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06.09.11

Links 9/6/2011: Millennius Sells GNU/Linux PCs, Snapshots in EXT4

Posted in News Roundup at 3:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Google discontinues specialised Linux and BSD search pages

    Google has discontinued its specialised Linux and BSD search pages. The services at google.com/linux and google.com/bsd offered search which was limited to a specific topic by searching only relevant web sites, message boards, blogs and other hand-selected sources of information. Users are instead now redirected to google.com/webhp, a standard search page.

  • Fight “lawful access” with Liberté Linux.

    While Canada’s Internet experience is, at present, nothing like the filtered and monitored mess you’d get in say, China, there are some troubling signs ahead. Chief among them is the looming spectre of “lawful access” — explained here by Dr. Michael Geist and the subject of this recent episode of Jesse Brown‘s Search Engine podcast.

    Fortunately, if you’re a Linux user like me there’s no shortage of options to protect your anonymity on the ‘net — hell, there’s an entire distribution dedicated to keeping your online affairs private.

  • Photos: Inside Murdoch’s $5m Linux supercomputer

    Supercomputing group iVEC has invited its first applications from researchers seeking access to its $5 million Linux cluster at Murdoch University.

    The so-called Epic@Murdoch was officially launched by Innovation Minister Kim Carr and State Science and Innovation Minister John Day yesterday, after some five months’ use by ‘early adopters’.

  • Desktop

    • Millennius Goes Old School With PC Towers Running Ubuntu

      Unless you build your own PC (or get one made from your local PC store), or you want a high-end gaming machine, it’s pretty uncommon to find PC towers on the market. But online retailer Millennius has bucked that trend, launch five new tower PCs, all of them running Ubuntu.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME, KDE and Unity: Virtual Desktops

      Together, GNOME 3, KDE, and Unity probably account for at least two-thirds of Linux desktops. However, each of the three offers a desktop experience that differs strongly from the other two, and nowhere is that difference stronger than in the use of virtual desktops. In fact, few other features show so clearly the design philosophies behind the three desktops.

      Virtual desktops go by a variety of names. Unity and the GNOME 2 series of releases call them workspaces, while GNOME 3 calls them activities. KDE offers activities, each of which can be divided into separate virtual desktops. However, all the names refer to the same basic concept: additional spaces that you can use to reduce the clutter on your screen and organize your open windows.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Discovering a New World

        This weekend a group of KDE hackers met in a small mountain village, Randa, in Switzerland to discuss the future of the KDE Frameworks. I was not present, but started on Saturday an endevour for the future of the KDE Plasma Workspaces. Yesterday evening I arrived in the new world:

      • digiKam Software Collection 2.0.0 beta6 is out…

        digiKam team is proud to announce the 6th digiKam Software Collection 2.0.0 beta release!

        With this release, digiKam include a lots of bugs fixes to progress in stability for future production use.

        digiKam include since 2.0.0-beta5 a new tool to export on RajCe web service.

      • New GStreamer backend for Phonon

        Along with the availability of QtGStreamer this should improve KDE and GStreamer interaction a lot. Nice stuff!

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Pomodoro Extension Toggle Timer For Gnome Shell ” Take A Break “

        Gnome Shell Extension notify you for how long you been setting since you activate the toggle timer extensions so you can take a break of whatever you are doing or start working on other stuff.

        By Default Pomodoro extensions change number of cycle every 25 minutes and the cycle start counting by one.

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux 1 (KDE) – First Look and Background Information

        After spending a little time with it, I have to say it’s a very nice first effort from the Mageia team, and I look forward to spending some more time with it. Lots of very up-to-date software, lots of desktop environments available, and, of course, the drakeconf tools.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • The Fruits of DEX Begin to Emerge

        A few months ago DEX was introduced to work with the Debian Front Desk to aid Linux developers in contributing back upstream to Debian. The Front Desk provides resources such as documentation, contacts, and a discussion forum in this goal, but DEX goes a step further by organizing developers from Debian and Debian derivatives to monitor and merge changes into the Debian development tree. They hoped this would make the contributing back process easier for those derivatives to better the Debian codebase.

        Today we got our first update on their progress. Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu and Debian developer (among many other things), has blogged that their first goal has been reached.

      • Debian Project News – June 8th, 2011

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Making the Evolutionary Leap from Meerkat to Narwhal

            ’m very happy with Ubuntu as a desktop operating system. I’ve used it for years with no significant issues. In fact, Ubuntu excels where other disributions fail. Even Linux arch rival Windows, is often left in the last century compared to the innovations perpetrated by the Canonical group. But what about Natty Narwhal? Is the hype worth the effort? I’d have to say, “Yes.” Although, I’m not 100 percent sold on Unity, I’m impressed with its boot speed, shutdown speed, and snappy performance. Oh, and there’s that little matter of The Launcher.

          • Loyal opposition: What it means

            “Ubuntu has many good points, not the least of which are kick-starting serious effort in making a really good desktop Linux, making inroads into the commercial computer market, genuinely welcoming new contributors, and inspiring hosts of respins and derivatives. Think back to the pre-Ubuntu days– Debian releases were stretching out ever longer (over three years!), Mandriva is perennially in crisis, Red Hat is uninterested in the consumer market….hmmm, methinks I spy an article in this subject.” (emphasis added)

            So I’ll take a bow for contributing to the inspiration behind Carla writing this article, which is outstanding. Its outstanding nature outshines the fact that there are a couple of minuscule glitches in the article itself — one is that while Red Hat may not care about the desktop market, it established Fedora Core and the Fedora Project at the same time it “went enterprise” (not terribly clear in the article), and Fedora started roughly a year before Ubuntu came along. Also, for all the great things it rightfully says about Ubuntu — let me repeat that, for all the great things it rightfully says about Ubuntu — it still doesn’t address the community’s lack of technical contributions back to the greater FOSS community, for starters.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Small tablet improvements

        If you’re interested in testing out this on a WeTab, you’ll need the accelerometer driver in the kernel, udev git (or udev 172 when it’s released) and gnome-settings-daemon master.

Free Software/Open Source

  • How Open Source Projects Can Prepare Students for Better Careers

    Paula Hunter is the executive director of the Outercurve Foundation. With over two decades of open source experience, she has served in leadership roles at organizations such as Open Source Development Labs and United Linux. Follow her on Twitter @huntermkt.

    Free and open source software (FOSS) is at the root of the most innovative products, technologies and services of our time. The Social Network may have taken some Hollywood liberties, but there’s still a big story to tell about today’s colleges as the hotbeds of innovation, much of it driven by FOSS.

  • Open Source for Vertical Apps: Is Wall Street Ready?

    Think of the kind of financial services firms that populate Wall Street and the City of London. The sort of collaborative ethos that surrounds open source does not immediately come to mind. Rather we see images of cut throat competition and a boundless desire to create a competitive edge, any way, any how.

  • On the value of contributing opinions

    I recently read a mail on the KDE core-devel mailinglist by Eike Hein. It was quite a good description of the value of opinions and ideas for a FOSS project – something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • OpenOffice + Apache = Open Content Innovation

      I will let other people debate Oracle’s motivations, Apache vs. The Document Foundation (TDF), etc. but here are a few interesting facts: OpenOffice is one of the most successful and vast open source projects in the world (1.2 million downloads a week and 135 million known distributions). OpenOffice.org gets 10x the number of unique visitors as the Apache.org homepage itself, according to Compete. By measures of downloads and web traffic, OpenOffice is as relevant as ever.

    • Like a box of chocolates

      There’s the OpenOffice.org handoff — or as some would put it, the OO.o drop kick — to the Apache Foundation by Oracle. This comes as no surprise. If Oracle were a good FOSS citizen, they’d have given it to the Document Foundation and LibreOffice would be its rightful heir. But this is Oracle we’re talking about, right? With Oracle finally washing their hands of OO.o, it remains to be seen what becomes of it. But since the barn door has been open for quite some time and the LibreOffice horse is at home out in the pasture, I am not sure if keeping OO.o around would be worth it.

  • BSD

    • FreeNAS 8 review

      FreeNAS is a popular FreeBSD-based operating system for network-attached storage (NAS). Thanks to the easy-to-use web interface, you don’t have to know anything about the FreeBSD base under the hood to share your files…

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Richard Stallman Takes Aim At eBooks

      Enthusiasm for eBooks seems to know no bounds these days, with Amazon even noting that its eBook sales are outpacing sales of hardback and paperback books. Free software pundit Richard Stallman isn’t having any of the trend, though. In an article titled “The Dangers of eBooks,” highlighted by PC Pro, Stallman builds a case against eBooks. His rant is not dissimilar to the one he recently supplied against smartphones, where he even noted that he doesn’t carry a cell phone. When it comes to eBooks, Stallman has some particularly notable objections.

      Stallman claims that eBooks “don’t respect our freedom,” and points to the DRM that comes with eBooks downloaded from Amazon (DRM is also built into many eBooks from other suppliers). He also notes that “Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an eBook.”

    • EBooks are “attacking our freedom”

      Free software guru Richard Stallman has called on consumers to reject eBooks until they “respect our freedom”.

      In an article entitled The Dangers of eBooks (PDF), the founder of the Free Software Foundation warns that “technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead”.

      He highlights the DRM embedded in eBooks sold by Amazon as an example of such restrictions, citing the infamous case of Amazon wiping copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from users’ Kindles without permission.

    • Two new projects can help free software replace Skype

      Skype has been in the news a lot lately: Microsoft agreed to buy the company, their network has gone down twice recently, and they’re threatening to take unspecified action against developers who try to write free software to make calls on their system. This all merely adds insult to injury; the software has always been nonfree, and that’s why a free software replacement for Skype has been on our High Priority Projects list since October 2008. Lots of people use software like Ekiga and Twinkle to make simple VoIP calls, but they’re still missing some features, and that prevents people from making the switch to using free software. Thankfully, a couple of new projects aim to close this gap, and both have made some promising progress over the last month.

Leftovers

  • Twitter the Winner in Weinergate

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Health Insurers Have Had Their Chance

      Of the many supporters of a single-payer health care system in the United States, some of the most ardent are small business owners who have struggled to continue offering coverage to their workers.

      Among them are David Steil, a small business owner and former Republican state legislator in Pennsylvania who earlier this year became president of the advocacy group Health Care 4 All PA.

      Another supporter is Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who last Thursday signed a bill that sets the stage for the country’s first single-payer plan. If all goes as Shumlin and the bill’s many backers hope, all 620,000 Vermonters will eventually be enrolled in a state-run plan to replace Blue Cross, CIGNA and other private insurers whose business practices have contributed to the number of Vermonters without coverage — approximately 60,000 and growing.

    • Military underprices tobacco more than law allows

      Smoking and chewing tobacco use in the armed forces is widespread. Yet many military bases break the rules and sell tobacco at big discounts.

    • It’s official: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide causes birth defects

      A new report by some top scientists has nailed it down, and Monsanto isn’t going to be happy. The Agri-giant has built its entire business model, including genetically modified (GMO) crops that dominate the US market, around its Roundup brand herbicide.

      They last thing they want to admit is that it causes birth defects.

      But that’s just what a group of scientists from a diverse group – including Cambridge University, the King’s College London School of Medicine, and the Institute of Biology, UNICAMP, São Paulo, Brazil – have found.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • The Energy Limit Model

      But it’s not like Americans haven’t tried to reduce their use of the primary energy source–oil. In the chart below, we can see that US consumption of oil, expressed in BTU, has fallen dramatically from the highs of mid-decade. While the US consumption of coal and natural gas—and also wind and solar power—has rebounded more strongly since the 2009 lows, US consumption of oil is still down nearly 11.00% from peak. This aspect of the story contains both good news and bad news, which I will explain below. | see: US Annual Petroleum Consumption in Quadrillion BTU 1995-2010.

    • The World Turns to Coal

      The latest BP Statistical Review was published in London this morning, and following a theme presented for years at Gregor.us, global growth in coal consumption continues to soar. Now that global oil production is flat, and is no longer able to fund new industrial expansion, coal remains the cheap BTU and of course the preferred energy source of the Developing World (non-OECD).

  • Finance

    • Russ Feingold Leads Thousands in Budget Protest at Wisconsin Capitol

      Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold led the march from Madison Fire Station 1 toward the Capitol. Feingold was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, and marched up to the Capitol with Rock County AFSCME member past the standing “Walkerville” tent encampment, whose friendly inhabitants set up refreshment tables to help crowds battle the crushing heat. Feingold refused to address speculation that he might oppose Scott Walker in the next election, but signs, T-shirts and chants of “Russ for Governor” indicated mounting support for his candidacy.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Fearful Teen Commits Suicide Due to Harold Camping’s Judgment Day Prediction

      A 14-year-old girl from Russia was so scared of the May 21 doomsday and rapture prediction made by Harold Camping that she committed suicide the same day, investigators said Wednesday. The teenager wanted to choose death rather than be among the ones suffering on earth after the rapture.

    • Corporate lobby targets African-Americans for NC bill raising loan interest rates

      North Carolina has some of the most stringent consumer protection rules in the country against predatory lending. In 2010, lending groups ramped up campaign contributions [pdf] to elect lawmakers more hospitable to their interests, and are now pushing a bill that would allow lenders to raise the interest rates they charge on consumer loans — and reaching out to African-American voters who would be among those most affected by the measure.

Reader’s Picks

Clip of the Day

Les Paul & Mary Ford How High the Moon


Credit: TinyOgg

06.08.11

Links 8/6/2011: Viewsonic Embraces Linux, Naev 0.5.0 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 4:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • A Report From Beyond: Linux Sound & Music At Virginia Tech

    From April 7 through 9 I attended Beyond, a series of lectures, workshops, and concerts promoted by the DISIS group at Virginia Tech – a.k.a. VTech – in Blacksburg VA. The festivities included presentations from Professor Brad Garton and Create Digital Music’s Peter Kirn, plus some incidental ramblings from yours truly. The concerts featured performances by VTech’s own Linux Laptop Orchestra, accompanied at times by percussionist extraordinaire Ron Coulter and a group from the Boys And Girls Club of Roanoke. Other performances included improvisations with some unique hardware controllers (more about those performances below) and original works composed by the participants.

    [...]

    I’ve just begun to look into similar programming environments for the Android and the existing audio APIs.

  • A use for EFI

    But when ERST support was added to Linux, a generic interface called pstore went in as well.

  • Windows killed my laptop, again

    Not sure how Windows kills itself, but Linux continues to work fine.

  • Desktop

    • How’s the Linux Desktop Doing?

      Linux doesn’t live in the one size fits all world of the proprietary operating system(s). As a matter of fact, I see Linux on the desktop offering better compatibility than their proprietary OS cousins thanks to its diversity. Each distribution is able to offer a customized kernel calibrated best for the given tasks at hand.

    • BluSphere – Sleek Linux Pre-Installed Computers

      I have been frequenting Linux message boards and chat rooms for several years now. During my time spent in these places I would estimate that 95% of the issues I have helped people with (and seen posted) are related to the installation and setup of the operating system. This comes largely from the fact that most of the computers you can buy come with Windows by default. The experienced Linux user knows that they need to research their hardware before forking out their hard earned money for something that might not work too well with their favorite operating system.

      [...]

      One of the reasons I like BluSphere (and am giving them this small plug) is because they give 5% of the profits on every notebook they sell back to open source projects.

    • M$ Attacks its “Partners”

      How about in the long term? Yes! The monopoly dies with “8″. How would you feel if M$ sold its PCs without “the tax” and “the tax” was larger than your margin??? Expect to see a lot more PCs shipping with Linux and expect to see a lot more PCs on retail shelves with Linux.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • A New Open-Source KMS Driver Just Published

        Embedded GPUs on Linux are a big mess due to their lack of fully open-source drivers, memory management complications, and other technical issues. However, there is some good news to report today and that’s on the emergence of a new open-source KMS driver.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome shell media player extension

        New extensions for the gnome shell appears by the day. Today its a ‘musicplayers’ extension. This new gnome shell extension will add a new menu to the gnome shell top panel and allows you to control various aspects of the allow you to control different music players through the menu.

  • Distributions

    • Zenix GNU/Linux – Fun, Fast, Different

      Back when I used to write full-length distribution reviews for a living, I always kept my eyes open for unique offerings. Unique distros were few and far between, but when those jewels were found – fun followed. Well, one of those gems of the Linux world appeared on my radar this evening. Zenix GNU/Linux is a Debian-based distribution that uses Openbox and Awesome WM to create something that’s just a little different.

      According to the Website, Zenix is designed to be lightweight, yet not light in features or applications. Not that it comes with lots of software, but its developers’ choices aren’t necessarily those little known or commandline versions. To quote the Website, “The goal of Zenix is to provide a light weight “base” without sacrificing functionality expected of a Desktop.”

      [...]

      Zenix is currently on Distrowatch.com’s waiting list…

    • New Releases

    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon XFCE: the story continues

        “Enough”, told I myself.
        I know now that Sabayon Linux is better than I though about it earlier. Some of the issues I had last time are solved.
        But Sabayon still requires more tweaking than I would like to make. And it behaves itself quite strange way sometimes.
        Does it mean I dump Sabayon? Not necessarily. I may come back to it later, but most likely with different desktop environment. KDE? GNOME? Guess or suggest!

      • New Gentoo Goodies
      • music videos made with gentoo
      • PMS Test Suite: getting the test results

        One of key problems in PMS Test Suite is getting actual test results. With the whole complexity of build process, including privilege dropping, sandbox, collision protection, auto-pretending it is not that easy to check whether a particular test succeeded without risking a lot of false positives.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Interview: Troy Dawson from Scientific Linux

        Red Hat Inc. rules the “enterprise” Linux market with their Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product line. Novell Inc. (now owned by The Attachmate Group) is second with their SUSE Enterprise Linux product line. To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any free SUSE Enterprise Linux clones but there are a number of free RHEL clones. CentOS is the most well known RHEL clone but with the seeming unending delay of the 6.0 release (July 11th is my guess), CentOS has received quite a bit of criticism leading some users to investigate alternatives. As a result, Scientific Linux is getting a lot of long overdue attention given the fact that it too is a solid enterprise clone… that has been around for a long time… that has a lot of support behind it.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Provides The Technology Foundation For Italian Dnshosting.it Cloud Offerings

        Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Dnshosting.it, the advanced Internet solutions developer located in Italy, has migrated its Cloud Server offering from VMware to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in order to remain competitive in the Italian market and gain the advantages of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization technology.

      • Obsidian drives Red Hat growth in emerging markets

        Adoption of open source systems in the South African enterprise is continuing unabated, with the country’s leading open source enterprise implementer, Obsidian, reporting a staggering 37% growth in Red Hat implementations in the past year. This is almost double the 21% global growth reported by Red Hat, the frontrunner in Linux-based enterprise systems.

        “I think it’s fair to say that open source adoption in South Africa has matured, but is still a long way from reaching saturation point,” says Muggie van Staden, Obsidian CEO. “The question is less ‘who is using it’ than ‘who isn’t using it’, with a great number of large corporates running mission-critical systems on Red Hat.”

      • Fedora

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • So what is Ensemble anyway?

            Have you heard of Ensemble? Are you excited about Cloud/Service Orchestration? What? Ok you’re not alone if you are scratching your head.

            Ensemble is an implementation of a new idea that has been taking shape the last couple of years. Ever since Amazon hooked up a remote API to thousands of machines to provide access to their virtual infrastructure (and called it macaroni? err.. AWS), people have been dreaming up ways to take advantage of what is basically a robotic “NOC guy”. No longer do you have to pre-rack servers or call your vendor frantically to get servers sent next-day to your colo. Right?

            Naturally, the system administrators that would normally be in charge of racking servers, applied their existing tools to the job, to mixed success. Config management is really good at modelling identical hosts. But with virtual hosts instantly available, this left those thinking at a higher level wanting more. Chef in particular implemented a nice set of tools and functionality to allow this high level “service” definition with their knife tools and simple ruby API.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Sprint to launch Gingerbread smartphone and tablet on June 24

          Sprint will ship the 4.3-inch HTC Evo 3D 4G smartphone and seven-inch HTC Evo View 4G tablet on June 24 for $200 and $400, respectively. Both devices run Android 2.3, and offer the latest Sense UI layer — which is now supported with a new HTCdev developer site and an OpenSense SDK to tap the Evo 3D 4G’s 3D capabilities and the Evo View 4G’s Scribe pen technology.

        • Will your next PC be running Android?

          Recently, I predicted that the future of the PC may not be powered by the x86 processor architecture.

          With ARM chips assimilating everything from smartphones to cars, and companies like Nvidia working on high performance CPUs based on the ARM architecture, the assumption that x86 will continue to dominate the PC no longer looks iron-clad.

          One of the key catalysts for that realisation was Microsoft’s announcement that Windows 8 would support x86 and ARM. If Microsoft is picking up on a trend, you know it has momentum.

          The thing is, if it makes sense to question one half of the Wintel alliance, surely it makes sense to question the other. If today’s PCs largely run Windows on x86 processors, could tomorrow’s be Android on ARM?

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source identity: FreeNAS 8′s Josh Paetzel

    FreeNAS is an open source operating system based on FreeBSD and, as its name implies, designed for networked storage. The project recently celebrated the release of FreeNAS 8, which racked up some 43,000 downloads in the first 48 hours after its release.

    Techworld Australia caught up with Josh Paetzel, director of IT at iXsystems and project manager for FreeNAS 8, to talk about the current state of the OS, what lies ahead for it, and the relationship to FreeNAS 0.7.

  • Two Open Source Ideologies That Are Just Wrong

    Ideology #2: Open source project should all play nice together

    When Oracle announced their proposal to bring Hudson to Eclipse, a number of people complained to me and others why didn’t Eclipse Foundation force Oracle to work with Jenkins. There is a similar conversation going on with Oracle participating with LibreOffice. It seems people believe Apache should have rejected the project proposal, so Oracle would be forced to work with LibreOffice.

  • Community Doesn’t Come for Free

    At Eclipse, we talk a lot about community. Developing a community is an important part of being an open source project. It is from a community of users, adopters, and contributors that a project draws strength and longevity. Without a community, an open source project is just a bunch of code that might as well buried on a server behind a firewall somewhere in parts unknown.

  • Events

    • Upcoming Open Source Webinars: Bitnami, Hippo vs Plone, Sonatype

      Improving Your Java development with Maven 3 and Hudson – Attend this webinar to learn about the advantages of upgrading to Apache Maven 3, including improved speed, greater stability and increased compatibility. Jason will also talk about the greatly improved support for Maven 3 within Hudson that is easy to configure and supports complex build scenarios with ease. We will cover the Eclipse IDE integration for both Maven and Hudson that improves developer productivity.

    • Zarafa SummerCamp 2011

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Releases Chrome 12 Stable for Linux

        The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced last evening (June 7th) the stable release and immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 12 web browser for Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Chrome Frame platforms.

        The new Google Chrome 12 web browser includes various interesting new features, such as the highly anticipated hardware accelerated 3D CSS support and a brand-new Safe Browsing mode.

    • Mozilla

      • Is Mozilla’s Webian Shell An Answer to Google’s Chrome OS?

        Mozilla Labs is generating a lot of buzz with its announcement of Webian Shell, which, as Digitizor notes, “basically consists of a browser which will replace the traditional desktop, and where the web applications are given more importance than the native applications.” You can download the early version of Webian Shell for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, but be warned that it exists in a very early version at this point. You can get a look at it here. Is Webian Shell an answer to Google’s Chrome OS?

      • Google and Mozilla Are Leveraging WebM and More for 3D Online Video

        Is 3D the future of web video? A few months ago, when Google announced its WebM video format, based on technology it acquired from On2, with its VP8 video codec, many people interpreted the move as an effort to undercut entrenched video standards, such as H.264. Could 3D video have been the actual brass ring that Google had its eyes on, though? Both Mozilla and Google are making moves to support 3D video in browsers, and Google’s YouTube web video juggernaut is increasingly supporting 3D videos. This blog post from Mozilla illustrates the focus that it has on 3D and Google’s efforts to make YouTube a haven for 3D videos. You can also find a good discussion of WebM and 3D video here.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice motors right along with a new release

      TDF proudly boasts that the latest LibreOffice “incorporates the contributions of over 120 developers (six times as many as the first beta released on the launch date).” And, that, “The majority of these contributors have started to hack LibreOffice code less than eight months ago, and this is an incredible achievement if one recalls that the OOo [OpenOffice.org] project has attracted a lower number of contributors in ten years.”

    • Oracle v. Google – 3rd Oracle In-House Attorney Gets Limited AEO Access

      A third Oracle in-house lawyer has been granted limited access to Attorneys’ Eyes Only materials. You will recall in an earlier ruling the magistrate denied Attorneys’ Eyes Only rights to Dorian Daley, Oracle general counsel, and limited the rights of Deborah Miller and Matthew Sarboraria, but the status of Andrew C. Temkin was left for further determination based on supplemental filings.

    • Google Granted Leave to File a Daubert Motion; Says Oracle’s Damages Report is Unreliable, Misleading – by pj

      Experts are hired by the parties. The parties hire them to say helpful things. There are all kinds of experts, some more reliable and independent than others. Do you remember when one of SCO’s proposed experts came to Groklaw and in a comment admitted that he took on the assignment to get paid and hopefully to attract more such work? So courts are not as much in awe of experts as the title might lead one to believe.

    • OpenOffice.org to Apache: What does it mean?

      What’s in it for Oracle?

      This is easy – Oracle off-loads OpenOffice.org, for which it has no further use, without damaging its relationship with IBM and other commercial OOo partners. They lose any revenues involved, but apparently they were resigned to losing those anyway. So for Oracle this is all up-side.

    • Publishing our recommendation to Oracle

      From time to time TDF is required to engage in private correspondence with parties, yet we are committed in our bylaws after a suitable period to make this content public.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • Funding

  • Project Releases

    • Naev 0.5.0 Release

      The Naev devteam is proud to announce the release of Naev 0.5.0! This release is the result of over a year of hard work done by nearly 30 committers. This release is just a step in the path for ultimate greatness and a major step forward in the maturity of Naev. It has many major gameplay changes and signifies the coming of age of Naev, which has now exceeded the tag of Escape Velocity clone.

      Due to the size of the 0.5.0 ndata, downloads shall from now on be hosted at Sourceforge instead of Google Code due to the latter’s arbitrary size limits.The rest of the project infrastructure will remain unchanged.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Here’s the Pitch: Open Ocean Celebrates Fund Three With Contest for Start-Ups

      ast September, an ambitious code-sharing initiative named Civic Commons was launched at the Gov 2.0 Summit in a bid to help city governments use information technology better. This week, Civic Commons took a big step forward with a new management team in place and $250,000 of funding from Omidyar Network.

      Former White House deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin will be the first executive director and Nick Grossman, former director of Civic Works at nonprofit Open Plans, will be its first managing director. Grossman was one of the lead architects of Civic Commons from its inception.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Google pits C++ against Java, Scala, and Go

      Google has released a research paper closely comparing the performance of C++, Java, Scala, and its own Go programming language.

      According to Google’s tests (PDF), C++ offers the fastest runtime of the four languages. But, the paper says, it also requires more extensive “tuning efforts, many of which were done at a level of sophistication that would not be available to the average programmer.”

    • Why OSCON Java?

      What is OSCON Java? It’s a good question. There are many Java conferences on every continent except Antarctica. Why is O’Reilly throwing its hat in the ring?

      The Java community has always been a broad, fractious, interesting mess, capable of doing surprising things with little warning, and that’s precisely why we’re attracted to it. It’s undeniable that Java is huge; it’s been in one of the top two slots on Tiobe’s Programming Community Index since Tiobe started in 2002. It’s always been one of the largest components of the technical book market. Java’s 2010 book sales represent a resurgence since 2008, but even in its weakest years, Java has always been one of the largest components of the book market. Beyond being huge, Java is one of the key languages of the open source movement. While there has been plenty of discussion over the years of the JDK’s status as open source software, there has been no shortage of open source projects. SourceForge lists more than 25,000 Java projects, more than any other language.

Leftovers

Reader’s Picks

Clip of the Day

Korean Gamers: APM Demonstration


Credit: TinyOgg

06.07.11

Links 7/6/2011: Platform 11, New Wine

Posted in News Roundup at 6:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Who Should Lead Linux?

    Richard Stallman is the ultimate nerdish power geek.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

    • Miro 4 – Maintaining an Android media library just got easier

      Android as a mobile platform is gaining more and more popularity day by day. However, Google is still yet to design a program that allows its users to synchronize their media across their phone and computers.

    • Proprietary

      • One Year Later: Adobe Abandons 64-bit Linux Again

        Just under a year ago I wrote about how Adobe had abandoned 64-bit Linux, at least temporarily. Linux users who chose to run a 64-bit OS were left with a range of unsatisfactory choices: use an outdated beta with known security vulnerabilities; run an FOSS alternative, most likely gnash, despite limits in functionality and compatibility; or run a 32-bit browser in a 64-bit operating system. At the time the move was surprising since reviews of the 64-bit beta, like this one by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Computer World, were quite favorable.

        Three months later on September 15, 2010, Adobe announced a preview of Flash Player “Square”, development code for an upcoming release of a native 64-bit version of Flash Player 10.2. Unfortunately Preview 3, released on November 10, 2010, was the last Square release. Flash Player 10.3 was released for 32-bit platforms only.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Wine

      • Wine 1.3.21 Released

        The Wine development release 1.3.21 is now available.

        What’s new in this release:

        * Support for installation rollbacks in MSI.
        * 8- and 16-bit bitmap formats in the DIB engine.
        * Fixes in the XInput2 mouse support.
        * Better support for text shaping in Uniscribe.
        * Improvements to the Item common dialog.
        * More MSVC runtime functions.
        * Various bug fixes.

    • Games

      • Any Linux News From The E3 2011 Gaming Expo?

        E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is officially kicking off today in Los Angeles and will be running through Thursday. This, along with the Game Developers Conference, is one of the key times of the year for the electronic gaming industry. A number of game studios will be announcing new titles and other great announcements, but will there be anything Linux related?

        Only time will tell if there are any Linux-related announcements to be found this week. If we know of any, it’s of course under NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) at the moment. But here’s a few random notes for what can be said at this tim..

        [...]

        - Linux Game Publishing is still working on something, but they won’t be at E3 and this next port of theirs with almost 100% certainty isn’t a triple-A title.

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Platform 11 at Randa

        I’m at the Platform 11 sprint at Randa. We are here to discuss and shape the future of the KDE platform. It’s the first meeting of this kind since Trysil five years ago. Four people who were at Trysil also made it to Randa, including a respectable dinosaur, but it’s great to also have new and very new faces around.

      • Kollaboration in at Platform 11
      • Random Randa Rumours
      • Sonar color scheme for KDE
      • Science and the KDE Platform – An Interview with the KtikZ Developers

        Many scientists use the LaTeX typesetting system as the preferred way to write publications. Among the various widely used add-ons, one special mention is the TikZ language, a powerful extension which is used to create publication-quality figures. Of course, like LaTeX, it takes its time to learn. The good news is that, like with LaTeX there is KDE software to fill in this gap: KTikZ, a graphical front-end to TikZ.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Adwaita (GNOME 3 theme) for Chrome

        Like many of you, I split my time between two excellent browsers: Firefox and Chrome. Neither feels really all so native in GNOME3 — although Firefox, as it mimics GTK+2 by default, fits in just a little better. Every time I started Chrome, however, I felt a bit frustrated with how much of a sore thumb it stuck out and decided to do something about it.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Review: Red Hat Fedora 15

          Verdict:

          Version 15 of Red Hat’s community project Linux distribution Fedora showed great stability, and it was simple to add applications onto the platform. We had no problem with hardware drivers and the new GNOME 3 GUI was easy to use, even though initially we did seem to be blundering about. Fedora would suit corporate road warriors who would like a combined Fedora-Windows dual-boot system (in case of OS failure), or anybody interested enough to see how far Linux has advanced compared to Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Support for each Fedora version is limited to 13 months, so corporates would not roll Fedora out except to expert users. In any case, there’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) available, which eventually gets to use features that have cut their teeth in Fedora.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Friendly: community sourced hardware validation

            Ubuntu corporate sponsor Canonical is developing a new Ubuntu Friendly hardware validation program for desktops, netbooks and laptops. The program will allow users to test hardware and the results of those tests will then be used to validate systems as “Ubuntu Friendly”. The program will be developed in parallel with the development of Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot, and should be in place by the time Oneiric Ocelot is released in October.

          • Using free software to promote proprietary

            The man behind the distribution Mark Shuttleworth already had a few ideas to earn money with the project. Ubuntu includes a Music Store, a Cloud Service for data storage and synchronization and commercial apps in the Software Center (which is quite similar to Apple’s App Store).

          • Ubuntu 11.04

            I guess the biggest enhancement for me is not so much related to Ubuntu. It’s that I completely deleted my Windows partition, with everything in it, i.e., everything I had before is now gone.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Instant Messaging in the Enterprise with Openfire

    Used responsibly, instant messaging (IM) offers the benefit of instant communication and collaboration on the corporate intranet. However, many companies, fearing IM’s adverse affect on productivity, tweak their corporate firewalls to block all ports ferrying IM traffic. A better approach is to control the IM server by bringing it in-house. The Java-based cross-platform Openfire application makes it easy to host your own instant messaging server.

  • Events

    • Linux Beer Hike 2011 in Tux

      Hacking, learning, talking, walking and dining – The Linux Bier Wanderung (Linux Beer Hike) is all this and much more. Each summer around 50 Linux enthusiasts meet up for a week’s holiday. This year the 13th annual event takes the penguin-friends to Austria, specifically to the small village of Lanersbach in the Tux valley [1].

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Labs Bring The Webian Shell – A Full Screen Web Browser Concept

        With the advancement of web technologies, it is not surprising that the web and web applications are increasingly playing an important part of our experience on the computer. In the coming week, Google is releasing its first Chromebooks – netbooks which are based completely on a cloud OS and in which the traditional desktop has been replaced by the web browser. Mozilla too has released the first concept of something along that line.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Is Oracle Holding Back OpenOffice Files from Apache?

      Michael Meeks published some interesting statistics on the completeness of the OpenOffice source code contributed to the Apache Software Foundation. His numbers actually came from a post from Christian Lohmaier to The Document Foundation discussion mailing list.

    • Strip mining of OpenOffice.org

      Oracle’s donation of the OpenOffice.org to the Apache Software Foundation does no favours for the users or developers of open office suites, says Richard Hillesley…

      Speaking at the time of Sun’s decision to release Java under the GNU General Public License (GPL), Marc Fleury, the founder of JBoss, claimed that “IBM reacted negatively” to the Sun announcement because “IBM’s approach to open source is what we call ‘strip mining’, which is to let the open source community do things – then IBM comes and packages them, adds proprietary code, and markets the result,” and concluded that “they have this dual strategy of proprietary products and low-end open source.”

  • CMS

  • Education

    • Saving Money

      I have long saved money in education by using GNU/Linux on PCs and on thin clients with zero licensing costs. I always chuckle when I read the anguish of some people trying to eke out similar savings with that other OS. Yes you can save money by using thin clients with that other OS because thin clients are cheaper and CALs are cheaper than full licences (just barely) but the maths is really simple with GNU/Linux. $0 beats all other licensing regimes of that other OS. No need to agonize over four plans each with negotiated prices to work things out. Install GNU/Linux and go.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • How GNU Free Call differs

      This is where GNU Free Call most clearly differs from most others who are looking to replace Skype. As GFC is already designed for use with any SIP capable client, we have no interest in re-inventing protocols or even how VOIP clients work. This is not the problems we are looking to solve. Rather than focusing on having people join or connect through yet another specific service provider to mediate their communications (whether iptel.org, ekiga.net, etc), we are interested in enabling anyone to discover and communicate with each other directly without the need for a mediating service at all. It is how users are empowered to discover each other which is hence most important in GFC’s design. This is best illustrated by the GFC client, which is in reality contact focused rather than communication driven. This I think becomes more clear from the GFC GUI design (and experimental client), as illustrated here.

  • Project Releases

    • VLC 1.1.10 is released!

      VideoLAN and the VLC development team present VLC 1.1.10, a minor release of the 1.1 branch. This release brings a rewritten pulseaudio output, an important number of small Mac OS X fixes, the removal of the font-cache building for the freetype module on Windows and updates of codecs.

    • VLC 1.1.10 updates open source media player for security

      Though it doesn’t typically come with EVERY Linux distro (it really should..), vlc is one of the most popular, and powerful open source media playing programs around.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Computacenter blamed in public sector open source row

      Systems integrator (SI) Computacenter has taken fire in a growing bust-up over open source software at Bristol City Council, which MPs have been told proves the government’s open source ICT strategy is unworkable, writes Mark Ballard.

      In a letter to MPs sitting on the Public Administration Select Committee, open source supplier Sirius Corporation said Bristol City Council had ditched its latest effort on the advice of its supplier Computacenter.

      Mark Taylor, CEO at Sirius, accused Computacenter of skewing an open source proof-of-concept pilot in favour of vendor partner Microsoft.

      Taylor told MPs this showed how the UK’s “oligopoly” of systems integrators ensured Cabinet Office open source policy “cannot and will not work”.

      Computacenter and Sirius bid for the Bristol deal after the Council Cabinet voted to adopt an open source computing infrastructure last September, said the letter.

      However Sirius claims it was thrown off the project after the two disagreed over its viabililty.

    • The end of open source down the Counts Louse?

      Money is now much tighter in the public sector, so we’re wondering how the council is going to pay for the Office 2010 licence, particularly as council tax has been capped. Will public services and/or staff be cut to pay for the Counts Louse’s largesse to Microsoft? Perhaps someone – councillor or officer – from BCC would like to comment below.

      Finally, another indirect effect of BCC’s return to the closed source fold is that this will have a negative effect on efforts to have Open Document Format (ODF) adopted as the standard means of exchange for public documents – something that is a reality in some of the UK’s EU partners.

    • System integrators render Cabinet Office open source strategy unworkable, MPs told

      More SMEs testified in secret to the PASC inquiry in May. They were fearful their complaints about the systems integrators’ oligopoly – said to control 80% of the UK’s £19bn-a-year public sector ICT – would lead to their exclusion from government contracts.

      [...]

      Taylor’s letter to MPs alleged Bristol City Council had, in September 2010, asked its supplier at the time, Capgemini, to complete a pilot of the open source software stack by November. Capgemini simply ignored the request, said Taylor’s statement.

      Capgemini was unavailable for comment.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • World’s first open source flashlight?

        Robotics wizard and two-time Battlebots champion Christian Carlberg first achieved notoriety shredding competitors’ robots with Minion’s 14-inch saw blade on one of TV’s first reality shows. Now he’s all fired up to begin shipping what may prove to be the “world’s first open source flashlight.”

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • The False Choice of Schema.org

    By ManuSporny On June 3, 2011 In RDFa, Semantic Web With 41 Comments Permanent Link to The False Choice of Schema.orgPermalink

    Full disclosure: I am the current Chair of the group at the World Wide Web Consortium that created RDFa. That said, all of this is my personal opinion – I am not speaking on behalf of the W3C or my company, Digital Bazaar. I am biased, but also have been around long enough to know when freedom of choice on the Web is being threatened.

    Some of you may have heard that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have just released a new uber-vocabulary for the Web. As the site explains, if you use schema.org, you will get a better looking search listing on all of the search listings for Bing, Google and Yahoo. While this may sound good on the surface, it is very bad news for choice on the Web. There are few points that I’d like to make in this post:

    1. RDFa and Microdata markup are similar for the schema.org use cases – they should both be supported.
    2. Microdata doesn’t scale as easily as RDFa – early successes will be followed by stagnation and vocabulary lock-in.
    3. All of us have the power to change this as the Web community – let’s do that. We will release a plan shortly.

    The schema.org site makes it appear as if you must pick sides and use Microdata if you want preferential treatment. This is a false choice!

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Bank of America pays debt instead of losing furniture

      Two burly Collier County sheriff’s deputies and a homeowner’s attorney strode into the Bank of America branch on Davis Boulevard in Naples with a court order and an ultimatum for Manager Erich Fahrner.

      Fahrner’s choice: Write out a check for $2,534 in attorney’s fees for the couple wrongfully slapped with a foreclosure lawsuit by the bank, or a William C. Hoff Storage moving crew waiting outside would start hauling out furniture to be sold at public auction.

    • Goldman Uses Wall Street’s Favorite Reporter to Make Unpersuasive Defense Against Levin Report

      It’s telling that the first salvo is being leaked through Wall Street’s favorite reporter. Now it’s possible the firm was using Sorkin as a one-man focus group to test and refine their messaging and have him all prepped to go. Sorkin says he’s been in communication with Goldman officials “for the past several weeks”. But this may also indicate that the firm intends to make its case to the press and then let the press persuade the public.

      I see that as a sign of serious weakness. The Levin committee provides a great deal of documentation to the public as well as a detailed summary of its findings. By contrast, Wall Street firms make an art form of cherry picking numbers and presenting them in isolation. And journalists don’t have enough knowledge of tradecraft to push back in a serious way.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality (Canada)

    • The CRTC Must Die

      Every time you think the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, has finally been chastised and in the process, learned a lesson, the bozos who run the circus come up with a new and silly act meant to help the broadcasters. And, as is usual with these folks, somehow ends up diminishing our choices as consumers and costing us more money in the long run.

      Last time the genius’ at the CRTC had the brilliant notion that behemoths Rogers and Bell should have the right to tell their sub-buyers like Teksavvy what they could charge for internet use. This blew up in the CRTC’s face when most Canadians saw through the money grab by the big providers and began a protest that made the suggestion disappear faster than a Liberal leader in the 21st century.

    • Conservatives To Discuss Net Neutrality, Broadband at Convention

      The Conservatives hold their convention later this week with 80 resolutions being considered for possible debate in the plenary session. The resolutions are proposed by local chapters and at least two focus on Internet access and net neutrality. Resolution P-063 (Durham) on broadband states:

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Federal departments hoarding copyrights: report

      Departments and agencies are hoarding hundreds of patents and copyrights each year, violating the federal government’s long-standing rules on so-called intellectual property, says a new report.

      For more than 10 years, federal policy has been to assign contractors the rights to any intellectual property produced during their work for departments and agencies.

    • The Copyright Pressure Points: What Next for Canadian Copyright

      The government delivered its Speech from the Throne on Friday, which included a commitment to “introduce and seek swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.”

    • Copyrights

      • Music and film industries split over pirates

        The music industry has backflipped on its long-held demands that repeat music pirates be disconnected from the internet as a new UN report declares such a policy would be a breach of human rights and international law.

        But film studios, represented by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), are still backing the controversial measures, arguing protection of intellectual property is a human right. It has released research saying film piracy costs the Australian economy $1.37 billion a year.

      • A Copyright Bill for the Creative Digital Economy: A CCC Statement

        Revisions to the Copyright Act are essential to Canada’s digital economy strategy as incentive to move the creative economy forward, and also to satisfy demands by its trading partners that Canada implement the WIPO “Internet Treaties”. Bill C-32, which died with the election call, included many new exceptions from infringement and some confusing language that would have led to costly litigation. It was clear that many proposed changes, some unintentionally, eroded creators’ rights.

        Arts and culture industries provide over 630,000 jobs and contribute $46 billion to Canada’s economy. Copyright revision should be supportive of these industries, big and small, and encourage their growth. The works of creators are the foundation of all such industries. A bill like C-32 would make it significantly more difficult for creators to carry on their copyright-reliant businesses, cause them significant income losses, and be a real barrier to the continuing growth of Canadian digital content and Canada’s digital economy.

Clip of the Day

HUGE explosion on the Sun on June 7, 2011


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 7/6/2011: Linux 3.0 RC2, No KDE5

Posted in News Roundup at 7:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Porting Linux: part 1 (of many)
  • Graphic Design for Linux Systems

    These days, Linux has managed to draw more attentions from those users who want to get faster result from their complicated task. It is an open space operating system, and it allows the users to accomplish their challenging task properly.

    Whether you want to use the Linux in your system or want to know the graphic design for Linux system, you need to move for the online media. Here, you can get numbers of important information through which you can know the importance of graphic design for Linux system. With the Linux you can monitor the system files, networks, and many important applications of a system easily and fast.

    At present, Linux is the vital opportunity for maintaining the system safe and secure. It is not requiring any types of anti-malware, anti-spyware, or anti-viruses for maintaining fast and secure system. With this system you can not face any kind of problems like severe system damages. It’s time to install it in your computer.

  • Desktop

    • Attention: This is not big news

      That desktop, however, is not the topic of this blog. Instead, I want to go on the record to say that the recent announcement of ASUS Pre-installing Ubuntu 11.04 on three of their EeePC machines (1001PXD, 1011PX, and 1015PX) is not big news.

      Although the Linux community will stand up against me to say that any time a company sells a piece of hardware with the Linux operating system pre-installed is a win; this “win” just doesn’t feel like a win. Why?

      We’re talking about netbooks. Again.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC), Qt

      • More Polka, please

        After blogging about Polka, my experiment with a radically new take on an address book, I got a lot of great feedback. I appreciate all the comments, questions, and encouragement. Two people made me particularly happy, as they not only sent feedback, but also contributed some welcome work. Sascha Manns built packages, and Saleel Velankar created a beautiful logo. Free software rocks.

        [...]

        My first attempt resulted in a port of Polka to MeeGo. MeeGo is a system targeted at touch interfaces, and being Qt based it seemed to be close enough for a getting Polka to work on it.

      • There is no KDE5

        In essence, this means there is no KDE 5, and there will never be. During the sprint here in Randa, we’ve spent a lot of thinking about the future of the KDE Frameworks, and we will be forthcoming with plans to further modularize these frameworks, which consist of what’s currently found in the kdelibs, kdesupport, kdepimlibs, kde-runtime and kdepim-runtime modules.

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 1 – A new distro and a new DE experience for me.

        There has been much work put into Mageia but in today’s computing world your product has to be far more than merely functional With so many other distro’s competing for your attention, I think Mageia is not yet ready to become a player at the top of the league for Linux distro’s with the RC seeming more like a beta. My requirements of an OS are not satisfied with Mageia and should I remain with this distro, I would not be as productive. That is not acceptable and so for me its goodbye, with an appreciation that KDE is not for me either. I will certainly be looking at the Gnome flavour of Mageia on a secondary rig and I would expect a more favourable opinion since I do love Gnome.

    • Gentoo Family

      • How to do simple things the Sabayon way

        Do you think there is only one penguin Tux? You are wrong. There is whole family of them. They are all brothers, because they have same father: Linux kernel code by Linus Torvalds. But they are not identical. They have their own names: Debian, RedHat, Slackware, Arch. Eac

    • Red Hat Family

      • Oracle cranks Red Hat Linux clone to 6.1

        If you needed a demonstration that Oracle is not CentOS, then look no further than the fact that only two weeks after Red Hat announced its Enterprise Linux 6.1 update, software giant Oracle has kicked out its Linux 6.1 clone. This is despite Red Hat’s attempts to slow down the RHEL cloners and others – such as Oracle and the former Novell – that offer technical support for RHEL distributions.

      • Upgrades & Downgrades: Green Ink For Red Hat?

        The Dow dropped 2.33% in four days for its fifth straight weekly loss, the longest such slide since since July 2004 — back when Greece was the pride of Europe (at least in soccer). Seven years on a Moody’s cut of the country’s credit rating, allied to May’s paltry payroll increase of 54,000 here at home, sent exchanges into a tailspin. DuPont (DD), down 1.72% after Friday’s grim jobless data, was appropriately among the blue chips’ worst performers; its most famous product gave Ronald Reagan the nickname of “Teflon President” after he won a reelection landslide despite 7.2% unemployment but with the rate now standing at 9.1%, President Obama has a hard act to follow. Bank of America (BAC), which fired John Thain after he amassed a $1.2 million bill on an office restoration, wrote a check for $2,534 in attorney’s fees rather than lose its office furniture.

      • Fedora

        • Trying on a Fedora that gives a new look

          As quite often happens with Fedora releases, I think version 15 is great in some respects and falls behind in others. Take, for instance, YUM — it’s probably faster than it has ever been and I was quite impressed with the command-line program, but the GUI front-ends still lag behind their counterparts in performance. This release handled my hardware really well and comes with some interesting technology previews — whether you are a fan of GNOME 3 or not, I think we can agree it’s nice to see a distribution offering it for people to try and, on cards/drivers which don’t support 3-D effects, the display “falls back” nicely to the classic theme. I think it’s good that the developers have managed to increase compression on the live disc without negatively impacting performance, but I wonder why they didn’t use the opportunity to add more software as there is about an extra 100 MB of space available on the CD.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu Certification Going Forward

            As you might have heard, we are planning to close down the “Ubuntu Ready” programme in time for Oneiric Final Release.

            The aim is to simplify the public Canonical endorsed certification programme to only one:“Ubuntu Certified“.

            To straighten out any confusion about what our certification offering will be here is a quick fact sheet about certification:

          • Ubuntu’s Contributions to Linux

            These tidy bullet points list a few examples:

            * Raised the visibility of Linux overall.
            * Generated excitement and given desktop Linux much-needed accelerant.
            * Entered commercial arenas both server and desktop: Dell, independent Linux OEMs like System76, ZaReason, Emperor Linux; commercial training and support.
            * Inspired hosts of derivatives such as Vinux, Mint, Mepis, nUbuntu, Gnoppix, Ulteo, moonOS, SuperOS, and dozens more.
            * Created good name recognition for “Ubuntu” out in the real world.
            * Created a welcoming, supportive developer community that supports noobs.
            * Streamlined and popularized the LiveCD.
            * Maintains multiple official editions– Ubuntu Server, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and Kubuntu– that all share the same repositories, with 100% compatibility.
            * Pioneered an easy installer.
            * Created UCK, Ubuntu Customization Kit, for easily creating your own customized Ubuntu LiveCD.
            * Created netbook/tablet/touch versions before any other distro.
            * Continually pushing ahead on multiple fronts.

          • Give Unity A Chance

            With Ubuntu 11.04 the Ubuntu Linux brings a new look to the desktop called Unity. I have installed Ubuntu 11:04 on a desktop computer and very soon, I will install it on my laptop and net-book. There have been mixed reviews of Unity; I have found Unity to be different and will take a bit of time getting use to. That said I would encourage all of us to give Unity an extended test period.

            The gnome desktop has been my standard desktop for many years now, so it is only natural that a departure from the norm will feel a bit strange. So you may be asking why do it?

          • Better Community With Better Technology

            One of the primary goals in the Ubuntu community is to encourage and inspire people to get involved in different parts of the project. Getting people involved typically requires a few key steps:

            * Inspire – Get someone interested in joining the community.
            * Provide Opportunities – Find something for them to do.
            * Review – Review their work to help them be successful and have their work included.

            [...]

            There are a couple of things that are obvious and yet don’t work. For example, lots of upstreams think they should form a non-profit institution to house their work. The track record of those is poor: they get setup, and they fail as soon as they have to file their annual paperwork, leaving folks like the SFLC to clean up the mess. Not cool. At the end of the day, such new institutions add paperwork without adding funding or other sources of energy. They don’t broaden out the project the same way a company writing documentation and selling services usually does. On the other hand, non-profits like the FSF which have critical mass are very important, though, which is why on occasion we’ve been happy to contribute to them in various ways.

          • On balancing economic power in the FLOSS ecosystem

            When we debate our goals, principles and practices in the FLOSS community, we devote a great deal of energy to “how things should be”, and to the fact that “men are not angels”. I think the approach of James Madison is highly relevant to those discussions.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Pinguy OS Mini 11.04.1 – A Stripped Down Pinguy OS [Uses Compiz 0.8.6]

              Pinguy OS is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The latest version – 11.04.1 is based on Ubuntu 11.04, but comes with the Classic GNOME 2.32.1 desktop instead of Unity.

              Pinguy has launched Pinguy OS Mini, a stripped down version of Pinguy OS which comes with all the tweaks and fixes that are available in the main Pinguy OS 11.04.1, but without most of the applications preinstalled in Pinguy OS.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Tablet PC

        I finally purchased a tablet PC for testing usability of recent GNU/Linux desktop on touch devices. Though there are not so many choices that meet my requirements (PC compatible, reasonably fast and cheap, and available in my country), Acer ICONIA TAB W500 looked fine. Actually F-15 final installed on that device without any problem and GNOME-Shell works fine on it (the peformance is not that bad as I expected from its 1GHz CPU clock).

Free Software/Open Source

  • Re: Control is Highly Overrated and Overpriced

    This type of thinking also deeply effects the free and open source culture. Since one of the reasons for using FOSS is ultimate control (and responsibility).

  • Linux, Open Source & Ubuntu: Open-Source Software Winning Mainstream Status in Enterprises

    Industry observers have been predicting for years that open-source software will achieve mainstream adoption. Five years ago, open source was in its “nascent stages” and its future “was promising but still unknown,” said Michael Skok, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. He presented the fifth annual Future of Open Source Survey at Computerworld’s Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. The latest survey results “clearly demonstrate” that open source “has gone mainstream,”

  • Nominations open for the O’Reilly Open Source Awards 2011

  • Events

    • Hop a ride on the Tux bus for Linux Learners Day

      The Linux Foundation will be teaming up with Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab (OSL) for Linux Learners’ Student Day, to be held in Vancouver on August 16 (the day before LinuxCon begins). The program includes sessions from OSL presenters on Linux basics, Python, embedded systems, and careers in open source.

      “The OSU Open Source Lab is very excited to be leading the sessions for Linux Learners Day,” said Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Outreach Manager. “We see educating future generations of Computer Scientists as one of the most important parts of our mission to serve the open source community.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Ready for Firefox 6? Here’s What’s on the Way

        Though the final version of Firefox 6 isn’t due until August or so, this Aurora release can now be downloaded for Linux, Mac and Windows from the “Future of Firefox” page on the Mozilla Project’s Web site.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle and OpenOffice: The Final Insult

      Things are never dull here in the Linux blogosphere, but there’s no doubt they would be a whole lot less entertaining without Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL).

      How else, after all, would we get the opportunity to ride on a thrilling emotional roller coaster such as the one Oracle’s had us on since it acquired Sun?

    • The Open Source Office Software Sector Heats Up

      The world of LibreOffice and OpenOffice(.org) has been heating up recently with several exciting and, at times, bewildering developments. The Document Foundation remains very active as is LibreOffice development, but Oracle has given up on OpenOffice and slapped LibreOffice in the face by giving it to Apache. Perhaps the most important announcement was the release of LibreOffice 3.4.0.

  • CMS

    • Drupal contributor statistics

      I recently extracted some data from the Drupal project’s CVS and Git logs to see how the number of code contributors and total contributions have changed over time. If there was any doubt of our continual growth, the resulting charts demolish it.

Leftovers

  • DuckDuckGo – Your next search engine

    DuckDuckGo is a silly name, possibly based on the duck, duck, goose game. Even the developers of the so knighted search engine admit as much. But under this seemingly simple and somewhat unprofessional moniker lurks a very powerful, refreshing and unique search engine. We checked.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • Supporters protest Manning’s detention

      A crowd of supporters were in Leavenworth Saturday to protest the holding of a prisoner on Fort Leavenworth suspected of leaking thousands of documents to the website Wikileaks.

      The Rally for Bradley Manning drew people from across the state and from areas like Chicago and Oakland, Calif. — close to 200 people in all, according to one of the event’s local organizers, Jim Davidson of Lawrence, Kan.

      The event started at Leavenworth’s Bob Dougherty Park, where Davidson said about 15 speakers from different organizations supporting Manning’s release, from Iraq Veterans Against the War to gay rights organizations, addressed the crowd before a march to the intersection of Seventh Street and Metropolitan Avenue, in front of Fort Leavenworth’s Grant Gate.

    • Coalition informant plays both sides of Afghan war

      The Afghan man with a grizzled beard puts his life at risk every time he chats with U.S. Lt. Col. William Chlebowski.

      As an informant for the U.S.-led coalition, the middle-aged man — whose name wasn’t disclosed for security reasons — talks to insurgents one day and snitches on them the next. He’s part of a network of Afghans across the country who tip coalition forces to the location of roadside bombs and weapons caches and share information about what militants are doing and planning.

    • Wikileaks a true account

      Is the founder of WikiLeaks the ministering angel of press freedom as his pale appearance might suggest? Or is he the demonic leader of the most dangerous hacker collective on the web? As one outspoken critic suggests, is he “worse than the Stasi,” or does he represent hope for those struggling against oppression? Either way, by the end of 2010 it became clear that a hitherto unknown organization had forever changed the global media landscape. Within a few months, some of the best-known newspapers – The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Le Monde – began to woo this small group of enthusiastic members of information transparency movement.

    • Dawn.com and Wikileaks present: Pakistan Illustrated

      Secret internal American government cables, accessed by Dawn through WikiLeaks, provide confirmation that the US military’s drone strikes programme within Pakistan had more than just tacit acceptance of the country’s top military brass, despite public posturing to the contrary. In fact, as long ago as January 2008, the country’s military was requesting the US for greater drone back-up for its own military operations.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • WikiLeaks: UK running out of oil and gas

      THE UK could be forced to rely on overseas countries for more than two thirds of its oil and gas supplies due to a “severe” decline in energy production in the North Sea, US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks have revealed.
      Cables seen by The Scotsman reveal that Britain’s gas and oil reserves are declining by 8 per cent a year, and that the country will import 60 to 80 per cent of its oil and gas supply within less than ten years.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Customer Service & PR 101: Vodaphone attempts to silence disgruntled customer?

      As if we need further proof of the commercial sector encroaching on the right to free speech, we have an interesting story from India. Perhaps a sad indictment of todays business where they view the net and its billions of users with greedy eyes, wanting the attention drawn to their products but not wanting you to put your opinion forward unless it favours them.

      Vodaphone is alleged by a customer (Dhaval Valia) to have sent a take down notice ordering removal of Facebook comments in regards to his unhappiness at the service Vodaphone provides. What Vodaphone did not count on (and maybe shows ignorance on their part) is that the story would hit the web and expose even more people to the incident (certainly more so than the Facebook users who saw the customer’s complaint)

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Clip of the Day

Charlie and the Apple Factory


Credit: TinyOgg

06.06.11

Links 6/6/2011: Toshiba and Ricoh Sell Linux Tablets

Posted in News Roundup at 5:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Produce a FLOSS Office Suite

      I suppose IBM feels that keeping its own product closed source/non-free is in the best interests of IBM but I think they are short-sighted. The reason Linux, ODF, Android, and so many other open technologies work so well is not because of the individual contributors but because the FLOSS community is the right way to produce software. Any non-free implementation is liable to be more limited, buggy and frail than the FLOSS equivalent.

      Attempting to put OpenOffice.org under ASL is nonsensical in the long run. Either or both of these things will be true:

      1. It will cost IBM more to develop.
      2. LibreOffice will eventually become a superior product.

    • IBM to Contribute to New, Proposed OpenOffice.org Project
    • What’s the future of OpenOffice.org?

      Get answers to top questions about the office suite’s future, now that Oracle has given the codebase to Apache

  • CMS/Freedom

    • Big media brands using open source Drupal to publish

      Rumour has it that several well known publishing brands have moved from their traditional print versions into online-only entities in recent times. For these reasons I ended up surfing for open source publishing topics this week.

      Maverick new players in this space might be interested in checking out http://theopensourcenewspaper.org/ and its ancillary references to Drupal, the free and open source software package for publishing, managing and organising a variety of content on a website.

    • The Freedom Box Alternative to Facebook

      “The human race has a susceptibility to harm, but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age. Because he harnessed ‘Friday Night,’ that is, ‘Everybody needs to get laid,’ and he turned it into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality. And he has to a remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal, namely ‘I will give you free Web hosting and some PHP doodads and you get spying for free all the time.’ ”

  • Business

    • Open for business: How some sales processes don’t work for OSS

      Due to the inherent freedoms in open source software, solutions built on them can cost less to implement and less to own–not solely due to the lack of license fees, but because they are simply better solutions. As I point out to prospective clients who are unsure about paying for pre-sales: While you may not be willing to explore open source, you can bet your competitors are, and they can use their savings to better serve their customers.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Brad Kuhn: a life devoted to Free Software

      Kuhn has been around in Free Software circles for a long time; he knows the movement well and has contributed an enormous amount to the progress it has made.

      It takes dedication, perseverance and idealism to work and keep working in this area. Kuhn has all three in spades and exemplifies the type of person who is needed more and more as commercialism makes inroads into, and often sullies, the ideals that gave birth to FOSS.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • More Standards for Europe and faster

      More Standards for Europe and faster: this is the main objective of a series of measures that the European Commission proposed on 1 June 2011. Standards are sets of voluntary technical and quality criteria for products, services and production processes. Nobody is obliged to use or apply them but they help businesses in working together which ultimately saves money for the consumer.

    • WebODF available in Android Market

      Android is an important operating system based on Linux. Many mobile devices come with Android. And now WebODF is available for these devices. You can see the entry in the Android market.

Leftovers

  • Walmart, Microsoft rulings waiting to drop

    The U.S. Supreme Court gets hot, like the weather, in June, when decisions in all the most controversial cases, like those involving Walmart and Microsoft, come cascading down as the justices join a frantic race to get out of Dodge for the summer recess.

    Many controversial cases are decided in June, the last full month of the term, regardless of when they were heard. The prevailing theory is that the issues in the cases are so weighty it takes time to get a clear majority. But another theory once popular in the Supreme Court press room says the justices want to rule on controversial cases at the last minute, just before they leave for parts unknown, because they don’t want to hear all the bitchin’.

  • Upgrade your browser, or we’ll kill your documents

    Google’s move is bad news for three groups: those who are tired of the upgrade treadmill, those who prefer alternative browsers (like Konqueror or Epiphany), and those (like me) who are trying to reuse older computers. I’m quite certain that there will be no Google-compatible browser that runs on a Pentium II with 192 MB of RAM.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • ‘Dr. Death’ Jack Kevorkian dies at age 83

      Jack Kevorkian, 83, the zealous, straight-talking pathologist known as “Dr. Death” for his crusade to legalize physician-assisted suicide, died June 3 at a hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

    • Cell phone use may cause cancer: WHO

      Mobile phone users may be at increased risk from brain cancer and should use texting and free-hands devices to reduce exposure, the World Health Organisation’s cancer experts said Tuesday.

      Radio-frequency electromagnetic fields generated by such devices are “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced at the end of an eight-day meeting in Lyon, France.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • China calls US culprit in global ‘Internet war’

      The Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of launching a global “Internet war” to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China.

      The accusations Friday by Chinese military academy scholars, and their urging of tougher policing of the Internet, followed allegations this week that computer hackers in China had compromised the personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including government officials, military personnel and political activists.

    • F.B.I. to Investigate Gmail Attacks Said to Come From China

      Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the F.B.I. would investigate allegations by Google that China was the origin of clandestine attacks on its Gmail service.

  • Cablegate

  • Finance

    • U.S. pushed Goldman, others for legal loss estimate

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc and other banks disclosed estimates of potential losses from legal issues after pressure from Securities and Exchange Commission staff, according to documents released on Friday.

      In a letter to Goldman on February 22, Stephanie Hunsaker, the senior assistant chief accountant in the SEC’s division of corporate finance, questioned an assertion by Goldman management that the bank was unable to come up with solid loss estimates.

      Other major banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Citigroup Inc, and Morgan Stanley received similar requests.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • The Revolution Will Not Be Monetized

      First thing you do, tear this article out of the magazine and carefully set it on fire. It’s about the jockeying for position and revenue among the big players in social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube. And the analysis isn’t bad for—whaddyacallit—history. But it wasn’t written in the past 12 minutes. So more likely than not it’s already hilariously out of date. (“Google?” you may be asking, perplexed. In case the brand has in the interim disappeared from the scene, like Webvan and John Tesh, listen up: “Google” was a search engine.)

  • Censorship

    • Finland: Blocking of domestic websites ruled illegal

      The Helsinki Administrative Court has ruled that domestic websites may not be placed on the secret blocking blacklist maintained by the police.

      This is the latest turn in a long legal fight by Finnish activist Matti Nikki, whose website lapsiporno.info (translates as “childporn.info”) was put on the secret blacklist in February 2008 and has remained on the list ever since.

    • Syria shuts down the Internet

      What is with Arab dictatorships and their thinking that cutting their people off from the Internet is a good idea? First, it was Egypt. Then, it was Bahrain, and finally Libya gave it a try How’s that working out for you guys? Egypt’s government was overthrown; Bahrain’s ruling family is hanging on thanks to outside support and mercenaries; and Libya’s in the middle of a bloody civil war. All-in-all, trying to cut the people’s communications’ life lines just angers the protesters even more and draws the world’s disapproving attention.

      The state-run Syria News site reported earlier today, June 3, 2011, that “The Syrian government has cut off Internet service (3G, DSL, Dial-up) all across the country (Arabic link), including government institutions.” Later the same site reported that the Internet is available across parts of Syria [but that the] “Internet was ‘broken’ in Damascus, Syria’s capital, and Aleppo, and the provinces.”

    • France bans ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ from TV, radio

      Radio and television news anchors may no longer say the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on air, unless the terms are part of a news story. This prohibits French news organizations from urging their audience to “follow us on Twitter” or “check out or Facebook page,” or other such promotions.

      The ban actually stems from a decree issued by the French government on March 27, 1992, which forbids the promotion of commercial enterprises on news programs. To sticklers of objective journalism, this may seem a reasonable rule. But as expat blogger Matthew Fraser points out, this type of regulation is absurd, especially when Facebook and Twitter have become so widely established in everyday life.

  • Civil Rights

    • U.N. Special Rapporteur Calls Upon States to Protect Anonymous Speakers Online

      On June 3, EFF will begin live coverage of a critical discussion about online freedom of expression held by the 47 member states of the U.N Human Rights Council during its seventeenth session in Geneva. The meeting will include the introduction of a landmark report to the Council by United Nations Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue that advocates safeguards to protect free expression online including privacy and anonymity.

      La Rue has spent the past year meeting with local organizations, including EFF, in numerous cities around the world. He has traveled to Stockholm, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Cairo, Johannesburg and Delhi to gather information about key trends that stifle free expression online. These actions include the blocking of content, monitoring and identifying activists and critics, criminalizing legitimate expression, and adopting restrictive legislation to justify such measures. In his report, La Rue recommends that United Nations member states recognize the legitimacy of anonymous expression (a core EFF value) and the critical protection it affords. La Rue argues in his report that “privacy is essential for individuals to express themselves freely.”

    • UN Report Says Internet Three Strikes Laws Violate International Law

      The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has released an important new report that examines freedom of expression on the Internet. The report is very critical of rules such as graduated response/three strikes, arguing that such laws may violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Canada became a member in 1976). Moreover, the report expresses concerns with notice-and-takedown systems, noting that it is subject to abuse by both governments and private actors.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

Reader’s Picks

  • Anti-Trust

    • M$ Can’t Handle Diversity

      M$’s plan to absorb the ARMed ecosystem is getting push-back. M$ wanted to talk with only a few “special” players and the gang said “no”. … [Microsoft wanted the five chip players to each choose only two of their downstream system partners to join] … the players in the ARMed ecosystem need their whole channel involved, nearly 100 parties, if products are to be delivered. The ecosystem is thriving with Android and they don’t need to be divided over “8″. M$ cannot win. If they get everyone on the same page, it will take time they don’t have.

    • Power Grab by M$

      [ARM] is just the beginning. M$ wants to tell the world how to make PCs. They even plan to make “activation” easier for end-users… To do that, no doubt they will try to insert some M$-only signature into the hardware. Fat chance

    • Nokia, in precipitous decline since Elop’s takeover, is in danger of collapse. [2]. No one mentions Nokia’s fine gnu/linux distribution.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • DoJ wants to hunt Wikileaks without informing the public

      Thursday’s 20-page filing by the Justice Department was in response to an ACLU motion filed last month, which asks U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to make public four additional court dockets that the ACLU believes are 2703(d) orders directed to additional internet companies. Without confirming that other records demands have been filed, prosecutor MacBride argued that there is no legal basis to make any information on other orders available, and that doing so could lead to companies being pressured to fight those demands.

      This shows they are afraid of the public and indirectly that public demands for justice are effective.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Anti-biotic resistant bacteria found in dairy cows and people, probably the result of indiscriminate anti-biotic use in dairy cows. How the bacteria got to the general population, despite pasturization of milk is unexplained.
    • BP oilspill taking the path predicted by those who said dispersant use was a coverup.

      BP used nearly 2 million gallons of Corexit on the almost 200 million-gallon oil spill, claiming it would break up the oil and allow bacteria to digest it. But the scientists challenge that claim, saying that Corexit does not in fact appear to speed up hydrocarbon breakdown. … According to preliminary findings presented at a conference last week by researchers from the University of West Florida, the dispersants may not have been effective — and could actually be more harmful to the ecosystem than the oil alone

      That 10x more dolphins than normal have died shows that the toxins have worked their way up the food chain and eating the seafood or spending time in the water is harmful.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • Sharing passwords is now a Crime in the US State of Tennessee. There are as many confusions in the article as there are in the law and those who passed it.

      [under the expanded cable theft bill it is] a crime to use a friend’s login — even with permission — to listen to songs or watch movies from services such as Netflix or Rhapsody. … services that believe they are getting ripped off can go to law enforcement authorities and press charges. … Stealing $500 or less of entertainment would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500. Theft with a higher price tag would be a felony, with heavier penalties.

      Copyright infringement is not theft. The values attributed to these non crimes are as ridiculous as the law itself. Using an otherwise unused service is no more copyright infringement than lending a book to someone. The concept of “blatant offenders” is foolish for many reasons and laws should be written with more precision.

    • UN report says network cut offs are a violation of UN charter.

      The Special Rapporteur considers cutting off users from Internet access, regardless of the justification provided, including on the grounds of violating intellectual property rights law, to be disproportionate and thus a violation of article 19, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Special Rapporteur calls upon all States to ensure that Internet access is maintained at all times, including during times of political unrest. In particular, the Special Rapporteur urges States to repeal or amend existing intellectual copyright laws which permit users to be disconnected from Internet access, and to refrain from adopting such laws.

    • Tornado devestated Cordova refuses to allow FEMA to deliver trailers to people who have lost their homes [2]. After local, national and international protest FEMA rubber stamped a hastily drafted recovery program that still forbids trailers.
    • The weapon supposedly wielded by innocent victim of mass drug raids, was on safety. It is more likely a dishonest police department would make that mistake than a veteran of two Iraq tours.
    • When the police kill your friend, you get charged with murder in Chicago.

      The teenagers allegedly robbed a man at gunpoint on the South Side of Chicago. When the officers told the teens to stop, Williams, who was holding the gun, allegedly turned in the officer’s direction. Fearing for her life, the officer shot the 15-year-old, killing him… Under state law, police can charge someone with murder when an accomplice is killed during the commission of a crime. Even though Ross didn’t pull the trigger, he was charged as an adult with murder and armed robbery.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Freedom Box progresses.

      if things keep moving forward we should have something that people can use that will have some basic privacy and security functionality within a year. Whether we’re going to have a full Facebook replacement in a year, I think we’re probably a little more than a year away from making that happen

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Patent extortionist steps on wrong radio station

      We were on the air with it two years before (Mission Abstract Data) even applied for their patent. … I find the granting of this patent insane. The research done to determine what was already out there in the field was abysmal

    • Another Microsoft proxy company suffers a setback, but PJ worries the smears will never end. From her News Picks:

      will the FUD cloud that just happens to surround all Microsoft competitors go away, or will another stupid lawsuit get filed, so articles like this can make ugly headlines? I don’t know why journalists love to write about litigation against large companies, siding with the “underdog”, as here, but it makes it easy for anyone wanting to smear a competitor, just by getting a small proxy to bring the litigation, a la SCO, powered by Microsoft money. Look how that turned out. Were all the articles that plastered our screens in the beginning of that litigation accurate, all about IBM being in trouble and Linux doomed? How about the mainframe FUD? IBM so far wins every battle, and that ought to tell journalists something the next time a proxy shows up claiming that big bad company X or Y is being mean to little competing business. Look for who the little business is being backed by, and then you’re more likely get the story right.

    • Trademarks

Clip of the Day

LEGO Sandcrawler MOC


Credit: TinyOgg

06.05.11

Links 5/6/2011: More GNU/Linux Preinstalls, New Stable Linux Kernel

Posted in News Roundup at 11:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Does Free Software Restore Dignity?

    About 20 minutes later we had Linux Mint installed on his laptop, and he was surfing the Web wirelessly using Firefox. Although he faced a punishing charge from Sony, he found a helping hand at his local public library. But I wonder: Do other public libraries help community members install Linux on computers? Do other public libraries hand out Linux CDs and/or CDs with OpenOffice? Perhaps a few public libraries do. For the most part, though, community members in other towns have few options when Sony requires a fee of $139 for a restore DVD.

    Hmmmm. I wonder if that $139 includes the shipping and handling fee? If I were Sony, I’d charge $39 for shipping and handling. Might as well gouge people when they are at their most vulnerable, right? Might as well humiliate that high-school student in front of his parents. Serves him right for misplacing his restore DVD.

  • Commercial & Movies built in Blender!
  • The Revolution OS – An Open Source epic docu-drama
  • 30 Free Web Tools and Open Source Software for Students

    Commercial software purchases can quickly eat away at the budget you have. The good news is that there are many free Web tools and open source software for students that will help you stay on task and organize your busy student life.

    If you are a student you’re probably wondering how to manage the cost of tuition, books and living expenses – and still pay for the software you need for your student laptop or desktop computer for research and assignments.

  • Google Releases Voice and Video Chat Technology As Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Delivers New Beta of Thunderbird Email Client

        As we’ve recently covered, Mozilla has moved to an agressive rapid release cycle for its Firefox browser, with the latest version 4 quickly emerging as the most popular version of Firefox. At the same time, though, Mozilla is pursuing rapid release cycle for other projects, including its Thunderbird email engine. Thunderbird is now out in a new beta version 5.01, featuring a number of upgrades.

        Thunderbird is now based on the same Gecko rendering engine that Firefox is based on. Among enhancements in the new beta version of Thunderbird, there are these:

  • SaaS

    • VMware invites Scala onto open source dev cloud

      Download a free trial of VeriSign’s SSL certificates

      VMware has invited Scala programmers onto Cloud Foundry, its open source “platform cloud,” an online service for building and readily scaling applications.

      When it first launched in April, the service let you build with Java, Ruby on Rails, the Ruby framework Sinatra, and Node.js, the current It Platform of the Silicon Valley development world. Now, VMware had added support for Scala, the Java Virtual Machine–based programming language that drives such big web names as Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice is Flying Like Ravens, not Seagulls
    • Apache OpenOffice: How to Get Involved

      A follow-up to my previous post on the Apache Incubation proposal to move OpenOffice.org over to Apache and continue the project there. In that post, I described how Apache projects are run via a meritocracy, that members gain additional rights and responsibilities based on the approval of their peers, etc. But I have received a variety of questions related to this, and I’ve done my best to track down some answers. So here are what I found out, in my words, paraphrasing the questions and giving answers, possibly with my mistakes, but I’ll correct them as they are identified.

    • OpenOffice.org Finds Home at the Apache Foundation

      OpenOffice.org derivatives. The large ecosystem of OpenOffice.org derivatives can benefit from the continued development under the Apache umbrella, the success of the incubation process would help them all given the permissiveness of the license.

      OpenOffice.org moving to Apache seems a good news for all stakeholders to me. Of course as usual code is the only things that matter, and all you need to do is just to wait and see, or if you like you can join and participate.

    • CLA Redux – The Donation of OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation

      Just last week we were talking about the role of contributor licensing agreements (CLA’s) and why some organizations/projects preferred to have the copyright in contributed code assigned rather than licensed, i.e., so the organization/project would be in a better position to enforce the copyright. A prime example of this centralized copyright ownership has been in a number of projects owned or managed by Sun Microsystems, includin OpenOffice. Of course, Sun is no longer Sun, and we have all been waiting to see what Oracle’s intent would be with the various open source projects they acquired. Well, we are now getting our first insight with the proposed donation of OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation.

      While the jury is still out on what exactly this assignment means for OpenOffice, I think it’s safe to say that the Oracle announcement has elicited a range of reactions, a number of which have been less than enthusiastic. The biggest issue is the license change. The Apache Foundation requires all code donated to them to be under the Apache License. Since OpenOffice.org was not under that license, it means that the project changes from a true copyleft license to a more permissive license that allows companies to take the code proprietary. What kind of reaction will this draw from those who have been contributing freely to OpenOffice. Are they as likely to continue to contribute? Will Oracle be willing to continue to fund developers on the project? Will Attachmate, the new owner of Novell, allow their developers to continue to contribute to LibreOffice, the fork from OpenOffice? What realistic expectations should the Apache Foundation have?

  • Public Services/Government

    • CityCamp Pairs Open-Source Tech, Gov’t Transparency

      [Editor's note: The Raleigh Public Record is a sponsor of CityCamp Raleigh]

      More than 100 people are planning to converge downtown Raleigh this weekend for a three-day brainstorming session on how to use technology to increase the transparency of local government.

      CityCamp Raleigh is looking to attract everyone from programmers to city officials to the “unconference,” which will be split between speaking events, work sessions and presentations all aimed at using the Web to connect citizens with government data. The event, which kicks off Friday at Vintage 21 on West Street, will mimic others by the same name held around the world from Chicago to Brighton, U.K.

    • UK: Survey of Higher Education and FLOSS

      So, in spite of all the naysayers here, FLOSS is alive and well on the desktop and making significant gains over the last few years. FLOSS is used on the desktop in more than twice as many institutions since 2008. There are obstacles to adoption but performance is not one of them. When people get around to thinking objectively about FLOSS they will choose it. The largest reason for not choosing FLOSS? “It’s not what users want.” As if IT is a democracy in education or anywhere else. Institutions should choose software that fits the current and future needs of the institution. Budgets and performance should be far more important than what the users want. Users are largely not knowledgeable about choices and only know what they have used previously, not a basis of rational thought.

  • Licensing

    • The issue of bringing harmony to copyright assignment

      This month openSUSE community manager, Jos Poortvliet, discusses copyright assignment and the buzz surrounding ‘Project Harmony’. As always, don’t forget to leave your comments and feedback – your opinion could feature in a future issue of Linux User magazine…

      Identi.ca has been buzzing with ‘project Harmony’ discussions lately. Harmony aims to be the ‘Creative Commons’ of Copyright Assignment Agreements (CAAs). A CAA is basically a contract you sign where you give away ownership of your code, and some free software projects already allow or even demand this for contributions. The Free Software Foundation itself, for example, requires a CAA.

    • Why does the Government need to own the copyright in software it has developed?

      Tech contract negotiations frequently involve a lot of argument about who gets to own the copyright generated. They essentially boil down to points of principle, rather than reasoned argument. Like many other complex issues, it’s worth going back to first principles. What does “owning the copyright” mean?

      It means:

      1. You can use the copyright yourself;

      2. You can stop other people from using the copyright

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Build Or Buy? Five Sub-$500 Store-Bought Systems Compared

    Have you ever claimed you could build a faster machine than top-tier vendors, but needed proof? We dig into five off-the-shelf sub-$500 configurations to figure out what they can and cannot do. The results probably won’t surprise Tom’s Hardware regulars.

  • Now You Tube 3D arrive on WebM

    You Tube continues to prove that it is the future of where the internet is going to be in the next few years by introducing the ultimate in internet media viewership. Meeting the demand from a growing number of 3D enthusiasts, You Tube introduced the 3D channel and today has close to a thousand and more 3D videos. Augmenting its

  • Security

    • Deciphering the Sony PSN Attack
    • Sony admits LulzSec attack, calls in the Feds

      Sony Pictures Entertainment has issued a statement blaming “a group of criminal hackers known as ‘LulzSec’” for attacking its web sites.

      In the statement signed by chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and co-chairman Amy Pascal, Sony said the “cybercrime wave that has affected Sony companies and a number of government agencies, businesses and individuals in recent months has hit Sony Pictures as well.”

      LulzSec previously claimed it had penetrated databases attached to sonypictures.com, sonybmg.be and sonybmg.nl.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Man Ordered At Gunpoint To Hand Over Phone For Recording Cops

      “Miami Beach police did their best to destroy a citizen video that shows them shooting a man to death in a hail of bullets on Memorial Day. First, police pointed their guns at the man who shot the video, according to a Miami Herald interview with the videographer

  • Cablegate

    • WikiLeaks Cables Reveal “Secret History” of U.S. Bullying in Haiti at Oil Companies’ Behest

      The Nation magazine, in partnership with the Haitian weekly newspaper, Haïti Liberté, has launched a series of reports based on more than 19,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. Called “The PetroCaribe Files,” the series begins with an exposé of how the United States—with pressure from Exxon and Chevron—tried to interfere with an oil agreement between Haiti and Venezuela that would save Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, $100 million per year.

    • Dublin Wikileaks Cables Reveal Irish Govt. Groveling to the US

      Ireland’s foreign-affairs minister assured the US ambassador in Dublin in 2006 that the Irish government was prepared to change the law that had allowed the acquittal of five anti-war activists for damaging a US Navy plane.

      The revelation that a senior Irish official discussed possible amendments to domestic criminal law with the US ambassador is contained in a Wikileaks cable (see below) that has not been published or reported upon elsewhere, but which has been seen by Counterpunch.

  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs Subpoena Doesn’t Mean Much…Yet

      Wall Street’s most notorious bank was subpoenaed by the Manhattan district attorney. The DA wants more information about Goldman’s business activity leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

    • Harte Doesn’t Expect Criminal Charges on Goldman Sachs
    • Goldman Sachs subpoenaed

      A prosecutor in New York has subpoenaed Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs for information related to the financial crisis, a person familiar with the development said Thursday.

      The broad request from the Manhattan district attorney, issued last month, stems from an April report by Senate investigators that accused Goldman Sachs of abusive behavior, according to the source.

    • Coffee Says Subpoena of Goldman Sachs Was Unexpected
    • Financials Dropping On Goldman Sachs Subpoena, Moody’s Watch

      Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) shares are dropping on news that a Manhattan Prosecutor is subpoenaing the company.

      In addition to this bad news, Moody’s has put the debt of Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) on credit watch.

    • NY Subpoena Is New Issue As Goldman Prepares For Ex-Partners

      A new inquiry into Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s (GS) activities during the financial crisis, prompted this time by Manhattan’s district attorney, has Goldman scrambling once again to control its image.

      The disclosure Thursday of a subpoena of the firm by the district attorney comes just weeks before Goldman is scheduled to meet with one of its most important constituencies: retired partners who have moved on to found prominent hedge funds, perform government service, or dabble in a range of endeavors. Goldman calls them home twice a year to hear from top management about the state of the firm.

    • Fitch Affirms Goldman Sachs Financial Square Prime Obligations Fund At ‘AAAmmf’
    • Goldman Sachs worried about beheading?
    • Goldman Sachs Said to Be Poised to Sell Litton Mortgage Business to Ocwen

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is closing in on the sale of Litton Loan Servicing LP to Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN), two months after writing down the value of the mortgage- servicing business by about $200 million, according to a person briefed on the negotiations.

      The sale of the unit to Ocwen, a mortgage servicer based in West Palm Beach, Florida, may be announced within days, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

    • Goldman Said to Get Subpoena Over Its Role in Crisis

      The Wall Street investment bank has received a subpoena from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, which is investigating Goldman’s role in the financial crisis, said one person familiar with the subpoena.

      It comes amid increased enforcement scrutiny of the company, which has faced blistering criticism that it shorted — or bet against — the mortgage market before it collapsed and that it knowingly sold bundles of bad mortgages to its clients. Goldman denies these accusations.

    • Goldman: Too Big for Jail

      .. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) won’t face criminal prosecution related to sales of mortgage-linked securities because such a move could threaten the U.S. financial system, according to Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. …

    • Goldman Sachs: a timeline of trouble
    • NY Prosecutors Probe Goldman

      New York prosecutors have delivered a subpoena to Goldman Sachs seeking information on the investment bank’s mortgage and derivatives business, a person familiar with the matter said.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Free for All: National Academies Press Puts All 4,000 Books Online at No Charge

        Today the National Academies Press announced it would offer its entire PDF catalog of books for free, as files that can be downloaded by anyone. The press is the publishing arm of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, and publishes books and reports that scientists, educators, and policy makers rely on.

Clip of the Day

Tomb Raider “Turning Point” Debut Trailer [US Version]


Credit: TinyOgg

06.04.11

Links 4/6/2011: Red Hat Upgraded, GNU/Linux Gets ASUS Preinstalls, Mageia 1 Welcomed by Reviewers

Posted in News Roundup at 9:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • GNU/Linux is Out of this World

    Richard Chapman sent me a link to a log of activity for the International Space Station.

    * The server was migrated from that other OS to GNU/Linux
    * The client was migrated to “T61p”, a Lenovo model that ships with that other OS… The ISS started with Lose ’95 on clients back in the day.

  • Desktop

    • ASUS to offer Ubuntu-powered Eee PC netbooks

      Ubuntu project sponsor Canonical has announced that its Ubuntu Linux distribution will be pre-loaded on new ASUS Eee PC series netbooks. According to Canonical, the Taiwan-based computer manufacturer began shipping three new Ubuntu-based Eee PC models through its sales channels on 1 June.

    • Asus will preload Ubuntu Linux on three Eee PCs

      Chris Kenyon, VP of OEM services at Canonical told The INQUIRER, “The deal with ASUS is an important one for Canonical which will put Ubuntu in the hands of a larger audience, people who would not necessarily download Ubuntu, but would be happy to buy a computer knowing that it will work perfectly on that hardware. Also, Canonical’s extensive work with manufacturers helps make all future versions of Ubuntu run perfectly on specific machines and individual OEM’s hardware.”

  • Kernel Space

    • Xen celebrates full Dom0 and DomU support in Linux 3.0

      This is a very short blog post as both Wim Coekaert and Ewan Mellor beat me by some time in publishing this great news: I was too busy traveling and celebrating. The fantastic news is that Linux 3.0 will have everything necessary to run Xen as both as a management domain and as a Xen guest.

    • How Linux 3.0 Makes Virtualization Easier

      The Xen team has been working for years to get everything needed to run the Linux kernel as Dom0. Some of the components were added last year, but the final elements have now been added to handle everything.

      Another addition that will make the mainline Linux kernel more Xen friendly is pvops, a mode which will enable the kernel to switch between paravirtualization (pv), hardware virtualization (hvm) or paravirtual-hardware virtualization (pv-hvm).

    • The problem with prefetch

      Over time, software developers tend to learn that micro-optimization efforts are generally not worthwhile, especially in the absence of hard data pointing out a specific problem. Performance problems are often not where we think they are, so undirected attempts to tweak things to make them go faster can be entirely ineffective. Or, indeed, they can make things worse. That is a lesson that the kernel developers have just relearned.

    • Torvalds Christens The Next Linux Kernel Series 3.x

      On the forums, reaction to the news has been mixed, with some wondering if Linus is falling prey to the current trend of large major version number jumps to give the impression of significant progress.

    • Graphics Stack

      • DisplayLink Continues To Progress On Linux, But No 3D

        It was back in May of 2009 that DisplayLink began providing open-source Linux support for their USB-interfaced graphics processors in the form of documentation and code. Shortly thereafter, frame-buffer and X.Org drivers for DisplayLink USB hardware arrived and it quickly matured. By early 2010 it was possible to produce interesting results with these USB graphics adapters doing things like driving nine monitors over USB from a single computer.

      • The Direct3D 10/11 State Tracker Is Still Around

        There was some initial thoughts that the Wine developers would be interested in the D3D state tracker as this natively implements the Direct3D 10/11 APIs where Wine’s existing Direct3D implementation largely lacks 10/11 support for now. With Wine’s Direct3D implementation, they’re also translating the Direct3D calls into OpenGL. The benefit of this is that it’s more platform agnostic and doesn’t place a requirement on the graphics driver being based on Gallium3D. The downside of translating the Direct3D calls into OpenGL is the associated overhead placed on the processor. In the future it could also be of use to the ReactOS in their development of a free software operating system that is Windows API/ABI compatible.

  • Applications

    • Use i3 for tiling window manager n00bs
    • Ekiga and SIP to replace Skype

      In a former article I’ve talked about the XMPP:Jingle protocol to find a good replacement for Skype.
      Some people asked me about Ekiga, is this a good software or not ? and how you can use it ?

    • Vim: Ni! Ni! Ni! Ni!
    • Aupeo review: great music, disappointing app

      Aupeo, a Pandora-like music streaming service, has just rolled out its first smartphone app for iOS and Android devices. Although its wide range of music, genres, subgenres, and preference-tuning features are impressive, Aupeo’s eye-candy-rich smartphone app is frustrating to use.

    • Treepad Alternative – Cherrytree

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Desktop Environments

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

        • KDE WebWorld Day Zero

          Or was it ‘Day One’? I can never quite decide… Either way, it was Wednesday, though after spending Tuesday night awake in the airport I was a little disoriented.

          The WebWorld Sprint has begun at the Linux Hotel near Essen in Germany. All the attendees arrived throughout Wednesday and – in contrast to conditions in Randa the sun has been shining on us. Yesterday evening we had a barbecue in the hotel garden, enjoyed some evening sun and then got to the first of the meetings about the extravagant number of KDE subdomains and our plans for the sprint.

        • My Discovery of the Week: Installing Applications via Krunner

          This functionality did not come out of the box with Kubuntu 11.04, but a little investigation revealed that it was added when I tried out the latest release of Muon Suite (The awesome Package installer which should replace kpackagekit on the next version of Kubuntu) I must have installed a package called plasma-runner-installer and probably forgot all about it.

        • What happens When Artists and Developers Come Together: The 2011 Krita Sprint

      • GNOME Desktop

        • GNOME Shell Impressions – Trying GNOME 3 on Arch Linux

          Another article about the GNOME Shell. Nothing really to see here, it’s just opinion, and yours is as good as mine. If you are bored however, read on.

          Recent trials with GNOME 3 using the Fedora Live CD’s did not go so well. They always dumped me into fallback mode which is, despite some claiming it to be a solution for GNOME 2 lovers, nowhere near good enough as a tide me over, and it looked unfinished. To be fair these were all before Fedora 15 final arrived, or were built on Fedora 14 but at that time GNOME 3 was still in development.

          [...]

          At present GNOME 3, with or without Shell, does not look like a serious desktop for serious work.

        • Beyond GNOME 3.0 – Beauty is (not)only Shell deep

          I’m amazed what GNOME team accomplished with GNOME 3.0, this is just an amazingly modern, slick and very usable desktop and at the same time original and not going after OSX or any other desktop. GNOME 3 is far from perfect but for a first release it’s a really solid one.

          Only downside so far I found is that GNOME 3.0 makes usage of Compiz impossible and incompatible, so you can wave goodbye to great usabillity and eyecandy from plugins like Cube, Wobbly, Expo, Wall and Zoom Desktop. Hopefully GNOME 3 development team will provide some layer of compatility between mutter and compiz so that compiz plugins could still be used with GNOME 3.

        • I’ve been disenfranchised
        • No applications category in Gnome 3.2?

          Allan, who is working for several gnome applications, posted an update to the recent gnome status about the development of gnome 3.2. One of the updates planned for the latest version of the desktop is a modified overview mode. There are two important changes to the overview mode compared with the version 3.0. One is a modified buttons (windows/applications) that allow you to view the appropriate category.

    • Distributions

      • Foresight Linux, Xfce, and me

        Gnome 3 looks to the future without fear. It even looks like the future, when everybody will have hooks implanted in their foreheads so they can look at their smartphones while they’re walking down the street. I’m getting old, and I’ve been kind of cranky for a while now. I don’t especially want to learn a new human interface. My phone is dull—borderline retarded, even—but I can usually make and receive calls on it, most of which are on the order of “this is Dr. Proctologist’s office confirming Edward’s appointment”. I don’t hate Gnome 3, but that’s because I don’t hate anything about Linux, and I don’t let myself hate anything in (or out of) Linuxland until I’ve used it for a couple of weeks, and I’m not a hateful sort of person anyway, and I haven’t managed to find the time to use Gnome 3 very much yet.

        [...]

        But Foresight’s my favorite. Since I installed it, I’ve been gravitating to it: given a choice (all three of my computers are multi-boot, and two have Foresight), I’m going into Foresight more than any other distro

      • My GNU/Linux & BSD Logo Zoo Version 2.0!

        After some useful feedback from visitors to my GNU/Linux & BSD Logo Zoo, I made version 2.0 at last. This time I included Plant distros, too. With them, I tried to take into account as many other distros as I could, but let me apologize if your favorite distro is still missing.

      • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

        • June 2011 issue of The PCLinuxOS Magazine

          The PCLinuxOS Magazine staff is pleased to announce the release of the June 2011 issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is a product of the PCLinuxOS community, published by volunteers from the community. The magazine is lead by Paul Arnote, Chief Editor, and Assistant Editors Andrew Strick and Meemaw. The PCLinuxOS Magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license, and some rights are reserved.

        • Mageia: Is It A Kind Of Magic?

          Decision was made to replace *buntus, but there was no decision so far about the replacement system.

        • Mageia 1 Linux Distribution Released

          Overall, I think Mageia is a good, solid distribution.

        • Mageia 1 Final – Summary Videos for Linux Newbies

          I have been watching the Mageia development since it was first announced. As soon as I saw that Mageia 1 had gone from a release candidate to a final release I started the Transmission torrent download of three of the ISO files to keep and used one of them (mageia-dvd-1-i586.iso) to check it out with VirtualBox.

      • Gentoo Family

      • Red Hat Family

        • Piper Jaffray Reports on Red Hat

          Piper Jaffray currently has an Overweight rating on Red Hat and a price target of $57.

        • Santos is Red Hat ‘innovator of the year’

          Santos developed TurboVNC so it could enable its geoscientists to work on reservoir models using light clients, with all of the processing being done in central servers.

          Also competing for the award were Nissan, DreamWorks, Verizon and Emirates. The award winner was chosen by voting by the open source developers at the summit.

        • Fedora

          • Compiz on Fedora

            My laptop is IBM ThinkPad Lenovo X200 which uses an Intel graphics card.

          • The Fedora Project Recognizes Student Contributor with Fedora Scholarship

            The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced that Ricky Elrod is the recipient of the 2011 Fedora Scholarship, a program now in its fourth year. The Fedora Scholarship program recognizes college and university-bound students across the globe for their contributions to free software and the Fedora Project. Elrod has spent significant time working within Fedora’s Infrastructure Team, a group of volunteers that manage the servers and applications that run Fedora. He was selected from an impressive applicant pool and plans to continue his education at the University of Akron this fall and major in Computer Science.

      • Debian Family

        • Derivatives

          • Canonical/Ubuntu

            • uGet Download Manager Gets Ubuntu AppIndicator, Torrent And Metalink Files Support

              uGet is a GTK+ download manager that runs on both Linux and Windows. The latest uGet 1.8.0, released today, brings support for Torrent and Metalink files (by using aria2), Ubuntu AppIndicator as well as GTK3 support.

            • Ubuntu or bust: Going Linux on the Desktop

              For six years I spent my professional career using and supporting Linux on the desktop. Outside of work and subsequent employment with Imagineer Systems & Memset I’ve been using Macs. A few days ago I decided to head back to Linux.

              [...]

              Ubuntu is a marvellous operating system. It’s clean, consistent and does what it says on the tin.

            • Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server reaches end of life
            • Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 1 arrives

              The first alpha of what will become Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” has been released by the Canonical and Ubuntu developers. This development milestone is the first on the roadmap which sees another two alpha and two beta versions before the final release on 13 October. The Alpha 1 is specifically aimed at developers as an early snapshot of ongoing work after the major system-wide changes have been made.

              Oneiric Ocelot is based on Linux kernel 2.6.39 and uses Gcc 4.6 as the default compiler. Network-manager version 0.9 has also been introduced in Alpha 1, which the release notes point out has broken API compatibility. GNOME 3 has also been brought into the system, and some components have been changed, while other desktop elements are in transition, to make use of GNOME 3′s APIs; this does not mean that the controversial Unity desktop is going away, just that underpinnings are moving from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3. Packages in transition, and their impact, are now being tracked. Progress, planned development and specifications are documented in the Blueprints for Oneiric web page.

            • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 1 Has Been Released [Video]

              Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot alpha 1 has been released today and it comes with GNOME 3 (the GNOME application stack such as Gedit 3, Nautilus 3, etc. – but it doesn’t come with GNOME Shell by default; however, GNOME Shell is available in the official Ubuntu 11.10 repositories) like we saw in our previous Oneiric post and of course, Unity by default. Also, the classic GNOME session has been replaced with Unity 2D so starting with Ubuntu 11.10 alpha 1, those with hardware that doesn’t support the regular Unity will be logged in to Unity 2D.

            • Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 1 Has GNOME 3, Firefox 5, Linux Kernel 2.6.39
            • [30 Days With Ubuntu Linux: Day 2] Day 2: Wow–That Was Really Easy

    • Devices/Embedded

      • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

        • Barnes & Noble NOOK Color hacked to run MeeGo Linux

          The Barnes & Noble NOOK Color is turning out to be a ridiculously versatile device. Originally positioned as a color eBook reader which just happened to run Google Android, it didn’t take long for hackers to figure out how to root the tablet and install their own apps. Now another hack shows that it’s possible to run a completely different operating system on the eReader: MeeGo Linux.

          MeeGoExperts spotted a demo of a NOOK Color running MeeGo at Computex in Taiwan. The responsible party is a company called Nomovok which develops MeeGo and other open source applications.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • The future of the computer

    If smartphones progress significantly in the ergonomics, they could slice into the netbook market chunk. Tablets also pose a risk, as they blend phone use with netbook size and comfort, although they remain pricey and not as good as the competition, yet.

    Currently, it looks as if the netbook is not going to die anytime soon. Half across the globe, it is still the most cost-effective computing device, in terms of price, size, capabilities, and overall usability. Not quite a high-end gaming rig, but then, it has some ten inches of screen equity, a decent resolution and enough hard disk space to store a handful of data. Internet connectivity can also be quite good. But all this may change.

    Netbooks will hold as little as 5% market and as much as 30%, all depending how the competition with the smartphone turns out. This will mainly be dictated by the giants like Intel and AMD. The big CPU vendors may eventually choose to leave the smartphone market dominance to ARM and focus on other segments.

  • Cablegate

Reader’s Picks and Comments

Clip of the Day

Larry Lessig 50th Birthday Lip Sync Tribute


Credit: TinyOgg

06.03.11

Links 3/6/2011: Google Censors Emulators After Pressure, More OpenOffice.org Analysis

Posted in News Roundup at 5:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What computer users should know, but don’t.

    1. Know your operating system. Knowing what operating system and version you have is a great help for when you have problems and need outside help. It also helps for when you wish to install programs so you can choose the correct one for your operating system.

  • Linux’s ‘Killer Feature’: Impossible to Choose Just One

    Well, June has arrived for another year, and that means the dog days of summer can’t be far behind.

    Scorching temperatures have already begun to beat down upon parts of the Linux blogosphere, in fact, which may be why there’s nary a barstool to be found down at the seedy but well air-conditioned Punchy Penguin Saloon, where Linux Girl plans to stay until, oh, say, October or so.

    There’s been plenty to discuss in recent days, of course, what with Computex going on and all the excitement over Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) OpenOffice move, but many bloggers have preferred to keep their spirits up with a spirited debate instead.

  • Five Things Every Windows User Should Know

    PC users owe it to themselves to consider their options, and those options include a broad array of Linux distributions tailored to virtually every need.

  • Desktop

    • Asus to ship Ubuntu netbooks

      Asus has started selling its Eee PC netbooks preloaded with Ubuntu 10.10.

      Asus will initially sell the 1001PXD, 1011PX and 1015PX, with more models added through the year.

      The original Asus Eee PC 701 – which kickstarted the netbook craze in 2007 – ran on a version of Xandros Linux, prompting speculation that Linux was on the verge of a mainstream breakthrough. It was quickly superseded by Windows XP, however, with tales of high return rates of Linux-based netbooks.

    • ChromeOS huge niche market…???

      The Traditional Desktop computer, on the other hand is a Jack of all trades, a multipurpose, powerhouse tool. With the conventional computer you have flexibility and power. Once again that is not what the Chrome OS is meant to give.

      So, being that the mobile netbook/tablet market and the traditional desktop market are not compatible with the new ChromeOS Operating System and the devices optimized for it. What can we use it for? Where, in the vast operating system lanscape, we can find its niche market?

      In the medium to large Desktop monitors… I think! With the ChromeOS installed there, we only need to add a keyboard with a touch pad and/or a mouse to have a working, comfortable, Internet access device. Simple to setup, simple to use, and optimized to do what 95 percent of the traditional Desktop Users do with their computers. Surf the net for work and fun.

    • We review the System76 Serval Pro: Is it the best Ubuntu laptop ever?

      Independent Ubuntu computer manufacturer System76 refreshed their popular 15.6″ Serval Professional line earlier this year, upgrading the laptop with an impressively fast second gen Intel Sandy Bridge i7 quad core processor, powerful Nvidia graphics, a lovely 1080p display and lots of options for optical drives and storage.

  • Server

    • That Other OS Fails

      Netcraft has produced their monthly rating of reliability of hosting companies. Out of 41 listed, only 5 run that other OS while 24 run GNU/Linux.

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: Hardware and “3.0″ difficulties

      The two-figure version numbers are still creating quite a bit of hassle that the developers are working hard to overcome. Inaccurate work by hardware manufacturers causes problems with rebooting and with the handling of UEFI hardware. The maintenance of kernel series 2.6.38 is soon to be discontinued.

      Only hours after the first release candidate of Linux 3.0 was issued, the developers released the first patches to improve the way the kernel handles version numbers which consist of two, instead of three, numbers. Changes include a workaround which allows the version of the depmod program that was current until recently to cope with Linux 3.0. At the same time, a patch to fix the cause of the depmod problems was incorporated in version 3.13 of the module-init-tools, which were also released shortly after Linux 3.0-rc1. Several developers have suggested that, due to these and similar problems, Torvalds should consider using version number 3.0.0 instead of 3.0; however, the alpha male of Linux kernel development has so far not commented on this.

    • The early days of Linux – join us as we celebrate 100 issues of Linux User & 20 years of Linux

      2011 is a year of milestones. Not only is it the year that sees Linux User magazine turn 100, but it’s also a year that Linux celebrates it’s 20th birthday. What better way to commemorate these auspicious occasions than with a walk down memory lane courtesy of past Linux User editor, Richard Hillesley?

  • Applications

    • Proprietary

      • Skype protocol reverse engineered, source available for download

        Hello, I’am Efim Bushmanov a freelance researcher and here is my project files on skype research.

        While “Wall Street Journal” makes politics and skype today’s trend, i want to publish my research on this. My aim is to make skype open source. And find friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it.

      • Researcher reverse-engineers Skype, makes code available publicly

        Just weeks after Microsoft announced it had acquired Skype for $8.5 billion, a Russian researcher has announced that he has successfully been able to reverse engineer the official Skype desktop implementation in an attempt to make the service open source.

      • Skype Reverse Engineered

        Good news for Free Software and open protocols: There has been a sucessful attempt to reverse engineer Skype (Magent URI). Nice timing, shortly after Microsoft’s acquisition Skype could finally be broken. :) He is also including modified Skype executables allowing debugging etc., which is usually prevented by really elaborated anti-features (encryption, kills itself if there is a debugger etc.). The sample code is able to send a message via Skype, awesome!

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to triple-boot Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7
      • Gimp 2.6 Cookbook

        I’ve been using graphic photo manipulation software programs for nearly 20 years. After using several, I’ve come to the conclusion that all of them are quite similar in features, bells, and whistles. The main difference comes in how they carry out the task at hand. That is to say, the menus, tool bars, and commands are laid out differently from program to program. So, migrating from one program to another isn’t difficult, it’s just that you need to learn (or relearn) the “moves” and menus in order to get the application to respond to your input.

    • Games

      • 12 Paid Games for Linux Totally Worth the Price

        Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defence genre. OilRush was expected to be available by 2010 itself, but it didn’t happen. OilRush RTS game for Linux is now available for pre order and you can expect a release very soon. Price: $19.95

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Reflections on Permanently Moving From KDE3 to KDE4: 2 Years Later
      • Efficiently Working With Text Files in KDE (or GNU/Linux in General)

        The bottom line is, if you work a lot with text, consider working with raw text and a powerful editor. Putting the whole thing through an HTML-based piece of software like WordPress or even LaTeX-powered software/front ends like LyX is always possible to do at the end. But the real power is in words; the lighter and faster, the better. To improve access to files and information of interest, divide the text editors/sessions into separate desktops. This reduces movement between desktops and enables focus on particular activities, leaving distractions aside. If you have to open the file manager a lot, then perhaps a better workflow is being missed. Shortcuts too can help.

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15 LXDE review

          Final Thoughts: The last time I used an LXDE-based distribution, LXDE was considered a geeks-only desktop environment. Since then, it seems to have developed into a nearly fully-featured desktop environment. It is usable by all, but not yet at the level of a KDE desktop. The main problem with Fedora Spins is that they do not seem to have received the same level of development attention as the main edition. But if you are looking for an alternative distribution to a GNOME 3-based distribution, and have the time to tweak and customize a lightweight distribution to fit your needs, this LXDE spin might be what you are looking for.

        • Fedora 15 impressions

          Last week, Fedora 15 was officially released. I installed a copy on my laptop, and quickly got back to work. The install process was the fastest I’ve seen for any Linux distro – about 15 minutes to install the complete operating system from the LiveCD installer.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • [Screenshots and Video] First Alpha of Ubuntu 11.10 ‘Oneiric Ocelot’ Brings Some Gnome 3 Magic
          • Ubuntu Certification: DELL PowerEdge Servers

            Over the last few months we have crossed the barrier of over 100 server models certified across all Ubuntu releases currently in maintenance. Last monthly alone we add 30 new servers to the certification list.

            We have been working with DELL to certify a large portion of their PowerEdgeline via what we call component equivalency.

          • The new ‘Celebrate Ubuntu’ YouTube channel

            A new official Ubuntu YouTube channel has popped up stuffed with short promotional videos.

            Called ‘Celebrate Ubuntu’, the channel was set up by Canonicals’ Iain Farrell as a result of discussions held at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in May. Those discussions centred around the idea of creating a ‘community toolkit’ that, as Iain explains on his blog, ‘…would allow anyone excited enough to show off and celebrate their use and love of Ubuntu.’

          • Family Farm game in Ubuntu

            We added Family Farm to the Software Center last week and I took a few hours (of non-work time!) to have a look at it. Summary is that it’s a fun simulation game for the whole family where your job is to build up your farm.

          • “For crying out loud Amber, it’s just a stupid newsletter”
          • Canonical Launches Ubuntu-Ready Hardware Certification

            Most VARs in the open source channel are happy just to get free code contributions from their users. Canonical, however, has taken community engagements one step further with the announcement of a user-driven hardware-certification program. Will it work? Here are some thoughts.

            Most software vendors can probably think of more than a few things they’d rather do than test hardware to make sure it works well with their products. Hardware certification demands many tedious hours, not to mention the acquisition of lots of hardware. Nonetheless, for companies like Canonical, whose main product is the Ubuntu operating system, hardware certification is a must-have to appeal seriously to users who want to be sure the Linux-based OS will be compatible with their computers.

          • Looking For Awesome LoCo Team Blog Feeds
          • Cool Projects That Need Your Help
          • Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu Power Tests

            With the extensive Linux power consumption tests that I’ve been carrying out to solve some nasty Linux kernel power regressions and find other areas for optimization, one of the requests that has come in frequently is to compare the power consumption of the KDE, GNOME, Unity, Xfce, and LXDE desktops. After the article earlier this week to look at how the desktop environments / compositing window managers affect OpenGL performance, I carried out a quick desktop power test. In this article are battery power consumption results for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu.

          • Ubuntu Power User Branding Winner

            Last week the PowerUser community ran a poll to decide the new logo/branding for our community and the submission by Thorsten Wilms was selected as the winner. Many thanks to Thorsten and all the other people who submitted artwork, they were all fantastic.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Review: Linux Mint 11 “Katya” GNOME

              Linux Mint is currently my favorite Linux distribution of all and is the one I use almost exclusively on a regular basis. Since the release of Linux Mint 9 LTS “Isadora”, I have made it a point to review new releases of Linux Mint. Six months ago, I previewed Linux Mint 10 “Julia” GNOME RC. Since then, I have also reviewed two versions of Debian-based Linux Mint. However, due to Ubuntu’s fixed 6-month release schedule, I haven’t been able to check out the latest version of Ubuntu-based Linux Mint until now.

              Regular readers of this blog know Linux Mint needs no further introduction. The only things to consider while reading this are that Linux Mint also has a Debian-based version that is going strong, while Ubuntu’s state of transition (what with Unity, Wayland, et cetera) could pose difficulties for Ubuntu-based Linux Mint in the future.

            • Bodhi Linux: The Power of E17 Profiles

              One of the many features the Enlightenment desktop has that sets it apart from other desktop environments/window managers is the profiles. Those that have used Bodhi Linux or have compiled Enlightenment from source should already have some idea of what profiles are.

              Profiles are a powerful tool, they control the layout of your enlightenment desktop. I’ve found those coming from other desktops (such as KDE or Gnome) often confuse the idea of profiles with theme. Themes control the colors of your desktop and the appearance of your gadgets.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Google pulls emulators from the Android Market

          The open nature of the Android Market is becoming diminished as Google realizes it needs to take a more active role in its policing it.

          Over the weekend developer Yong Zhang, known on the Android Market as yongzh saw his Android developer account revoked and all the apps he offers removed from the Market. The apps he was offering were all emulators for popular older systems including the NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Atari, Game Gear, and Game Boy. But Google has seen fit to remove all of them ( including Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid, and Gameoid).

        • MIPS: More than 90% of Android apps can run on any processor architecture

          Android has been a hot topic at Computex Taipei this year, with various players discussing the pros and cons of developing apps for the respective hardware platforms such as ARM or x86. However when it comes to the MIPS platform, CEO and president of MIPS, Sandeep Vij pointed out that in terms of the application universe, well over 90% of the apps that are available in the Android marketplace work on MIPS.

Free Software/Open Source

  • W3af Open Source App Vulnerability Testing Hits 1.0

    The open source w3af project released a 1.0 stable version this week after five release candidates and months of development. W3af enables developers and security researchers to audit, discover and test Web applications for vulnerabilities.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Arguments Over the Future of OpenOffice.org

      Don’t expect Oracle’s donation of the code of OpenOffice.org to The Apache Software Foundation to settle anything about the troubled office suite. If the situation does improve, it will be small thanks to Oracle.

      According to Oracle, the donation is proof that “Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities. Donating OpenOffice.org to Apache gives this popular consumer software a mature, open, and well established infrastructure to continue well into the future.”

      However, from the way that the donation was done, and the situation it leaves the project in, it looks very much like a last spiteful gesture toward the rival Document Foundation, the project that develops LibreOffice, the OpenOffice.org fork. The result is a future that leaves the future as troubled as the present. At the very least, to some observers it appears to show a disdain for the community that borders on arrogance.

    • The big winner from Apache OpenOffice.org

      IBM is still making Lotus Symphony. Remember Symphony? (Don’t worry, it slips my mind occasionally, too.) But IBM is still pushing this OpenOffice.org-based suite as a business desktop application, and Big Blue will be much happier keeping OpenOffice.org with the Apache Software Foundation than The Document Foundation.

      Why? Because when, not if, the OpenOffice.org proposal is approved by the Apache Software Foundation, the OpenOffice.org will be licensed under the Apache Software License (ASL) v2. This means IBM and any other Apache OpenOffice.org project member can innovate the heck out the source code and not be obligated to give back to the mainline OpenOffice.org code, since the ASL is a non-copyleft license. IBM and other OpenOffice.org contributors will also be able to re-license OpenOffice.org code under any license they want, including a proprietary license, should they wish. It also keeps a major Open Document Format project ensconced within IBM-friendly governance.

    • Michael Meeks’ Take

      It seems that IBM and the ASF are encouraging individuals from the LibreOffice world to sign on as ‘Initial Committers’ to their new project.

    • Why OpenOffice Going To Apache Foundation Makes No Sense At All

      Why The Document Foundation is a better choice than the Apache Foundation

      Another point to consider is the developers who will be taking care of OpenOffice. With OpenOffice in the hands of the Apache Foundation, they have to get a new team of developers to take on the development of the project. I am not saying that the Apache Foundation is not capable of doing that. But, for a completely new team to take over a project the size of OpenOffice can be very tough. In fact, that was what happened to Oracle after almost all of the previous developers left. But, The Document Foundation has most of the previous OpenOffice developers. After forking OpenOffice, they are developing one of the best office suite around – LibreOffice.

    • IBM Announces New Open Software Development

      IBM has announced its supporting role in the new OpenOffice.org code base submitted to The Apache Software Foundation Incubator. This is all part of an effort for the company to continue its long-standing commitment to open source. The firm will contribute staff resources to collaborate with the Apache community during the project’s incubation period to further the Open Document Format standard.

    • Oracle proposals may open Java Community Process

      The Java Community Process may get a welcome and much-needed breath of fresh air if a new proposal from Oracle is approved.

      The proposal, entitled JCP.next JSR 1, which is actually Java Specification Request 348, would see a reorganization of the existing Java Community Process to make the JCP a more open environment in which developers can work.

      According to the JCP Program Office, JCP.next JSR 1 (JJ1) “will focus on changes to the JCP Process Document in the following areas: transparency, participation, agility and governance. The Process Document describes the formal procedures used in the JCP program.”

      JSRs, by the way, are defined as “actual descriptions of proposed and final specifications for the Java platform.”

    • Apache president Jim Jagielski talks about OpenOffice.org next steps

      The ASF is best known for project like the ubiquitous Apache HTTP server — but Apache is home to dozens of projects. Still, doesn’t OpenOffice.org seem just a bit out of place here? Jagielski says no. “Although Apache is mostly known for server-side code (either complete servers, middle-ware, libraries, etc…) we do have some client-side and userland projects. Apache OFBiz is likely the best example.” In fact, Jagielski says what is “typical” for Apache is “building (or even “re-building”) communities around those codebases.”

    • What Oracle’s Open Source Retreat Means
    • Why Oracle’s donation of OpenOffice disappoints

  • Public Services/Government

    • EU goes global for procurement standards

      On Wednesday, the Commission laid out its strategy for reforming the way EU public institutions deal with standards. Open-source advocates welcomed the strategy, saying it would promote competition, reduce lock-in and lead to faster standard development.

      [...]

      Taylor added that Oasis would not have had to cede control of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to ISO in 2008, if the European Commission had not mandated this as a condition for accepting the standard. “Under this new arrangement there’s potentially no need to go to ISO,” he said. “Hopefully what we will get is faster standards to market without adding levels of bureaucracy.”

  • Licensing

Leftovers

  • Inventing Unix

  • My Thoughts

  • Cablegate

    • Julian Assange wins Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism

      iLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the Martha Gellhorn prize for Journalism.

      The prize is awarded annually to a journalist whose work has “penetrated the established version of events and told and unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or ‘official drivel’, as Martha Gellhorn called it.”

      Gellhorn, who died in 1998, was a well-known war correspondent and author.

  • Finance

    • S.E.C. Case Stands Out Because It Stands Alone

      Hundreds of employees worked closely in teams, devising mortgage-based securities — billions of dollars’ worth — that were examined by lawyers, approved by management, then sold to investors like hedge funds, commercial banks and insurance companies.

      At one trading desk sat Fabrice Tourre, a midlevel 28-year-old Frenchman who was little known not just outside Goldman but even inside the firm. That changed three years later, in 2010, when he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the only individual at Goldman and across Wall Street sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for helping to sell a mortgage-securities investment, in one of the hundreds of mortgage deals created during the bubble years.

    • Geithner and Goldman, Thick as Thieves

      What was Timothy Geithner thinking back in 2008 when, as president of the New York Fed, he decided to give Goldman Sachs a $30 billion interest-free loan as part of an $80 billion secret float to favored banks? The sordid details of that program were finally made public this week in response to a court order for a Freedom of Information Act release, thanks to a Bloomberg News lawsuit. Sorry, my bad: It wasn’t an interest-free loan; make that .01 percent that Goldman paid to borrow taxpayer money when ordinary folks who missed a few credit card payments in order to finance their mortgages were being slapped with interest rates of more than 25 percent.

      One wonders if Barack Obama was fully aware of Geithner’s deceitful performance at the New York Fed when he appointed him treasury secretary in the incoming administration. The president was probably ignorant of this particular giveaway, as were key members of Congress. “I wasn’t aware of this program until now,” Barney Frank, D-Mass., who at the time chaired the House Financial Services Committee, admitted in referring to Geithner’s “single-tranche open-market operations” program. And there was no language in the Dodd-Frank law supposedly reining in the banks that compelled the Fed to reveal the existence of this program.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • The Real Legacy of the Hargreaves Report?

        Of course, on its own the report can’t achieve much in these three areas. But by raising these issues in a public way it has effectively put down markers. It means that when writing about the area of copyright and its enforcement, we can point back to statements about the need for evidence-based policies, and the fact that practically all the studies trotted out by the content industries are worthless, or that the economic damage of piracy is by no means a given.

      • Cabinet Minister Mandate Letters for The Digital Era

        James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage: Together with Paradis, you will be working on the fourth attempt at Canadian copyright reform. Bill C-32 provides the starting point, but we need to establish a stronger link between copyright and innovation by instituting greater flexibility on digital locks and fair dealing.

        The next four years also offers the chance to create a true national digital library as the foundation of a digital cultural policy. Canada has only digitized 13 per cent of its documentary text and less than one per cent of its video, audio, and photographs. You should assume a leadership position by actively working with provincial and local groups to develop a world-class national digital library that makes Canadian culture available from coast to coast and around the world by July 2015.

      • ACTA

        • Gröna gruppen mobiliserar inför ACTA-omröstning Green Group mobilizes for ACTA vote

          The Green Group (Greens / EFA) in the European Parliament are working hard to ensure that the European Parliament does not give its consent to the ACTA treaty. På ett möte i dag antogs att gruppen kommer att driva kravet på att alla av unionens förhandlingsdokument skall offentliggöras, i enlighet med den förfrågan som EDRi (European Digital Rights) framförde till utskottet för Internationell handel (INTA) den 11.e maj i år. At a meeting today was that the group will drive the requirement that all the Union’s negotiating document to be published in accordance with the request that EDRi (European Digital Rights) expressed to the Committee on International Trade (INTA) on 11th May this year. Vidare kommer man fortsätta driva kravet på att skicka ACTA-avtalet till European Court of Justice (ECJ) och kommer att försöka få upp sin resolution på dagordningen vid nästa plenarsammanträde. Moreover it will continue to drive the requirement to send ACTA treaty to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and will try to bring up his resolution on the agenda at the next session.

Clip of the Day

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (Wireless Games Contorller Demo)


Credit: TinyOgg

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