09.16.11

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• http://www.tuxradar.com/content/lxf-150-sale-today

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • FLOSS Weekly 182

    We talk about PC-BSD, a user friendly desktop Operating System based on FreeBSD.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • The Fight Over Merging Drivers Back Into X Server

    • NVIDIA Has A New “Long-Lived” Linux Driver

• Applications

  • Eina – A classic player for a modern era

  • Tmux – the Terminal multiplexer

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Zero padding for Bash scripts

    • Top on Steroids – 15 Practical Linux HTOP Examples

    • Getting Started With Zend Framework In Ubuntu

    • How to Disable Login Sound in Ubuntu Oneiric [Quick Tips]

    • How to install Media Codecs for Fedora 14/15

    • multiple MySQL instance on Fedora/CentOS/Redhat/Scientific Linux

    • Setting Up Mutt With S/MIME And PGP/MIME

    • Quick and dirty: why sudo is bad for security

    • Awesomeness!

    • Managing Startup Applications On Kubuntu Systems

      If you are interested in taking more direct control of your system startup procedure you can with the KDE autostart manager. This tool allows you to specify applications or scripts that you would like to run on startup, shutdown, or pre-login. As you can imaging, this allows for a variety uses and configurations. Customizing your own system startup procedure is an effective way of maintaining system integrity. Run system maintenance tasks during startup and shutdown to make sure your system always runs at peak efficiency. But now you can find out how to get the most out of the KDE autostart manager on your Kubuntu system.

  • Games

    • Dungeons of Dredmor soooooon!

      Further to my previous post about Dungeons of Dredmor, Gaslamp Games have now stated Linux support will be in the next version!

    • Gaming In Linux : Steam Installation

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • Active play and test

      The current pre-release images are downloadable from the usual place, test the hell out of it, it’s fun

      If you find something that is still a bit problematic, you can go to bugs.kde.org, and in the report bug form, there is the “Active” product among the others.

• Distributions

  • Arch Linux – “It is what you make it”

    Many Linux distributions have taken the path of easy GUI-based installation, in order to appeal to a broader mix of users. But not Arch Linux, which emphasises simplicity of technical complexity over general usability. Richard Hillesley explains.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Solar panels are a go for convention center

      The city will move ahead with plans to install solar panels on the Raleigh Convention Center, now that the software company Red Hat has decided to lease downtown office space in an existing building rather than build a high-rise of its own.

    • Red Hat Expands Brisbane Support and Engineering Facility

      Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today celebrates the expansion of its Asia Pacific Engineering and Support headquarters, located in Brisbane. This marks a significant milestone for Red Hat both locally and across Asia Pacific.

    • Release for CentOS-5.7 i386 and x86_64

  • Debian Family

    • APT Woodchuck

      A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with Michael Banck about DebConf. He told me that one of the sponsors provided everyone a SIM card with 5 units of credit, and that the first time he established a data connection was also his last: he got bit by Maemo’s automatic repository update misfeature; because, he had gone more than 24 hours without checking for software updates, Maemo checked even though he was using a cellular data connection and only had a few megabytes worth of data transfer credit.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Dream Studio (64-bit) 11.04 Official Release

            DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.04 for 64-bit processors. This is the first official release of Dream Studio in a fully 64-bit version, and while it contains all the same programs and features of the standard release, this version does come with a few advantages, such as:

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Boeing chooses Android for 787 Dreamliner’s entertainment system

        While Apple continues to score wins in the use of its iPad for inflight entertainment, Boeing has chosen its nemesis – Google’s Android operating system – to provide music, video and even airline-specific apps for the next-gen 787 Dreamliner.

      • Samsung Nexus Prime – new details emerge

        The utterly mysterious Samsung Nexus Prime has apparently been seen in the real world and it looks just like a chunkier Nexus S.

Free Software/Open Source

• A Bushel of Tools for Business and Personal Financial Management

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

• Tools to Help You Nurture Your Open Source Project

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

• Open source tool enables security tests for chip cards

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

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla co-founder quits Firefox veep role

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

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

• SaaS

  • Memset takes open source to cloud storage market

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

• Databases

  • Oracle adds commercial extensions to MySQL

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

• CMS

  • Onxshop CMS goes fully open source

    Norbert is now eager for other developers who find Onxshop useful to contribute to the source code.

• Business

  • Free Software versus Open Source: Tryton vs OpenERP

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

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

• BSD

  • PC-BSD 9.0 on its Way

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

• Project Releases

  • Omaha 3: Updating Google style

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

• Licensing

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

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

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

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

• Openness/Sharing

  • Open-source policy formulation for Sri Lanka’s capital

  • Qualcomm goes open source with AllJoyn

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

  • Open Hardware

    • A brief introduction to Arduino

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

• Programming

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

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

Leftovers

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Joyent upgrades cloud service to compete with Amazon

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

• Health/Nutrition

  • Call: using ICT to save lives

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

• Security

  • Another Apache update due to byte range flaw

• Cablegate

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

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

• Finance

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

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

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

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

  • I Failed… and I’m So Very Sorry

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

  • Goldman Sachs should consider its own breakup

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

  • The Limits of Meritocracy

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

• Privacy

  • Green leader slams Harper’s proposed internet spying laws

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

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

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

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

• Civil Rights

  • Phone hacking: Met use Official Secrets Act to force Guardian to reveal sources

    The Metropolitan police are seeking a court order under the Official Secrets Act to make Guardian reporters disclose their confidential sources about the phone-hacking scandal.

  • Congress: Investigate Rupert Murdoch

    Rupert Murdoch and other News Corporation executives are at the center of a shocking British media scandal that involves spying, bribery, corruption, a corporate cover-up and even murder.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

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

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

    • Lib Dems get a chance to vote on copyright reform

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