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09.21.11

Links 21/9/2011: Pardus 2011.2, Red Hat’s Results Impress

Posted in News Roundup at 4:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • The Model For Windows 8 Is Linux

      Linux has been more than competitive with Windows for a decade, thanks in part to the Apache Web server. It is more than competitive on tablets and phones, thanks to Google’s Android, now being forked by Amazon and Baidu. It gets laughed at, and perhaps rightly so, because it’s week on the desktop. “This is the year of desktop Linux,” is a running gag.

    • Building the Ultimate Modern Linux Desktop

      Despite what we’ve read in various Linux articles lately, there’s a world beyond Ubuntu and their Unity desktop experience. Fact is, you can actually still stick with Ubuntu if you choose to and not feel obligated to use their choice for a desktop experience.

      In short, Unity isn’t mandatory for people who want access to the rest of the Ubuntu experience. In this article, I’ll show how you can take part in the benefits of using Ubuntu without limiting your desktop experience to Ubuntu’s ideals.

      [...]

      On my desktop, I rely on Compiz Fusion. So the idea of using a dock that relies on that technology was a natural fit for me. In the end, I wound up with the Awn dock due to its useful functionality. Not only can I duplicate almost anything that Gnome panels or Unity might have to offer, but I can theme my Awn dock to look more appealing.

  • Server

    • To CFD, or Not to CFD?

      OpenFOAM (Open Source Field Operation and Manipulation) basically is a set of C++ libraries that are used in the various processing steps. OpenFOAM, just like most other CFD packages, breaks down the work to be done into three separate steps. The first step is called pre-processing. In pre-processing, you define the problem you are trying to model. This involves defining the boundary conditions given by the solid objects in your model. You also describe the characteristics of the fluid you are trying to model, including viscosity, density and any other properties that are important for your model. The next step is called the solver step. This is where you actually solve the equations that describe your model. The third step is called post-processing. This is where you take a look at the results and visualize them so that you can see what happens in your model. An obvious consequence of this breakdown is that most of the computational work takes place during the solver phase. The pre- and post-processing steps usually can be done on a desktop, while the solver step easily can use up 50 or 100 processors. OpenFOAM includes several pre- and post-processing utilities, along with several solvers. But the real power comes from the fact that, because OpenFOAM is library-based, you can build your own utilities or solvers by using OpenFOAM as a base. This is very useful in a research environment where you may be trying something no one else ever has.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • You can’t go Gnome again

        AS a user of Ubuntu Linux since 1996, I viewed with some trepidation the decision by its commercial sponsor, Canonical, to revamp its user interface, which was based on the Gnome desktop. Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to Gnome’s simple elegance, which I found gave me a surprising amount of freedom to customize my desktop environment. Combined with special effects from programs such as Compiz and Emerald, my Gnome-based Ubuntu desktop was truly beautiful.

        But starting with the current release (11.04), Ubuntu began sporting the Unity interface, a system that Canonical designed from scratch, obviously with an eye to touch-screen functionality and the simplicity of point-and-drag menus favored by smart phone users.

      • Richard Hughes on color management in Linux and GNOME

        Color management on Linux used to be a thing for brave boys and girls in the past. Two years ago the GNOME Color Manager project led by Richard Hughes and powered by Argyll color management system made a major breakthrough to fix it once and for all. Now that GNOME 3.2 is just a week away, we decided to corner Richard and ask him some very direct questions.

  • Distributions

    • Pardus 2011.2 screenshot preview

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

      • Stabilizations: situation stable

        I just checked and x86 and amd64 bug queues are fully under control. I’d even say we’re now doing stabilizations faster than maintainers can file new bugs and fix stabilization blockers.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Shares Poised for Earnings Pop

        The earnings calendar is unusually busy this week, with a number of big names on the schedule. Any time you can find Nike (NYSE:NKE), FedEx (NYSE:FDX), and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) in the same week, things could be interesting.

        One of the smaller names on the docket this week is Red Hat (NYSE:RHT). The open-source business software maker reports on Wednesday after the close.

      • Red Hat to release earnings on Wednesday
      • Red Hat (RHT) Shares Given a “Overweight” Rating by Piper Jaffray (PJC) Analysts

        Red Hat last announced its quarterly results on Wednesday, June 22nd. The company reported $0.24 earnings per share (EPS) for the previous quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters consensus estimate of $0.22 EPS by $0.02. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 26.6% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts predict that Red Hat will post $0.25 EPS next quarter.

      • Open Virtualization Alliance adds 100-plus members

        The Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies, today announced total membership of more than 200, up from 65 in just over three months. New members include CA Technologies, DataStax and Jaspersoft.

      • Want to work for Red Hat?

        Respond quickly via email (spot@redhat.com) with your resume/CV and sales pitch as to why I should consider you for a job at Red Hat. This is a limited time opportunity, and I guarantee nothing. :)

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Interview: Stuart Langridge, Strategic Architect for Ubuntu One

            In this interview with Strategic Architect for Ubuntu One, Stuart Langridge, I kick off the first of a series of articles about Ubuntu One.

            Today, we’ll learn a little more about Langridge and his involvement with Ubuntu One and a brief overview along with future plans for this personal cloud service.

          • Ubuntu Linux and Wayland Display Server: Status Update

            Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wayland graphical server for Ubuntu, the Linux distribution, in fall 2010. Wayland for Ubuntu news made headlines. But almost a year later, Wayland for Ubuntu remains in development and the venerable X server won’t be going anywhere soon — which is not surprising, since replacing a display system that has dominated the open source world for decades is hard work. But when can we expect Wayland for Ubuntu to hit the mainstream? Read on for some updates.

          • Free ‘Ubuntu Software Centre’ Guide Released
          • Ubuntu Software Center: Streamline Your Software Experience

            The Ubuntu Vancouver Local Community believes that one barrier to the widespread adoption of Ubuntu’s ethos and its collection of outstanding software is a shortage of well-written and accessible user guides. Guides that make people say “Wow! I didn’t know Ubuntu is that easy. I didn’t know Ubuntu could make my life easier and more fun!”

            The Ubuntu Software Center is one of the most important components of Ubuntu. It’s the entry point for new users into the universe of excellent software that is written with freedom in mind. It’s our delivery channel. It’s an Ubuntu first (now copied by a fruit company), and it’s full of amazing.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Industrial-focused Cortex-A8 SoCs offer CAN support, imaging subsystem

      Texas Instruments (TI) announced three ARM Cortex-A8 system on chips (SoCs) featuring a camera imaging subsystem, a wide range of peripheral support including CAN-bus, and an optional evaluation board. Aimed at industrial applications, the Linux- and Android-ready AM387x triplets all feature 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 cores, while two of them offer video subsystems and the top-of-the-line AM3874 is endowed with a 3D accelerator.

    • Phones

      • Samsung plans to make Bada open source

        As part of a drive to increase the reach of its own brand OS, the firm has let slip its plan to release Bada to developers and device makers. The change will occur sometime next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

      • Samsung Looking to Open-Source Bada [REPORT]

      • Android

        • Samsung Galaxy SIII Leaked

          According to the information the Galaxy SIII will come with a quad-core , yes quad not dual, 2.0 Ghz processor and a whopping 1.5GB of RAM. The multi-tasking performance of such a device will be incredible and we’re already excited about the gaming prospects of the device.

        • 5 Free Android apps for capturing ideas and thoughts

          Many writers and bloggers often need to jot down important ideas that they come across. For years, people have relied on notepads, sticky notes and even paper napkins. Even though the traditional method is the best, there are some tech-savvy folks like us who prefer using their smartphones to do the same. If you’re one of those people, then here are some of the best Android applications for capturing new ideas and thoughts.

        • Google preps developers for one-size-fits-all Android update
        • Do You Still Care That Android is Open Sourced? (Op-Ed)

          Android is ubiquitous because it is free and not because it is open source. Except for the popular Cyanogen mods, the FOSS aspect has largely been ignored by most of the ODM’s. Witness the poor implementations of Android devices by Archos, Augen, Camangi, and countless other Tier Three AKA Chinese manufacturers and the animosity towards UI’s like Sense and MotoBLUR. If the FOSS was so easy to take advantage of then why are only a handful of developers able to deliver a customer experience that was comparable to Google’s? And even Cyanogen AKA Steve Kondik only bothered to modify the ‘with Google’ version.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Google preps developers for one-size-fits-all Android update

        Google is preparing Android developers for the latest edition of its Android mobile operating platform that will work the same on both tablets and smartphones.

        Scott Main, the lead tech writer for Google’s Android Developers Blog, Monday reminded developers that the newest edition of Android — dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich” — will “support big screens, small screens and everything in between.” Main also emphasized that Android would maintain “the same version … on all screen sizes” going forward.

      • Preparing for Handsets

        Early this year, Honeycomb (Android 3.0) launched for tablets. Although Honeycomb remains tablets-only, the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) release will support big screens, small screens, and everything in between. This is the way Android will stay from now on: the same version runs on all screen sizes.

Free Software/Open Source

  • BRIC Countries A Huge Opportunity For FLOSS

    Brazil, Russia, India and China all have governments that support use of FLOSS for many different reasons: cost, security, local economies and building IT infrastructure. They also contain 40% of the global market for PCs and have high rates of growth.

  • Events

    • XDC2011 Chicago Recap: Open-Source Graphics, GPGPU, OpenGL 3.0

      For those that missed out on attending XDC2011 Chicago in person or missed out on the Phoronix coverage due to the Intel Developer Forum and other events taking place last week, here’s a re-cap of the interesting bits of information that were revealed during this year’s developers conference that focused upon open-source graphics drivers, GPGPU / OpenCL computing, and open-source OpenGL 3.0 driver support being just around the corner. Here’s also a collection of photos from the event.

  • Web Browsers

    • Acid3 Test Simplified; All Modern Browsers Score 100

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla may shorten Firefox’s six-week release schedule to five weeks… or less

        Mozilla, not content with its monumental shift from four major builds in five years down to a new stable build every six weeks, is looking at outputting a new release every five weeks, or perhaps even less.

        Christian Legnitto, a project manager at Mozilla (and currently the “release manager” of Firefox), announced the intention to shift to a shorter release cycle on Mozilla’s planning mailing list. In response to one developer citing the success of the six-week release cycle, and asking whether it would be feasible to speed it up even further, Legnitto said: “Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle,” but recognizing the pains caused by the sped-up process, he added “But it won’t be soon. We have some work to do to make 6 weeks smooth from a process, tool, and product side.”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle v. Google – Update on ’702 Reexamination

      One of the patents asserted in the Oracle v. Google case, U.S. Patent No. 5,966,702 [PDF], is subject to an ex parte reexamination as we have earlier reported. Oracle has now filed their response [PDF] to the first office action [PDF] in this reexamination. Not surprisingly, Oracle contends that the art cited by the examiner in the first office action is not relevant and that all of the claims should reissue as is.

  • CMS

  • Healthcare

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • More partisanship from free software leadership

      But Stallman mentions open source with his little air quotes to make sure that when he’s talking about non-free software, he’s also lumping open source with proprietary software in that descriptor. It’s not enough that he disagrees with open source (which is his right, of course), but he also needs to belittle it as much as possible.

  • Public Services/Government

    • NASA unbolts open source space applications challenge

      NASA said it will coordinate with other interested space agencies around the world on an International Space Apps Challenge that will encourage scientists and concerned citizens from all seven continents – and in space – to create, build, and invent new applications that can address world-class issues.

    • MT: Number of open source applications on government desktops doubled

      The number of open source applications installed by default on desktop PCs of public administrations in Malta has increased by 47 percent, between December 2009 and May 2011, says Michel Bugeja, enterprise architect at Malta’s Information Technology Agency (MITA). “The biggest increase is on tools to handle PDFs, for creating diagrams, for mind mapping and for project management.”

Leftovers

  • UEFI secure booting

    The UEFI secure boot protocol is part of recent UEFI specification releases. It permits one or more signing keys to be installed into a system firmware. Once enabled, secure boot prevents executables or drivers from being loaded unless they’re signed by one of these keys. Another set of keys (Pkek) permits communication between an OS and the firmware. An OS with a Pkek matching that installed in the firmware may add additional keys to the whitelist. Alternatively, it may add keys to a blacklist. Binaries signed with a blacklisted key will not load.

  • Government Provides Details on Do-Not-Call Enforcement

  • Hardware

    • Intel downstream partners request CPU price drop

      Executives from Intel’s PC partners – Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin and Compal Electronics president Ray Chen both have invoked Intel to help drop the Ultrabook price to below US$1,000 by reducing the CPU price.

  • Finance

    • SEC’s Proposed Rule To Stop Banks From Profiting At Investors’ Expense

      Underwriters or sponsors of asset-backed securities would be banned for one year from taking positions to profit from investors’ losses under a plan released by U.S. securities regulators on Monday.

      The proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission would get at the very heart of issues raised by U.S. Senate investigators in a report earlier this year that accused Goldman Sachs of positioning itself to profit from clients’ losses on complex securities that it packaged and sold.

      The proposal would also prohibit the kinds of conflicts that were seen in the SEC’s civil case against Goldman in 2010 by banning third parties from helping assemble an asset-backed pool that would let those parties profit from investors’ losses.

    • Tech Firms Facing the Abyss

      There seems to be quite a few tech companies in trouble these days. In fact, in an article published yesterday on 24/7 Wall Street, tech firms represent six out of the eight major companies listed as being in troubled financial waters. There aren’t any surprises here for anyone who’s been paying attention, but a year or so ago most of us wouldn’t have suspected that some of these companies would even be capable of falling on hard times.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Claimed Monopolies Over ‘Running A Game of Skill Tournament’

      Apparently the Game Show Network felt it could just steal another company’s property by having a computer match, rank and distribute awards to competing contestants based on their relative skill levels. They obviously need to pay dearly for this moral outrage…

    • Patents finance illegal drug company payoffs to doctors and worse

      Dean Baker takes issue with a Washington Post story link here on doctors shilling for drugs and drug companies paying them big money to push greater use of their drug including for uses prohibited by FDA link here.

      The Post article is a routine description (“fair and balanced” as the big papers like to claim) leading to the fact that the doctors are well-paid for what amounts to treating patients while never seeing them. In some cases they push uses that are criminal, as when they recommend or prescribe a drug for unapproved use.

09.20.11

Links 20/9/2011: GeeXboX 2.0, Birthday for Mageia

Posted in News Roundup at 5:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Turns Twenty Years Old As It Continues To Take Over The World
  • Linux at 20, some personal memories
  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 165
  • Linux Counter Project

  • Desktop

    • Hands on with the first Chromebook

      We get hands on with Samsung’s Series 5 3G, the first Chromebook on the market and the international role model for Google’s ambitious new PC landscape.

      After a pilot program in December in which Google shipped out the first prototype Cr48 Chromebooks to beta testers in the United States, the first commercial Chromebooks started shipping in June to the United States and a handful of European countries.

  • Server

    • CMS Tool MemHT Names A2 Hosting Preferred Hosting Partner

      A2 Hosting says its MemHT hosting accounts include cPanel, free CloudFlare CDN service, free Server Rewind backups, the CloudLinux OS and Attracta tools to improve Google listing and rank.

    • Looking For i In All The Wrong Places

      Once again IBM has done a fine job of making Power Systems all about Unix and Linux. It’s as interesting that this presentation is listed on the IBM i home page as it is that a presentation like this gets made with essentially no recognition that IBM i is part of the Power Systems equation. You can find it under the heading of “Special Offers,” where none of the four offers have anything to do with i.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Podcast: Pete Savage
    • Podcast Season 3 Episode 18

      In this episode: Ubuntu should move to a monthly release, according to Scott Remnant. Bruce Perens has come up with a new scheme for copyright ownership and Linux Format turns 150. Hear how successful we are at discovering things, building mesh networks and thinking up excuses.

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: Coming in 3.1 (Part 3) – Architecture, infrastructure, virtualisation

      Linux 3.1 contains all the necessary components for passing through PCI devices to Xen guests; KVM offers rudimentary nested virtualisation support for Intel CPUs. Supported CPU platforms now include the OpenRISC open source processor architecture.

    • Graphics Stack

      • The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison

        Last month I alluded to a 40-way graphics card comparison being worked on at Phoronix. This comparison is to extensively compare the performance of the open and closed-source drivers for each graphics card and to comprehensively comment on other areas of the Linux graphics driver support. Not only is the OpenGL performance being evaluated, but the thermal performance, CPU utilization, and power consumption is being looked at too. Being published today to mark the beginning of the Oktoberfest 2011 articles are the ATI/AMD Radeon results. This includes 28 of the 40 graphics cards, with GPUs as old as the Radeon X800XL and as new as the AMD Radeon HD 6950.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • The many faces of Linux.

      Human beans of the two legged kind love variety. That is why we always are changing the drapes, moving the furniture and continuously buying new clothes. We like to show our individuality in the way we present our personal surroundings to other people.

      Yet when it comes to compooters there is no such choice for many people. Because they use proprietary operating systems they are very limited in choice for what they can do to customise their “computer room” and have it look and work in a manner to suit their individuality.

    • All Change?

      Two developments in the Linux world have spawned a hell of an amount of comment: Canonical’s decision to develop Unity for Ubuntu and the arrival of GNOME 3. While there have been many complaints about the changes made in both, there must be a fair few folk who are just getting on with using them without complaint. Maybe there are many who even quietly like the new interfaces. While I am not so sure about Unity, I surprised myself by taking to GNOME Shell so much that I installed it on Linux Mint. It remains a work in progress as does Unity but it’ll be very interesting to see it mature. Perhaps a good number of the growing collection of GNOME Shell plugins could make it into the main codebase. If that were to happen, I could see it being welcomed by a good few folk.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • plasma active workshop: day 0

        The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously busy. Or, if you prefer (and I do): ridicubusy. On the personal side of life, I managed to squeeze in a two day paddle-and-camping trip the other weekend, played dinner host to Lawrence Krauss (made some of my favourite dishes, and one new one (for me, anyways): egg yolk ravioli), co-hosted a “Ready, Steady, Cook!” evening at the house along with S. All of that was enjoyable, and great breaks between the long hours of working on Plasma and general KDE “stuff”.

  • Distributions

    • NetbootCD Installs and Updates Multiple Linux Distros on One Disc

      Linux fans, do you burn CDs for multiple distros and have to update those CDs when a new version comes out? As long as you have access to a wired internet connection you can download the latest versions of 7 distros directly from the disc.

      A CD-ROM burned with NetbootCD allows you to download and install the latest versions of CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Slackware, or Ubuntu.

    • NetbootCD installs multiple Linux distros on one disc
    • Taking a long look at Salix OS 13.37

      From the beginning the Salix OS developers made clear that they had no intention of competing with Ubuntu or Mandriva and they were not trying to create a newcomer-friendly distribution that would be easy for Windows or MacOS users. Rather, they described the target audience as “lazy Slackers.” I’ve always understood that to mean Linux users who want the reliability, stability and performance that Slackware consistently delivers but who also want modern conveniences and features like automated dependency resolution, automated notification when patches are available and a first class set of tools to administer their systems. If those are truly the goals then Salix OS meets them admirably.

    • Is Salix XFCE 13.37 better than 13.1.2?

      Nobody can argue there are 2 major Desktop Environments now in Linux world: GNOME and KDE take lion part in installed Linux desktop systems. Most Linux distributions are released with at least one of them available.
      But since system requirements for resources of KDE and GNOME are rather high and growing, there is more and more space for lighter desktop environments like LXDE and XFCE.

    • Curse of the semi power user

      I am beginning to feel this curse with the choice of distributions available today. Let me start with a little background information. I have been a regular Linux user on desktops and servers since about 2006. In that time I have mostly worked with Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS. I have had the pleasure of building a desktop from the ground up using a Debian net install CD. I have setup other users with Ubuntu and Fedora on desktops and netbooks. I have installed new servers and re-purposed retired ones. In short, I can be considered a semi power user, still not among the experts but a bit better than an average user. And this is where the curse strikes most often.

    • Building an OS: The workflow!

      The project I’ve been working on does require a bit of thought around enterprise Linux versions run by a community. There is the ever amazing CentOS, Scientific Linux and a few others who have been around the block a time or two. The work that they have done has been immense and very helpful to many, including me.

      For my project, the work was about building a fully binary compatible, enterprise-ready, community version of Linux, very similar to what CentOS and others have done. The question always comes ‘why?’ which will be addressed later on in future posts. Suffice it to say, the work we’ve been doing has paid off in both a individual and community sense.

    • New Releases

      • IPFire 2.9 – Core Update 52 released
      • pfSense 2.0
      • Macpup 528

        Macpup is a small,light OS. The .Iso is only 164 MB.It runs in ram and is very fast. It is not a striped down,bare bones,basic core OS. Macpup is a full featured systemright out of the box with apps for office,graphics,multimedia,internetand much more.And it looks really cool.

      • GeeXboX 2.0 has landed

        After countless years of development, the 2.0 release of GeeXboX (codename “Love It or Shove It”) finally has landed. The GeeXboX project was created in December 2002, 9 years ago, to become the major HTPC / MediaCenter dedicated Linux distribution. From a ridiculous 3 MB ISO image, using an ultra-simple customized version of MPlayer OSD, GeeXboX now has evolved into a much more mature system. Our objective always has been to provide you with a Linux distribution, so easy to use, that anyone, regardless of any computer skill, would be able to make use of it.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Happy Birthday Mageia!

        Yesterday, September 18, was Mageia’s first birthday. It was one year ago that a fork of Mandrake Linux was announced. From the start Mageia decided to take a new tack in distribution development. They synthesized the community and professional models of development in way no other had quite done before and it’s paying off. Mageia recently unleashed their inaugural release and received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Earnings Preview: Red Hat Reports Results Wednesday

        Red Hat, Inc. provides open source software solutions to enterprises worldwide. It also offers enterprise-ready open source operating system platforms. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

        * 52 Week High: $49.00
        * 52 Week Low: $31.77
        * Book Value: $6.88
        * Float Short: 2.06%

      • Fedora Community

    • Debian Family

      • Linux Mint (Debian) 201109 Gnome and Xfce Final Release

        The bottom line: I have been recommending Linux Mint for quite some time now – I happen to have gotten back an ASUS netbook from a friend over the weekend which was loaded with Linux Mint 8, and had been in daily use without a hiccup for a couple of years. The only change now is that I will be recommending the Mint Debian editions first, rather then the Mint Ubuntu editions. If you haven’t tried Linux Mint yet, this would be a very good time to do so.

      • Debian Project News – September 19th, 2011

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Installing Software On Ubuntu Systems

          The stunningly fast ability to install applications at a moments notice is one of the primary reasons Linux is so popular. Ubuntu systems by default comes with the Synaptic package manager or the Ubuntu software center, whichever you prefer. You can also install packages from the internet or from the command line. New items are downloaded through software repositories which store collections of applications that are bundled into packages. When you choose an item to install from the package manager all relevant packages required by an application will also be installed. When you install Ubuntu only the official application repositories are accessed but more can be added without too much trouble.

        • Update Software in Ubuntu
        • Backups and Distro Upgrading

          I don’t recommend using Déjà Dup to hold your data when you upgrade distros (e.g. from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10) without understanding the risks.

        • Series: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – Part 5
        • Recent Unity Updates Bring Changes to Workspaces Overview, Alt+Tab & Unity Launcher
        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 233

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Trisquel 5.0 Released

            In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.

          • Bodhi Linux Service Pack 2 Ready

            Ten days ago the Bodhi Team and I released our second update to Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 Today I am happy to let all of our users that have limited or no-internet access machines know that our service pack 2 is ready for download. For those that do not know our service packs allow for a single download upgrade of your Bodhi system from the previous stable release to the current (those still on Bodhi 1.0.0 will need to install service pack 1 followed by service pack 2).

          • Kubuntu 11.10 Beta Test Drive

            Canonical recently released its Beta version of Kubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, with all eyes toward the final release scheduled for October 13. We take a look at this release and the new KDE 4.7 Desktop and Netbook Plasma Workspaces.

          • Trying out Pinguy 11.04

            Regular readers might remember my review of Pinguy OS 10.10.1 this past April.

          • Linux Mint 11 Saves the Day

            A friend of mine brought me his computer for fixing, a Compaq Presario with XP Home. It was in a reboot loop. I told him about Linux, and all its advantages, and he agreed to try it. I grabbed my PCLinuxOS CD and installed it in a matter minutes. Everything was working, but something about that particular hardware was not sitting well with it. It kept freezing. This is the first time I see this, as all other machines I have installed it on have been very stable. My guess is that it has to do with the graphics. The machine has and old built-in Intel graphics adapter. I did not have a proper graphics card laying around to give him, so I figured I wouldn’t fight it.

          • Installing Linux Mint LXDE – Why Linux Mint LXDE?

            I decided to install Linux Mint LXDE for one reason really – I use a Dell Vostro with 2gb RAM and a Core2Duo running at 2.2ghz. I simply wanted the fasted machine possible given the spec of the hardware.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Low-vision eyewear runs Linux-compatible Unison 5.2 RTOS

      RoweBots announced that its minimalist, Linux- and POSIX-compatible “Unison” real-time operating system (RTOS) powers eSight’s Alivios Intelligent Eyewear. Currently in clinical trials, Alivios helps to improve vision in people with eye diseases such as macular degeneration, combining Unison OS 5.2, a Texas Instruments (TI) DaVinci processor, an HD video camera, and “near-to-eye” displays, says the company.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • What’s Android?

          With 500,000 activations a day, Android is becoming the dominant player in the mobile eco-system…

        • MyGreatFest – The iDroidProject Takes To The Stage

          Back in 2008, the project initially began under the name of the “iPhone Linux Project.” This project aimed to boot a Linux kernel, and by the end of 2008, this aim had been achieved. The year after, the hacker behind the iPhone Linux Project surprised everybody by presenting a working first-generation iPhone running Android OS: The iDroid Project was born.

        • Android market share doubles while Apple IOS falls eight per cent

          According to data from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, in the 12 weeks ended 7 August, Android had 47.1 per cent share of the UK smartphone market, compared with 22.9 per cent during the same period a year earlier.

          Apple’s IOS however, has fallen by eight per cent to 20.8 per cent share from 28 per cent a year earlier, as Android surged in popularity.

          RIM’s Blackberry OS was the second most popular with 21.5 per cent of the market, up four per cent from 17.4 per cent a year earlier.

        • Prepaid Android 2.3 phone features 1GHz processor, QWERTY keyboard

          Prepaid phone provider Boost Mobile announced a mid-range Samsung smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard and a $230 no-contract price tag. The Samsung Transform Ultra runs Android 2.3 on a 1GHz processor, and offers 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a three-megapixel camera, a front-facing VGA webcam, and Android Market support, the mobile provider says.

        • Epic 4G Touch powers up nicely with 4G, dual-core, and a ‘Super’ display

          Samsung’s Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch is a mouthful to say and a handful to hold, but the 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Sprint’s 4G WiMAX network make it worth the $200 on contract, says this review. Battery life suffers on 4G, but from the 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display to the responsive cameras, there’s a lot to like.

        • Android’s last obstacle overcome – Rocket Launcher

Free Software/Open Source

  • FLOSS, A Better Way To DO IT

    If there ever was evidence that FLOSS is a better way to do IT, the smart phone is it:

    * lots of choices for the consumer
    * Android/Linux (FLOSS OS from Google) shipments at 47.1% of the market, up 105% over last year

  • Packt announce Finalists for 2011 Open Source Awards
  • Does open source exclude high context cultures?

    High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.

    Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.

  • Z: The open source generation

    Generation Z is beginning to join the workforce. This age group–born between the early 1990s and early 2000s–has never really existed in a world without the web or lacking the widespread use of cell phones, laptops, and freely available wireless networks and digital media.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

    • To SQL or NoSQL – that’s not the question

      If you haven’t heard about NoSQL by now, we contend that you’ve been in hiding for the past three years. The term NoSQL itself refers to a broad class of data management that is not based on the traditional relational tables in typical RDBMS. Examples include document-based data storage such as MongoDB, key-value pair such as Riak, or column-based storage such as HBase.

      While assessing usage of NoSQL, we are often presented with the CAP model which is great from the theoretical perspective, but grasping its implications on real world enterprise systems is difficult.

      In this post, we’ll explain some of the design factors and the associated implications of using NoSQL in the context of three data-centric enterprise applications: Portal, Reporting and Analytics. Enterprise transactional systems are not included for obvious reasons.

    • Oracle adding close source extensions to MySQL

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Business

  • Funding

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Sony v World: Counter-attack

    The latest salvo in Sony v World is that Sony wants users of its Playstation Network to agree not to sue. Imagine going into a “mom and pop” shop on the street and telling the clerk, “I’d like to buy that can of unhomogenized peanut butter.” only to be told, “Sorry, we don’t do business with people who might sue us…”. That should not be part of any model of business no matter the size. Businesses should compete on price/performance and let their quality of service fend off attacks. If people don’t hate you, they are unlikely to sue. That works for me. I have never been sued.

  • Trolling

  • Finance

    • Goldman to close Global Alpha fund
    • HOT: Goldman, Sachs Acted as Exclusive Financial Advisor to Solyndra…

      When it comes to government money, it’s always about insiders running circles around the government money and pocketing a piece. Don’t ever forget that. And usually, there is a crony investment banker as part of the program.

    • Goldman Sachs CEO hires criminal defense lawyer

      Lloyd Blankfein retains Reid Weingarten amid the governments inquiry into the financial crisis. The move hints there could be new push to investigate the firm and its executives on criminal grounds.

    • There Are Two Big Reasons Why Goldman Sachs Just Got Sued For Fraud Again

      The FHFA’s massive bank lawsuit extravaganza is a reminder of the horrific behavior that took place inside the subprime mortgage machine: fraud.

      In it’s lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, the FHFA claims that Goldman directly committed common law fraud, and particularly claims that Goldman “aided and abetted fraud.”

    • Even the smart money is flummoxed by this economy

      Small investors, take note: The smart money isn’t sure what to make of the economy, either.

      Some market strategists say the recent drop in stock prices means the market is expecting a recession. Banks like Goldman Sachs and others have lowered their year-end forecasts for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. And Mark Zandi, the much-followed economist from Moody’s, says the chance that the economy will fall into another recession is 40 percent.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Hurt Locker File Sharing Lawsuits Put the Hurt on Everyone

        File sharing lawsuits involving the movie the Hurt Locker have been big news in the United States for months as tens of thousands of lawsuits have been filed against individuals alleged to have illegally downloaded the movie. The lawsuits have now made their way into Canada as the Federal Court of Canada has ordered the identification of subscribers at Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Videotron who face similar copyright infringement claims.

09.19.11

Links 19/9/2011: Linux Mint Debian 201109, Knoppix 6.7.1

Posted in News Roundup at 5:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Rugged Linux field computer acts as mission-critical video server

    The MCP runs Linux on a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with the help of 4GB of DDR3 RAM, says Harris. An optional H.264 video encoder is said to be available for video-intensive applications, supporting video capture, storage, and real-time playback capabilities. A removable 160GB, SATA 2 solid state drive (SSD) “provides ample storage for long duration video recording,” says the company.

  • More Linux Site Hacks, ReactOS Ready to Go, Obama Signs ‘America Invents Act’
  • Happy 20th Birthday, Linux: 10 Cool Devices That Embrace You

    The Linux operating system is not just for nerds. Even though you may not realize it, chances are you probably have a version of Linux running right under your nose. It’s found its way into a multitude of devices, both large and small.

    Today, Sept. 17, 2011, is the 20th anniversary of the date when the first Linux kernel (version 0.01) was released and uploaded to an FTP server by Linus Torvalds in Helsinki. Although Torvalds had been working on the code since April, 1991 (recognized by some as the birthday of Linux), it wasn’t until September of that year that he released the first Linux kernel to the world. That early iteration consisted of a mere 10,239 lines of code.

  • Desktop

    • Why Ultrabooks Should Run Ubuntu 11.10

      When Steve Jobs unveiled the slim but powerful Macbook Air, it was as if a magician had pulled a flailing rabbit out of a hat. Everyone was amazed at how laptop technology had moved forward, and instantly the latest Macbook Air became a massive success.

      The Macbook Air might be an awesome product, but there are currently no alternatives for folks who don’t want to get converted to the Apple religion. But don’t get disappointed just yet; come Q4 2011, Intel will be bringing us the new revolution in computing called Ultrabooks.

      Touted as the direct competitor to Macbook Air, Intel’s ambitious project will leave no stone unturned to prove itself in the not-so-dead laptop market. While it is not confirmed as to which operating system manufacturers will be using, there is a high chance that Windows 7 will be the one.

      However, we here at TechSource believe that running Ubuntu 11.10 (or higher) on Ultrabooks might actually be more profitable.

    • LinuxCon: The world’s largest Linux desktop deployment

      Userful deploys Linux in very large-scale “digital inclusion” projects — such as schools in second- and third-world environments — including the world’s largest, a 500,000 seat deployment in Brazil.

  • Server

    • The Little Woman Now Uses a GNU/Linux Terminal Server

      Her former terminal has an aluminium case that sings and must be positioned and burdened just so to minimize the noise. In the hot days of this summer it also put out too much heat so it is banished to the basement in a dark closet. In its place she will be using a tiny thin client about the size of a box of chocolates.

    • Will Ubuntu make to Mainframes?

      A recent development between IBM and Canonical, predicts that soon IBM’s p mini-computers and blades; System Z mainframes will be certified for use with Ubuntu. It is most likely that minicomputers should be running on Ubuntu in the next month or so, while mainframes could well receive full support by end of the month.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Testing EXT4 & Btrfs On A Serial ATA 3.0 SSD

      Last month I wrote a review on the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB solid-state drive, which was a very impressive Serial ATA 3.0 SSD. The performance of this solid-state drive was terrific and a huge improvement over previous-generation SATA 2.0 SSDs and over SATA 3.0 hard drives. All of that testing was done when the drives were formatted to the common EXT4 file-system type, but in this article are more benchmarks from the OCZ Vertex 3 as it’s tested with Btrfs and various mount options.

    • Understanding the File System and Structure in Linux

      The file system in Linux can be intimidating coming from other operating systems like Microsoft Windows. At first glance it may seem that there is no organisation to the files, but there is a method to this madness. After spending some more time with the file system in Linux, it will seem a lot more secure and organised.

    • TI Proposes A Low-Level Linux Display Framework

      An OMAP driver developer at Texas Instruments wrote a rather lengthy post about a new low-level display framework.

    • Graphics Stack

      • The Proposal For Nouveau GPU Command Scheduling
      • This Is What Started AMD’s Open-Source Strategy

        While AMD’s open-source strategy was announced on Phoronix on 7 September 2007, it was on 17 September of the same year that the Novell/SUSE developers did their first public release of their xf86-video-radeonhd driver. This was the X.Org driver created by the Novell Linux engineers in months prior for R500 and R600 GPUs. Here is some special reading — a letter that was volleyed from Novell to AMD that kicked off this entire process — to celebrate what would have been the fourth birthday of this open-source Linux driver.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Are Mobile-Style Interfaces Leaving Desktop Power Users Behind?

      Both Unity and Metro borrow heavily from the mobile world, and for that reason seem likely to appeal to an increasingly mobile-minded world of consumers. As I’ve said before about Unity, this is a good way to attract mainstream users, particularly when you’re trying to help them get used to something new.

    • A Native Enlightenment EFL Port To PlayStation 3

      From the announcement, “This port comes as great news for the ps3 homebrew community which has been strugling with a complete lack of tools for easily developing application. With PSL1GHT (The unofficial PS3 SDK) and a port of the SDL as pretty much the only available libraries for the PS3, not much could be done without a huge waste of time in order to reimplement all the basic things. The initial port of the EFL was done in just a couple of days, where eina, eet, evas, ecore, embryo and edje were made available and a port of expedite and eskiss were successfully running on the PS3.The port was made using the SDL engine for evas, and while it worked, the performance wasn’t great.”

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Nepomuk – What Comes Next

        After a very generous start to my fundraiser (thank you so much for your support) it is time I get into more detail about what you are actually supporting. Originally I wanted to do that by updating nepomuk.kde.org. I will still do that but it will take a little more time than anticipated. Thus, I will simply start with another blog post.

      • KDE e.V. Report for Second Quarter 2011
      • KDE Commit-Digest for 11th September 2011
      • Kubuntu and KDE love story continued

        Over the last couple of weeks the better part of the Kubuntu team has been working on bringing KDE SC 4.7.1 to Kubuntu.

        Especially the last week we started to backport it to Kubuntu 11.04. We’ll need some more time since 4.7.1 need a lot being backported to natty.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Top 10 GNOME Shell Themes

        GNOME Shell is at the very beginning of its long treacherous journey. As we saw in our earlier post, it is now possible to easily install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric Ocelot, whose final release is scheduled to happen next month itself. Meanwhile, I have been using GNOME Shell in Ubuntu Oneric beta for sometime now and one thing I am really unhappy about is its default theme. But third party GNOME Shell themes are already pouring in. Here is a collection of top 10 GNOME Shell themes(installation instructions towards bottom of this post).

      • Ten Gnome 3 features that won me over

        I like uncluttered desktops, and Gnome 3 offers about as clean a desktop as you’ll find without running E16. The only object on the desktop is the panel — until you reveal the launcher. But Gnome 3′s minimalist approach does not make it difficult to use. On the contrary, once you’re familiar with it, Gnome 3 is one of the most user-friendly desktops available.

  • Distributions

    • Arch linux: my perspective

      Arch is really simple in the sense at the system level. I was able to create init scripts for Arch far more easily than on Gentoo for the same package. Arch however is not as configurable as Gentoo is. No distribution can match or even come close to Gentoo in this regard. It uses a unique system for this called USE flags. With Arch I can not have a custom KDE; but with Gentoo I have a large number of options as to what I want to have and what not. This flexibility of configuration in Gentoo comes at a price: every package is compiled on your system.

    • Chakra GNU/Linux: A Review With Screenshots

      According to Distrowatch, Chakra GNU/Linux is a Live CD distribution aimed at ease of use and originally forked from Arch Linux. Some of its features include a graphical installer, automatic hardware detection and configuration, the latest KDE desktop, and a variety of tools and “extras”.

    • Gentoo Family

      • The state of Gentoo

        It’s been three years since LWN last covered Gentoo Linux, so checking in on Gentoo’s activities since then seems appropriate. Let’s start with a re-introduction to Gentoo. Gentoo is a source-based distribution that is unlike the more common binary distributions because packages are compiled on your machines rather than remotely on the distribution’s infrastructure. Source-based distributions allow for far more customization than is possible with binary distributions because you can not only control which packages are installed, but also which features of a given package are enabled (and consequently how many dependencies get pulled in).

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Francois Marier, Debian Developer
      • Linux Mint Debian Edition 201109 Is Ready to Roll

        Good day, everybody! What better way to start my morning other than announcing a new release of Linux Mint Debian! Last time I tried it, there was only a GNOME version available, but now Xfce is here to party as well.

      • Derivatives

        • The Tails Project’s The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails)

          The live distro, which runs on any PC powerful enough to run Windows XP, is based on Debian Live and runs directly from CD and/or USB Flash memory. No trace is left after using Tails, thanks to many features, such as independent operation of all software and all hardware drivers from the PC’s operating system, no permanent data storage and all the channeling of all Internet connections through the Tor anonymization network. “With Tails”, say the distro developers, “we provide a tongue and a pen protected by state-of-the-art cryptography to guarantee…basic human rights and allow journalists worldwide to work and communicate freely and without fear of reprisal.” The journalists of these pages humbly salute the valiant effort.

        • Linux Mint Debian 201109 Released

          Linux Mint can be a bit difficult to keep up with these days. One is based on Ubuntu, another on Debian. The newest Debian-based version comes with GNOME or Xfce while the Ubuntu-based counterpart is available in GNOME or LXDE. 32- and 64-bit versions are available for both. Today brought a new release: Linux Mint 201109 Debian (GNOME & Xfce).

        • Knoppix 6.7.1 with Firefox 6.0.2, LibreOffice 3.4.3 and Linux 3.0.4 Kernel Is Here

          Knoppix 6.7.1 has been released. The latest version of the popular live CD/DVD Linux distro that started it all, comes with a lot of bleeding-edge software, along with all of the things you’ve grown accustomed to.

          The latest release comes with updated packages from its Debian upstream, picked from the testing and unstable repositories. It brings the latest Linux kernel, modern browser options and the latest LibreOffice 3.4.3.

        • KNOPPIX 6.7 and ADRIANE Audio Desktop Review

          Once upon a time the daddy of this distribution, Klaus Knopper, started a trend with his pioneering Knoppix live CD as rescue and repair tool. It was known for incorporating extensive hardware detection that required minimal to no configuration at boot to arrive at a fully working desktop.
          Nowadays nearly every Linux based project also has a live CD or hybrid live and install image to offer, and Knoppix has been out of the limelight for a while. It’s still around though and has some unique points to offer, as I’m about to find out in this review of Knoppix 6.7, which was recently released to the world on 3rd August 2011 with the 2.6.39.3 kernel.

          As a heavily KDE leaning distribution Knoppix was also one of the first to ship with KDE 4 when it debuted, where it allowed for an early view of things to come. The DVD came with a variety of desktops including GNOME, Fluxbox and IceWM which could be enabled through entering cheat codes at the boot prompt. These days, ever since 6.0 was released, LXDE has become the default on the CD, with more environments and window managers available on the DVD.
          Besides, Klaus Knopper also issues special versions to coincide with the annual CeBIT and LinuxTag expos and conventions, so there are usually three releases a year to keep the system up to date with the ever changing requirements of hardware detection.

        • The Perfect Desktop – Mepis 11

          This tutorial shows how you can set up a Mepis 11 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge. Mepis is a Linux distribution based on Debian Stable.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • New Games, Books and Magazines in Ubuntu Software Center

            Canonical announced that lots of new games, books and magazines will be available in the Ubuntu Software Center
            for all Ubuntu users.

            While Canonical is preparing the final version of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, many developers submit their interesting apps in the Ubuntu Software Center.

          • Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 Beta Released with Revamped User Interface

            Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 beta has been released with new user interface and all new plugin system.

            The entire interface is divided into four categories – Overview, Tweaks, Admins and Janitor. Plugins can be installed for all of these categories, though in this release they are available for Overview category only.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • PinguyOS 11.04 Review

              PinguyOS is the distribution made for everyone, the out-of-the-box functionality of PinguyOS makes this distribution a perfect choice for Linux newcomers. The massive list of hand-selected applications ensures that users get the best possible experience no matter what they plan to do. Though if you prefer a minimalistic interface, or if you are picky about your applications, PinguyOS may not be the right choice for you. The polished interface is highly functional and easy to navigate. And I feel that the Conky system monitor is a tool that is missing on most distributions. So if you want a full featured distribution that holds nothing back try PinguyOS 11.04 today.

            • Trisquel 5.0 Release announcement

              In what we can now call it a tradition, we celebrate the Software Freedom Day by publishing our latest release: Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0 STS, codename Dagda.

              Today we publish both the standard GNOME based, and the lightweight, LXDE based Trisquel Mini editions. Current Trisquel 4.5 users can upgrade using the update-manager application, without the need for reinstallation. Advanced installations -server, RAID/LVM, encrypted, etc- can be done using the netinstall images. Two more editions, one based on KDE and other using the educational environment Sugar are on the way.

            • Joli OS 1.2 review

              1.1, and now 1.2 are based on the perennial Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Jellybean to Follow Ice Cream Sandwich

          As each alphabet progresses, it comes with a delectable treat to water your mouth. I don’t know if tasty names are the reason why Android is getting popular, but they certainly make it more interesting.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Openindiana- The revolution continue | Screenshots Tour

    OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to début later this year. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open-source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation.

  • Open source tool enables security tests for chip cards

    At this year’s Black Hat Conference, crypto expert Karsten Nohl of SRLabs demonstrated the degate tool that can be used to take a closer look at applications stored on smartcards, such as credit cards and SIM cards.

  • New Award: Community Member of the Month!
  • Seven Ways to Celebrate Software Freedom Day

    Today is Software Freedom Day, and that means fans of free and open source software around the globe are celebrating all the ways it improves our lives.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Releases Chrome 14 Stable for Linux

        The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced a few minutes ago, September 16th, the stable release and immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 14 web browser for Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Chrome Frame platforms.

    • Mozilla

      • Password Protect Firefox Bookmarks

        Firefox bookmarks are accessible for all users of a computer system if one user account is used instead of individual user accounts. This can be a issue if you want to protect data from being seen or accessed by other users. But even if there are multiple user accounts, chance is that some may have access to your Firefox profile folder. A system administrator for instance would have that access.

  • Databases

    • Oracle Further Commercializes MySQL Database

      Oracle has added additional commercial extensions to the enterprise edition of its open-source MySQL database, further differentiating it from the community version available to anyone at no charge.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria

      We’re starting a new project – open source drug discovery for malaria. Initially the participants are my group at the University of Sydney and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), but naturally as an open project we need to expand beyond this. If you’re reading this, you can join us. Check here for what’s needed at the moment.

  • Programming

    • A Look at the Future of Perl 5.16 and Beyond

      Despite many assertions that “Perl is dead,” it’s very much alive – particularly Perl 5, which is and will be in widespread use for quite some time. It may not be getting as much attention as JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, and whatever the language du jour is that Google wants to put out – but it’s not going anywhere.

Leftovers

  • A Beginners’ Guide to Internet Trolling

    Nowadays, the phenomenon of trolling other people online is considered a bad thing. But it has not always been so. Trolling was a noble cause once, perpetrated by Usenet veterans, who would pull simple and innocent general ignorance type of jokes on unsuspecting newbies. There was much rejoicing and a handful of tears, but in the end, people learned through whimsical, violent allegories.

  • Finance

    • Rudolf Elmer – the man who exposed the dark side of global finance

      Blowing the whistle on government or corporate malpractice takes great courage and involves a high sense of civic duty, as whistleblowers often put their lives on the line in order to inform society on behaviour that is against its citizens’ interest as well as the basic principles of democracy and human rights. Because of the possible consequences of such an act, it is important to have the feed-back of prominent whistleblowers who share their experience, thoughts and advice with potential whistleblowers and society as a whole, as anyone can find themselves in the uncomfortable seat of government or corporate crime witness from inside. Also, because they are often the victims of smear campaigns, at Liberté-info we like to give whistleblowers the opportunity to be heard without the bias and censorship that can surround economically motivated media outfits. Plus this is #OccupyWallStreet day, a good occasion to talk about global financial crime.

  • Civil Rights

    • Tesco threatens journalist with arrest for writing down prices

      A Guardian journalist who was researching prices at a Tesco supermarket was threatened with arrest for writing down prices as he walked around. The security guard who questioned him claimed that it was illegal to write down prices at Tesco’s. The manager later allowed as how it wasn’t illegal, merely against store policy.

  • DRM

    • FSF speaks against patent and DRM provisions at Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiators’ meeting

      The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement currently under negotiation that could require member countries to enact strict copyright and patent legislation that hurts free software users and developers. Our license compliance engineer Brett Smith talked about the FSF’s opposition to these terms with negotiators last weekend; in this blog post, he shares his perspective on the event.

09.16.11

Links 16/9/2011: Boeing Goes With Android, Oracle Splits MySQL

Posted in News Roundup at 4:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A Bushel of Tools for Business and Personal Financial Management

    While they don’t get written about as frequently as other types of open source applications, there actually are many good FOSS applications for business and personal financial management. Historically, some of the best ones have been targeted at computer users, but with the rise of mobile applications, you can get your hands on many good financial apps that you can keep in your pocket. Here is a grab bag of good resources on this front, and you should find some applications here that can help you manage your money.

  • Tools to Help You Nurture Your Open Source Project

    If you’ve given some thought to launching an open source project, or you’re in the process of delivering one, some up-front footwork and howework can help things go smoothly, and even keep you out of trouble. Issues pertaining to licensing, distribution, support options and even branding require thinking ahead if you want your project to flourish, and to stay safe. Fortunately, there are many free, helpful resources that can help you ramp your project up. In this post, you’ll find our updated collection of good, free resources to pay attention to.

  • Open source tool enables security tests for chip cards

    At this year’s Black Hat Conference, crypto expert Karsten Nohl of SRLabs demonstrated the degate tool that can be used to take a closer look at applications stored on smartcards, such as credit cards and SIM cards.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla co-founder quits Firefox veep role

      A longtime Mozilla Corporation VP has quit the open source outfit he co-founded in 1998.

      Mike Shaver, who oversaw technical strategy for the past six years at the Firefox maker, confirmed he was hanging up his hot foxy boots in a blog post. Shaver was among those who founded the Mozilla Organization following the release of Netscape’s web browser source code.

  • SaaS

    • Memset takes open source to cloud storage market

      Memset has drawn specific attention to its added security features – knowing full well it is still the issue holding many customers back from putting their data into the public cloud – as well as touting its simplicity.

  • Databases

    • Oracle adds commercial extensions to MySQL

      Oracle has announced the availability of commercial extensions for the MySQL database. These new extensions are only being added to the Enterprise Edition and will further differentiate the commercial edition from the community edition. Previously, the Enterprise Edition only included external tools, MySQL Enterprise Monitor and MySQL Enterprise Backup, as part of its package, but the new extensions are much more deeply integral to MySQL.

  • CMS

  • Business

    • Free Software versus Open Source: Tryton vs OpenERP

      When I talk about Free Software, I talk about not only about freedom, but also community and good will from the software author. The latter probably is the most important one.

      You write Free Software because you want to contribute to the community. It’s an act of social activism. It’s about sharing and helping out.

  • BSD

    • PC-BSD 9.0 on its Way

      PC-BSD is the Ubuntu of the free BSD world. It features an easy install (similar to Anaconda), with a nice default system, and usually gives no reason to fiddle under the bonnet. Version 9.0 is currently in development and Beta 2 was recently released.

  • Project Releases

    • Omaha 3: Updating Google style

      Google’s latest update to its Omaha update system, also known as Google Update, brings a range of enhancements to the open source background update engine. Google introduced its update mechanism for Windows applications, code-named Omaha, in 2007 and, in 2009, the technology became freely available as open source code under the Apache licence. The company has been modernising the update engine and has now made version 3 of Omaha available at Google Code.

  • Licensing

    • Spring Roo to be up to 10 times faster and without GPL

      A completely different change concerns the licensing for Spring Roo. Up until now, a large part of the code has been under GPLv3, which is controversial among some members of the community; annotations and associated code are under a mixture of GPLv3 and Apache Software Licence version 2 (ASLv2). In the future, Spring Roo will completely be under ASLv2 in order to make the development environment more interesting for commercial projects as well.

    • How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 2

      To those who whine “I don’t want Google/Microsoft/Apple/whoever to use my code!” — why not? Really, if you think they’re evil because they close off code, how are you any better by doing the same to them? (plus, whining is for kids). “But it conflicts with our anti-copyright anti-business agenda.” Put down the bong, grab a bar of soap, and stop acting like a freetard. You’re giving the rest of us a bad name.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open-source policy formulation for Sri Lanka’s capital
    • Qualcomm goes open source with AllJoyn

      Qualcomm’s desire to drive the Internet of Things starts with a little-known open-source project called AllJoyn, and it could easily prove one of the most important things the company has ever done. We got talking to Rob Chandhok, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of software strategy and the president of the Qualcomm Innovation Centre, to find out what’s going on.

    • Open Hardware

      • A brief introduction to Arduino

        If you’ve heard the term “Arduino” but never quite known what people were talking about, then this is your lucky day. An excellent primer has been posted, which might sound like nothing new for the popular open-source microcontroller, but know this: this primer is in comic book form.

  • Programming

    • IT-centric GCSE on way to boost kids’ coding skills

      The new IT GCSE, which does not yet have an official name, will be additional to the current ICT GCSE, which IT industry experts have long attacked for putting kids off careers in IT and failing to excite them about technology.

Leftovers

  • Putting the C-I-O Back into “Commission”

    How can we get better at promoting the benefits of ICT? By asking the people who do it every day.

    Yesterday I had a fascinating meeting with people from CIONet – a network for Chief Information Officers and IT managers, with over 3000 members from 7 EU Member States.

    Among other things they organise CIOCity – at which I had the pleasure to speak back in March, and where I presented awards to some top-performing CIOs.

    Yesterday was a fascinating insight from a mixture of academics and those in the industry – including some of the award-winners themselves.

    They explained the changes in the role of CIOs. Once they were seen predominantly as an administrative function given the sole job making sure everyone’s email worked, and maybe saving some cash while they were at it. Now they are increasingly seen as major strategic players in company development. Because these days, ICT isn’t just something that adds value to a product – it’s essential to getting a product to market.

  • Joyent upgrades cloud service to compete with Amazon

    Joyent is upgrading its public cloud service with better analytics and the ability to run Linux and Windows, as it hopes to persuade CIOs to move more applications to the company’s cloud, it said on Thursday.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Call: using ICT to save lives

      Every year in Europe, about 35,000 people are killed in road accidents, and about 1.5 million people are injured. That’s a death toll close to 100 per day.

  • Security

  • Cablegate

    • 2011-09-10 The Vatican cables revisited. Just a matter of procedure?

      There is no obvious reason to redact these passages. No informants are named. Cardinal Keeler is a public figure, and it is not conceivable why his position in this very important matter should be kept secret. The cable does not name the Jewish members of the committee that allegedly insulted Gumpel. Overall, the only effect of these redactions is that they downplay the conflicts within the commission.

  • Finance

    • What Wall Street doesn’t want us to know about oil prices

      The top six financial institutions in this country own assets equal to more than 60 percent of our gross domestic product and possess enormous economic and political power. One of the great questions of our time is whether the American people, through Congress, will control the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, or whether Wall Street will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and the lives of working families.

    • What Wall Street doesn’t want us to know about oil prices

      The top six financial institutions in this country own assets equal to more than 60 percent of our gross domestic product and possess enormous economic and political power. One of the great questions of our time is whether the American people, through Congress, will control the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, or whether Wall Street will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and the lives of working families.

    • I Failed… and I’m So Very Sorry

      Today, another victim of the foreclosure crisis took her own life. She was a disabled American veteran and her family was counting on me to help. And I let them down.

    • Goldman Sachs should consider its own breakup

      Goldman Sachs has often helped chief executives boost their companies’ shares by breaking them into pieces. The U.S. bank run by Lloyd Blankfein is currently advising Kraft Foods on its split and counseling McGraw-Hill on whether it should do the same. So it’s logical that some inside Goldman have run the numbers on their employer. The results are compelling. Should the firm’s stock linger below its book value, or assets less liabilities, of about $130 a share for much longer, a breakup could be hard for the firm’s board to resist.

    • The Limits of Meritocracy

      The 2010 Educational Attainment data from the US Census Bureau shows that close to 90 percent of the population now finishes high school, and of those, about 57 percent go on to post-secondary study. Roughly 27 percent get community college and vocational degrees or attend college but do not graduate and 30 percent finish college. The college graduation rate was only 13 percent in 1970 and 25 percent in 1995, and is projected to grow to 34 percent by 2020.

  • Privacy

    • Green leader slams Harper’s proposed internet spying laws

      Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s proposed electronic surveillance laws will act as “an infringement on civil liberties,” Green Party leader Elizabeth May said in a press release today.

      The “Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act,” which Prime Minister Harper has vowed to pass as part of a larger omnibus crime bill within 100 sitting days of convening parliament, would expand the federal government’s internet surveillance powers.

    • Congress Debating If Putting A Fake Name On Facebook Should Be A Felony

      On Wednesday, George Washington Law professor and former federal prosecutor Orin Kerr authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, posing the question “Should faking a name on Facebook be a felony?” He was, of course, talking about the infamous Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which Congress is preparing to update. The CFAA, as has been noted here many times, is a federal law passed in the ’80s and initially designed to combat malicious computer hacking, but which has become bloated, stretched and over-applied in the years since.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Group Will Sue Pay Processors If They Don’t Name Site Admins

        Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN says it will pursue a similar strategy to its counterparts in the United States and UK by pressuring payment processors like PayPal to stop doing business with file-sharing sites. But BREIN says the processors must go further. Either they can voluntarily hand over the names of the admins behind the site accounts, or they will go to court and sue them into submission.

      • Lib Dems get a chance to vote on copyright reform

        This weekend’s Lib Dem conference will feature a debate and vote on a new IT policy paper.
        Getting IT policy right is hard, because technology is a moving target; but getting IT policy right is vital, because today there’s virtually nothing we do that doesn’t touch on IT, and tomorrow there’ll be practically nothing that doesn’t require it.

Links 16/9/2011: Unity Contributor Report, Archos G9 Linux Tablets

Posted in News Roundup at 6:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Kolab Groupware Solution wins CH Open Source “Community Award” 2011

    Kolab Groupware Solution wins the 2011 CH Open Source Awards in the category “Community Award” for contribution towards Free Software / Open Source which is awarded upon criteria of activity, participation, ease of contribution and participation in the community, usage of Open Standards and quality of the solution. The award was presented 13 September 2011 during a ceremony at the Hub Zürich.

  • ‘Fenix’-like rise into open source profits

    Four years ago, Fenix pivoted its business model when Ms. MacKinnon decided to make a risky change and become an open source developer. Clients were becoming more concerned, she thought, with being locked into proprietary systems. What if your vendor tanks? Who will support your applications then?

    [...]

    It also helps that Fenix has become known as an Ottawa-based open source shop. That’s its differentiated value. Ms. MacKinnon even gets calls asking Fenix to audit work done by other developers in this space.

  • Events

    • Taking LCA to places never explored

      “The idea of linux.conf.au Ballarat was first jokingly thrown around when a group of us were out one night during the conference in Dunedin,” Stewart told iTWire. “I’d been attending linux.conf.au since 2005 and loved it every year, but at the time our group was really nothing more than a few guys barely out of uni, laughing about how crazy you’d have to be to try and run the event in Ballarat. There was no Linux User Group and the size of the conference would make it one of the largest ever held in the city.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla: A study in organizational openness

        My theme this week is organizational openness and transparency and today I’d like to highlight a fantastic example of an organization that has built a culture with openness at its core: Mozilla.

        Most of you probably know Mozilla as the organization famous for its open source Firefox web browser. But what you may not know is that open source is more than just a technology decision for Mozilla; the open source way is deeply ingrained in every aspect of its culture.

      • Mike Shaver Leaves Mozilla, again

  • Oracle/Lawsuits

    • Google Wins a Part of Its Motion for Summary Judgment

      At least he does rule that Google is not guilty of violating copyright on the names of the APIs. Why does that concept not penetrate when it comes to names of the variables and structures without which the API is useless? Good luck using those APIs without the names. Sigh… Let’s hope jurors are awake.

    • Oracle v. Google – Google Denied Summary Judgment on Copyright
    • Oracle v. Google – Google Still Trying to Suppress the Lindholm Email

      Google is still working hard to suppress the Lindholm email. They believe the magistrate got it wrong, so they filed a motion for relief from the magistrate’s order [408, PDF]. But Judge Alsup had the motion stricken because Google did not follow proper procedure under Rule 72 and request the court’s permission to file the motion. [412, PDF]. Fortunately, the Judge also ruled that they would be considered to have made the précis request in a timely manner if they did so immediately.

    • A Needle in a Haystack: A Case of Criminal Charges for Copyright Infringement

      Last Thursday, a case of criminal copyright infringement popped up like a weasel. A subsidiary of the software company SAP was charged for having downloaded Oracle Corp’s programs and having converted those programs to serve clients of SAP. The defendant later announced that it would plead guilty for the twelve counts related to the theft of software. The investigation revealed that SAP employees would log on to Oracle’s computers using customers’ passwords. They downloaded thousands of copies of Oracle’s software-related materials. The feud between SAP and Oracle has reached a new high. Recently, a jury had awarded $1.3 billion to Oracle in a civil lawsuit between the two companies, only for a judge to reject the decision as “excessive” and to ask Oracle to settle at $272 million or go for a new trial.

  • CMS

  • Education

    • Explaining Open Source to students in 2015

      I get the biggest laugh when I tell them that grown people actually payed for restricted-use software that was available for free as Open Source and worked just as well.

    • It’s time to bring FPGA design to the masses

      Unlike what happens with Free Software, or even with Arduino, making custom integrated circuits at home is still a relatively unknown concept, even if the technology is now affordable. Many people, including hobbyists, don’t really know or ever think about this. Certain activities are still considered as very esoteric, highly difficult and specialized jobs for very gifted, full time professionals. There is no doubt that this is still the case when you need to push technology to the limit, but the barrier to use FPGAs for something useful for normal folks is much lower today.

  • Business

    • What is OpenERP? Open Source ERP Software Explained
    • Open source: Driving change in the software industry

      Open source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades, and has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations. It has also shown how companies can become more innovative, more nimble and more cost-effective by building on the efforts of community work. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. Open source is continuing to grow in importance as the framework for intelligent computing from enterprise environments to smartphones to yes – the car in your driveway.

  • Licensing

    • Big data meets Bruce Perens: an open-source “covenant”

      Balancing an open-source community with commercial interests can be difficult, which is why HPCC Systems sought the help of Bruce Perens before open-sourcing the code for its eponymous big-data-processing software. I covered the open-source news last week. Afterward, open-source pioneer Perens directed me to an essay he wrote on the HPCC Systems site explaining the new licensing model he helped create for the software that aims to disrupt Hadoop’s big data dominance.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Open Access/Content

    • ICFOSS launches open access journal

      Heralding a new era in publishing, the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) launched its open access journal ‘Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge’ at a function here on Monday.

    • ‘Open Courses, Open Teaching, This Is Dangerous’

      Though it is a muggy late-spring day in Edmonton, it is comfortable inside the conference room of the Mayfield Inn. Along with a group of other education geeks, I am seated around a table strewn with the usual continental breakfast detritus — empty coffee cups on saucers along with small plates with balled-up muffin wrappers, strawberry stems and melon rinds. What is unusual, however, is the half-dozen or so smartphones resting on the table. No one is texting, reading Twitter feeds, or checking on their stock prices. Instead, we are hanging on every word from the man at the podium, Stephen Downes of the National Research Council Canada.

      [...]

      What I really like about this arrangement, and this is where the “open” part comes in, is that I can go into the back of each course and modify the course content, and all of its settings, so that I can have my own version that works the way that I want it to.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Google opens Google+ up for developers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • AP Review Finds No WikiLeaks Sources Threatened

      An Associated Press review of those sources raises doubts about the scope of the danger posed by WikiLeaks’ disclosures and the Obama administration’s angry claims, going back more than a year, that the revelations are life-threatening. U.S. examples have been strictly theoretical.

  • Finance

    • The Limping Middle Class

      THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

      When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt – which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

    • Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

      Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats’ health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats’ rank capitulation to corporate interests – no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

    • On Lehman Day, Elizabeth Warren Runs Against “Wall Street’s Favorite”

      Warren spoke directly to Bay Staters when she said: “I have stood up to some pretty powerful interests. Those interests are going to line up against this campaign and that is why I need you.”

      This may be the understatement of the year.

      Warren has been described as “Wall Street’s worst nightmare” by reporters. How did this soft-spoken mom, who appears to wear JC Penny off the rack, earn such an appellation?

    • GOP Backs Insurance Industry-Friendly, Anti-Consumer Bills

      House Republicans, unable to repeal President Obama’s health care reform law outright, have decided to go after it piece by piece. If they are successful, what’s likely to remain is the kind of reform the insurance industry dreamed of, but never really thought could be the law of the land.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CMD and The Nation Magazine Win the Sidney Award for Investigative Journalism

      The Sidney Hillman Foundation selected the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine for its prestigious “Sidney Award” this month. The award recognizes our investigative journalism exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which the Foundation called “an obscure but powerful conservative group that brings state legislators and corporations together to write laws.”

  • Copyrights

    • A year after shutdown, LimeWire still hugely popular

      LimeWire has been shut down for almost a year, but the former file sharing service is still hugely popular with people looking to download free music and other forms of media. An injunction by a U.S. District Court ordered LimeWire to suspend its operations in October 2010, and the company’s website has been replaced with a single splash page informing users about the injunction ever since. However, that page saw more than 1.1 million unique visitors in August alone, according to Google Analytics statistics obtained by GigaOM, which makes one wonder: Was the decision to shut down LimeWire, rather than allowing the company to launch a licensed music service, a mistake?

    • The copyright revolution at US art museums

      Every once and a while an art museum (or two or three) does something so jaw-droppingly clever that in hindsight it seems like an obvious thing to do. So it is with the decision by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum and various entities at Yale University to make high-resolution images of art from their collections available for anyone to use, for any purpose, copyright-free. (At Yale special credit goes to the Yale Center for British Art, which got out ahead of the rest of the school’s similar efforts.)

      As a result, if you want to make a t-shirt, a tote bag or a beach towel out of a YCBA Rubens, just download-and-go. If you’re a PhD student who wants to publish her dissertation about Constable as an e-book, here are scores of Constables you can download and e-publish free of charge.

    • Newzbin2 claims it can beat BT’s block

      USENET INDEXING WEB SITE Newzbin2 claims it has developed software that will defeat a block about to be imposed by BT.

      Legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in July resulted in BT being ordered to block access to Newzbin2.

09.15.11

Links 15/9/2011: Linux 3.1 RC6, X Server Newsfest

Posted in News Roundup at 8:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • ‘Bossie’ Awards Crown FOSS’ Best of Breed

  • Events

    • Q/A: Contributing To Open-Source Projects
    • Software Freedom Day, Team Christchurch

      This Saturday is Software Freedom Day – a global celebration of free and open-source software and the international community that supports it.

      The Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome internet browsers, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, and GNU/Linux operating systems are all examples of free/open software that many people use efficiently every day. This combination of personal and business computer tools runs virus-free, saving time and raising both user productivity and technical experience. They thus form first-rate educational tools, and without licensing costs.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle v. Google – Oracle’s MSJ Opposition on Copyright – Some Interesting Nuggets

      When we did our earlier article on Oracle’s opposition to Google’s motion for summary judgment on the copyright issue, we didn’t provide the Roman Swopes declaration [343, PDF] in text or its associated exhibits because most of those exhibits had been heavily redacted. Now the exhibits have been made available unredacted, and they contain some very interesting nuggets of information taken from the depositions and documents of various individuals at Google.

      What is interesting about these nuggets is that they actually support Google’s theory and evidence the continuing lack of understanding of the relationship of copyright to software on the part of Oracle (or at least on the part of legal counsel representing Oracle) and the continued distortion of actions by Google.

  • CMS

    • Site builders: Drupal vs. Joomla vs. WordPress

      Building a website has never been easier. Gone — mostly — are the days of having to hand-code HTML and PHP scripts in order to get a slick, fully functional website, thanks to the capabilities of content management systems that do most or all of the heavy lifting for site creators.

      There are boatloads of content management systems (CMSs) for serious site creators, but the most common for websites today are three open-source tools: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Actually, to call them “tools” is an understatement — these are full-fledged platforms, with tens of thousands of add-on tools created by very active developer communities.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • French Prime Minister encourages greater use of open formats

      The government announcement makes the point that there are also economic gains to be made from a more transparent approach to government data, noting that the opening of public data helps to develop the digital economy and to support innovation, growth and employment. It adds that web entrepreneurs and researchers will be encouraged to develop new uses for public data.

  • Licensing

    • How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 1

      Bruce Perens wrote several times that he had to check with the lawyers to see what the various terms of his open source covenant really mean. If this license is so complicated that he doesn’t understand it, shouldn’t it be fixed? And why would he be publicly advocating others use a license he doesn’t fully understand? This doesn’t inspire confidence.

    • Why make a new open source software license? MPL 2.0 (part 3)

      In my previous posts, I discussed the new features of the MPL and the new compatibility between MPL and other licenses. In this final post, I’ll summarize a few other small details about the new MPL that may be of interest to opensource.com readers.

  • Programming

    • Mesa Compiler Stacks, A Hard Dependency On LLVM

      Tom Stellard, the former Google Summer of Code student who worked on R300 GLSL improvements and a new register allocator, is now working for AMD and his work is focused on bringing up open-source OpenCL / GPGPU support in the Radeon Linux driver.

    • Gedit as a Django IDE for Linux
    • Covenant for contributors has real promise

      Open source developers continue to struggle with how they can work with commercial entities and still keep some measure of control over their code, and vice versa. But a recent plan crafted by an open source software pioneer may offer another option to solve this conundrum.

      The issue of contributing to open source projects maintained by commercial companies is not some sort of incongruity between open source software licenses and for-profit business interests, as many FUD-sters would have you believe. It’s not the licenses that are the problem, but rather the copyright: who owns the code?

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Blackberry would close UK service in unrest if ordered

      BlackBerry said on Thursday it would close down its hugely popular messenger service in Britain if ordered to at times of civil unrest, after police singled out the system as a key tool used in last month’s riots.

    • Google’s IBM Patents Feast: Good or Bad?

      Nicholas George planned to brush up on his Arabic vocabulary during a flight in August from Philadelphia to California, where he was to start his senior year at Pomona College. So he carried some Arabic-English flashcards in his pocket to study on the plane.

    • Cameron, Sarkozy meet with Libyan rebels

      British Prime Minister David Cameron has sent a strong message to Moammar Gadhafi and his followers still waging war in Libya to “give up” the fight, warning that NATO’s mission will continue “as long as it is necessary” to protect Libyans.

      Cameron spoke at a press conference alongside French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday — the first world leaders to travel to Libya since revolutionary forces seized the capital and ousted Gadhafi. Both countries led international support for the rebellion.

  • Cablegate

    • Moyo loses sleep over Wikileaks

      Zanu PF politiburo member Jonathan Moyo has presented the party with a “golden opportunity” to discuss the emotive succession issue and those quoted in the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables should stick to their guns and tell President Robert Mugabe to go, analysts said yesterday.

    • Nigeria: The Rage and the Fever of Wikileaks

      The fever that is raging in Nigeria today is “wikileaks”. Yet as entertaining as these secret communications are, the truth is that if you believe everything that you read in Julian Assange’s “leaks” then you will believe anything. I say this based on my own personal experiences. So far I have been fingered twice by them and in both cases I can assure you that the stories were fabrications. They simply never happened.

    • WikiLeaks fever grips Harare

      The story exploded last week with many political and economic heavyweights were alleged to have leaked sensitive information to US Ambassador Charles Ray.

  • Finance

    • UBS Blames $2 Billion Loss on Rogue Trader
    • Rogue trader suspected in $2 billion loss at UBS

      One man armed with only a computer terminal humbled a venerable banking institution yet again. This time it was Swiss powerhouse UBS, which said Thursday that it had lost roughly $2 billion because of a renegade trader.

      The arrest of 31-year-old equities trader Kweku Adoboli in London is one more headache for troubled international banks, and fresh proof that they remain vulnerable to untracked trading that can produce mind-boggling losses.

    • John Mack Stepping Down as Chairman of Morgan Stanley
    • Questions and answers about the crisis in Greece

      Its economy is smaller than that of many U.S. states. It’s better known for olive oil and souvlaki than high finance. It last strode global affairs 2,400 years ago, when men wore togas.

      Yet everyone is suddenly worried about Greece.

    • Deficit panel senses ‘historic’ moment

      Ignoring calls for their talks to be out in the open, members of the new deficit-cutting supercommittee went behind closed doors Thursday to begin their first bargaining that could reshape federal spending and programs for years to come.

    • The Lehman Brother Anniversary Bailout!

      Although this could be looked at as awful news — more economies and banks in such dire straights as to need yet another central bank bailout, moral hazard notwithstanding — the kneejerk response was relief. Dax is up 4%, US futures flipped positive, Dow now up 100.

      The key question is the another QE2, or a failed European TARP?

    • Lagarde calls for unified action to fight Europe crisis and backs Obama job-growth plan

      The head of the International Monetary Fund called Thursday for bold and collective action to combat a slowing global economy and a worsening European debt crisis.

      IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde also said she welcomed President Barack Obama’s U.S. job-creation plan in light of the unemployment crisis in the United States.

    • Study: Privatizing government doesn’t actually save money

      The theory that the federal government should outsource its operations to private firms usually rests on a simple premise: It saves money. But why should we believe it saves money? Often the argument is made by pointing to salaries for public- and private-sector employees in comparable jobs and noting that the private-sector employees make less. So outsourcing the task to the private worker should be cheaper, right? That’s the theory, at least. But a new study from the Project on Government Oversight suggests that this theory is quite wrong. In many cases, privatizing government turns out to be far more costly.

    • Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010

      The U.S. poverty rate hit its highest level since 1993 last year with a record 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, according to a government report on Tuesday that depicted the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

  • Privacy

    • Exclusive: Ziff Davis Offering Money To Sites To Secretly Track Users

      Technology publisher Ziff Davis is offering money to tech sites to secretly track their users, Medacity has learned exclusively.

    • U.S. border deal could compromise Canadian privacy: report

      The anticipated trade and security agreement with the United States carries no guarantee of a reduction of red tape at the border for Canadian business and is more likely to violate national privacy laws, a new report suggests.

    • The Government Might Know You’re Reading This

      “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

      Many Americans have said this, or heard it, when discussing the expanded surveillance capabilities the government has claimed since 9/11. But it turns out you should be concerned. Just ask peace activists in Pittsburgh, anti-death penalty activists in Maryland, Ron Paul supporters in Missouri, an anarchist in Texas, groups on both sides of the abortion debate in Wisconsin, Muslim-Americans and many others who pose no threat to their communities. Some of them were labeled as terrorists in state and federal databases or placed on terror watch-lists, impeding their travel, misleading investigators and putting these innocent Americans at risk.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canadian Police Issue File-Sharing Scam Letters Fraud Warning

        Canadian authorities are warning Internet users to be vigilant following the emergence of a file-sharing settlement scam operation. West Vancouver police, who have now issued an official fraud warning, say that seniors have been receiving letters claiming they have been caught downloading a range of porn titles. Unsurprisingly, the letters come with an offer to settle for thousands of dollars.

Links 15/9/2011: GNOME 3.2 Preview, Rudolf Elmer Interview

Posted in News Roundup at 6:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Revolutionizing desktops without causing user revolts

      The last few years of development on the free desktop have been instructive. First, KDE stumbled and recovered with the KDE 4 series. Then, this year, GNOME and Ubuntu introduced radically new desktops. In each case, user complaints immediately poured in. Although both GNOME and Ubuntu seem determined to ignore these complaints and continue on their course, I keep wondering: could the disastrous receptions have been avoided?

    • Debian 6.0: LXDE Menus

      When I installed LXDE from the Debian repository, it started right up, and its Start Menu had the usual default categories (Accessories, Games, Internet, Office, and so on). And most of my applications were in the correct categories. But a few were missing, such as Claws (my email client), and I wanted to create some new categories. No problem; I expect to do this with any new system.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome 3.2

        Gnome 3.2 is going to get:

        * A matching GDM welcome screen.
        * Integrated chat- no need to launch Empathy.
        * More natural workspace switcher behaviour.
        * Device hot plugging work nicely with the shell.
        * More obvious waiting messages.

  • Distributions

    • Distro review : Dragora GNU/Linux

    • New Releases

      • Dyne:bolic GNU/Linux hits version 3!

        Dyne:bolic is one of the ever increasing list of GNU/Linux distributions we recommend because of their strong commitment to user freedom. After five years of development, a new release is available.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • A monospace that looks like a proportional
          • A First Look at Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1

            Canonical recently released the first beta of Ubuntu 11.10, Code named Oneiric Ocelot. Ubuntu has ditched Gnome Shell completely and stepped up its committment to the Unity Desktop. As the final release approaches, just one month from today, we spin up this beta and take a first look at the distro that Mark Shuttleworh called, “part daydream, part discipline.”

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Home Encryption Performance

            With more and more of one’s personal and professional lives being on the computer, encrypting and properly securing those computers — particularly mobile devices — is incredibly important. Sadly, it’s not often thought about until it’s too late. It has become relatively easy to protect your personal data on Ubuntu Linux with home directory encryption support being just a checkbox-away within the installer or even full-disk LVM encryption when using Ubuntu’s alternate installer. Previous tests of Ubuntu disk encryption performance have shown there is some penalty in disk-centric workloads, but the benefits are certainly worth it. In this article is a look at the Ubuntu home encryption performance under Ubuntu 11.10 with both old and new laptops.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Beta and Unity: Mixed Verdict

            “Our goal with Unity is unprecedented ease of use, visual style and performance on the Linux desktop,” Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth wrote in his blog last month.

            That statement can also stand as a summary of the goals for Ubuntu 11.10 (better known as Oneiric Ocelot). Judging from the beta released last week, Ocelot promises to be a release that, so far as users are concerned, is less about innovation than about perfecting interfaces — mainly the Unity desktop, but also one or two other applications.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Metro & WinRT & Linux

      Imagine that you are in a store. You have two new netbook/tablet convertibles in front of you. One of them is $250.00 and runs Ubuntu Linux. The other is $350.00. They are both dual core ARM systems with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and 64GB SSDs. On top of that, they can both run Metro applications, and have cloud synchronization features that are free of charge for starter storage amounts and pay to expand. Besides price, the Ubuntu machine has two other things that it can offer. It has a different interface, and it has an extra application store with thousands of free and libre applications. This is a very real possibility in the future.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Interview: Izzat Sabbagh, leader of the Capaware 3D virtual world framework project

  • Events

    • Events I’d like to see

      Expanding Linux Venues In the South (or ELVIS): A FOSS event fit for The King, this one would be held in Memphis, as close to Graceland as possible. Everyone would be required to wear blue suede shoes. We could have Elvis impersonators demonstrating various Linux distros and FOSS programs. Shoot, we could have Linus impersonators doing the same thing. And Stallman impersonators doing the same thing. And Jon ‘maddog’ Hall impersonators . . . you get the idea. This is definitely something worth planning, and I’m so far from Memphis. Is someone closer that could take the reins?

  • CMS

    • Why You Should Join Diaspora Now, Like Your Freedom Depends On It

      I never really “trusted” Facebook or Google+. That is to say, I never expected them to respect my privacy or keep my secrets. I’m not too secretive online anyway, and what I do have to hide, I just don’t post. But it is very clear that there is a great deal of corruption inherent in a business model which is based on concentrating the personal data from millions of users and selling that data to advertisers. At the very least, there must be a free alternative. But for that alternative to be viable, we need to use it. Identica has been around for some time now (and I use it — I’m “digitante”), and Diaspora is (after a long hard start) finally getting some wind under its wings. I’ve used it, and it’s Good Enough. In fact, you’ll find it’s pretty similar to what Facebook or Google+ offers, although there are still some rough spots.

Leftovers

  • OpenIndiana 151a Released; One Year Anniversary

    To mark the one year anniversary of the creation of OpenIndiana, there’s a new OpenIndiana release. OpenIndiana 151a is this new release that is timed one year after this OpenSolaris fork arrived following the fallout from Oracle killing off OpenSolaris and Solaris development in the open.

  • Finance

    • Rudolf Elmer interview with India Today

      In his first interview since being released from jail, Rudolf Elmer stated to India Today that:
      - the investigation against him is still ongoing, and that he could not make any detailed statements because he would be arrested again.
      - the CDs he handed over to Julian Assange in the Frontline Club were empty. He also said that it was only a symbolic handover, because it was a public place, and because the police could have intervened. He also said that Assange would not have come, had there not been information.
      - that he would not have been released from prison had any data been published.

    • Ford’s fake fiscal crisis

      Let’s start with the stated budget hole of $775 million. Even that figure is iffy. The fact is, we know that a multi-hundred-million-dollar structural year-end surplus is built into the budget left over from David Miller’s cost containment, the well-performing property market and prudent financial management by unelected city managers.
      This money, about $300 million, is not included in the $775 million and obviously dramatically shrinks the budget hole.

      It’s true that Toronto has some fiscal challenges, but they’re not due to excessive spending, which has increased by 3 to 4 per cent over the last decade, less than that of the provincial and federal budgets over the same period. It’s also in line with population growth of 2 to 3 per cent, which drives the need for more services.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Perens tries to bridge gap on copyright

        Copyright assignment is a topic that has received a fair bit of publicity ever since the head of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, started pushing the idea of developers surrendering their rights to his company when they contributed code.

        Shuttleworth argues that without the freedom to do what he likes with the code – and that includes the possibility of locking it up and making it proprietary – he will be unable to make progress on Ubuntu, the GNU/Linux distribution that has soared to the top of the distro charts.

      • Big data meets Bruce Perens: An open source ‘covenant’

09.14.11

Links 14/9/2011: PostgreSQL 9.1, Qt In Cars

Posted in News Roundup at 7:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Defensive banking

    This being Computerworld, you’d expect a blog about defensive banking to be about online banking. Not this time.

    Online banking, at this point, is old news. For those that need it, I have long advocated Linux as the best defensive technique. Using a Windows computer is, without question, a mistake. Given Apple’s record on security (illustrated again with the DigiNotar mess), Linux is the safer choice for Mac users too.

    I have an account with a major financial firm and typically do my two transactions a year over the phone (with a wired phone line). The rare times that I do a financial transaction online, I reboot a Windows PC and run Linux Mint off a USB flash drive. That copy of Mint is not used for any other purpose.

  • Trine 2 ‘Vibes’ trailer details new environments

    Another version is being planned for Linux and “other platforms”, due out some time after.

  • Linux Australia airs code of conduct draft

    President of Linux Australia, John Ferlito, has this morning aired the first draft of the council’s new presenter code of conduct, which looks to curb inappropriate material being displayed as part of conference presentations.

  • Windows 8 distribution takes a page from Linux

    The other reason is that Microsoft may be slow, but they’re not stupid. They’ve noticed over the years that Linux developers gets enormous amount of valuable feedback from users with every release. While, Microsoft won’t be open-sourcing Windows anytime this decade; they can certainly see the advantage of having potentially millions of early testers giving them feedback.

  • 10 Hackers Who Made History

    Richard Stallman

    [...]

    Linus Torvalds

  • Applications

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • NetGear Wi-Fi router offers six antennas for greater speed, range

      Netgear announced a dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi router, aimed at home users but featuring a 3×3 antenna array and high-power amplifiers for greater bandwidth and range. The N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router runs Linux on a new Broadcom processor, offers dual USB 2.0 ports, provides four gigabit Ethernet ports, and supports up to 900Mbps combined throughput, claims the company.

    • Nokia Puts Qt In Cars, Announces Nokia Car Mode

      As Nokia goes in bed with Microsoft it will definitely be pushing Microsoft’s proprietary technologies leaving a question mark for its own open source technologies. There might me one or two exceptions. Nokia yesterday announced Nokia Car Mode at the IAA (Internationale Automobil Ausstellung).

      The Nokia Car Mode is a standalone application optimized for the in-car use of Nokia smartphones. Nokia Car Mode features an optimized user interface simplifying the access and use of Nokia Drive (voice-guided car navigation with Nokia Maps), traffic updates, music and voice calls while driving.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Developer License for open source GIS software Geomajas now available
  • Lexis-Nexis finally releases source code to HPCC

    HPCC Systems, part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, has finally made the source code to the HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) available, after announcing it would be open-sourced in June. The C++ source code, hosted on Github, is licensed under the AGPLv3 rather than the GPLv3 as originally planned and announced.

  • Databases

    • PostgreSQL 9.1 released

      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces the release of PostgreSQL 9.1. This latest version of the leading open source database offers innovative technology, unmatched extensibility, and new features such as synchronous replication, K-Nearest Neighbor indexing, and foreign data wrappers.

    • PostgreSQL 9.1 Advances Open Source Database Innovation

      The PostgreSQL 9.1 open source database is now generally available, offering users a long list of new features. The new PostgreSQL release follows a six month beta process, following the initial beta release in May.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Funding

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK transport ministry extends its use of open source

      The UK government’s Department for Transport (DfT) has signed a new contract with Kainos to support the department’s new open-source-based web systems and move them to a hybrid cloud environment. The Department for Transport has informed The H that the technologies involved are the WordPress open source content management system which will be running on RackSpace’s public cloud and the department’s own private clouds. The DfT have been assisted by Kainos’s Causeway division in a migration from their previous proprietary Morello CMS to WordPress.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • LexisNexis Releases Code for Big Data Analytics into Open Source

      HPCC Systems from LexisNexis Risk Solutions is pleased to announce today that it has released the source code for its HPCC Systems platform to the open source community. Developers can now leverage and further enhance the platform. Available immediately for download, the source code can be found here: http://hpccsystems.com. The HPCC Systems platform helps customers solve Big Data analytics problems.

    • Open Access/Content

      • ICFOSS launches first Open Access Journal

        The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) launched its Open Access Journal, “Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge” (JFSFK), at a function here on Monday. JFSFK is the first journal in FOSS and related domains internationally.

    • Open Hardware

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Karl Rove’s Crossroads Groups Double 2012 War Plan to $240 Million

      Lost in the build-up to President Obama’s big jobs speech Thursday night was a bomb of an announcement, first reported by Peter Stone of iWatch News, from American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the conservative independent expenditure groups that are two of the heaviest hitters in the political money game. Founded in 2010 with help from Bush guru Karl Rove, the Crossroads groups are now trumpeting a new fundraising target to double their planned haul of $120 million for the 2012 elections. Yes, you read that right: the Crossroads groups say they will raise a whopping $240 million to vanquish President Obama, help GOPers win the Senate majority, and strengthen their House majority.

    • Late Night: Stephen Colbert: Honor 9/11 with ‘useless crap’

      On his show Monday, Stephen Colbert devoted a segment to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “Have we as a nation recovered?” he wondered. The answer, according to Colbert, is a definitive “yes.” The proof is in the product.

      “I wasn’t sure until I saw all this great 9/11 commemorative stuff you can buy,” he said, rattling off a list of inexpensive trinkets designed to memorialize and/or cash in on the country’s collective grief: 9/11 sneakers, a 9/11 cribbage board, 9/11 dog collars.

    • Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

      Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.

      But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.

      My flight from Denver landed in Detroit on time. I sent a text message to my husband to let him know we had landed and I would be home by dinner. The plane stopped on the tarmac, seemingly waiting to have the gate cleared. We waited. I played on my phone, checking Facebook, scrolling through my Twitter feed. After a while of sitting there, I decided to call my husband to tell him the plane was being delayed and I would call him when I got off the plane.

  • Cablegate

    • Instead of attacking WikiLeaks, fix what it exposed

      Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was right when he suggested that the WikiLeaks revelations were “embarrassing” and “awkward.” But his assessment — and that of so many other government officials — stems from the magnitude of what he left unsaid.

  • Finance

    • Liberal group files ethics complaint against Darrell Issa

      Issa pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission “into inaction” after the commission sued Goldman Sachs

    • Message to the Unemployed: Uncle Sam Does(n’t) Want You

      Not long ago, the city council of Ventura, California, passed an ordinance making it legal for the unemployed and homeless to sleep in their cars. At the height of the Great Recession of 2008, one third of the capital equipment of the American economy lay idle. Of the women and men idled along with that equipment, only 37% got a government unemployment check and that check, on average, represented only 35% of their weekly wages.

      Meanwhile, there are now two million ”99ers” — those who have maxed out their supplemental unemployment benefits because they have been out of work for more than 99 weeks. Think of them as a full division in “the reserve army of labor.” That “army,” in turn, accounts for 17% of the American labor force, if one includes part-time workers who need and want full-time work and the millions of unemployed Americans who have grown so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for jobs and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. As is its historic duty, that force of idle workers is once again driving down wages, lengthening working hours, eroding on-the-job conditions, and adding an element of raw fear to the lives of anyone still lucky enough to have a job.

    • Limits to Keynesianism

      But the greatest flaw with Keynesianism now is that, like the economy itself, it has run squarely into the energy limit. As the most recently updated data shows, 2011 will be the 6th year that world production of crude oil was unable to increase beyond the ceiling established in 2005. Oil remains the primary energy input to OECD economies. OECD economies are of course where the Keynesian experiment has flourished longest, first in Japan, then the United States and now Europe. It is hardly, hardly the case that the current financial crisis in the OECD is “simply a matter of accounting.” Instead, the crisis is one of systemic, structural growth now permanently limited by energy costs as OECD economies try to service debt loads that have escaped their ability to manage. Change all the digits, and the energy limit remains.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Wisconsin Legislators Support Corporate Right to Secret Spending

      Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to prohibit the state elections board from passing any rules regulating corporations, as part of an effort to thwart rules that would show how corporate interests are laundering election spending through front groups. Lawmakers only meet one day this month (Tuesday, September 13) and plan to take up the bill during that brief window.*

    • ALEC Corporations Spend Big in Washington

      On Monday, September 12, Brad Hooker of the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets blog posted an exposé of the money that the corporate members of ALEC’s “Private Enterprise” Board (including AT&T, Exxon Mobil, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Koch Industries) spent to lobby Washington and fill the campaign chests of ALEC alumni in Congress (as well as other Congressmembers). ALEC alumnus John Boehner received the most from ALEC Board corporations, a total of “$368,200 from the people and political action committees associated with the companies on ALEC’s private enterprise board during the 2010 election cycle.” Second place goes to another ALEC alumnus, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has been introducing ALEC’s agenda to the House. He collected “$328,100 from people and PACs associated with 17 companies on the ALEC private enterprise board.”

    • Shale Gas Industry Insider: We Are Losing the Messaging War on Fracking

      he shale gas industry has had its collective ass kicked, and kicked hard, by Gasland and others opposed to hydraulic fracturing and needs to redefine its core messages to defuse a burgeoning negative public perception of the controversial drilling technique, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) said today.

    • CNN Throws a Tea Party

      Network aligns with controversial far-right activists

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Newzbin2 Release Encrypted Client To Defeat Website Blocking

      The operators of Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 have introduced measures to circumvent court-ordered web-blocking measures designed to render the site inoperable in the UK. Site staff aren’t revealing how the stand-alone software client works but some basic network packet analysis shows that it defeats ISP BT’s Cleanfeed censorship system by using a handful of techniques including encryption.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canada’s Tories set to reintroduce DRM-friendly copyright bill without consultation

        Canada’s majority Tory government is poised to reintroduce its disastrous DRM-friendly copyright law, formerly Bill C-32, without any further public consultation. This law repeats the major error made in the US 1998 DMCA, namely granting special status to “software locks” (AKA DRM), making it illegal to remove a lock, even if you’re doing so for a lawful purpose.

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