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02.15.10

Links 15/2/2010: Mobile World Congress

Posted in News Roundup at 6:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 5 Linux features I miss when on Windows.

    Always on top
    The ability to keep any window on top of all the others at any given time is a blessing Linux that I am yet to see on Windows. It comes in really handy when you need to have more than one window visible to get things done or when you want to be working but have VLC lurking on the lower part of the screen.

    [...]

    Multiple desktops
    On a typical day, I have about 6 worksheets open, with Google Chrome, Firefox, Thunderbird, and some other folders open. On Linux, in order not to clutter my desktop, I just move some of he open windows to another desktop and all is well with the world. Windows? Well I do not know of any such function.

    Reboot, Reboot and reboot
    Again, lots of applications I install tell me to reboot before the installation will be complete. If I make an installation of 5 such programs, it means for 5 times I have to reboot my system. Linux? Sudo-apt get install XYZ and bam, its done.

  • Stuff That Works With Linux #5

    The HTC Hero has been around for a while now, so I’m not planning to write a detailed review of it here, except to say that I am absolutely delighted with it in every respect. And then things got even better.

  • Polaris Launches IStore Linux

    Polaris Software Lab said that its wholly-owned subsidiary Polaris Retail Infotech (PRIL) has launched a Linux-powered retail store management solution called ‘ iStore Linux.’

  • Barbie slides into the cubicle, becomes a computer software engineer

    It only took 126 career hops — the first one being a soulless teen model — for Barbie to land a job as a computer software engineer. All we know now is that she has a dual monitor setup and a picture of Ken at her cubicle. Oh, and she uses Linux on the world’s smallest netbook.

  • Computer Engineer Barbie: Dual Monitors, Linux

    Barbie and her dual monitor set-up with laptop (pink) running Linux, geeky binary t-shirt, smartphone, Bluetooth headset and of course, glasses, will hit the shelves Winter 2010. I’ve heard on the grapevine that you can pre-order so I’m currently trawling the Mattel store for the goods but I’m not having any luck so far.

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 84
  • Server

    • IBM Unveils Clustered NAS Storage

      IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled its entry in the growing market for clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

    • Virtual Appliances Offer Fast Sandboxes, Production Environments

      It did not take me too long to find the first offering that met my needs: TurnKey Linux has, among several other free virtual appliance offerings, a full Joomla! instance running on top of a LAMP stack. Everything is put together for you: the Joomla! configuration, the PHPMyAdmin front-end, Postfix MTA configuration, and Apache, PHP, and MySQL modules for Webmin.

    • SGI Cyclone Offers HPC in the Cloud

      SGI says Cyclone is backed by the industry’s fastest supercomputing hardware architectures, including SGI Altix scale-up, Altix ICE scale-out and Altix XE hybrid clusters, all based on Intel Xeon or Itanium processors. Customers can also choose between Novell SUSE or Red Hat Linux, with further performance offered by SGI ProPack. Altair PBS Professional and SGI ISLE Cluster Manager provide system scheduling and management.

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Amarok 2.3 – First Look

      Amarok user and enthusiast Abhishek has made a great video, showing off some features of the upcoming Amarok 2.3.

    • Upgrading to KDE 4.3.5 (and should you?)

      The most exciting prospect of KDE 4.4 is the social desktop and the netbook Plasma. The social desktop will bring your social network to widgets on your Plasma desktop. And the netbook Plasma will offer a much more modern desktop to those adorable little mini-laptops.

    • KDE 4.3.5 is starting to seriously impress

      But with KDE 4 finally reaching a point where it is once again one of the most solid desktops available, the innovation it forces will make the Linux desktops a temptation many simply can not pass up.

    • The KDE 4.3 System Settings – Part 5 – System

      Welcome to part 5, the final article in our little series on the KDE 4.3 System Settings control panel. I first off want to thank the KDE devs for creating such a great desktop environment (DE) and for simplifying the control panel (now known as “System Settings”). The last time I had to do an article series like this, it took me 10 articles and nearly a month to pull it off.

    • Plasma Javascript Jam Session Contest

      We are pleased to announce the Plasma Javascript Jam Session. This friendly competition will reward creators of the most original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets (Plasmoids) written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • NetBSD 5.0.2
      • One solution for the entire school [5.0.4 now out]

        Skolelinux / Debian Edu is a complete and free “out of the box” software solution for schools that reduces costs, prolongs the lifetime of hardware and covers almost every aspect of the schools’ IT needs.

      • paldo 1.21 released9 Feb 2010

        We are pleased to announce the release of paldo 1.21 with many bug fixes and updates.

        Enhancements to point out:

        * GNOME 2.28.2
        * Firefox 3.6
        * Linux 2.6.32.7
        * GCC 4.4 and glibc 2.11
        * X.org server 1.7.4

      • PC/OS VirtualServer 10 released

        We are proud to announce the release of PC/OS VirtualServer System 8.5. VirtualServer System 8.5 is a release of PC/OS OpenServer System 8.5 designed to be run on Sun Virtualbox. Its a virtual hard drive image with the Sun Virtualbox tools preinstalled. This takes out the necessary step of having to install the Virtualbox toolset.

      • 3.1.6 is here! – 08 Feb 2010

        3.1.6 is released! See the download page.

      • Privatix Live-System 10.02.07
    • Gentoo

    • Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva Linux 2010 and its KDE 4.4 Upgrade

        I’ve been happily using Mandriva 2010 as my desktop system since its release last November. The few issues I’ve had could be traced back to KDE 4.3.2. I had run the Update Manager a couple times at the beginning, but soon became lax and haven’t updated since. Honestly, I just didn’t want to risk an upgrade ruining what was essentially a completely enjoyable experience. But when Juan Luis Baptiste posted that KDE 4.4 packages were available for Mandriva 2010, it seemed worth risking a re-install.

      • Noteworthy Mandriva Cooker changes 1 February – 14 February 2010

        # KDE has been updated to final version 4.4.0. New features since KDE 4.3 include integrated desktop search in Dolphin, a new Plasma desktop interface optimized for netbooks, Palapelli (a jigsaw puzzle game), Cantor (a scientific maths application) and many others.

      • A Perfect Linux or BSD desktop distribution

        No distribution has all the features in this list. The only one that comes close is Mandriva Linux. The task for the next few weeks is to identify a list of desktop distributions that come close to being “perfect.” Will your distro make the list? Keep in mind that because of their philosophical stand on freedom in software, some distributions will never make the list.

      • Boot – PCLinuxOS 2010 Beta
    • Red Hat Family

    • Ubuntu

      • I’m not driven by Microsoft hatred: Shuttleworth

        The blog post had listed a number of reasons why the writer thought Ubuntu was allegedly becoming the new Microsoft: the inclusion of Mono as a default; the creation of Ubuntu One, a proprietary software repository; removing the GIMP and other applications from Ubuntu; changing the default search engine to Yahoo!; discussion about what proprietary applications should be included in the Ubuntu repositories; and the appointment of Matt Asay as chief operating officer.

      • Is There an Ubuntu 10.04 in Your Future?

        Ubuntu 10.04, aka Lucid Lynx, is an LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means that this version of Ubuntu will be supported for five years after its release. The last LTS was Ubuntu 8.04.

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 180

        Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #180 for the week February 7th – February 13th, 2010. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week: Call For Participation, Interview With Jono by Joe Barker, Interview with Dustin Kirkland, Ubuntu Core Developer about encryption in Ubuntu, Upcoming Ubuntu Global Jam and your Loco Team, Ubuntu Honduras Loco Team at the T3 conference, Call for feedback on preferred desktop fonts, and much, much more!

      • Mint

        • Linux Mint 8 KDE Edition

          Linux Mint is one of the most popular Ubuntu based distro’s, possibly for the fact it brings something new to the table rather than just a different set of wallpapers. Its always been one of my favorite distros, and like the main Ubuntu project, it has more than one ‘flavour’. The main edition, which features the GNOME desktop has been out for a while, but the latest KDE release, was released about a week ago.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Hybrid terrestrial/satellite STB offers Linux dev platform

      French consumer electronics firm Sagemcom has joined with Belgian software company SoftAtHome to collaborate on an MPEG4-ready HD set-top box combining IPTV, satellite, and terrestrial delivery. The “Universal Set Top Box” offers DLNA-compliant content sharing, removable storage, and an open Linux SoftAtHome development environment.

    • The AirJaldi Mesh Router

      The router’s firmware (operating system) is a Dharamsala-brewed Linux clone, based on multiple open-source projects. Thanks to the amazing and promising development of the OpenWRT project, we now need very little additions of our own. The core of OpenWRT is based on UCLIBC and Busybox. With so many supporters and contributors, today one can find a very rich selection of pre-compiled packages and tools. This allows people on the ground to focus on local issues, while enjoying pre-tested and fully functional OS. Multiple Mesh routing protocols were tested and are supported optionally.

    • Chipset targets low-cost smartphones running Android or Linux

      ST-Ericsson announced an ARM9-based chipset designed for low-cost smartphones running Android or Linux.

    • Phones

      • Open Source: Fuel for the Smartphone Explosion
      • LiMo

        • Linux group LiMo growing, Adobe joins

          U.S. software firm Adobe and three other firms joined the wireless Linux group LiMo on Monday, underlying the growing role of the Linux computer operating system in cellphones.

        • SRS Labs, First Audio Company to Join LiMo Foundation

          SRS Labs (Nasdaq: SRSL), the industry leader in surround sound, audio, and voice technologies, announced today that it has joined the LiMo (Linux Mobile) Foundation™ to become the first sound technology company to join the ranks of the mobile industry’s global consortium.

        • Android first to host Adobe’s AIR for smartphones

          Adobe will also announce that it is joining the LiMo Foundation in order to support Flash on mobile Linux and name new partners for its Flash-based Open Screen Project including the Symbian Foundation, Freescale and Opera.

      • Android

        • Sony Ericsson preps compact Android pair

          Not content with releasing one Xperia X10 smartphone, Sony Ericsson is planning to offer two more.

          The two additions to the Android phone family are the X10 Mini and the X10 Mini Pro. Both were said by SE to be “smaller than a credit card” and to sport an “intuitive four-corner touchscreen user interface”.

        • MIPS aims for Android telephony market
        • Moto shows off eighth Android ‘andset

          Motorola today took the wraps of yet another Android smartphone, this one called Quench and based around a 3.1in touchscreen.

          If the Quench seems familiar, it’s because its already been annouced, kind of. Recently, Motorola unveiled the Cliq XT in the US, and the Quench is the same handset, tweaked for the European market just as it renamed the US-oriented Droid as the Milestone over here.

        • Oops! Motorola Jumps the Gun on Droid Upgrade Announcement

          Android 2.1 entered the world with the release of Google’s Nexus One last month. At the time of the launch, Motorola said the software update would be reaching the Droid and other Android phones at some point in the near future.

        • Android version of Nuvifone boasts multi-touch

          Garmin-Asus announced a multi-touch enabled Android version of its navigation-focused Nuvifone smartphones for the European market. The Nuvifone A50 appears to have similar specs to the earlier Linux-based Nuvifone G60, but adds a comprehensive suite of Google apps, as well as new styling and a touchpad.

        • MWC2010: CSR launches Android software platform

          CSR is supporting the Android open-source mobile operating system with its embedded wireless system software.

        • ST-Ericsson and ARM give Android a leg up

          ST-ERICSSON AND ARM have been telling the Mobile World Congress that their cunning plan to optimise Android to take advantage of Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) on the ST-Ericsson U8500 platform is nearly ready.

        • The tale of an Android phone in the earthquake in Haiti

          We talked extensively about why Android is better than some other smartphone OSes, its openness, its multitasking characteristics, but have you ever thought that its customization features could actually save lives? Well read on.

      • Nokia

        • MWC 2010: Nokia and Intel announce MeeGo Linux-based device platform

          I am a big fan of the Maemo 5 platform as you can see in my Definitive Nokia N900 Guide so the news that Nokia and Intel are combining Moblin and Maemo to create the MeeGo Linux-based software platform for future mobile computers, notebooks, tablets, and more is quite exciting. MeeGo will also offer the Qt application development environment and allow developers to feature applications in the Ovi Store and Intel’s AppUpSM Center. Looking at the Nokia plot of their operating systems it looks like Maemo is out while MeeGo replaces it moving forward too.

        • MeeGo time!

          We’ve been busy with our friends @ Intel.

          We decided to expand the relationship we started already last spring. We merge Maemo and Moblin projects into one single project called MeeGo. MeeGo is an open software platform – an operating system – for a wide range of devices. It’ll run on X86 and on Arm based hardware. It will be developed as an open project hosted by the Linux Foundation.

        • Mobile World Congress: Network operators have big plans for platforms

          Third, Intel and Nokia announced they would merge their Moblin and Maemo software projects to create MeeGo, a unified Linux-based platform that will run on pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, media-rich smartphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle “infotainment” systems, ideally but not exclusively all based on Intel’s Atom microprocessor.

          This promises to be the West’s answer to LiMo, the Linux Mobile initiative that has drawn support from Asia-Pacific handset makers.

        • Nokia N900 works with PS3 controller

          It seems like not a week goes by without some clever hacker finding something unusual to do with their Nokia N900, and the device itself is proving more versatile than ever. The latest hack is the ability to hook up a Bluetooth PS3 controller, and play your Nokia N900 games with complete control. Read on after the break to find out more…

        • Nokia N900 review

          Besides the design and the speed, many of its functionalities strongly depend on the phone’s operating system. Nokia always uses Symbian OS for high-end mobile phones. Symbian enables installing applications, and also managing your agenda and email account is easy and straightforward. Besides Symbian, Nokia also uses a further developed Open Source operating system, the Linux-based Maemo.

        • JoikuSpot Goes Linux

          Joikusoft Ltd. today announces the next wave of mobile WiFi Tethering by extending JoikuSpot Mobile 3G HotSpotting to new Linux based Maemo devices from Nokia.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Five Best Netbook Operating Systems

        Jolicloud is the most distinctly netbook-oriented operating system in this Hive Five. It’s not just pretty good on a netbook—it was actually designed from the ground up to be a netbook operating system, so it’s a great fit. (For the curious, it’s a combination of Debian and Fedora Linux with WINE mixed in to support Windows-only apps.) Jolicloud has been tweaked and tuned to make it shine even on systems with low resources and small displays. The emphasis is not on a traditional computing experience but on harnessing web-based applications and storage services so that much of the heavy lifting and deep-storage of the netbook is transferred from the netbook to more powerful and larger servers. The application launcher—see in the screenshot here—makes it easy to organize and select your applications. The launcher emphasizes easy to read and identify text and logos, and all applications launch in full-screen mode by default. In addition to the default applications, you can browse the app directory to find new applications—the Jolicloud team curates the list to ensure compatibility.

      • HP jumps into smartbook market with announcement of AirLife

        Instead of Windows or Linux, the AirLife uses the same operating system and device drivers as many smartphones, Google Android. The AirLife’s screen will measure 10.1 inches, be touch-sensitive, and be able to display images at a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The keyboard will be 92 percent as large as a standard-size, and will include a touch pad.

    • Tablets

      • Linux’s Tablet Answer: Notion Ink ADAM

        The truly revolutionary component on this tablet is its screen, which incorporates Pixel Qi technology to give a similar experience as e-Ink when the backlight is off. This gives the tablet its godly battery life, and allows it to directly challenge the reading experience of eReaders. It is a powerful tablet, and the device’s multitasking with Flash support is undoubtedly a response to the iPad’s inability to do either.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source eCommerce: Quality is no longer enough

    I’m delighted to be writing about Open Source eCommerce (OSC) for Practical eCommerce! When I started in the Internet industry, the few eCommerce stores were custom-programmed, they cost millions of dollars and employed large teams of programmers. osCommerce changed all that at the turn of the century with the first free, open source eCommerce program.

  • TeleKast Is a Snazzy Open Source Teleprompter App

    Over at cool-stuff blog Cool Tools, former TV commercial director and producer Jeff Bragg gives TeleKast a runthrough in the video below:

    TeleKast if a free download for Windows and Linux only. It’s currently an alpha release, so you might expect a little bugginess—but it worked like a charm in my tests. If you’d prefer a little teleprompter action without installing an application, check out previously mentioned CuePrompter.

  • KnowledgeTree Spreads Its ECM Through Open Tech Channel

    KnowledgeTree (news, site) is joining Open Tech and taking their document management software to thousands of resellers worldwide.

  • hSenid launch new products, mChoice Soltura, community VAS platform, and mChoice Vishma, an open source application store

    hSenid Mobile Solutions, a leading mobile solution provider, will be launching their latest revolutionary products mChoice Soltura, community VAS platform, and mChoice Vishma, an open source application store at this years Mobile world congress held in Barcelona.

  • Twitter to use BitTorrent for upgrades

    The company is now planning to use the Open Source Bit Tornado torrent client to distribute updates from a seed server to a swarm of peer servers.

  • Open version of cloud management software takes on ECP

    Toronto-based Enomaly severed its links with open source software with the release of the latest version of its Elastic Computing Platform (ECP). Not only did the company remove all traces of the open source Community Edition from the product but it also moved ECP from the open source repository, SourceForge, moves which caused great disquiet among the company’s customer base.

  • CA Brings SOA Security to Open Source JBoss

    CA announced it has extended its world-class Web access security technology to include support for Web applications and Web services hosted on JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

  • The City of Houston Utilizes Zenoss Enterprise for Cisco Monitoring

    Zenoss, Inc., a leading commercial open source provider of Unlegacy enterprise IT management products, today announced that the City of Houston is using the company to manage the mission-critical network infrastructure at the Houston Airport System (HAS), the world’s sixth largest airport system. Using Zenoss Enterprise, The City of Houston has been able to reduce the total cost of operating its large and complex HAS network by over 500% while more efficiently meeting the demands of managing a network consisting of hundreds of Cisco routers, switches and firewalls spread across the city’s three airports.

  • Exclusive podcast: CEO of Actuate, the open source firm behind BIRT

    I had a good long chat with Pete Cittadini, CEO of open source business intelligence firm Actuate recently. The company is doing somewhere between $120m and $140m a year, having founded and still co-leading the Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) open source project.

  • OpenOffice.org

    • Too fat to fly: Kevin Smith and OpenOffice

      Canonical has done a fine job of making the Linux user experience more coherent, and for the kind of dinky 3lb laptops that Apple doesn’t make, Ubuntu is preferable in many ways to Windows 7 or XP for reliability and ease of use. So there are high expectations for the official NetBook-specific distro, originally called NetBook Remix but now called NetBook Edition. It promises all the benefits of Google’s ChromeOS, but without the mandatory built-in Google creepware.

    • OpenOffice 3.2 now available

      OpenOffice.org, the open-source office software package, has released version 3.2 of its free Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access replacement tools. Simultaneously, the team also revealed that it’s hit 300 million downloads since the suite launched in 2002.

    • OpenOffice Reports 300 Million downloads

      The impressive open source office software suite Open Office a free alternative to Microsoft’s office desktop software has reported over 300 million people have downloaded the application since its debut in April 2002. Eat your heart out Microsoft.

    • Open Source OpenOffice Records 300 Million Downloads
    • 300,000,000 Downloads Later, OpenOffice Ships Version 3.2
    • Open source office software upgraded

      Microsoft-bating open source software maker OpenOffice.org has announced the latest release of its ‘anything you can do we can do cheaper’ suite of office productivity tools.

    • Free open-source word processing software gets speed and compatibility update

      More than 300 million downloads later, OpenOffice.org – the world’s leading free personal productivity software — is updating its office suite to make it faster and more compatible with other office software programs.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox Turning Into A Multi-Browser

      In an upcoming version, Firefox will be a multiprocessing browser. The developers of Firefox at Mozilla are preparing for one of the most important changes in the history of this browser. It will not be the version of Firefox 3.5 which will make the Firefox browser a multithreaded one. But it is expected to be so in any of the following versions, such as version 3.6, which we have already spoken of. Or in version 4.0 Firefox can become a multi-browser. For those of you who do not know what a multithreaded browser means, you can keep an eye on the post explaining what a multi-browser is all about.

  • CMS

    • WordPress Mobile now available, free and open source, for BlackBerry, Android and iPhone; Nokia soon!

      WordPress, the gold standard in blogging platforms, has just announced that they now have WordPress applications for RIM’s BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) platform, Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android, and the iPhone. They’re all free, and they’re all open source, so the community can help make them better. They’ve also announced that in a few weeks they’ll be playing with Qt and releasing a beta for not only Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s Symbian platform, but the Linux based Maemo too.

  • Intelligence

  • Business

    • Nuxeo releases DAM application with CMIS support

      Nuxeo, the open source enterprise content management vendor, released a new digital asset management system last week with support for the most current OASIS CMIS specification. This should make it easier for companies using the Nuxeo solution to share multimedia content across different repositories whether or not they are using Nuxeo tools.

    • The Momentum Builds for Open Source Telephony

      In fact, as the economy stabilizes, Digium firmly believes that the momentum the open source community has gained will continue. After all, though the recession helped boost the open source space to its current market position, the growth of the open source community and the stability of open source platforms (Asterisk is a decade old now) have helped create a new market dynamic that is driving interest in alternative vendors, including those in the open source community, as well as Skype,Microsoft ( News – Alert), and others.

    • Wireless Giant Launches Open Source Subsidiary

      Chandhok: Open source has become increasingly important to mobile, and QuIC was formed to bring increased focus to open source initiatives. Qualcomm is unique in its market reach, powering the vast majority of 3G handsets as a whole as well as smartphones that are commercially available today. This puts us into a very good position to drive innovation forward for the wireless industry.

    • Cynapse Partners with VNC for Exclusive Distribution of Cyn.in across EMEA to Drive Open Source Enterprise 2.0 initiatives

      Cynapse, provider of open source Enterprise 2.0 software for small, medium and large organizations, today announced a partnership with Virtual Network Consult GmbH (VNC), a Value Added Distributor for Commercial Open Source & Cloud Solutions, to deliver its product Cyn.in in the Europe, Middle East and Africa markets.

    • Equinox Expanding into Support for Koha Open Source ILS

      Yesterday, Equinox Software, which has built its name and business supporting the Evergreen open source integrated library system (ILS) its founders helped develop, announced plans to support Koha, the other major open source ILS.

  • Funding

    • XIPWIRE Donates Text Pledging Service to Open Source Community

      By facilitating text donations to several non-profit organizations, XIPWIRE would like to give back to the community, stated the company. Currently, donations can be directed to the Apache Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, GNOME Foundation, KDE e.V. and the Linux Foundation.

  • BSD

    • Opera Dragonfly open for business

      Since the inception of Opera Dragonfly, we planned for it to become an open source project. It has always been released under an open source BSD licence, but the source repositories were on Opera servers. Starting today, Opera Dragonfly is a fully open source project, hosted on BitBucket. Since the previous version of Opera Dragonfly, a lot of work has gone on behind the scenes replacing the existing architecture with a modern version of the Scope Protocol – STP-1. Opera Dragonfly has been rewritten to use this faster and more efficient version of Scope. Now that we believe that the underlying protocol is stable and performant, and a public desktop build has been released with this included, it is time to put Opera Dragonfly on a public Mercurial repository.

  • Releases

    • eXo Platform Releases Open Source CMIS Implementation

      eXo Platform today introduced xCMIS, an open source implementation of the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. Fully compliant with the latest CMIS 1.0 – cd06 specification, xCMIS supports eXo’s standards-based Java content repository (JCR) and works with third-party CMIS clients as well as a new eXo CMIS client based on Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

    • Cubeia Unveils Open-Source Game Server

      Cubeia Ltd, a technology solutions provider for the online gambling and gaming industry, are pleased to announce the ground-breaking release of Firebase Community Edition – a scalable, enterprise server for multiplayer games. Firebase Community Edition is the first ever open-source game server in the online gambling industry.

    • Git 1.7 brings some compatibility changes

      Version 1.7 of the free Git distributed version control system (DVCS) is now available to download. The new release offers numerous changes that have been discussed for some time, changes that have made the new version incompatible with its predecessor, Git 1.6.6, but the repository format is unchanged. The changes appear to have been important enough for the developers to choose to introduce them rather than maintain the system’s backward compatibility with previous releases.

  • Government

    • Time to turn open-source words into action

      Since early 2004, it has been the government’s stated policy to use open-source software in the public sector wherever possible, as long as it offers the best value for money.

      To date, the policy has had little impact. So will the latest tweaks to its open-source action plan make a difference?

      Software is “open-source” when the source code is freely available to be viewed, shared or changed — things that you can’t do with conventional proprietary software. Crucially, open-source is also the cheaper option in many cases.

    • Letting the cat out of the bag

      When I blogged about the UK government’s open source initiative (or rather the lack of it) a couple of weeks ago. It was obvious to me – and to many of the people in the open source community that the government wasn’t exactly pulling out all the stops in its attempts to cut waste in the tendering process.

      [...]

      So, the open source commentators who say that the government has not been enthusiastic about pursuing are completely missing the point. It’s not about inertia; it’s not about the influence of proprietary software companies; it’s not about the perceived lack of maturity of open source companies – it’s simply that those newer competitors aren’t expensive enough. Those pitches proving cost savings have been going down the wrong path – it’s as if they were setting off to play golf and keeping under par the whole way round, only to be told at the end of the game that the object was to take as many shots as possible.

    • Open Source Toryism

      Finally, Cameron had a populist swipe at lobbyists. Which is fine. No-one likes lobbyists. But Cameron’s attitude towards lobbying is instructive, for it demonstrates the extent to which, despite his rhetoric, he remains a centraliser. The problem with lobbying is a “lack of transparency” and so he’ll also slow down the revolving door, making it harder to ministers to move seamlessly into lobbying. Which is also fine but no more than tackling a symptom while ignoring the cause of the disease. Which is, silly, government.

    • Cameron pledges to publish contracts in full

      “No ICT project will be commissioned without first seeing if it can be done for free or at very low cost. We will set open standards to encourage interoperability between ICT systems and open up ICT procurement to more companies by creating a level playing field for open source software throughout government.”

    • Q&A: Red Hat’s Werner Knoblich on UK open source

      Vice president and general manager of Red Hat in EMEA Werner Knoblich talks about how open source is going down in the UK and what 2010 has in store.

    • ICT & Education: Eleven Countries to Watch — and Learn From

      With a population of over 31 million, the Indian state of Kerala — home to the IT@school initiative — has more people than all but two of the countries listed here. IT@school, which provides ICT-enabled education to 1.6 million students per year in the state, is considered by some to be the largest educational program of its kind utilizing primarily free and open source software.

  • Openness

    • Open government could lead to open-source textbooks

      Yes. Free open source textbooks are alive and well at both the college and k-12 level. Check out CK12.org. Initial free STEM textbooks are available now and more digital materials will be forthcoming as the company progresses and leverages more of an open source community for standards-aligned open digital materials.

    • Open-source Cyberinfrastructure to Aggregate Cancer Research Data

      The Cyberinfrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CYCORE) project for cancer research will be scalable, open-source and user-friendly. CYCORE will aggregate data from clinical trials, patient medical records, self-reported and objectively monitored social and behavioral data, data on cancer outcomes from regional cancer registries, and cost-benefit analyses.

    • Introducing TED Fellow: Cesar Harada

      Cesar Harada is the coordinator of Open_Sailing, the open-source group developing the International Ocean Station.

    • ‘Anarconomy’ and the News Industry

      In contrast, the Copenhagen “anarconomy” vision of anarchy is not particularly anarchistic. In fact, it is rather rule-based, albeit the collectivist social rules of open source copyleft communities. Jaron Lanier has called fundamentalist manifestations of this “Digital Maoism”, which is catchier than it is historically accurate, but you get the idea… Another variant is expressed in the sometimes fickle wrath of the tough love inflicted by open source gatekeepers when cool new ideas conflict somehow with “community standards.”

    • “Open-source science” project will seek to improve synthesis of schistosomiasis drug

      Matthew Todd, a chemist at the University of Sydney has obtained funding amounting to US$350,000 to support his project. He intends to go about the work using an approach known as “open-source science”.

    • 28 Days, 28 Ideas #14: Open Source Curriculum

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      A reckoning with the debts the world owes to Haiti would radically change this poisonous dynamic. This is where the road to repair begins – by recognising the right of Haitians to reparations.

    • Vancouver Olympics protest takes violent twist

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      “The Olympics have a history of leaving host cities in debt, and relocating the poor and homeless away from the sanitized corridors of host cities,” The Christian Science Monitor noted on Friday. “Vancouver is no exception.”

    • India Says PayPal Not Authorized for Money Transfer

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  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

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    • Google has disabled the ability for Nawaat to upload new videos

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      [...]

      And while we are not complaining about all the censorship and attacks targeting us, as we are totally aware that these are the consequences of the fight we are waging against the Tunisian regime to win back our freedom of expression, we really don’t want and don’t expect to see this battle front extended to Google services.

    • Computer savvy activists launch attacks to punch holes in online shields of authoritative regimes

      Jacob Appelbaum, a San Francisco programmer with the long-time open source Tor Project, a cloaking program used by corporations and free speech activists alike, said closed systems like Haystack concern him. He said it has no peer review the way the Tor Project does, which has been created and vetted by programmers around the world over many years.

    • Yahoo! Nectar deal to link online ads to offline buys

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  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Net neutrality: Are all bits created equal?

      The ability to visit big or small websites equally is coming under attack from critics of “net neutrality” in America.

      This principle means all web traffic is treated equally regardless of the type or origin.

    • Google Ultrafast Broadband May Shake Up Fiber Market

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  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • DOJ Launches Intellectual-property-enforcement Task Force

      The task force will work closely with the recently established White House Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), which has the responsibility of drafting a strategic plan on IP for President Barack Obama’s administration. The task force will recommend ways to improve IP enforcement, the DOJ said.

      [...]

      There are some indications that the DOJ may target peer-to-peer file sharers, however. The DOJ, under Obama, has hired five former lawyers for the Recording Industry Association of America, and the DOJ this year supported a US$675,000 file-sharing verdict in Massachusetts.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Christian Einfeldt’s DTP presentation in Berlin 2004 04 (2004)


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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8 Comments

  1. satipera said,

    February 17, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    Gravatar

    Reference Mark Shuttleworth

    look at the language that mark shuttleworth is using. To demonise someone is to make a demon out of them. Microsoft have done it on their own, no help needed. Observing what Microsoft have done does not make the observer guilty of demonisation or hate. Mark is obviously a smart bloke, but it is safe to say that after equating criticism of microsoft to racism then he has a bad day at the office.

    Roy Schestowitz Reply:

    If you put this into context, he was responding to a harsh criticism. I was replying to the general pattern, not Shuttleworth himself (this post is hardly about Ubuntu).

    It’s too easy to nitpick when someone types/says something hastily (recall the whole Shuttleworth/sexism incident). I too wrote some things impulsively.

    satipera Reply:

    It is not nitpicking some of those quotes were plain wrong. Do you really think criticism of Microsoft equates to racism. If he retracts we can forget about it and move on but that will not happen. Mea culpa goes a long towards trust.

    Roy Schestowitz Reply:

    I think it’s a poor analogy, but not intentionally so. Same with the “explaining to a girl” remark.

    your_friend Reply:

    Shuttleworth, if he has not been grossly misquoted, is making some fundamental mistakes. He thinks he can help free software by cooperating with Microsoft and he just dropped a load of FUD on the FSF and ALL other GNU/Linux distributions. Perhaps the worst thing is that he stoops to this instead of clearly defending decisions that people worry about.

    Let’s look at the worst quotes:

    “I admire many of the things they (Microsoft) have done. I think it is as wrong to demonise the people who work at a company as it is to demonise people of a particular colour, nationality or other demographic. … I’m not here to punish Microsoft, or hate them, I’m here to build a better way, if I can. … in the cases where we have common cause, I am happy to work with Microsoft. That may be a hard concept for people who think that life is easier to understand if you have an enemy to make your own cause right, but I find that attitude leads to bigotry and bad results, and makes it impossible to get past the wrongs of the past.

    People who read Microsoft’s emails and understand that the people in charge of the company can’t be trusted are simply bigots, too stupid to understand a complex world? I don’t think so but that’s what Mark just said. PJ, RMS and other well read people, I’m sure, are not amused. Everyone knows that there are many thousands of innocent people working for Microsoft. That does not make mono worth using or any less of a patent trap, for example. The evil is not in the past and can not be worked through, only avoided.

    A lot of good people have made the mistake of trusting Microsoft. The cure is to sit down and read “Evangelism is War” training manual and then read it again because they are even worse today. Most people don’t have time to read all of Microsoft’s emails published by the Comes vrs Microsoft trial. Those that do realize that the 1997 training manual was just the start and that company executives continue their various “jihads” against all “competitors”. Anyone who agrees to do as Microsoft asks is still looked down on as a fool to be encouraged until their company can be wiped out and assimilated.

    If we are as successful as I hope we will be, then the world will for the first time have a commercial grade platform that is freely available to all. That’s not true with the existing dominant commercial Linux players.

    Wow! The phrase “commercial” is worth avoiding for many reasons. “Commercial grade” is even worse. A reader might get the impression that Mark does not think Debian and Fedora are of equal quality to any “commercial grade” software. I don’t think that’s what Mark meant.

    A RMS quote is appropriate, “You can’t get North by walking East.” Software freedom, if that’s the goal, can not be persued by making deals with non free software companies. Even tacit endorsement of non free software and services is bad for software freedom. It is never reasonable to surrender software freedoms in order to advance software freedom. Surrendering rights simply strengthens those who demand surrender.

    The concern should not be, “Is Ubuntu becoming the next Microsoft?” It is, “Is Canonical becoming the next Novell while Novell becomes the next SCO?” Let’s hope not.

    Roy Schestowitz Reply:

    Mark Shuttleworth has also criticised Microsoft on many other occasions. Let’s assume it’s quote-mining.

    your_friend Reply:

    This is not the first time those quotes have been mined. Microsoft set up their “Microsoft Haters” meme to draw out just this kind of language. The toxic atmosphere for criticism does a lot of work for Microsoft.

    One has to wonder how effective this kind of quote mining is when it comes to keeping regulators from doing their job. The Microsoft take over of Yahoo was just approved by US and EU regulators today. US regulators have the special shame of having rejected a more friendly rescue deal between Yahoo and Google.

    Roy Schestowitz Reply:

    He didn’t say “Microsoft haters”.

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