• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Gartner Believes the World Owes Wintel A Living

Gartner has predicted that 2012 will be another slow year for Wintel but 2013 will be better. They seem to feel ARM and */Linux will have no traction. The same forces that Gartner believes will give Wintel traction will also give */Linux on ARM greater traction. In fact there is nothing preventing */Linux from running on Intel/x86 systems…

IBM streams Linux and Windows desktop through USB stick

Server

• NOAA and GNU/Linux Predict the Weather

  All IT should do the same. Look at what IT costs your organization and what performance you get or want to get in the future. GNU/Linux will give whatever performance you want at a lower price for licensing, re-re-reboots, slowing down, pleasing M$ with absurd restrictions in the EULA or authentication, and complexity. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux.

Kernel Space

• Linux Foundation Welcomes Nvidia, 3 Other New Members

  In a brief statement, Nvidia said that its membership in the Linux Foundation will enable it to collaborate better with “the organizations and individuals instrumental in shaping the future of Linux, enabling a great experience for users and developers of Linux.”

• Kernel Log: Coming in 3.3 (Part 4) – Drivers

• Fluendo Joins The Linux Foundation

  Fluendo, the leading multimedia software development company and GStreamer expert, announced today that it has joined The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux.

• Linux creator Torvalds slams OpenSUSE security devs in Google+ rant

  Linux creator Linus Torvalds has posted a vitriolic rant on Google+ hammering the developers of OpenSUSE for “mentally diseased” security measures.

  Requiring users to provide an admin password to make even minor changes like adding a new wireless network or changing the time zone is “moronic and wrong,” according to the open source guru. The furious article was apparently prompted by Torvald’s daughter running into these security issues at school.

• Greg KH: The 2.6.32 Linux kernel

• Nvidia’s Embrace of Linux Foundation Highlights Open Source’s Growing Status

• Lustre User Group Announces Conference Program

• Graphics Stack

  • TitaniumGL: A Faster Multi-Platform Graphics Driver Architecture?

    After first being introduced on Windows years ago, and then FreeBSD and ReactOS support added last year, this week finally marked the release of TitaniumGL for Linux. TitaniumGL is self-described as a “freeware driver architecture” and carries a goal to support OpenGL on graphics cards with broken, bad, or missing OpenGL hardware drivers. Here are some benchmarks of TitaniumGL compared to NVIDIA’s binary GPU driver and the Mesa/Gallium3D LLVMpipe software rasterizer.

  • VMware’s Linux 3D Guest Driver Is Ready

    The vmwgfx DRM kernel driver left the staging area in the Linux 3.2 kernel, marking it as a point ready for stable production use. The Gallium3D user-space driver for VMware became properly christened in Mesa 8.0 along with the new XA State Tracker for 2D acceleration and other changes. The final piece of the accelerated VMware puzzle is now fitted: the xf86-video-vmware 12.0 DDX driver. (Read VMware’s New Graphics Architecture Is Shaping Up.)

  • Linux 3.4 Kernel Will Support Intel Medfield Graphics

    The merge window for the Linux 3.4 kernel will open up this month assuming the latest Linux 3.3 release plans work out. One of the features to look forward to out of Linux 3.4 will be the DRM driver support for Intel Medfield graphics.

Applications

• Improve your singing, piano, guitar skills with Performous

• FOSS v proprietary software: image editing

• 8 Linux Graphics Apps for Just About Everything

  One of the remarkable benefits of using Linux operating systems is that there is a plethora of free and open source software to accompany them. Most Linux distributions come with many free software packages, and you can always install more anytime you want.
  For Linux desktop users, there are plenty of graphics programs from which to choose. The following list does not cover all of them. Instead, it highlights one graphics tool from each type.

• Goodbye, D4X. Hello, FatRat.

• The Best Disk Cloning App for Linux

• Proprietary

  • DJ Software Helps You Get the Party Started

    VirtualDJ from Atomix is much more welcoming to beginners. It has a similar interface to Traktor Pro and is available for the Mac. The same applies to Ultramixer from Digital Audio Solutions, which also comes in a Linux version. VirtualDJ and Ultramixer can both be used for free, so long as they are not used professionally.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Create a Custom Dojo Component

  • How To Upgrade openSUSE 12.1 To KDE 4.8.1 [Updated]

  • Weekend Project: Take a Look at Cron Replacement Whenjobs

Distributions

• Review: MadBox 11.10

  MadBox is an Ubuntu-based Openbox distribution that aims to be user-friendly as well. In essence, it is the successor to #! for the Ubuntu base. Development on MadBox and related applications like ADeskBar seemed to have ceased after version 10.10, but a few months ago (though I only found out about it a few weeks ago) a new version based on Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” was released, coinciding with the unveiling of a new website for the distribution.

• New Releases

  • Linux Mint 12 LXDE released!

  • Linux Mint 12 LXDE released

  • Linux Mint 12 LXDE Screenshot Tour

  • Tails 0.10.2 is out

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Government use of Ubuntu

        Governments are making increasingly effective use of Ubuntu in large-scale projects, from big data to little schools. There is growing confidence in open source in government quarters, and growing sophistication in how they engage with it.

        But adopting open source is not just about replacing one kind of part with another. Open source is not just a substitute for shrink-wrapped proprietary software. It’s much more malleable in the hands of industry and users, and you can engage with it very differently as a result. I’m interested in hearing from thought leaders in the civil service on ways they think governments could get much more value with open source, by embracing that flexibility. For example, rather than one-size-fits-all software, why can’t we deliver custom versions of Ubuntu for different regions or countries or even departments and purposes? Could we enable the city government of Frankfurt to order PC’s with the Ubuntu German Edition pre-installed?

        Or could we go further, and enable those governments to participate in the definition and production and certification process? So rather than having to certify exactly the same bits which everyone else is using, they could create a flavour which is still “certified Ubuntu” and fully compatible with the whole Ubuntu ecosystem, can still be ordered pre-installed from global providers like Dell and Lenovo, but has the locally-certified collection of software, customizations, and certifications layered on top?

      • Ubuntu 12.04 to ship with enhanced privacy controls

        Ubuntu 12.04 will ship with new privacy controls for the Zeitgeist event logger. Zeitgeist is the program that runs in the background of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment collecting statistics on how users interact with their computers and offering suggestions based on most-used items and applications using machine-learning techniques.

      • Got Privacy? Ubuntu Linux 12.04 Will Help Ensure It.

      • New stable series for Canonical’s Bazaar version control

        The Bazaar developers have announced version 2.5.0 of the version control system that is used by the Linux Foundation, Ubuntu, the GNU project, Drizzle and many other free software projects to manage their source code. The new version marks the start of a long-term stable series due to be supported until April 2017. Users of previous stable releases of Bazaar are encouraged to upgrade.

      • Three Reasons the Ubuntu Desktop Lags the iPad

      • Five day private cloud deployment promises low stress, high quality

        Canonical, the company behind the Linux-based OS Ubuntu, is promising a private cloud infrastructure deployment service that it says takes exactly five days to complete, costs $9,000 and comes ready for channel resale.

        Canonical delivers the Jumpstart program using OpenStack as the cloud computing architecture in combination with DevOps program Juju, which enables end users to manage expansion more easily over time.

Devices/Embedded

• Tiny Linux computer punches above its weight

• Raspberry Pi network plan for online free-speech role

• What Does One Serve With Raspberry Pi?

  The idea to develop the Raspberry Pi computer grew from a need at the University of Cambridge for a platform where kids could learn to program. Upton, who now works for Broadcomm, used to be on the computer sciences teaching staff at Cambridge.

• Fedora Remix Is the Official Linux Distro of Raspberry Pi

  Recently, we’ve been covering the diminutive $25/$35 Raspberry Pi computer, and how the initial batch of 10,000 ARM-based devices sold out in seconds. The Raspberry Pi devices should spark the interest of any fan of Linux and if you’re also interested in how low prices can go for a reasonably high-powered computer, you’re probably already following the Raspberry Pi story. As we’ve reported, developers and tinkerers are putting numerous Linux distros on the devices, including Fedora, Debian and Arch Linux. Now, the Raspberry Pi team has confirmed that its official recommended Linux distro for the Raspberry Pi is Fedora Remix, and you can get the download and explanatory links here.

• Raspberry Pi tries on Fedora Linux

  FOR THE LUCKY FEW who have escaped supply shortages and manufacturing glitches to actually get their hands on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer there is now a recommended Linux distro to install.

• Raspberry Pi ARM-based Linux computer hit by manufacturing delay

• Raspberry Pi Linux Computer Hits Manufacturing Snag

• What the Raspberry Pi Means for ARM, Open Source Computing

• Raspberry Pi finally gets a Fedora Remix

• Phones

  • Nokia Reports Euro 1.4 Billion Loss, Can Nokia Still Be Saved?

    Nokia, once the leading phone maker, has reported €1.4b annual loss. The company’s market share is consistently declining. The failure of Nokia may be attributed to the strategy of newly appointed CEO Stephen Elop.

    Instead of learning from the market and take advantage of the widely accepted and adopted platform Android, Stephen Elop chose to use the failing mobile OS of his immediate previous boss Microsoft. Elop’s decision to go with Windows Phone is seen by critics as a move create a hardware delivery truck to deliver Windows Phone OS. The move has not helped Nokia at all. In an ideal world the job of a Nokia CEO would be to protect the interests of Nokia and not Microsoft.

  • Nokia to focus on budget handsets

    Nokia is reportedly working on a new Linux-based operating system called Meltemi for its popular feature phones.

  • Android

    • Sprint brings the ZTE Fury, an entry-level Gingerbread for $20

    • Replicant developer interview: Building a truly free Android

      Android has made massive strides forward since its debut in 2008, and in Q3 2011 more than half of all smartphones sold worldwide ran Google’s mobile platform. In one sense it represents a massive validation for open source, and proof that free software is not condemned to a future of ‘merely’ running servers.

    • Can $90 in freebies help jump-start Droid Xyboard sales?

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Google Tablet May Debut In May

    We are filing this report under ‘rumor’ section as there are no confirmed reports yet. According to reports Google is finally working on Google branded Android tablet, on the lines of Nexus series of smartphones. Unlike the Google phones which enable developers to have access to an open device, this time Google is reportedly taking aim at Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet.

  • Google, Asustek co-brand 7-inch tablet PC to debut earliest in May

    Google and Asustek will unveil a 7-inch co-branded tablet PC as early as May, with the model targeting Amazon’s Kindle Fire and to be priced at US$199-249, according to industry sources.

  • 5 things to know when buying a tablet or smartphone

    The most widespread open source operating system (OS) for mobile devices is Google’s Android platform. Various manufacturers build a range of phones and tablets based on the operating system, and Android is a “collaborative model,” which means the OS source code is available to users and developers to massage and use as they wish. Essentially, it allows users and developers a greater amount of freedom to create hardware and apps and distribute them.

  • HP TouchPad Triple Boots Android, WebOS, and ArchLInux

    The HP TouchPad is a curious device, to say the least. It is hard to call it anything other than a failure, but it has certainly managed a fairly successful life after death, thanks in part to 2011 fire-sales of the unit by companies like Best Buy, combined with the flexibility of its hardware.

Premise going open source? Help make it happen!

PageKite offers free accounts for open source developers

PageKite is offering open source projects free of charge access to their reverse-proxy service. The company says the service is to thank the Free Software community by offering “free as in beer” accounts to their service.

JetBrains MPS Adopted by Yet Another Open Source Project

Open source: The evildoer’s choice

If you’re an evil dictator with designs on world domination, and want the best database software to build your SDPMS (Superhero Death Plot Management Software), and if you also have an irrational (for an evil dictator) desire to remain compliant with copyright law, where do you go for software?

Free and open source, natch. By definition, free and open source software can’t contain any restrictions on use of software for planning global kitten death, transmitting Jim Davidson stand-up routines or developing personal nuclear devices, whereas proprietary software licences commonly do (although rarely with this degree of specificity, except possibly for the nuclear one).

Software is only free if you have complete freedom to run it for any purpose (including evil ones) (freedom zero of the FSF four freedoms). Open source software must not discriminate “against fields of endeavour” (even if the field of endeavour includes annihilation of every life form on the planet).

Riverbed Chumming the Open Source Waters at SHARKFEST 2012

Events

• The Linux Foundation Announces Keynotes, Co-Located Events for Annual Collaboration Summit

SaaS

• Open-Source A.W.S.: Creating a Thousand Clouds

  In the past few years, companies and organizations like Open Nebula; the Open Stack alliance; Cloud.com, which is part of Citrix; and Eucalyptus have been offering various forms of the kind of software that works inside A.W.S.

Databases

• Open Source Translation Database: Interview with Andrew Smith

CMS

• Which Open Source CMS Is Right for Your Business?

• E-commerce software firm plans Ann Arbor expansion after $5 million venture capital investment

  The company, which has developed a version of an open-source content management system called Drupal for e-commerce applications, reported that the number of websites running its software recently surpassed 10,000.

• Totara Learning to Build Open Badges Infrastructure for Moodle

  The “Moodle as Issuer, Mahara” as Displayer project will integrate Mozilla’s new free and open source “Open Badges” software to issue, manage and display digital badges for learning across the Web. All the new software will be released as open source to Moodle, the world’s leading open source learning management system, and Mahara is the leading open source eportfolio system widely used in K12 and higher education.

Healthcare

• VA open source group names board of health IT experts

  The open source organization that the Veterans Affairs Department created to accelerate innovation in its VistA electronic health record software and to support its integrated EHR system with the Defense Department has established a guiding board of IT luminaries.

  The Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) promotes open, modular architecture that uses non-proprietary standard open interfaces. Launched in August 2011, OSEHRA also is designed to establish a new model of federal software development and procurement.

Business

• CeBIT 2012: Commercial open source companies

  As in previous years, a number of commercial open source companies are present in Hall 2 at the CeBIT trade show, which is taking place in Hannover, Germany until 10 March. The stands range from small booths manned by just one or two people, such as that from EclipseSource, to huge stands that feature multiple large displays as well as areas for talks and demonstrations.

Project Releases

• WANdisco Announces Release of Apache Subversion 1.7.4

Openness/Sharing

• How open source could help malaria treatment

  In open source drug discovery all data and ideas are freely and immediately shared, and anyone may participate at any level.

• Transparency isn’t a cost – it’s a cost saver

  Accountability doesn’t have to be a cost drive. Quite the opposite, transparency should and can be the bi-product of good procurement strategies, interoperable architecture choices and effective processes.

• ‘Occupy’ as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation

• Open Data

  • OSMF: Apple is using OpenStreetMap maps

    The OpenStreetMap Foundation blog welcomed Apple to the list of existing users of its crowdsourced, open source map data. Apple has, so far, said nothing about apparently using the OSM map data for areas outside the US in the desktop version of iPhoto.

• Open Hardware

  • Hardware Open Source Synth Improved

“Algorithms can have errors”: One man’s quest to purge horrific pictures from his Google results

Security

• EXCLUSIVE: Infamous international hacking group LulzSec brought down by own leader

• FBI looks to private industry for help in fighting cyber-crime

• Accused Irish LulzSec hacker worked in security

  One of the people accused by U.S. authorities of being at the core of Lulz Security, perhaps the most feared hacking group on the planet, led a nonprofit group in Galway, Ireland, dedicated to making websites more secure.

• Malware as a Service, Zeus Trojan Variants Biggest Threats of 2012

  A Verisign report looking at security dangers for 2012 pointed to MaaS and an open-source Zeus kit as issues, but also noted that sandbox technology helps against exploits.

Cablegate

• Octodad: Dadliest Catch is the best-named game of 2013

  According to a trailer released alongside the moniker, the game will be released on PC, Mac, and Linux in 2013.

Finance

• One More Thing For Governance Day

  The basic argument is that repeat-player investment bankers provide value not by telling brainless executives whether to accept or reject a merger, but by providing intelligent decisionmakers with access and relationships, and relationships come with conflicts.

• Chris Cook: The Ghost of Enron Past Explains Oil Market Manipulation

  I outlined in a recent post my view that the oil market price has been inflated twice by passive (inflation hedgers) investors, albeit with short term speculative spikes from active (speculators) investors: once from 2005 to June 2008; and again from early 2009 to date. In attempting to ‘hedge inflation’ passive investors perversely ended up actually causing it, and allowed oil producers to manipulate and support the oil market price with fund money to the detriment of oil consumers.

• Fox Attacks Wages of Working-Class Maids

  Fox Business News recently ran a segment criticizing a collective bargaining agreement struck between workers and management in New York City’s hotel industry. Analysts on the program called the deal “a nightmare,” singling out the provisions raising wages for housekeepers as “shocking.” Fox’s reaction is consistent with its past coverage of worker’s issues, which has portrayed union efforts to secure higher wages and benefits for the working class as an affront to capitalism.

  The agreement between the New York Hotel Trades Council A.F.L.-C.I.O, the union representing workers in New York’s hotel industry, and the Hotel Association of New York, the trade group representing hotel owners, gives housekeepers a 29% raise in their current salary over seven years, giving them a salary of $59,823 by the time the CBA expires.

Censorship

• Police Censor Google, Facebook and 8,000 Other Sites by Accident

  A “human error” carried out by the police resulted in thousands of websites being completely blocked at the DNS level yesterday. Danish visitors to around 8,000 sites including Google and Facebook were informed that the sites were being blocked by the country’s High Tech Crime Unit due to them offering child pornography, a situation which persisted for several hours.

• Paypal Pressured To Play Morality Cop And Forces Smashwords To Censor Authors

• Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming

  The file-sharing landscape is slowly adjusting in response to the continued push for more anti-piracy tools, the final Pirate Bay verdict, and the raids and arrests in the Megaupload case. Faced with uncertainty and drastic changes at file-sharing sites, many users are searching for secure, private and uncensored file-sharing clients. Despite the image its name suggests, RetroShare is one such future-proof client.

• The True Damage Of An Illegitimate DMCA Takedown Goes Much Further Than Simple ‘Inconvenience’

  Whenever an artist finds their own creations removed by a erroneous DMCA takedown notice, defenders of the system are quick to point out that the collateral damage is minimal and, because the supposedly “offending” post/picture/etc. usually returns to its original place, what’s the big deal? It’s just an inconvenience and a small price to pay in order for rightsholders to protect their intellectual property.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• BT and TalkTalk lose challenge against Digital Economy Act

  The government has been given the green light to implement the Digital Economy Act after the final legal challenge by two internet service providers was thrown out at the court of appeal.

  BT and TalkTalk on Tuesday lost their appeal against last year’s judicial review of the government’s controversial anti-piracy legislation on all but one ground.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Electronic Arts, identity thief?

  Identity theft is a huge problem that affects millions of Americans each year. If a crook stole your most personal information and used it to make a buck, you’d be furious.

  And, of course, that’s illegal. But if you are a corporation, you can steal all the identities you want for profit.

• Trademarks

  • Louis Vuitton’s International Tour Of Trademark Bullying Runs Smack Dab Into UPenn Law School Who Explains Trademark Law In Return

• Copyrights

  • As BPI Tries To Block The Pirate Bay From The UK, Dan Bull Explains Why Musicians Should Block BPI

    Dan Bull, the UK-based musician who we’ve written about many times for his consistently awesome songs about the music industry, file sharing, copyright laws and the like has now put together another wonderful song, called Bye Bye BPI.

  • Streetlight Manifesto Proudly Boycotts Itself

    It is and has been for quite some time our position that Victory Records is an artist-hostile, morally corrupt and generally dishonest company, with whom we have had the displeasure of being associated due to a contract that was signed years ago. We’re not writing this today to air grievances, of which there are many; numerous bands’ struggles with Victory are well-documented (and many more are sealed by a court of law), so we figured we’re going to skip the allegations and try to solve the problem, as we see it.

  • Why Search Engines Can’t Just ‘Fix’ Search Results The Way The MPAA/RIAA Want

    It’s become clear in the past year or so that one key “target” in the legacy entertainment industry’s game plan is to force Google to change its search results to have “good sites” rise up and “bad sites” be pushed down. They’ve been putting pressure on search engines for quite some time now, and have even considered suing Google for not giving it the results they want. Late last year, the RIAA even put out a “report card” in which it complained that Google won’t let them program Google’s results for everyone else.

  • German Government Wants Google To Pay To Show News Snippets

  • Justices Won’t Hear Photo Site’s Suit Against Google

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by a nude-photo publisher that alleged Google Inc. was infringing its copyrighted images.

  • RIAA Still Doesn’t Get It: Hopes SOPA Opposition Was A ‘One-Time Experience’

    In a previous post, I looked at the first part of Andrew Keen’s interview with RIAA CEO Cary Sherman. In the second half of the interview, Sherman fields some audience questions collected on Twitter, and his answers further expose the serious problems with his understanding of what’s happening in music, what happened with SOPA, and what’s happening to his industry.

  • Can A Company Be An ‘Author’ For The Purpose Of Copyright?

    The specific case involved horse-racing tables and a dispute between two different horse-racing magazines, with one accusing the other of copyright infringement. Oddly, both magazines seem to admit that the actual data originated from neither magazine, but from the same third party: the Singapore Turf Club. Still, there appears to have been some questions about the layout and design, which could be given some level of copyright protection — but, apparently, only if it were created by “living humans.”

  • Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement

    His latest discussion on the topic came at the National Association of Attorneys General meeting in Washington DC — a “friendly” audience for Dodd. His discussion starts around the 2 hour, 10 minute mark if you want to fast forward the video. For reasons that are unclear, CSPAN has disabled embedding on this video. Either way, Dodd continues to show off that he has no idea what happened. The specific “panel” that he’s on is (of course) pretty one-sided. It involves him, old friend Rick Cotton from NBC Universal (“just think about the poor corn farmers!”) and then two university officials to talk about how they’re forced to censor the internet because of draconian laws that the MPAA pushed through (where there’s at least a little pushback on the ridiculousness of copyright law, but just barely).

  • INTERVIEW: Seth Godin on Libraries, Literary Agents and the Future of Book Publishing as We Know It

  • ACTA

    • Darrell Issa Posts Text Of ‘Unconstitutional’ ACTA For Open Feedback; Something USTR Never Did

    • Workshop Audience Barred From ‘Demonstrating’ Approval Of Michael Geist’s ACTA Takedown

      Although ACTA has now been referred by the European Commission to the European Court of Justice, it continues its passage through the various committees of the European Parliament, each of which will provide input on the final decision of whether to ratify ACTA or not. The first of these took place last week, when the International Trade (INTA) committee had a preliminary ACTA workshop. This included hearing from external experts, one of whom was Michael Geist, well known to Techdirt readers.

      It will come as no surprise to learn that his ten-minute speech succeeded in distilling the key flaws of ACTA in a highly-accessible way that left the treaty’s supporters desperately trying to undo the damage to their arguments for the rest of the day — and failing.

    • Obama Administration: ACTA Is Binding & Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Heads About TPP

      That’s interesting, because it’s what many people had assumed (and what other signatories to ACTA have been saying), but actually contradicts earlier statements from the USTR suggesting that we can ignore parts of the agreement that we don’t like or which conflict with existing US law. It also means that, as we’ve been warning, ACTA dangerously restricts Congress from passing new laws that could push back on some of the worst aspects of copyright law. Sure, Congress could ignore ACTA, but there would be substantial problems if it were to do so. In other words, ACTA is binding on the US under international law… but not under US law. Of course, international law trumps US law here, so that’s kind of meaningless.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Dice.com: Still Seeing Linux Skills Highly Sought in the Job Market

In a recent interview with Alice Hill, from job search site Dice.com, The Linux Foundation established that Linux skills are very highly valued in the job market, which is backed up my a lot of corroborating data.

How Pinweel Uses Linux to Power Group Photo Sharing

Pinweel, a group photo sharing service, launched in February 2012. Lead back-end developer Michael De Lorenzo explains how Pinweel is different than other photo sharing services and how Linux and open source are built into the backend.

An appeal to reason

A little over an hour ago, I was giving the final read on what was originally this blog item, under a different title and with a metric ton or two of humor, cutting criticism and the high quality of commentary that you’d expect from this blog. It was in derisive and cutting response to what Mark Shuttleworth considers “innovation” as outlined in this morning’s ZDNet blog item by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

Having the ability to use the English language to slice and dice the ridiculous with the accuracy of a Benihana chef with a complete set of Ginsu knives — whether it’s an idea or a person or both — is both a blessing and a curse. The Mark served up some pretty meaty fastballs right in my wheelhouse — a baseball metaphor now that we’re in spring training — and if he puts them where I can hit them, they’re gone. And I tattooed them, right into the next time zone.

CeBIT 2012: LPI announces “Linux Essentials” certificate

The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) has announced the launch of a new Linux Essentials certification program aimed at those new to the world of Linux and open source software. According to the LPI, the “first-of-its-kind” program has been developed over the last two years in collaboration with various government organisations, academic partners, publishers, private trainers and IT professionals.

Two asteroids named after Unix co-creators

Desktop

• Swap Your Laptop for an iPad + Linode

  On September 19, 2011, I said goodbye to my trusty MacBook Pro and started developing exclusively on an iPad + Linode 512. This is the surprising story of three months spent working in the cloud.

• 7 days in the cloud. Or so was my intention…

• Graziano and Garlach44 announce free software laptops with Trisquel preloaded

Kernel Space

• LPI announces Linux Training Program with the International Telecommunication Union in the League of Arab States

• Stable kernel 2.6.32.58

• Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit Coming in April

  The Linux Foundation, which has emerged as a true leader in encouraging technology companies, open source community members, developers and others to work together to brighten Linux’s future, is holding its sixth annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in April. The event will take place at the Nikko Hotel in San Francisco from April 3 to 5, and if you’re able to make it, the roundup of speakers is particularly notable this time around.

• Linux 3.4 Kernel Will Gain More Android Patches

  Towards the end of last year a new effort was initiated to mainline more of the Android changes inside the Linux kernel. Work has been progressing on that front and with the Linux 3.4 kernel more of these changes will land.

• Graphics Stack

  • How-To Bang On VIA Hardware With Linux KMS

    Here’s a video by James Simmons, the community developer that’s near single-handedly been working on providing VIA kernel mode-setting (KMS) support and in-kernel memory management (via a GEM-ified TTM implementation), talking about the Linux KMS and GEM/TTM infrastructures for those wishing to learn more about Linux graphics driver programming.

  • AMD Catalyst 12.2 For Linux Brings Few Changes

    AMD has released their belated Catalyst 12.2 Linux driver today. Unfortunately, it’s not too exciting of a release.

    Their download page is still reflecting Catalyst 12.1 from January, but there’s already many Phoronix readers discussing the 12.2 release.

  • X Server 1.12 gets multi-touch support

    The X.org developers have released version 1.12.0 of X Server. The update adds support for multi-touch, allowing it to recognise and manage input from multiple fingers on touch screens and touchpads; the feature has been implemented using inputproto 2.2 (X Input Protocol extension), which Peter Hutterer released earlier this month. In his announcement, the lead developer of X Server’s multi-touch support refers to four blog postings in which he discusses the details of the implementation’s functionality and characteristics (1, 2, 3, 4). GTK+ maintainer Matthias Clasen announced that, a few days ago, the code to support the new multi-touch infrastructure was incorporated into a pre-release version of GTK+ 3.4, which is due to be finalised in April; Qt has offered multi-touch support for some time and will soon also be able to access the new X Server’s features.

  • AMD Radeon HD 7950 Running On Linux

    Here’s the first bits of information following Phoronix tests of the “Southern Islands” AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics card running under Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with the Linux 3.2 kernel and the AMD Catalyst driver.

  • New evdev Handles Multi-Touch, Smooth Scrolling

    Following the release of X.Org Server 1.12 earlier in the week, the evdev input driver has been updated and released. The two big features for this common input X.Org driver is to take advantage of multi-touch and smooth scrolling, which is now supported by the latest X Input extension updates.

Applications

• Audience: A Slick, Minimalistic Linux Media Player

  Audience is a new media player written in Vala that “brings the lessons learned from the web home to the desktop”.

• Unigine Releases New Heaven For Linux

• Open-Source Skype Effort Is Dormant Or Dead

  In June of last year Phoronix delivered the news that the Skype protocol was reverse-engineered and that there was already a working open-source code example for interfacing with Skype to send messages. While it seemed promising at first for potentially resulting in an open-source Skype client, the Microsoft-owned Skype vowed to take action. In the end they did go after the open-source / reverse-engineering work and now it looks like the project is dead, or at least terminally dormant.

• Proprietary

  • Crossover XI released

  • CrossOver XI Brings Microsoft Office 2010 to Linux

    CodeWeavers, through Jon Parshall, proudly announced last night in a press release that the CrossOver XI software has been officially released for both Linux and Macintosh platforms, bringing initial support for Microsoft Office 2010.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 16

  • Installing And Configuring MNTOS

  • Minecraft Config Editor: Tkinter Text Widget and Frames

  • HOWTO – Installing Porteus from both Windows and Linux

  • C++1x Tidbits: Template Aliases

  • Running Roundcube 0.7.1 On Nginx (LEMP) On Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.10

  • Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Fedora 16

  • How do I caption my photographs using Gimp software?

  • Fifth installment: “fun” with xmodmap

  • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 12.1 (LAMP)

  • FreeBSD 8.3 RC1 has been released

  • Build A Free, Full-Featured Mail Server On Gentoo Linux With iRedMail

  • Random Linux Tips: Making KDE4 Behave, Thwacking Those Weirdo U3 Partitions on USB Sticks

  • 5 Tips and Tricks for Using Yum

  • PGI Adds Support for OpenACC & Native CUDA C/C++ for Multi-core x86

  • Making Short Work of Image Conversions with Converseen

• Wine

  • Wine 1.4 Stable Release Is Available To Download | What’s New

    Wine software allows you to run Microsoft Windows applications on Linux/Unix operating systems. Recently many release candidate of wine 1.4 released in the past few weeks, and here comes the final stable release of Wine 1.4 after 20 Months of development. The latest stable release Wine 1.4 brings several improvements to graphics rendering, added a new DIB graphics engine, improved Direct3D, support for many new applications and over than 16,000 individual changes. Check What’s new in Wine 1.4 and installation instructions down below.

  • Wine 1.4 sports a redesigned audio stack, improved graphics rendering

  • Wine 1.4 Has Support for Microsoft Office 2010

  • To Run Windows Software on Linux, Try Wine 1.4

    As free and open source software continues to become more powerful and more prevalent, there’s less and less need to choose anything else.

  • Wine 1.4 released

    This release represents 20 months of development effort and over 16,000 individual changes. The main highlights are the new DIB graphics engine, a redesigned audio stack, and full support for bidirectional text and character shaping.

• Games

  • An interview about “Ensign-1″

  • What Could be the Right Way to Convince Game Engine Developers for Adding Linux Support?

    Every once in a while there is some news on Unity3D Linux web player support. Sometimes it excites us and most of the times the situation seems all the more dismal.

    Few months back, we also reported that Unity3D Linux support is not a priority and that the chances are bleak. Now finally, the situation has been cleared in a conversation between Richard Cuddy and Graham (from Unity3D) that happened last December.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Ships March Updates to Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform

  • KDE 4.8.1 – the best DE you can get

    Today saw the announcement of a new chapter in the KDE 4.8 series. I was already very pleased with the point release 4.8.0 – it is amazing how the developers managed to keep their desktop environment stable when transitioning from 4.7 to 4.8. And the first maintenance release 4.8.1 brings us bug fixes and more.

    Thanks to the fact that the KDE team makes the sources available to packagers ahead of the public announcement, I am again able to provide you with Slackware KDE 4.8.1 packages on time, and they are up for the taking!

  • KDE Ships March Updates to Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform

  • Akademy 2012 – papers, registration, travel

• GNOME Desktop

  • The GNOME 2 Zombie

Distributions

• Linux Deepin 11.12.1 review

  Linux Deepin is a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop, but using a modifed GNOME 3 shell, not Ubuntu’s Unity desktop. It was founded by Liu Wenhuan, who is also a co-founder of Wuhan Linux User Group (LUG), a LUG in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China.

  Linux Deepin is the third distribution reviewed on this website that makes use of a heavily-tweaked GNOME 3 desktop. The others are Pear OS (now known as Comice OS) and KahelOS. (See KahelOS 111111 review, Pear OS Linux Panther 3 review and Pear Linux Comice OS 4 beta 1 review.)

  Like most desktop distributions today, Linux Deepin is made available for download as a Live ISO installation image. Deepin’s, both the 32- and 64-bit images, weigh in at about 650 MB. Thus they are Live CD images. The boot menu is shown below.

• New Releases

  • GParted 0.12.0-5

  • Zentyal 2.3

  • Next Gen Linux Distros Hit Milestone Releases

    It’s not gravity that makes the Linux Planet go around, it’s the continuous process of never-ending code development.

  • antiX Linux M12 test 2 has been released

    antiX is the very fast and light-weight Linux distribution for old computer system. It is based on MEPIS and Debian. It can be uses on your old machines like 64 MB P2 processor but recommended is 128 MB of RAM. It can be also use as a rescue CD as it is very light-weight.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Not everything is happiness in the world of Linux

    Although you can use other DEs with PCLOS, it is eminently a KDE system that you can rely on. I have been using it both in a desktop and a laptop computer since version 2011.6 and I am completely satisfied by its performance.

    User satisfaction is not a coincidence. Texstar, the founder of PCLinuxOS, puts a lot of effort in addressing bugs, polishing the distribution and, in short, making a Linux distro that you can count on for every possible task you want a computer to perform. In fact, he has worked so passionately that right now he is on a sick leave: he posted an announcement saying that doctors told him to rest.

• Gentoo Family

  • Sabayon 8 Xfce review – Gentoo for the masses

    Sabayon’s Gentoo heritage might prove a difficult pill to swallow for some, but Russell Barnes explains why that definitely shouldn’t put you off Sabayon 8…

• Red Hat Family

  • Notable Put Options Activity in Red Hat

  • The Evolution Of Enterprise Linux Performance

    Curious to know how the performance of enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS, Scientific, etc) evolves over time? Here’s a look at the performance of Scientific Linux 5.7, the recently released Scientific Linux 6.2, and then Fedora 16 as representative of what will eventually work its way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Knoppix 7.0 Presented at CeBIT 2012

      The popular Knoppix Live DVD Linux distribution was presented last evening, March 6th, at the CeBIT 2012 event by its German developer, Klaus Knopper.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • First Look At Ubuntu Linux 12.04: ‘Precise Pangolin’

        Ubuntu 12.04 is coming in April, but eager users can check out the beta version today. “Precise Pangolin” includes a new quick search feature called the HUD, some new privacy settings and a few tweaks to the Unity interface.

      • Ubuntu Linux 12.04 One-Ups Windows and Mac, Shuttleworth Says

      • Ubuntu for Android is an open-source treat in hands-on video

      • Ubuntu is the open source platform of choice for Oxford Archaeology

        Oxford Archaeology, as its name implies, is no high-tech newbie. The company, self described as an expert in excavation and heritage management, was founded in 1973 in Oxford, England and has been expanding globally ever since. Clients include the United Kingdom’s Royal Household, Ministry of Defence and Highways Agency as well as UNESCO, British Petroleum, Oxford University and the Ministries of Culture for France, Turkey and Nepal.

      • Watching the Future of Canonical

        Is it just me, or is there a whiff of desperation these days around Canonical, Ubuntu’s commercial arm? By that I mean that Canonical increasingly seems to focused on reaching profitability, and nothing else. The de-emphasis on community, the constant introduction of new services, and the increasing market speak are all in marked contrast to the Canonical of five or even three years ago.

        Since Ubuntu is a privately-held company, its financial position is a matter of speculation. In 2009, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth stated that the company was “creeping toward $30 million,” the point of profitability, but that was before many of its current services were introduced. Consequently, you won’t find many — if any — analysts who believe that Canonical is profitable today.

      • Privacy Settings in Ubuntu 12.04 Gets New Application Usage Dialog

      • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Updates Take Canonical Beyond the Desktop

        In little more than a month, the latest release of Ubuntu, 12.04 LTS, will be upon us. As we’ve already noted, it brings a lot of new features to the desktop. But since PCs are only a fraction of the Ubuntu universe, we’d be remiss not to take stock of the updates that 12.04 will usher in on servers, the cloud and beyond. Here’s a look.

      • Ubuntu One Gets Redesigned in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

        With today’s updates, Canonical updated the Ubuntu One user interface in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.

        The Qt version of the Ubuntu One control panel was updated a few weeks back, but today Canonical also changed the GTK interface with the same beautiful design used in the Qt one.

      • Improving Hardware Support in Ubuntu

        One of the missions of the Canonical Hardware Enablement (HWE) Team is to track and drive code changes from OEM enablement projects into future Ubuntu releases and upstream. We have a concept of n+1 fixes which we do our best to make sure that those bugs are corrected in our next (that is, n+1) release.

      • Ubuntu Precise Call For Testing Unity File Lens

        The Dash search is an integral part of Unity. Users use the dash to search applications, files and other content online (eg. Ask-ubuntu lens). Until now, the file lens only showed files which were opened recently with the help of Zeitgeist. However, users have long wanted to search for files not opened recently through the dash. This long anticipated feature was not present for 2 cycles. That is all about to change with Ubuntu 12.04. Alan Pope, an employee of Canonical has announced a call for testing the new file lens which can now search for all files on your hard disk regardless of whether it has been opened or not.

Devices/Embedded

• Arch Linux released for the Raspberry Pi

• Enter the element14 Pi Day “Raspberry RoadTest” Challenge for a chance to win a Raspberry Pi computer

  Launched today, the global “Raspberry RoadTest” Challenge poses the question: “What innovation will you create using the amazing Raspberry Pi computer?” Designers and enthusiasts can enter the challenge by signing up on the Raspberry RoadTest page on the element14 Community and submitting ideas for the innovations they would create using this credit card-sized computer. The winner will be chosen on “Pi Day” – 14th March 2012.

• Raspberry Pi Linux distro released, but the $35 computer faces new delays

  The Raspberry Pi foundation has suffered a production setback that could delay delivery of the organization’s $35 Linux computer. The manufacturer accidentally used ethernet jacks without integrated magnetics, built-in transformers that provide DC-isolation and help filter noise.

  The wrong jacks have been soldered to the Raspberry Pi boards and will have to be removed and replaced before the product can ship to end users. According to the foundation, the ethernet jacks are relatively easy to replace. The problem is that sourcing a sufficient quantity of the right ethernet jacks might take some time. This will be the second time that the Raspberry Pi project has suffered a minor delay due to component sourcing difficulties.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Free Hardware and The Rise of Android

      Yesterday on Twitter, I asked whether anyone could identify a particular point on a basic time series chart plotting of Google’s publicly disclosed Android daily activation figures. No one provided the answer I had in mind, though Corey Gilmore came close. In the field’s defense, they had little chance of success initially because the first chart provided applied the datapoint to the wrong point on the timeline, meaning that they were scrutinizing the wrong month for clues (mea culpa, guys). Here’s the chart, which plots the number of daily Android activations by time:

    • NSA, German government using Android for secure phones

      At the RSA Conference last week, the US National Security Agency (NSA) released specificationsPDF for their secure Android-based phone network called Project Fishbowl. Similarly, the German government is now switching their secure smartphone solutions from Windows Mobile and Symbian to Android.

    • Camera ICS gives users a taste of Android 4.0 on their Android phone

    • Android Jelly Bean could come first from Asus

      Asus hopes its close partnership with Google will lead it to be the first company to offer devices running Android Jelly Bean – version 5.0.

      Asus prides itself on its Android upgrade efficiency, as it was the first to provide tablets running Honeycomb and the first to push the Ice Cream Sandwich update to its tablets.

    • 16GB Galaxy Nexus Headed to Verizon April 5, DROID Incredible 4G on April 26

    • StatCounter: Android web browser claims biggest user share

    • 7 Best Gadgets at Mobile World Congress 2012

    • Android Controls Almost 50% Of US Smartphone Market

    • 6 Things We Want From Android’s Rumored Siri Competitor

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Open e-mail to CBC: Apple Does Not Control 70% of the Tablet Market

    The facts are otherwise:

    * in their SEC filing for Q4 2011, Apple report 15.433 million iPads shipped, 111% above the previous year in the same quarter,
    * DisplaySearch reports 31.7 million tablets shipped in Q4 2011
    * Apple’s share of tablet shipments is 15.433/31.7X100 = 48.7%

  • The new iPad’s great but what’s wrong with a good, inexpensive Android tablet?

    Great new display, check; faster processor, check; 4G mobile connection, check; better camera, check. Price, still starts $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi model and $629 for 4G. Hmmm… How about a $199 Android-powered Nook Tablet instead?

  • Linux Netbook Sales: Suffering From More Market Shrinkage?

    Still, where have all the Linux netbooks gone? Back in 2008, they were available from major retailers across North America before the netbook market began to shift to Windows. Now those Linux netbooks are nowhere to be found in North America retail stores, and somewhat difficult to find online. Here’s some perspective from System76 President Carl Richell.

  • Amazon plans to launch 2 tablet PCs in 2H12, say sources

    Amazon plans to launch two new tablet PCs, a 7-inch model and another 10-inch model, in the second half of 2012, a move which could cast a shadow on the future development of e-book readers, according to industry sources.

  • NVIDIA to Apple: Prove your graphics claims for the new iPad

  • Archos serves up Ice Cream Sandwich for G9 series tablets

  • Android tablet surge will be led by Google-Motorola, HP, Dell in ’12

    Apple and Microsoft are getting all the ink in the tablet wars these days but no doubt Android tablets will be matching if not outselling iPads within a year or so.

    People seem to forget that Google is the new owner of Motorola Mobility and plans to release a Xoom-like tablet running Android 4.X sometime in mid 2012, company chairman Eric Schmidt has said publicly.

  • Hype About iPads

    In the frenzy to post about iPad, I thought it would be useful to report that on Amazon.com’s most popular list, the top 3 are

    * Kindle Fire,
    * ASUS Transformer, and
    * Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Zanata: Web-Based Translation Manager For Open Source Developer

If you are a open source software developer or a content writer you can use Zanata to translate your software strings, User interface text/String, software documentation and localized into any languages.

Zanata is an open-source translation manager that enables a community of translators to work on localising software and documentation using nothing more than a web browser.

Netcraft: Open web platforms the winners

A new survey from Netcraft has Apache, Nginx, and Google’s web servers all up, with Microsoft IIS market share dropping down, raising questions about the health of Microsoft’s related offerings.

The Netcraft results are always interesting, because there’s always a little something for everyone. Depending on how the data is presented, a given hosted domain could be up, down, or off in the ninth dimension. So, care must be taken when qualifying the survey results.

TLWIR 34: Africa Embraces Free Software

FTA Community demands TradePub to correct inappropriate use of FTA course books

Events

• CeBIT 2012: At the Open Source Project Lounge

  The Open Source Project Lounge at this year’s CeBIT – taking place in Hannover, Germany until 10 March – is as diverse as ever, with a variety of free and open source (FOSS) projects and organisations being represented by both developers and community members alike. Despite primarily being a commercial show where space is expensive, each year, projects have the opportunity to apply for free booth space, and this year, the Open Source Project Lounge is in the corner of Hall 2. The H had the opportunity to attend this, the world’s largest ICT event, and catch up with a number of the projects’ representatives.

• Linux Training Opportunities at Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

  The Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit is a great time to, well, collaborate. But it’s also a really good opportunity to learn.

  We’re offering three courses at this year’s Collaboration Summit, each in a different area, to help build skills while rubbing elbows with other top kernel developers.

  Advanced Linux Performance Tuning is a deep dive into proven tools and methods used to identify and resolve performance problems, resulting in system that is better optimized for specific workloads. This is particularly for those who write or use applications that have unusual characteristics, that behave differently than kernel performance heuristics anticipate. It is a hands-on course that assume some familiarity with basic performance tools. This course is offered on Monday, April 2nd.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Developers Should Love Mozilla Boot-to-Gecko Phone

    When Mozilla announced the Boot-to-Gecko, all-HTML cell phone last week at Mobile World Congress — along with a plan to partner with Telefonica Digital to build really cheap smart phones running the Mozilla system — I wondered if it was really possible to bring such a cheap phone to market, regardless of the underlying system running the phone.

  • Mozilla Doesn’t Want Pepper for Linux Flash

    A couple week ago, Adobe announced that is was abandoning Flash on Linux to Google. The idea being that Chrome integrates Flash and Google can be the place where Linux users go for Flash.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle Linux 5.8 Screen Shots – Oracle website

Education

• Open source maps a new education future

BSD

• FreeBSD 8.3 RC1 has been released

Project Releases

• PhoneGap 1.5 Released!

• Vagrant celebrates its 1.0 stable release

  Exactly two years after its first release, the Vagrant project has announced the first stable version of its open source development environment generation tool. Vagrant 1.0 allows developers to easily set up virtual machines for development and testing purposes using Oracle’s VirtualBox and a single configuration file.

Openness/Sharing

• An Open Source Robotic Surgeon Could Save Your Life

  Could the surgeon who saves your life be a robot? The answer to that could be yes, if the developers of the Raven II robotic surgeon have their way. Raven II comes with a surgical robot featuring two robotic arms, a camera for viewing the operational field, and a surgeon-interface system for remote operation of the robot. “The system is powerful and precise enough to support research on advanced robotic surgery techniques, including online telesurgery,” say U.C. Santa Cruz researchers who helped develop it (shown here). The code for Raven II is open source, and this robot is only one of several open source robots poised to advance healthcare.

Programming

• Alpha release of Python 3.3.0 brings first syntax changes in two years

  The 3.3.0 version of the Python programming language has entered the testing phase with its first alpha release. This version marks the lifting of a two-year moratorium on changes to the language’s syntax. Proposed by Guido van Rossum as Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) 3003, the moratorium was designed to enable non-CPython implementations of the language to catch up to the core implementation after the Python 3.0 release.

• A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python, an interview with author Hans Petter Langtangen

  I am a professor of mathematical modeling at the University of Oslo, but for the last 10 years I have been on 80% leave to work at Simula Research Laboratory, which carries out long-term basic research in ICT. At Simula, my main responsibility is to be the manager of a Norwegian Center of Excellence, named Center for Biomedical Computing. Our aim is to develop mathematical methods and software tools to study biomedical phenomena and thereby help clinicians in improving diagnostics and treatment. I am an active scientist and participate in several of the center’s projects. More information is found on cbc.simula.no.

• Develop Android apps from within Android using AIDE (video)

Standards/Consortia

• W3C CEO calls HTML5 as transformative as early Web

  CEBIT 2012 Jeff Jaffe sees enormous potential in the specification for every major industry, despite some early performance challenges. More on the future of the Open Web standard

Security

• GitHub security incident highlights Ruby on Rails problem

  On Sunday morning, 4 March, Egor Homakov exploited a flaw in how the Ruby on Rails web framework handles mass assignments that allowed him to write a posting, delete a posting or push changes into source code on any GitHub project. Homakov had previously created an issue regarding mass assignment security on the rails issue tracker on GitHub; this was closed by the developers saying that it was the application developers’ responsibility to secure their applications. Homakov then decided to demonstrate the issue using the nearest Ruby on Rails application, GitHub.

• At Pwn2Own Hacker Competition, Google Chrome Gets Punk’d

  Slowly but surely, the Pwn2Own hacker contest has become an important fixture in the world of testing the security of software applications, operating systems and hardware devices. Just prior to last year’s Pwn2Own competition, Apple dropped a series of important updates to its Safari browser and iOS platform, but that didn’t stop Charlie Miller from exploiting a Safari vulnerability to hack into an iPhone’s address book. The results from the 2012 Pwn2Own hacker contest are now in, and one of the major software applications to lose to the hackers this year was Google Chrome.

• OpenSUSE, Linus’ Daughter, and a Question of Security

  “Nobody likes the idea of having to practically beat their operating system into submission,… but this is the reality with Linux,” asserted Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson. “One good idea layered over another good idea added to another good idea sometimes ends up with really bad results. We don’t all want to be ‘protected from ourselves’ by more and more features that assume the user is a dummy. There’s another OS for that.”

Censorship

• All Your Internets Belong to US, Continued: The Bodog.com Case

  Imagine a scenario in which a country enacts a law that bans the sale of asbestos and includes the power to seize the assets of any company selling the product anywhere in the world. The country tests the law by obtaining a court order to seize key assets of a Canadian company, whose operations with hundreds of employees takes a major hit. The Canadian government is outraged, promising to support the company in its efforts to restore its operations.

  That is the opening of my technology law column this week (Toronto Star version, homepage version) which continues by noting this scenario became reality last week, though the product was not asbestos and the Canadian government has yet to respond. The case involves Bodog.com, a Canadian-owned online sports gaming site and the country doing the seizing was the United States. Supporting online gaming operations will undoubtedly make governments somewhat squeamish, but the broader implications of last week’s seizure touch on millions of websites and Internet companies who now find themselves subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

• Banned Facebook promises Chinese devs GLOBAL glory

Civil Rights

• Vermonters Say: Corporations Are Not People!

  In a presidential primary season marked by the rise of “Super PACs” and an explosion of corporate spending in elections, Vermont voters have raised their voices against special interest money in politics. On Super Tuesday, 63 out of a possible 65 towns in Vermont called on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. F.E.C. and to address the issue of corporate personhood and money in politics.

  The 2010 Citizens United decision, which Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders labeled “one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court has ever handed down,” struck down bipartisan clean election laws and declared that Congress could not limit so-called “independent” spending. After Citizens United, the 2010 fall elections were the most expensive in U.S. history, with more spending by outside groups than from the candidates themselves. The 2012 election cycle is on track to be the most expensive yet.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • ACTA may already be dead

      During last week’s public workshop on ACTA, held in presence of Commissioner Karel De Gucht and moderated by MEP Vital Moreira, chairman of the INTA committee1, the manifest tension made it obvious: the Parliament and the Commission are now afraid of citizens,and of the streets. What we saw during the workshop was a parody of debate, where speakers were either members of the Commission, academics, or among the few of the remaining ACTA proponents (including the chairman of a pro-ACTA lobby2!). Nobody from authors, artists or citizen groups were allowed on the panels, despite La Quadrature’s demand to participate.

    • Danish trade minister and ACTA booster apologise for bogus piracy numbers

      Here’s a clip of a Danish TV show discussing ACTA, which Denmark has fiercely advocated in favor of. It starts with the head of a rightsholder society and the Danish trade minister quoting dodgy statistics about the extent and cost of piracy, and then demonstrates that these statistics are patently false, and finally, brings out those responsible for quoting them and gets them to admit their errors.