Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Kernel Sandbox

    All in all, simply working with a virtual machine 80% of the time is a lot nicer than working with a physical machine 100% of the time, and has really allowed me to not exhaust my patience when working with kernel code.

• Applications

  • The best Linux desktop search tools

    Tools such as grep, find and awk have often come to the rescue of gleeful Bash-mongers searching for files buried beneath gigabytes of other items. But when a typical Linux distro takes up a couple of gigs of disk space, it’s not hard to imagine that finding your files will only become trickier over time.

  • GloobusPreview & CoverGloobus Sneak Peeks

    Having to contend with intermittent electricity in my house today means this is likely the only post of the day. So, instead of pushing out something half-baked I thought i’d go the whole-hog and not really say anything at all…

    …and just post some new pictures showing of the awesome progress the Gloobus-Preview & CoverGloobus development teams are making with undoubtedly two of the coolest applications around. Clicking on the pictures should take you supersized, but don’t roast me if they don’t!

  • CodeWeavers Road Map for 2010

    Early in the year, we plan to bring out ‘Snow Mallard’, our new platform for CrossOver 9. This is going to be an exciting release for us for a variety of reasons.

  • Wine 1.1.36 Released

    The Wine development release 1.1.36 is now available.

    What’s new in this release:

    * Completion of the 16-bit separation.
    * Improved Shader Model 4 support.
    * A ton of memory leak fixes.
    * Improved debugging support for MinGW.
    * A number of MSHTML fixes.
    * Various bug fixes.

  • The rise of web applications and Chrome: it’s all about timescales

    The significant thing about Chrome is that it sets a new way of thinking. It does not mean Chrome will dominate the world. Open standards mean that other companies could provide similar services. It’s the 80% scenario. 80% of what we do could be web based and probably will be in the future. It is near 100% for 80% of the population. It does not then make much sense to have everyone running a desktop OS just in case they might happen to want a specialist application that is dependent on that technology. Some people will still need this, but not the majority.

  • Download Google Chrome 4.0.288.1

    Google has made available for download the second update of 2010 for its open source browser. On January 6, the Mountain View-based search giant has kicked up a notch the Dev channel version of Google Chrome. Early adopters can now grab Google Chrome Build 4.0.288.1 through the developer channel, a release which is available for all supported platforms. Technically, Google Chrome Beta Build 4.0.249.49 was the first release of the open source browser this year.

  • e-Book Collection Management on Linux

    Having trouble sorting out hundreds of e-Books? No troubles for me, because I don’t have much e-Books. But some people do have huge collection of books. If the collection is too big, its really not friendlier to find a book by file name. We need something like Book Shelf to keep them in order, that is what e-Book Collection Managers are, but they are a lot flexible than our real life Book Shelves.

  • Instructionals

    • Installing Cherokee With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 12

    • 10 things to know about Linux and Open Source: Compilation

    • 6 Steps for Minimal Ubuntu Installation Using debootstrap

    • Possible solutions to Fix the Missing Network Manager Icon in Ubuntu 9.10

    • Anatomy of the libvirt virtualization library

    • Automate Backups With Back In Time

    • Setting Full Duplex mode Ethernet Interface

    • Single instance apps using D-Bus

    • Inkscape Class Day 1

    • A few cool plugins for The GIMP (and how to add them)

    • Mount Windows partition automatically using PySDM

    • Mastering a DVD using QDVDAuthor

    • Binutils Porting Guide To A New Target Architecture

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • Silicon – auto image mounter for KDE 4

    Perhaps you know how mount ISO image by commend line. However, If you are lazy – like me – to use Konsole, Silicon is a good choice for this task. I tried Furius ISO before, but I don’t like it because it lacks KDE4′s integration.

  • Searching and Filtering Photos in digiKam — Part 2

    Besides the quick search and filtering tools at the bottom of the main window, digiKam offers more advanced search features accessible via the left sidebar. Here, you’ll find a variety of search options, including the Calendar, Tags, Timeline, Searches, Fuzzy Searches, and Map Searches. The Map Searches option was covered previously, so let’s take a look at what else digiKam has to offer.

• Distributions

  • On the road again with Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Alpha1

    Mandriva team wishes you happy new year 2010 and is proud to propose the first alpha release for 2010 Spring. Together with these isos, you will find also technical specifications for this coming release.

    Many improvements and new functionnalities are planned for this new version: your desktop will be smart and connected! Smart desktop is still one of the focus of main version, you can have a look on the coming roadmap. But you will find also easy home encryption so that your personal data are secured even whereever you are. Also planned a big work on our tools to manage softwares installation and update to give more useful information and help user in choosing the best of open source softwares.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Enterprise Virtualisation Powers Cost-Effective Growth

      Red Hat, the world leading provider of open source solutions, recently released Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEV) that gives businesses unprecedented technology prowess to unlock capital and enhance operational efficiency. RHEV is built on open source and comes at a much lower cost than proprietary virtualisation products.

      RHEV is the first open source virtualisation solution that features Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, the software that allows multiple virtual operating systems to run on a host machine or system.

    • Open source may be a venture capital dry hole

      Still, some companies manage to make money. Red Hat makes money.

      Most people credit Red Hat’s success to its relationship with IBM and the fact it’s selling a Linux. But I suspect there is more to it than that.

      Marc Fleury built JBOSS around committers, and many cashed out when Red Hat came in during 2006. It has taken Red Hat a long time to build back a proper support infrastructure, but now that work seems to be finally done and, while the company doesn’t break out its numbers, JBOSS seems to be a profit contributor rather than a cash sink.

  • Debian Family

    • Does Ubuntu Make Linux Look Bad?

      One may argue that Linux is not supposed to be “one size fits all.” It was never meant to be an all-in-one solution. Linux is not Windows! It can be just about whatever you want it to be, as much or as little as you desire.

      This is an eye-of-the-beholder thing. To a newbie who has known only Windows or Mac, Ubuntu and other similar Linux distributions make Linux look beautiful! Simple, graphical, versatile, powerful, infinitely configurable. It’s “one-size fits all” is simply what they have come to expect from an operating system because that’s all they know.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Hands-On With the Boxee Set-Top Box and Remote

    A host of video services on the web enable you to watch your favorite TV programs and movies anytime you wish, and Boxee is an open platform striving to weave them all into one neat interface. To get the Boxee experience onto a TV, D-Link has launched a set-top box dedicated to the open video platform, along with a special remote.

  • Phones

    • Nokia N900

      • gTranslate – Translation Anywhere on N900

        Nokia N900 is full of little gems thanks to it’s open source nature and a growing developer community . Although much of the applications are available in the Untested Maemo Repository but still it never stops us from playing with them .

    • Palm

      • Palm opens developer program, adds plug-in support

        The number of applications available for webOS is much smaller than for the iPhone or Google’s Android OS. To close this gap, Palm will also open up its application distribution channel to developers and Web sites, giving them access to detailed information about applications and statistics, such as the number of downloads. This will allow them to build their own application directories and application ranking mechanisms, Mitic said.

      • Palm Prē lands in France

        Palm is extending the market range of its smartphones to France through a partnership with mobile service provider SFR, which will begin offering the Palm Prē and Pixi to its existing 20 million mobile customers – and, hopefully, more – in the second quarter of this year.

      • Palm fishes for devs with $1m lure

        Palm has – finally – opened up its application development program for webOS to one and all. It will also open its app database to anyone who wants to build a store, extend its SDK’s powers with a plug-in kit for C and C++ coders, and prime the development pump with $1m in incentives.

      • Palm updates devices, opens App Catalog, boosts gaming

        Palm revealed new versions of its Pre and Pixi handsets during its press briefing today at CES. The company also expanded its development platform and demonstrated new features of its webOS software.

      • AT&T Will Add Android, Palm Devices, Boost Apps

        AT&T will offer mobile devices using nearly every operating system as it adds more Android devices, including Dell’s, and Palm webOS devices to its smartphone lineup. Observers think AT&T is preparing to lose its exclusive U.S. contract for Apple, Inc.’s iPhone. AT&T also plans to encourage development of applications for its devices.

      • AT&T to begin selling Android and Palm smartphones in the U.S.

        AT&T has announced it will soon begin selling Android and Palm smartphones in the U.S., The company announced it will offer five new devices based on Google’s open-source operating system and two devices that use Palm’s webOS.

    • Android

      • Android Unleashed

        Vizzeco (nee Koolu) a company that I work for, even invested their resources in porting Android to the Openmoko “FreeRunner” phone in an attempt to have the best of both worlds. Vizzeco wanted Android and the “openness” of being able to change Android to meet our (and our VAR’s) needs while maintaining application compatibility. Unfortunately while the FreeRunner served as a good platform for prototyping mobile phone operating systems, there were limitations to its manufacturing capacity which limited the usefulness to Vizzecos’ business.

      • 400,000 Motorola Backflip Android phones ordered by AT&T?

        Although it’s the last major US carrier to launch Android phones, AT&T seems to be betting heavily on Google’s open source mobile platform.

        According to Eldar Murtazin (who is, most of the time, right), AT&T has ordered 400,000 Motorola Backflip handsets, and it might even order more – which means that the carrier is hoping to sell them like hot cakes.

      • The Backflip: Motorola’s Innovative Android Phone

        The Backflip will try to surpass or at least equal the success of Cliq (Dext) and Droid with its own good looks and innovative features. The two previously released Android smatphones have really revitalized Motorola’s struggling handset business and they hope that Backflip will ride the momentum.

        [...]

        Motorola hasn’t announced the price and availability of the Backflip just yet. But there are reports that it would cost the same as Cliq and it will be available to consumers this first quarter of 2010.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • Are Tablet PCs Destined to Flop?

      For all the hype about the rumored Apple Tablet, the ‘will they or won’t they’ about Microsoft’s Courier tablet, and a host of actual tablet announcements such as Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 and theDell’s still unnamed slate, everyone seems to have forgotten one tiny, little fact: tablets have been around forever and have never, ever lived up to their buzz.

    • Does a Tablet PC Market Exist for Apple and Others?

      Sounds like the UMPC To Me

      Yet for all the hype, we’ve seen a device with similar functionality before, one that didn’t go over terribly well. Consider this: In July 2006, more than three years ago, I wrote a review of a device for InformationWeek that sounds surprisingly similar to what we can expect from tablet PCs. The product was the Samsung Q1, a precursor to the Netbook market, known as a UMPC or Ultra Mobile PC.

    • Hands On With the Litl [GNU/Linux] Webbook

      Powering the litl is a 1.8-GHz Atom Z540 processor, with 1GB of 533-Mhz DDR2 RAM. The bright, two-toned chassis is sturdy, belying its dainty appearance. Its 12.1-inch screen is driven by Intel integrated graphics, and offers a 1280 x 800 resolution. It also weighs just over 3 pounds, making it very portable.

    • Screens From Former OLPC CTO Now in Devices

      Mary Lou Jepsen and her team at start-up Pixel Qi have their display-screen technology in several products being shown at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and plan to put a DIY (do it yourself) screen kit on the market early this year.

      Jepsen, formerly the head of Intel’s display division and chief technology officer at One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), has focused on lowering the battery drain by LCD screens and making them useful as e-readers in addition to normal computer use.

    • After the Hype: The current state of OLPC and Sugar Labs

      Back in early October a tweet by someone I follow alerted me to the fact that the deadline for submissions to the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) was less than 48 hours away. In a lunch break I whipped up a quick proposal for a lecture called “After the Hype – The current state of One Laptop per Child and Sugar Labs”. A couple of weeks later I learned that my submission had been accepted.

Free Software/Open Source

• Symbian Lays out Mobile OS Roadmap

  Symbian Foundation, responsible for development of the Symbian mobile OS, is readying its Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 versions of the platform, with version 3 likely to be feature-complete next month, a Symbian blogger said this week.

• Tool King rebuilds its e-commerce site on an open source platform

  Open-source software has freely available source code that is open for development by a broad community of developers.

• WSO2 Launches Open Source BAM for SOA

  WSO2 is offering a Business Activity Monitor for its open source SOA offering, providing real-time visibility into processes, transactions and workflows.

• Yahoo Helps IIT Bombay Set up Hadoop Cluster Lab

  Yahoo has helped the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay to set up a Hadoop cluster lab in Mumbai by donating a cluster of servers running the open-source Hadoop software.

  Apache Hadoop is an open-source distributed-computing project of the Apache Software Foundation that Yahoo supports.

• Happy Birthday, Chris Messina, And Enjoy Advocating The Open Web At Google

  It’s no secret that Google is a big proponent of open source technology and the open web (to a degree), and it’s no secret that Chris Messina is too, either. It’s thus not terribly surprising that the man is joining the Mountain View Internet giant as its new Open Web Advocate.

  Messina announced the news on his blog, and referred to his move as a very happy birthday present (he’s turning 29 today).

• Lucid Imagination Streamlines Apache Solr for Enterprise Search Applications

  Lucid Imagination, a commercial company dedicated to supporting open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technologies, today announced the immediate availability of its LucidWorks Certified Distribution for Solr 1.4.

• I Run 13 Browsers At Once; 11 of Them Just Went Open Source

  FluidApp is what’s called a Single Site Browser and is a great way to pull key websites you use throughout the day out of your primary browser and onto your Mac dashboard as standalone applications. It’s super easy for anyone to use. The service has a thriving community of users – I have 10 Fluid browsers running on my computer right now and wouldn’t want to work without them. In fact, I’m writing this blog post from Movable Type inside a Fluid Browser.

• GlassFish ESB 2.2 released

  ESB can be downloaded for free under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL); Sun offers commercial support for the distribution, which also contains the latest version of Sun’s open development environment NetBeans (6.7.1) and the GlassFish application server (2.1.1) .

• OrangeHRM – 300,000 Downloads and Counting…

  OrangeHRM, The world’s leading Open Source HR Management solutions provider hit a new milestone. The company said today that it went past 300,000 downloads of its application.

• HIE deploys open-source interoperability software

  Here comes the first wave of products with “meaningful use” in their names. Open-source health IT company Mirth Corp., has an interoperability program called the Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange (Mirth MUx), and says the system now is being deployed at Redwood MedNet, a health information exchange in Northern California.

• Asterisk – A Disruptive Force in IP Communications

  In fact, new developers are joining the Asterisk community at a rate of nearly 60 percent annually, and the open source adoption rate in some countries is approaching 80 percent.

• WANdisco Names Hyrum Wright to Lead Subversion Open Source Efforts

  WANdisco, a leading provider of infrastructure software for replication, scalability and high availability, today announced that Hyrum Wright has joined the company to lead its open source team.

• Jan 14: Emerging Technologies & Trends Series in RTP presented in partnership with WorkSmart (Raleigh)

  Open source enables companies to continuously improve their product utilizing partners and customers that use it the most.

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla Drumbeat Aims to Expand Web Participation

    Open source has dramatically reshaped the software development landscape. Yet is it enough to help propel the Web itself forward for the next decade?

    That’s what Mozilla believes. After having been synonymous with open source for over a decade, thanks to its efforts behind the popular Firefox Web browser, Mozilla is now creating a new effort to help shaping the Internet’s development using the same sorts of techniques that have made open source a success.

  • Firefox for Maemo closing in on final release

    Mozilla is expected to push out an update for Web surfers who have already downloaded the first release candidate into their Nokia N900 or N810 devices. You can also download the RC2 directly from the mobile browser.

  • Mozilla releases Firefox 3.6 RC1

    The Mozilla developers have announced the availability of the first release candidate (RC1) for what will become version 3.6 of their open source Firefox web browser, code-named Namoroka. As with the previous development releases, Firefox 3.6 RC1 is based on version 1.9.2 of Mozilla’s Gecko web rendering platform. The RC1 release includes over 70 bug fixes made since the preceding beta, with three known issues affecting all platforms concerning tracing and web worker performance, crashes in FIPS mode and problems with Hotmail scroll arrows. A known issue also exists for Linux where some distributions will have trouble playing system sounds and another exists for Mac OS X where there is a problem opening local files with a space in the name.

  • Intelestream Extends Free Trial for intelecrm, the On Demand CRM Application for Small and Medium Businesses

    Intelestream, Inc., the leader in open source CRM consulting and developers of intelecrm™, the award winning online small business CRM solution, today announced the company has extended the fully functional free trial of intelecrm from 30 days to 60 days. Customers must mention promo code 60extCRM to qualify for the extended trial.

• Databases

  • MySQL, Oracle And Cloud Computing

    Ever since Oracle announced the acquisition of Sun Microsystems along with MySQL, all hell broke loose in the open source community. With EU questioning the deal, there is a war (of words) erupting inside the community with one side asking EU to block the deal or, at the very least, change the license to another open source license from GPL and the other side urging EU to allow the transaction to go through. Even though I have no love for Oracle, I think it is time to let the deal go through at least for the sake of Sun employees who are sitting there with their future unknown. At the same time, I am not unduly worried about the future of MySQL because I have complete confidence in the open source license of MySQL. Let me try to explain my position here in this post.

• CMS

  • Movable Type 5 Released, Adds Versioning, Better Management

    Movable Type was released as open source in December 2007. The clarity around this effort and the its community momentum has largely languished from what we see. The current MT 5 release messaging highlights the open source version as an option for developers. It does not seem to be positioned the same way other commercial open source options are. This is probably one of the reasons why ex-Movable Type product manager lead an effort to fork Movable Type Open Source into what is now know as Open Melody (news, site). The first release of Open Melody is due in Q1 of this year.

  • Bespoke CMS – bad news for you, good news for your agency

    In a world of widely available, top quality, open source and commercial content management systems, there’s no upside to using a bespoke system. All the advantages lie with the agency, not the client…which of course is why they try to sell them to you!

  • VT4 using Drupal

    Flemish commercial television channel VT4 is using Drupal on http://www.vt4.be. VT4 is part of ProSiebenSat.1 Media, the second-largest broadcasting group in Europe. Cool!

  • Ragnaroek 8.09.7 released

    Lodz, January 6th 2010 — The Midgard Project has released the seventh maintenance release of Midgard 8.09 Ragnaroek LTS. Ragnaroek LTS is a Long Term Support version of the free software content management framework.

• BSD

  • BSD Magazine goes free

    I’m glad to see BSD Mag go free. Hopefully, more people will read BSD Mag now and become interested the BSD branch of operating systems. However, on the other hand, if there’s little income (ads etc), how can this be maintained?

• Openness

  • Unreliable evidence? Time to open up DNA databases

    WHEN a defendant’s DNA appears to match DNA found at a crime scene, the probability that this is an unfortunate coincidence can be central to whether the suspect is found guilty. The assumptions used to calculate the likelihood of such a fluke – the “random match probability” – are now being questioned by a group of 41 scientists and lawyers based in the US and the UK.

    [...]

    Without external scrutiny of the databases, doubts will remain, Mueller argues. “All of this… can be resolved by letting scientists have access to the data to do what they need to do.”

  • ISCB Licenses Virginia Tech’s GenoCAD Software to Ensure Long-Term Availability to Open Source Code

    In an unusual move, the International Society for Computational Biology announced this week that it has licensed the GenoCAD synthetic biology software from Virginia Tech in an effort to help ensure the long-term availability of the software under an open-source license.

• Programming

  • What Java EE 6 Offers the Enterprise and Integration

    Sharples: The big selling point of Java has been always choice. Because it’s an open specification driven by an open process (the JCP) and because there’s a very active Open Source Java ecosystem – there’s choice at every level. If you are a developer – there’s a choice of technology frameworks – there is no single vendor dictating how you should build your applications and what technologies and APIs you should use. But at the end of the day – it’s all Java and very familiar to a large number of developers — as a result there’s a huge developer base to tap into and a huge ecosystem of tools and applications designed to work with Java EE.

Leftovers

• Acer Recalls Notebook Computers Due to Burn Hazard

  The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following products. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

• No, a nearby supernova won’t wipe us out

  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I attended the first few days of the American Astronomical Society meeting this week. I went as a member of the press, as I have for the past few years. The press room is a fun place; lots of old friends, banter across the table, and, of course, the press releases.

• Testing, Testing

  The health-care bill has no master plan for curbing costs. Is that a bad thing?

• Crime

  • Former CEO of BetOnSports.com Sentenced to Prison Term

    The former director and CEO of BetOnSports.com, a large offshore sports-wagering business, has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in running the illegal gambling operation.

  • Killing Organizers in Honduras

    The bodies of slain activists are piling up in Honduras. While it’s being kept quiet in most Honduran and international media, the rage is building among a dedicated network of friends spreading the word quickly with the tragic announcement of each compañero/a.

  • Iraq files case against Blackwater: PM

    Iraq has filed a lawsuit against private security firm Blackwater in a US court and will file another in Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday, amid fury over an American court dropping charges against five Blackwater guards.

    “The US justice department has protested against this decision,” Maliki said, referring to the ruling last week to dismiss criminal charges against the guards, who were accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in September 2007.

  • Cancer – The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq

    The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

• Security

  • American Civil Rights Just Died. Again.

    One of George W. Bush’s worst policies, the Military Commissions Act, has been reinforced by the Supreme Court as not just Constitutional (which it is, of course, not) but also allows for the administration to declare you a “suspected enemy combatant” and at that time, you cease to exist as a “person”. Per the Supreme Court, a suspected enemy combatant, even if they are an American citizen, does not have any rights: human, inherent, natural, or any legal standing whatsoever. Even if you are a normal American citizen walking down the street, if President Obama (or any other president after him) declares you a suspected enemy combatant, you will simply cease to exist as a legal entity in the United States at that time.

    From then on, the federal government can arrest, torture, or do whatever they feel necessary with you. You or your family have no legal recourse – after all, in the eyes of the national government, you don’t exist. Obama’s promise to end torture still applies – after all, if they’re torturing “suspected enemy combatants”, legally speaking, they’re not torturing people.

  • More Surveillance Can Make Us Less Safe

    In the wake of the September 11 attacks, we had a post detailing why greater surveillance wouldn’t have helped prevent the attacks. The data was all there, it just wasn’t put together. And yet, in the time since then, the government has, in fact, continually focused on gathering more surveillance (warrantless wiretaps, anyone?), rather than on making better use of the data that is there. Back in 2002, in another post, we discussed how collecting more surveillance data in data retention schemes also made it harder to find the useful data and harder to connect the dots on the data that you had.

  • Dominic Lawson: If we are all under suspicion, then we are all threatened

    Even were I to live within walking distance of the Queen’s Sandringham estate, it would never occur to me to spend any part of Christmas Day standing outside its church to take photographs of attendant members of the Royal Family. Yet, odd as such behaviour might seem – it’s not as if the media don’t produce film and pictures from the same event, saving everyone else the trouble – it is about as harmless as anything can be.

• Environment

  • First Carbon Tariff Will Tax CO2 at the Border

    The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota.

    To encourage the switch to clean renewable energy Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012, to discourage the use of coal power; the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Copenhagen gatecrash protesters released after 20 days

    Four protesters held for 20 days in a Copenhagen prison have been released today after embarrassing the Danish state by impersonating world leaders at last month’s UN climate summit.

    The four, from Greenpeace groups in Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Spain, have had to promise that they will return to Copenhagen for a trial later this year. They will be accompanied by a further five protesters who took part in the action, the details of which were passed to police by Greenpeace this week as part of the conditions of release. The nine have been charged with impersonating police officers, trespass, and falsifying documents.

    They admit hiring limousines and evening dress and joining 120 world leaders at a state banquet in the Danish parliament.

• Finance

  • House panel wants Geithner to testify about New York Fed and AIG

    The chairman of the House oversight committee turned the spotlight Friday once again on the government’s much-maligned bailout of American International Group, saying he would ask Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to testify about whether company executives were told to withhold key details about how they were spending taxpayer money.

    Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said he will hold a hearing later this month to examine the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s role in advising AIG to limit its disclosures about billions of dollars it paid to other firms during the height of the financial crisis. Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time.

  • 2010: Giant Gathering Storm Clouds

    Instead, with much greater force, enthusiasm, and recklessness, the financial system hurtled deeper into the Weimar chambers of commerce. Worse, most steps simply apply greater doses of precisely what caused the problems with debt overload and excessive monetary expansion. Worse doubly, most reforms grant even more power to those responsible for the breakdowns and fraud perpetration. The Untied States is being recognized internationally as a rogue nation moving headlong toward communism, run by powerful syndicates, whose most prominent foreign policy is explained by military hardware.

    There is no shred of the capitalist structural makeup remotely evident outside of Asia. We see cronyism systems in the West, but worse, we see syndicate systems with alleged cords of criminality. The discredit of the central bank franchise system is barely noticed by the mainstream, which applauds the printing press monetary operators without recognition of the repeat of Weimar chapters. Just today, the New York Times formally posed the question of how the US Federal Reserve can prevent the next asset bubble when it missed the last one.

  • Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home

    China’s leaders do not. Determined to reverse the drain of top talent that accompanied its opening to the outside world over the past three decades, they are using their now ample financial resources — and a dollop of national pride — to entice scientists and scholars home.

  • Keeping America’s Edge

    The United States is in a tough spot. As we dig ourselves out from a serious financial crisis and a deep recession, our very efforts to recover are exacerbating much more fundamental problems that our country has let fester for too long. Beyond our short-term worries, and behind many of today’s political debates, lurks the deeper challenge of coming to terms with America’s place in the global economic order.

• Censorship/Civil Rights

  • Wikileaks Funding Plan Could Be Risky

    The open-source whistleblower site, Wikileaks, which according to The National has “produced more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years,” has temporarily and voluntarily suspended its own service.

    The staff of Wikileaks is making a direct plea on the Website for financial assistance, with a slogan proclaiming: “We protect the World – will you protect us?”

• Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

  • Court Notices That The FCC Appears To Have No Legal Mandate To Enforce Net Neutrality

    Still, it’s not just the groups supporting the FCC on net neutrality that are taking inconsistent positions here. Remember how Comcast — which this latest ruling supports — has in the past used the argument that the FCC does have this mandate over them to try to avoid regulatory oversight in California. So neither side looks very good here. In fact, in a recent interview concerning the proposed Comcast/NBC merger, Comcast’s spokesperson highlighted that people shouldn’t be afraid of NBC getting preferential treatment because “existing law already prohibits any discrimination.” What existing law? Uh, the same one Comcast just convinced the court doesn’t exist. In other words, the law doesn’t exist when Comcast doesn’t like it, but if anyone says Comcast might violate neutrality, it insists the law suddenly does exist.

  • Court Questions FCC Authority to Impose Net Neutrality

    FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has stated that the FCC acted based on the Four Freedoms outlined by the previous FCC administration in 2005. These principles, while not formal rules, have been used to govern net neutrality on a case-by-case basis:

    1. Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.

    2. Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

    3. Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.

    4. Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • The FFII calls to remove the chapter.

    Korea FTA and the ‘acquis communautaire’

  • Karel de Gucht grilled

    The Trade Commissioner-designate De Gucht will be grilled before the European Parliament INTA committee, Tuesday 12 January 9-12h. While the Council told me that ACTA was not about legislation the new.

    [...]

    The Korean FTA is a good example. What else than legislation is included in the IP chapter? De Gucht seems to be unaware of the problem that the trade portfolio is abused for “policy laundry”, and an international legislative process.

  • Fox News Sued For Copyright Infringement

    A former adviser to Michael Jackson sued Fox News on Thursday for copyright infringement, claiming the cable channel aired portions of an interview with the singer’s ex-wife without proper payment or permission.