Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

09.03.10

Links 3/9/2010: Wine 1.3.2, Great Fedora Site Redesign

Posted in News Roundup at 4:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • New, open source PS3 jailbreak may get round piracy claims

    Users will need to know what they’re doing, but the hack is achievable with a $25 Teensy++ USB development board or a $30 AT90USBkey loaded with the PSGroove files – which are available here.

    The hack is essentially similar to the PS Jailbreak technique.

  • Open Source: Quality, Flexibility and Cost

    Open Source has matured to the point where it is now used to some extent in every company. 98 percent of respondents to a survey said that their organizations make use of Open Source in some way. The people answering the survey were IT professionals in areas like network operations, server management and engineering.

  • Adopting Enterprise Open Source Software

    Nagios sent me a reminder yesterday, which I finally got around to reading today, to update to the latest version of Nagios Core, 3.2.2. We were running 3.2.0, so we were a couple versions behind, so after browsing through the list of fixed bugs I thought it would be good to go ahead and upgrade. I had a meeting in fifteen minutes, and Nagios was actively monitoring servers in production.

  • Google Wave’s open source future “in a Box”

    “Wave in a Box” will include a server and web client using the same structured conversation system that appeared in Google’s own Wave service, complete with support for threaded conversations in the web client and a refined version of Wave’s client-server communications. The server is based on the FedOne example server which was released on waveprotocol.org as a basic client/server prototype. Patches that have already been contributed allow “Wave in a Box” to implement a MongoDB based persistent store which supports searching and the server will also feature the gadget, robot and data APIs which allow for external applications to offer inline information or automated services within a Wave conversation.

  • Google Wave Freed As Open Source Project

    Alex North, Software Engineer, Google Wave team, wrote on a blog, “We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we’ve already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete application or “Wave in a Box.”

  • Nuxeo present FISE, a RESTful semantic engine

    Open source enterprise content management experts Nuxeo have announced that, as part of the IKS European project, they are working with partners in the project to develop an open source semantic engine with a RESTful interface, dubbed fise. Fise, which stands for Furtwangen IKS Semantic Engine, was initially created in March at the IKS Semantic Engine Hackathon and now Nuxeo have made a demonstration system available for users to get a feel for what a semantic engine can achieve.

  • Giving Back To Open Source

    And recently, I became aware of the debt I owe to the Open Source movement. Open Source software freed my PC and turned it into a sleek, fast, secure, stable and powerful machine. I feel I owe much to Open Source software.

  • Open Source Software is “coming of age”: Accenture

    Showing how seriously OSS is now being taken at management level, nearly two thirds of the respondents said that their organisations now have a documented strategy for open source adoption with the remaining 32 percent currently developing a strategic plan.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome reaches second birthday, version 6 goes stable

      Google recently demonstrated some highly experimental tab features that offer insight into how Chrome tabbing might eventually be enhanced. Compared to something like Mozilla’s Panorama feature, Google says it wants to create something more automatic that doesn’t require much user intervention.

    • Two years on, Chrome reshapes browser market

    • Mozilla

      • Meet Kerim Kalamujic, Bosnian Contributor!

        1. Hello Kerim. To start out with, could you give us a little introduction and tell us a little bit about you?

        Hi. I was born in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am 25 years old, I have an Engineer’s degree in Telecommunications and am currently working as an IT Director in a local company called Triland Development.

      • Mozilla’s Bespin becomes Skywriter

        The project is now to be officially hosted on GitHub to allow developers to fork the project more easily. Previously, Skywriter was officially hosted using Mercurial which led to developers only installing Mercurial for access to Bespin and the creation of unofficial mirrors. The new GitHub repository is a work in progress though as it will only contain an “all JavaScript” version of the Skywriter system, and that is currently incomplete. The older bespinclient Mercurial repository is being kept open for now to give developers access to “something that works today”. The project also has a new home page on Mozilla Labs reflecting the name change.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle

    • Gosling Webcast

      Next week JavaZone, the conference that brought you Lady Java and Java Forever will be held in Norway. To celebrate the opening of the new ForgeRock Norway office, we’ve arranged for a party just before the conference starts, on Tuesday evening. If you are in Oslo and would like to attend, please send an RSVP to the address on the web site.

    • Does the Fate of OpenSolaris Tell Us Where Unix Is Headed?

      It’s not easy to pin down the exact date of the birth of OpenSolaris, but it’s really easy to nail the date of its demise: Friday, August 13, 2010. This was the date a leaked Oracle internal memo was released on the Internet: a memo that effectively announced the end of the OpenSolaris Project, just over five years after the general release of the OpenSolaris code and 830 days after the first official release of an OpenSolaris distribution from Sun Microsystems.

    • An obituary for Larry Ellison

      I’m tired of hearing questions about the future of Java, OpenOffice and MySQL (to limit myself to only three projects), and even more tired of trying to talk to people with whom I have contact in Oracle and always hear the same history (invest more and do better), that simply doesn’t translate into any concrete action. I’m tired of living in a world of uncertainty and rumors in this area.

  • CMS

  • Education

    • New course management program to replace WebCT

      EduCat is powered by an open source course system called Moodle, a software package for creating internet-based courses and websites. NMU is switching because the vendor that supports WebCT will no longer be licensing the software, said Smock. NMU’s license with WebCT expires in July 2011.

  • Healthcare

    • Open health in Guatemala

      The FreeMED Software Foundation has been involved with a medical clinic and teaching project in Guatemala for some time. The project, hosted by Pop-Wuj, a non-profit Spanish language school in Xela (Quetzeltenango), Guatemala, hosts a medical clinic for the poor in the city and surrounding pueblos.

    • EU: 3.3 Million To Continue Projects On Open Source And Reusable Data

      The European Commission is planning to spend 3.344 million Euro until 2016 to continue the services provided by its projects – such as OSOR.eu and Semic.eu – on open source and on electronic data exchange.

      The EC published the budget details last week Thursday for its e-Government project. Apart from the 3.344 million Euro planned for the new platform to provide collaborative services for current Semic.eu and OSOR.eu users, another 8.8 million Euro are foreseen to provide support for existing and future communities around eGovernment in general, including the growing Open Source community on OSOR.eu and the community around interoperablity assets on Semic.eu.

    • Medical FLOSS Repository: An update from Medfloss.org

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Only one day left to influence the EURO 2012 qualification games

      As it is common in football since some time to bribe the referee, this is also possible: Just transfer the money to FSFE’s bank account with the subject “donation for Free Software European championship [Country name]” and announce your bribery via microblog with the above mentioned hashtag ;)

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Game-addicted man scores rare win over software lawyers

    Craig Smallwood sued Lineage II maker NC Interactive late last year, claiming that his compulsive urge to play the game caused him to sink more than 20,000 hours into it. As a result, he had to be hospitalized and continues to suffer extreme and serious emotional distress and depression that requires treatment and therapy three times a week, according to court documents.

  • Lawyer sues Avvo for libel after receiving poor online rating

    A Florida lawyer has sued Avvo for libel, arguing that the Seattle online attorney rating service published inaccurate information about him and engaged in a practice of blackmail in order to get him to participate on the site. Larry Joe Davis Jr., a St. Petersburg lawyer who has a 3.7 rating on Avvo, argues in the suit that the site inaccurately listed him as having a practice in the “employment/labor” area when in fact he specializes in health law. He also alleges that Avvo engaged in unfair acts of trade or commerce.

  • Security/Aggression

    • Security hole found in top price-comparison sites

      While sites such as Confused.com and Comparethemarket.com might save you time and money, the true cost could be higher than you think courtesy of a basic flaw when it comes to securing customers’ personal data.

    • Kirklees Council ban future use of Mosquito device on council land and property

      A DEVICE which targets young people has been banned following a campaign by junior politicians.

    • United Airlines and Dulles security treat Pakistani military officers as terrorists

      The officers were on a junket in the USA, and had been travelling extensively; one of them said words to the effect of, “I hope this is my last flight.” This was interpreted as a terrorist threat by a flight attendant.

    • Sneaky Senate Trying To Slip Internet Kill Switch Past Us

      Sensing Senators don’t have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support.

    • Hardware hackers defeat quantum crypto

      Security researchers using hardware hacking techniques have unearthed generic flaws in supposedly ultra-secure quantum cryptography systems.

    • German “secure” ID cards compromised on national TV, gov’t buries head in sand

      A German TV programme showed hackers from the Chaos Computer Club using off-the-shelf equipment to extract personal information from the government’s new “secure” ID card, which stores scans of fingerprints and a six-digit PIN that can be used to sign official documents and declarations.

    • Drumroll, please: the top Web scams of the decade

      Good to know that there are so many people out there who care. But better to know what the most common scams look like. Here is security vendor Panda’s new list of the biggest Web scams of the decade.

    • New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page

      Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user’s browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren’t the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user’s trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn’t been seen before.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Former Lehman CEO: It’s Not Our Fault We Went Bankrupt

      Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy had nothing to do with Lehman Brothers, according to Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ former CEO.

      Instead, Fuld argued at a public hearing today, Lehman went bust because the financial world wrongly lost confidence in the bank, and the government failed to effectively intervene.

    • Lehman Brothers ex-CEO Wants Everyone To Know That It Was Everyone Else’s Fault Lehman Failed

      In fact, a recent report from Planet Money and Pro Publica, that came out just last week, showed how ridiculous levels of self-dealing among banks not only prolonged the mess, but actually made the eventual impact much, much worse. Basically the banks created fake demand for the very worst parts of the mortgage-backed securities they were trying to sell, in order to keep on selling.

    • Goldman employees still enamored with firm, CEO

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) is the bank many Americans love to hate, but one group just plain loves it: its employees.

      The firm’s employees are among the most fiercely loyal in the financial services industry, according to a survet by glassdoor.com, a career website. And Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein had the highest approval rating of any CEO in the financial sector.

      Glassdoor.com’s survey was done online, which means it is not exactly scientific, but any good news is surely welcome at Goldman, which is fresh off settling civil fraud charges with U.S. securities regulators. The lawsuit set off a public relations nightmare that led some inside the bank to question whether Blankfein should be ousted.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Announcing our new Online Director

      He comes to us from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Joey brings extensive experience from a range of online activist efforts, including the T. Boone Pickens alternative energy campaign, and an in-depth knowledge and understanding of how to use technology to galvanize and engage a community. He will lead our digital grassroots efforts towards change in Washington.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Google’s Earth

      Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, eminently reliable — before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot.

    • Murdoch Reporters’ Phone-Hacking Was Endemic, Victimized Hundreds

      A phone-hacking scheme involving British royals and reporters working for one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers went far beyond what was previously disclosed and prosecuted, according toThe New York Times.

      Andy Coulson, currently media advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, is accused of having encouraged the hacking during his tenure as editor of Murdoch’s News of the World paper.

    • Don’t Let Schools Chip Your Kids

      On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and were handed jerseys embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are tiny computer chips that are frequently used to track everything from cattle to commercial products moving through warehouses. Now the school district is apparently hoping to use these chips to replace manual attendance records, track the children’s movements at school and during field trips, and collect other data like whether the child has eaten or not.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Scam Artists Use HADOPI to Steal Users Money

        News has surfaced that warning letters, allegedly from HADOPI, are being sent to an untold number of French citizens who are accused of copyright infringement. The problem? Neither HADOPI nor rights holders actually sent those e-mails.

      • Introduction to “three strikes” copyright infringement rules in Dragon*con EFF track

        Distribution of digital content has only gotten easier over time. In the early years of web sharing, distribution happened over the client-server system. The more people using it, the slower the system was. But now with peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing, speeds and access actually increase with a greater number of users. Trammell demonstrated with the following list, a history of how, since P2P arrived, the two big players in the fight against sharing, the RIAA (Recording Industry of America) and MPAA (Motion Picutre Association of America), have fought it:

        * 1999 – RIAA labels sued Napster
        * 2002 – RIAA sued Aimster
        * 2003 – MPAA studios sued Grokster
        * 2006 – RIAA labels sued the developers of LimeWire

        [...]

        The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (which has its own session for discussion at Dragon*Con) is an international treaty to create standards for IP rights enforcement. It’s supposed to be a response to the increase in pirated works and is a framework for companies to voluntarily join outside of WTO, WIPO, and the UN. It’s also held in secret. Many in the US have sent FOIA requests seeking transparency. There have been leaks and a condensed version that have come out. And earlier this year, they confirmed that mandatory graduated response for signing companies is off the table.

      • ORGCon: James Boyle Interview

        In this video James speaks to Open Rights Group volunteer Nitya Rajan about the importance of the public domain, and why it should be treated with care and respect.

      • Settlement reached after judge refuses to dismiss copyright suit

        U.S. District Judge Philip Pro rejected a defendant’s argument that the case should be dismissed because Righthaven didn’t own the copyright to the story at the time of the alleged infringement.

      • Copyrighting Fashion: Who Gains?
      • Media Minutes: September 3, 2010

        Latinos for Internet Freedom, a new coalition of more than 40 organizations and groups, is advocating for an open and accessible Internet. And bloggers and nonprofits are now targets of a “lawsuit mill” that shakes down people for big sums of money for sharing articles and links.

      • iTunes song-sample plan runs into music publishers
      • LVRJ Defends Righthaven Suits; Mocks Competitor For Highlighting Problems With Them
      • Why we are writing about the R-J copyright lawsuits

        Some commentators are wondering why the Las Vegas Sun, and our sister publication In Business Las Vegas, have published so many stories about the Las Vegas Review-Journal/Righthaven LLC copyright infringement lawsuit campaign.

        Are we covering the R-J/Righthaven lawsuits, which through Monday totaled 107 complaints against defendants throughout the United States and Canada, because they involve our competitor?

        Because we’ve reported criticism of Righthaven by defense attorneys and others, do the Sun and In Business condone and encourage copyright infringement?

        And as I’ve been the writer of most of these stories, one reader said it appears I’m “outraged” by Righthaven and asked me if that was the case.

      • ACTA

Clip of the Day

Physicist Leonard Mlodinow vs. Deepak Chopra


Credit: TinyOgg

Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Reddit
  • co.mments
  • DZone
  • email
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • NewsVine
  • Print
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis
  • Facebook

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Links 10/1/2017: Synfig 1.2, Kodachi Linux 3.7

    Links for the day

  2. With Help From the US Supreme Court (Key Cases), Patent Trolls Are Going Away

    The demise of patent trolls in the United States, a trend partly attributable to Alice and other Supreme Court decisions, will likely accelerate soon (later this year) as the future of the Eastern District of Texas courts is at stake

  3. Patent Maximalism on Display: Patent Aggressor IBM Celebrated in the Media

    The patent lust at IBM, which is suing if not just shaking down companies using software patents, earns plenty of puff pieces from the corporate media

  4. FFPE-EPO, the EPO Management's Pet/Yellow Union, Helps Union-Busting (Against SUEPO) in Letter to Notorious Vice-President

    In a letter to Elodie Bergot (as CC) and Željko Topić, who faces many criminal investigations, FFPE-EPO ringleaders reveal their allegiance not to EPO staff but to those who perpetually attack the staff

  5. Links 9/1/2017: Civilization VI Coming to GNU/Linux, digiKam 5.4.0 Released

    Links for the day

  6. Links 9/1/2017: Dell’s Latest XPS 13, GPD Pocket With GNU/Linux

    Links for the day

  7. Update on Patent Trolls and Their Enablers: IAM, Fortress, Inventergy, Nokia, MOSAID/Conversant, Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures, Faraday Future, A*STAR, GPNE, AlphaCap Ventures, and TC Heartland

    A potpourri of reports about some of the world’s worst patent trolls and their highly damaging enablers/facilitators, including Microsoft which claims that it “loves Linux” whilst attacking it with patents by proxy

  8. Mark Summerfield: “US Supreme Court Decision in Alice Looks to Have Eliminated About 75% of New Business Method Patents.”

    Some of the patent microcosm, or those who profit from the bureaucracy associated with patents, responds to claims made by Techrights (that software patents are a dying breed in the US)

  9. Eight Wireless Patents Have Just Been Invalidated Under Section 101 (Alice), But Don't Expect the Patent Microcosm to Cover This News

    Firms that are profiting from patents (without actually producing or inventing anything) want us to obsess over and think about the rare and few cases (some very old) where judges deny Alice and honour patents on software

  10. 2017: Latest Year That the Unitary Patent (UPC) is Still Stuck in a Limbo

    The issues associated with the UPC, especially in light of ongoing negotiations of Britain's exit from the EU, remain too big a barrier to any implementation this year (and probably future years too)

  11. Links 7/1/2017: Linux 4.9.1, Wine 2.0 RC4

    Links for the day

  12. India Keeps Rejecting Software Patents in Spite of Pressure From Large Foreign Multinationals

    India's resilience in the face of incredible pressure to allow software patents is essential for the success of India's growing software industry and more effort is needed to thwart corporate colonisation through patents in India itself

  13. Links 6/1/2017: Irssi 1.0.0, KaOS 2017.01 Released

    Links for the day

  14. Watchtroll a Fake News Site in Lobbying Mode and Attack Mode Against Those Who Don't Agree (Even PTAB and Judges)

    A look at some of the latest spin and the latest shaming courtesy of the patent microcosm, which behaves so poorly that one has to wonder if its objective is to alienate everyone

  15. The Productivity Commission Warns Against Patent Maximalism, Which is Where China (SIPO) is Heading Along With EPO

    In defiance of common sense and everything that public officials or academics keep saying (European, Australian, American), China's SIPO and Europe's EPO want us to believe that when it comes to patents it's "the more, the merrier"

  16. Technical Failure of the European Patent Office (EPO) a Growing Cause for Concern

    The problem associated with Battistelli's strategy of increasing so-called 'production' by granting in haste everything on the shelf is quickly being grasped by patent professionals (outside EPO), not just patent examiners (inside EPO)

  17. Links 5/1/2017: Inkscape 0.92, GNU Sed 4.3

    Links for the day

  18. Links 4/1/2017: Cutelyst 1.2.0 and Lumina 1.2 Desktop Released

    Links for the day

  19. Financial Giants Will Attempt to Dominate or Control Bitcoin, Blockchain and Other Disruptive Free Software Using Software Patents

    Free/Open Source software in the currency and trading world promised to emancipate us from the yoke of banking conglomerates, but a gold rush for software patents threatens to jeopardise any meaningful change or progress

  20. New Article From Heise Explains Erosion of Patent Quality at the European Patent Office (EPO)

    To nobody's surprise, the past half a decade saw accelerating demise in quality of European Patents (EPs) and it is the fault of Battistelli's notorious policies

  21. Insensitivity at the EPO’s Management – Part V: Suspension of Salary and Unfair Trials

    One of the lesser-publicised cases of EPO witch-hunting, wherein a member of staff is denied a salary "without any notification"

  22. Links 3/1/2017: Microsoft Imposing TPM2 on Linux, ASUS Bringing Out Android Phones

    Links for the day

  23. Links 2/1/2017: Neptune 4.5.3 Release, Netrunner Desktop 17.01 Released

    Links for the day

  24. Teaser: Corruption Indictments Brought Against Vice-President of the European Patent Office (EPO)

    New trouble for Željko Topić in Strasbourg, making it yet another EPO Vice-President who is on shaky grounds and paving the way to managerial collapse/avalanche at the EPO

  25. 365 Days Later, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas Remains Silent and Thus Complicit in EPO Abuses on German Soil

    The utter lack of participation, involvement or even intervention by German authorities serve to confirm that the government of Germany is very much complicit in the EPO's abuses, by refusing to do anything to stop them

  26. Battistelli's Idea of 'Independent' 'External' 'Social' 'Study' is Something to BUY From Notorious Firm PwC

    The sham which is the so-called 'social' 'study' as explained by the Central Staff Committee last year, well before the results came out

  27. Europe Should Listen to SMEs Regarding the UPC, as Battistelli, Team UPC and the Select Committee Lie About It

    Another example of UPC promotion from within the EPO (a committee dedicated to UPC promotion), in spite of everything we know about opposition to the UPC from small businesses (not the imaginary ones which Team UPC claims to speak 'on behalf' of)

  28. Video: French State Secretary for Digital Economy Speaks Out Against Benoît Battistelli at Battistelli's PR Event

    Uploaded by SUEPO earlier today was the above video, which shows how last year's party (actually 2015) was spoiled for Battistelli by the French State Secretary for Digital Economy, Axelle Lemaire, echoing the French government's concern about union busting etc. at the EPO (only to be rudely censored by Battistelli's 'media partner')

  29. When EPO Vice-President, Who Will Resign Soon, Made a Mockery of the EPO

    Leaked letter from Willy Minnoye/management to the people who are supposed to oversee EPO management

  30. No Separation of Powers or Justice at the EPO: Reign of Terror by Battistelli Explained in Letter to the Administrative Council

    In violation of international labour laws, Team Battistelli marches on and engages in a union-busting race against the clock, relying on immunity to keep this gravy train rolling before an inevitable crash

CoPilotCo

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

CoPilotCo

Recent Posts