DMCA

        The latest episode of the TVOntario Search Engine podcast is an interview with Industry Minister Tony Clement, the Canadian minister who co-introduced the punishing new Canadian copyright law that contains even harsher restrictions against breaking “digital locks” than the US DMCA, a 12-year-old trainwreck of a law. Host Jesse Brown really does a good job here, getting Clement to squirm over the question of turning Canadians into crooks for breaking the locks on their own property.

      • ISP Attempt To Block File-Sharing Ends in Epic Failure

        In response to the country’s “3 strikes” Hadopi legislation, last week a French ISP began offering a service to block file-sharing on customer connections for ‘just’ 2 euros per month. It didn’t take long for awful vulnerabilities in the system to be found which breached not only the privacy of subscribers, but exposed them to new security threats.

    • ACTA

      • FSF says: Take a stand with us for freedom, against ACTA
      • Support a firm, simple declaration against ACTA

        # ACTA must respect sharing and cooperation: it must do nothing that would hinder the unremunerated noncommercial making, copying, giving, lending, owning, using, transporting, importing or exporting of any objects or works.

        # ACTA must not weasel about what is commercial: no labeling of any noncommercial activities as somehow commercial-like or treating them as if they were commercial.

      • Red Letter Day for ACTA in EU: Let’s Use It
      • ACTA restricts developing economies, India tells WTO

        A secret trade agreement designed to harmonise some countries’ intellectual property laws could destabilise existing international agreements and harm the economic prospects of developing countries, India has said.

        The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a secret IP treaty being negotiated by the US, Japan, the European Commission and others outside of the normal international trade bodies the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Clip of the Day

Richard Spiers – CLUG Talk 30 September 2008 – GStreamer (2008)


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