• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

£15 ARM Linux computer before Christmas

The RaspberryPi Foundation, which aims to put computers in front of children for £15, has taken delivery of 50 engineering prototypes, and intends to get the final version to customers by the end of the year.

Based in Cambridge and founded by six high-tech high-flyers, the foundation’s aim is to cure the programmer shortage by inspiring people to take up computing in childhood – as Sinclair Spectrums and BBC Micros once did.

VIDEO: Quake 3 Running on Tiny, Little Raspberry Pi

Fixing old computers with Linux

Now this snowbank computer that I am using to write this has 512 megs of RAM, 128 meg video card, and a 300 Gig SATA hard disk, and two DVD drives. It is a Dell Dimension XPS just barely 5 years old when I found it (I would never have spent this much money on a computer when it was purchased new). Recent rejects that I have had all have SATA drives and at least one gig of memory. Again these computers were running too slow so the owner bought a new one. These poor souls just can’t convert to Linux and so they keep on paying. I get their rejects. My mom is running Linux on one of them.

Desktop

• Chromebooks Live!

  I’ll be the first to admit that while I like Chromebooks, I own a Samsung Series 5, Chromebooks also have serious problems. Still, the Chromebook is far from being dead.

  My fellow ZDNet writer, Scott Raymond argues that the consolidation of WebKit, and Chromium open-source Web browsers source code trees means the end of a need for Chromebooks–and by extensions other lightweight laptops. Specifically, Raymond argues, “If we had the Chrome browser on an Android tablet, why would we want a Chromebook? For the price of a Chromebook you could pick up an Android tablet with a keyboard that connects via dock or Bluetooth. You would have the same functionality, plus the added capabilities of Android.”

Kernel Space

• Linux at 20 years: a progression from promising to pervasive

  Speak to a mobile analyst and it’s not uncommon to hear comments such as “the future is Android” banded about.

  Speak to an open source convert about cloud computing and you might hear “Linux modularity is a killer for cloud” spoken.

  Google that last comment now and you’ll get this blog, Google it in eighteen months and you just might get a few more hits.

• Linux Benchmarks, Reviews Coming For September

• The People Shaping the Future of Linux

Applications

• TrueCrypt Locks Down Data In a Rock-Solid Vault

  For data sensitive enough to warrant encryption, a tool like TrueCrypt is a great solution. The app creates and encrypted file container of any size on your hard drive or on an external drive. Once mounted using a super-strong password of your own choosing, files can come and go as you please. Once dismounted, they’re locked behind a virtually impenetrable wall of encryption.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • DocVert Can Handle All Your Document Conversion Needs

  • Running WordPress On Nginx (LEMP) on Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.04

  • How to Use Screen in Linux

  • Implementation Qemu-kvm 0.15.0,SpiceServer and Spice-Gtk-0.7 on Ubuntu 11.10 KVM Server the most recent approach

  • Generating Web Charts with Gnuplot and Web Scripting

  • 10 steps to getting a Haiku VM running

  • Installing PowerDNS (With MySQL Backend) And Poweradmin On Debian Squeeze

  • How To Install VMware Player On Ubuntu 11.04/Linux Mint 11

  • Add a Nginx Reverse Proxy to Your LAMP Setup

  • Implementation Qemu-kvm 0.15.0,SpiceServer and Spice-Gtk-0.7 on Ubuntu 11.10 KVM Server the most recent approach

  • How to Setup and Use Github in Ubuntu

• Games

  • Innovative Real Time Strategy Game ‘Achron’ Released for Linux

    Much awaited innovative real time strategy game Achron has been released for Linux. Achron features single-player and multiplayer strategic gameplay with free-form time travel.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • A Performance Overhaul Of KDE’s KWin

    Martin Gräßlin has successfully boosted the performance of KDE’s KWin for the upcoming 4.7.2 point release and more so for the KDE SC 4.8 release. This is an attempt to make the KWin compositing window manager handle rendering at sixty frames per second, which it hasn’t been able to scale to that frame-rate due to deficiencies in the project’s code-paths.

  • KDE Frameworks 5.0: What it means for KDE

    There have been some rather interesting announcements from the KDE community that give an idea of where the desktop environment is headed. In very short, KDE Frameworks 5.0 will begin development soon!

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Default to open: The story of open source and Red Hat

  • Red Hat Seeks Wish List Items from Customers for RHEL 7

    There are strong signs that Red Hat is approaching the next wave of its considerably successful business story. As CEO Jim Whitehurst has noted, virtualization is emerging as a big concern for the company going forward, as it increasingly squares off with VMware in that space. And recently, although his position is arguable, he contended that both the PC and fat client operating systems are headed for obsolescence. But let’s not forget that Red Hat is an operating system-centric company, and it can take lessons from other technology companies that have specialized in operating systems, including Microsoft and Apple. Those companies have always kept close ties with customers when it comes to additions to operating system updates, and Red Hat is taking that job seriously, too.

  • Red Hat sets up RHEL 7 discussion forum

  • Red Hat Expands Customer Involvement in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Development

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • How do I benefit from Ubuntu Pre-Install?

        I was reading the Ubuntu Forum when I saw a thread called Ubuntu-certified hardware is not accurate ! This grabbed my attention.

        The main issue seemed to be that the user that started the thread wanted to know if he should buy the Lenovo X220 or not. He had looked around and seen that the system is Certified (pre-install only) for 10.10 but found several user comments in the web pointing at problems with stock Ubuntu.

      • Bisigi Themes Add Ubuntu 11.04 Support

      • Unity? Thanks, but no

        Tried Unity, Unity 2D and GNOME3 today. Removed each after less than 0.5h of playing with them.

      • Column: Ubuntu for Developers’ workstations

        In June this year, Eclipse, a popular IDE, published the results of a global survey of its community, which aims to show how people are using Eclipse and other open source software (OSS), and participating in open source communities. The purpose was to create a profile of how open source developers interact with the community. Incidentally, the Eclipse developer survey had the fourth highest number of respondents from India.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android Honeycomb- Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

      Yes there will be a few tweaks here and there; however there won’t be huge changes. It’s pretty cool too- seems that the OS is so complete that there aren’t any major upgrades that we have to wait for.

    • Android-x86 2.3 RC1 (Test build 20110828) is released.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • HP’s webOS may yet live (but probably not with HP)

    DigiTimes reported on Monday that Samsung Electronics, which has denied any interest in buying HP’s PC division, is “considering purchasing webOS to compete head on against Apple and Google, according to sources from notebook players.”

  • The secret weapon of the HP Touchpad: Linux

  • TouchPad longevity gets a boost from Android/Ubuntu ports

Web Browsers

• Getting the best out of your browser

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.4.3

  The Internet, August 31, 2011 – The Document Foundation (TDF) maintains the speedy pace of LibreOffice development with the announcement of version 3.4.3, intended for enterprise deployments. The new release arrives two weeks after version 3.3.4 (intended for more-conservative users) and one month after the previous release of the 3.4 family, which provides a larger feature set based on cleaner and leaner code.

• LibreOffice 3.4.3 Is Now Available for Download

CMS

• Jekyll and other static site generators are, currently, harmful to the free, open source software movement

  My blog is powered by WordPress. WordPress remains at its core a monstrous amalgamation of PHP spaghetti code. Thus, despite the fact that WordPress is free (beer+speech), easy to use, well supported, well documented, and all that jazz… it still pains my hacker sensibilities to use it. For similar reasons, a lot of hacker types are moving away from WordPress and similar blog software to static site generators like jekyll.

Healthcare

• VA Open Source Health Software Site is Open for Business

  The Veterans Affairs Department open source electronic health record software website went live today with a pitch that it will serve as the nexus for an “open source community designed to unleash innovation in electronic health record software.”

• VA open source agent set to go live

  The Veterans Affairs Department is set to make its open source agent operational tomorrow and make available the software code of various applications in the electronic health records of VA and the Defense Department.

  Users of the applications will also have a method to report back to the open source agent changes to the software.

Semi-Open Source

• Open source: Driving change in the software industry

  The subsequent development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to the hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the world’s attention. What we saw was the start of an international, industrial revolution as well as a struggle between automobile manufacturers for commercial dominance that is still fought today. As a result of greater competition for customers, and customers’ greater demand for innovation, car buyers now have an infinite number of brands, makes, models and pricing options to choose from to meet their individual needs.

Funding

• MapR makes friends of Hadoop and the enterprise, raises $20M

  Hadoop is open source software that allows companies to store data on clusters of cheaper servers and run software very quickly on top of those clusters. It organizes and prioritizes data, so often-used data is pushed to the top of the stack for easy access. Along with the organization, Hadoop uses a graphical user interface and heat maps to help data managers monitor usage and locate problems. The software also offers analytics for companies that want to watch their data to spot emerging trends.

Project Releases

• Apache HTTP Server 2.2.20 Released

Programming

• Getting started with Twisted

It’s Most Certainly Not The End of the OS

Asus Tech – You will NOT fool me Twice

This USB 3.0 Flash Drive Has 2 TB of Storage

Google and OpenDNS join forces to speed up DNS

Security

• Slow HTTP DoS vulnerability test tool

• Updated Chrome and Firefox for fraudulent Google certificate available

• Thunderbird 6.0.1 and 3.1.13 security updates now available

• Firefox 6.0.1 and 3.6.21 desktop security updates now available

• Apache patches Web server DoS vulnerability

• SSL Certificates: What’s Left to Trust?

Defence/Police/Aggression

• WikiLeaks reveals Atrocities by US forces

  US forces had committed a heinous war crime during a house raid in Iraq in 2006, wherein one man, four women, four children, and one infant were summarily executed, a State Department diplomatic cable released last week by WikiLeaks revealed.

  The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, addressed to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

  American troops had approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, a farmer living in central Iraq, to conduct a house raid in search of insurgents in March 2006.

  “It would appear that when the MNF (Multinational Forces) approached the house,” Alston wrote, “shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued.” Afterwards, “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (age 23) were killed during the raid.

  Alston’s letter reveals that a US airstrike was launched on the house presumably to destroy the evidence, but that “autopsies carried out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.”

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks cable: US expected Congress bribes in TransCo deal

  The US embassy expected money to change hands in Philippine Congress before it granted a franchise to a consortium in 2007 to operate the Philippine National Transmission Company (TransCo), a cable published by whistleblower group WikiLeaks said.

Finance

• Big Reason to Shut SEC, Start Over: William D. Cohan

  Thanks to Darcy Flynn, a longtime attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, we now have all the ammunition we need to do what should have been done years ago: terminate the SEC, with extreme prejudice, and in its place construct a new regulatory watchdog for Wall Street free of obvious conflicts of interest.

  Flynn’s courage has almost been lost in all the recent apocalyptic talk of earthquakes and hurricanes, but a few weeks back he did something remarkable. After raising concerns internally at the SEC last year — and getting nowhere — Flynn went public and alleged in a formal whistleblower complaint that for at least 17 years the SEC “followed a policy of systematically destroying documents” related to what are known as Matters Under Investigation, or MUIs, most of which were focused on possibly illicit or illegal behavior at Wall Street firms. MUIs are the first step in investigating a case that may lead to a formal SEC inquiry.

• Matt Taibbi on the SEC and Wall Street

  For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed.

• Citigroup, Goldman Big ‘Super Committee’ Donors

  Goldman Sachs(GS), Citigroup(C), JPMorgan Chase(JPM), Bank of America(BAC) and General Electric(GE) all rank in the top 10 organizations in terms of their campaign contributions to a special Congressional committee charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit, according to MapLight.org a nonpartisan organization that studies the relationship between money and politics.

• Panel tallies massive waste and fraud in wartime U.S. contracts

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Outlaws 225 – Chicken Herding (OggCamp 11 Recap)

Kernel Space

• Linux Foundation chief: ‘You are an idiot’ if you don’t give back to open source

• Kernel Log: X Server 1.11, new kernel maintenance strategy

  New Intel graphics drivers for X.org already support the Ivy Bridge family of processors that is expected to become available early next year. In future, a new Linux version will be selected on an annual basis to become a long-term kernel with two years of support. Material from LinuxCon 2011 Vancouver provides development background on such topics as USB support, KVM and Wi-Fi drivers.

• Linus Torvalds and Others on Community Burnout

  Both Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon and Ubuntu volunteer and journalist Amber Graner find that, when they deliver talks based on Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North’s The Burnout Cycle, afterwards people approach them privately to talk about their own experiences with burnout.

  Similarly, kernel hacker and Ada Initiative co-founder Valerie Aurora talks about sitting with a dozen women and technology activists and discovering that all of them were burned out, recovering from burnout, or else had been burned out in the past.

• On burnout.

• Open Ballot: What are your highlights and lowlights of the past 20 years?

• Linux-ready 4G base-station SoCs begin sampling

• Graphics Stack

  • Samsung DRM Driver Could Make It Into The Kernel

    Last week I wrote about Samsung releasing code to a new DRM driver for one of their ARM SoCs, the Exynos 4210 that’s used by the Samsung Galaxy S II and other mobile devices. It looks like this open-source kernel driver from Samsung stands a chance as being the first ARM driver to be accepted into the DRM area of the mainline Linux kernel.

Applications

• GIMP 2.7.3 adds Single Window Mode

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Simple off-site backup of a MD RAID 1 system

  • Video Tip – Finding Open IP Addresses

  • The Perfect Server – CentOS 6.0 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2]

  • Booting up stuck at “Starting Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to Quit” after ATI Driver Installation

  • How to Write syslog Daemons Which Cooperate Nicely With systemd

  • HOWTO: Linux on the Dell Inspiron Duo

  • How to kill a dead SSH session gracefully

  • Getting Information about packages in Ubuntu Linux

  • Quantifiers in Managing Repetition

• Games

  • Oil Rush is now available in the Software Center!

    According to the press release from Unigine, Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. In Oil Rush players build up defenses and upgrade oil platforms. Players progress through the game by capturing enemy platforms and oil rigs.

  • Incognito

  • Marball Odyssey Released For GNU/Linux !

    Sylvain Labbe aka Ozzy from Sunday Coders announced the GNU/Linux release of his game Marball Odyssey.

  • Flightgear 2.4 plus something cuddly and something fishy

  • SickBrick

Desktop Environments

• Big Brother Still Thinks He Knows Best

  There are folks in the world of FLOSS just as determined to sabotage their installed base. Ubuntu Unity, KDE 4.x and GNOME 3 come to mind. Perhaps those new interfaces are “better” in some ways, but the users will notice the learning curve. I don’t doubt some will not even be able to start using them because they are used to clicking on things they can see in front of them just as they have been seeing and grasping since infancy. Unnatural may be new but it’s not intuitive. Training had better be built in or it will be resisted.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Performance Boost Ahead

    Have you experienced performance issues when using KDE? If so, then you aren’t the only one. While things have been improving as KDE 4 matures, some users still have registered complaints. And one KDE hacker is trying to address them.

    Martin Gräßlin had begun working towards “rendering at 60 frames” per second. Gräßlin stated in a blog post today, “I could not imagine how a frame could take longer to render than the 16.67 msec.” But after some thought he realized where a couple of bottlenecks may be hiding.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Introducing Documents

    Many people asked me at Desktop Summit about the work I’ve been doing recently on implementing the awesome Documents designs from Jon and Jakub; so here it is, I am very happy to announce the first release of GNOME Documents. Here’s the obligatory screenshot.

Distributions

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Review: Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen”

    Aside from a few isolated instances, Mandriva generally felt quite snappy and fast. It used 400 MB of RAM at idle, which I think is about average for KDE 4.
    KWin desktop effects worked well after I enabled them. The only issue I had was that there was no keyboard shortcut to directly change the virtual workspace; I had to zoom out to see the whole desktop cube to change workspaces, which is a little more cumbersome and time-consuming. What I mean is there’s no shortcut like CTRL+ALT+LEFT to switch to the workspace immediately to the left. For some reason I also couldn’t find any way to set such shortcuts to my liking.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat goes for OpenStack’s community jugular

    Red Hat has chosen to announce its new cloud management software Aeolus with a fresh spin of being more community-oriented than Aeolus’ competitor, OpenStack.

  • Red Hat’s Aeolus to ‘out-Linux’ Rackspace’s cloud

    Red Hat is leading a Fedora-like effort to succeed where OpenStack has struggled in building an open-source cloud founded on broad community input.

    Red Hat’s engineers are building Aeolus, a software suite to spin up, manage and deploy applications from physical and virtual servers to any public or private cloud.

  • Why Jim Whitehurst is Right to See VMware as the Competition

    Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is never one to mince words, and is often full of surprises. Recently, although his position is arguable, he contended that both the PC and fat client operating systems are headed for obsolescence. Now, he has told ZDNet which company he forecasts will be Red Hat’s primary competitor by the year 2016: VMware. There are some excellent reasons to believe that forecast.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Begins to Take Shape

    The next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux isn’t scheduled for general availability for another couple of years, making this the right time for Red Hat to get started on its development.

    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 is now starting to take shape as the Linux vendor begins the multi-year process that will ultimately result in a new enterprise distribution release. RHEL 6 was officially released in November of 2010 and RHEL 7 is currently scheduled for release in 2013.

• Debian Family

  • Vaio tips for Debian Squeeze

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Picturing the end of the road for another cycle

      • 10 Reasons Why I’m Done With Windows. (or why Ubuntu Linux is now ready for primetime!)

        2. Ubuntu is lovely. Yep there, I’ve said it. Linux for the desktop is now a great product. Not a perfect product yet, but great. How do I know? Well I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on the wife’s machine and it worked flawlessly out of the box. No having to configure networks, fiddle with arcane video driver settings or anything like that. It just worked. OK, there was one glitch later on, where her HP inkjet printer driver was incorrectly installed (so I had to hunt around on the forums to find the fix) but I said it wasn’t perfect. And even so it easily compares with the best that Windows has to offer in terms of ease of installation. Surprised? Yeah me too. Last time I looked Ubuntu was a pain. Now it’s not. ‘Nuff said?

      • Series: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – Part 1

      • 44 Community Wallpapers Shortlisted for Ubuntu 11.10

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 230

      • Quick Look: Ubuntu 11.10 Beta

        In two days, September 1st, Canonical will unleash to the world the first Beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, due for final release on October 13th, 2011.

        With this occasion we thought it will be a great idea to inform our Ubuntu readers about some of the interesting features that will be included in this first Beta release of Ubuntu 11.10.

        We also remind everyone that just like the previous release (Ubuntu 11.04), this version of the Ubuntu operating system will have two Beta releases; the second one will be availble on September 22nd.

      • Don’t Hate the Playa…Hate the Game!

        So I was reading a recent article in NetworkWorld where once again, the “Canonical doesn’t give back” bullshit is raised. The author seems to take a couple “jabs” by bringing up Greg K-H’s infamous plumbers rant talk, the fact that Microsoft is in the top 10 of kernel contributors (and Canonical isn’t even top 30), and even says Canonical is unprofitable as “general understanding”…nice, thanks! Thankfully, it seems from the comments, that people see this as the sensationalized, we-need-click-through-traffic journalism it is. I could go into an epic long posting of how wrong the basis for the “doesn’t give back” argument is, or take jabs at other distros profitability, how they got there or why they were sold…but I won’t. Instead, I’d like to issue a bit of urban education on those of you who seem to hate Canonical/Ubuntu because it succeeds where others have failed.

Devices/Embedded

• £15 Raspberry Pi survives Quake

  The UK-based charity Raspberry Pi, which hopes to supply schools worldwide with ultra-low-cost computers, has shown off the current version of its $25 computer running Quake 3.

  The device itself is only about the size of a credit card and is designed to connect to a PC, monitor, or a touchscreen to create a cheap tablet.

• Raspberry Pi $25 PC runs Quake III

• Linaro released in Android and Ubuntu images, supports Linux 3.0

  Linaro has released a new version of its Linaro open source Linux tools, kernel, and middleware stack for ARM Cortex-based consumer electronics. Based on the Linux 3.0.3 kernel and GCC 4.6 toolchain, Linaro 11.08 offers Android and Ubuntu images for the BeagleBoard-xM, Pandaboard, Snowball, and Samsung Origen development boards, plus a new build for the Freescale i.MX53 board.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Motorola Announces the Pro+

    • Android sets records again, as Windows Phone 7 languishes, comScore says

    • Samsung Releases Kernel Source Code For Verizon LTE Galaxy Tab 10.1, Let The Overclocking Commence

    • NEC bringing world’s thinnest smartphone to the U.S.

    • Motorola business phone offers Android 2.3

      Motorola Mobility announced an enhanced version of its QWERTY-enabled Motorola Pro phone destined for Europe and Asia. The Motorola Pro+ moves up to Android 2.3, is considerably lighter, and offers improved 640 x 480 resolution and Corning Gorilla glass for its 3.1-inch screen, but carries over a 1GHz processor, a five-megapixel camera, and business-oriented features.

    • Samsung Nexus/DROID Prime Cruises Through Bluetooth SIG with a CDMA Radio

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • HP to Manufacture More TouchPads

    Hewlett-Packard said it will manufacture more TouchPads in response to “stunning” demand following the company’s decision to discontinue the tablets.
    “Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand,” Mark Budgell, an HP spokesman, wrote in a blog post. The site appears to be overloaded and is currently unavailable, but the post has been reposted elsewhere online.

  • Seven lessons from the HP Touchpad fire sale

  • HP Could Revive The TouchPad, Says Former webOS VP

    Hold on to something tight, webOS geeks. Your favorite tablet, which I can only assume is the TouchPad, might not be the last webOS tablet incarnation from HP. An HP executive and former webOS VP recently stated that the company could resurrect the TouchPad stating to Reuters, “tablet computing is a segment of the market that’s relevant, absolutely.” But let’s hope that HP’s Personal Systems Group head Todd Bradley remembers the TouchPad’s rough path to success.

  • Toshiba launches AT100 Android tablet in Europe

    Toshiba has launched its first tablet powered by the “Honeycomb” branch of Google’s open source Android mobile operating system in Europe. Like most Honeycomb-based tablets, the AT100 series tablet has a 1200×800 10.1-inch touch screen display and a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 250 processor with 1 GB of RAM.

  • Barnes & Noble’s Nook revenue up 140 percent

    Barnes & Noble’s traditional business model is lagging, but its digital focus has helped buoy its financial performance, the company said today.

    During its fiscal first quarter that ended July 30, B&N generated $1.4 billion in sales, representing a 2 percent increase over the same period last year. Its slight revenue increase becomes more impressive when one considers that the core of its operation–book sales in stores–were down during the period. In fact, the company reported that store sales decreased 3 percent year over year to $1 billion.

  • Two Reasons Why an Amazon Tablet Could Compete with the iPad

  • Can Linux Compete in Tablets?

    For a mere $199, Linux fans can buy this little netbook that offers a number of things not found with tablets. Running MeeGo, the X101 does lack the Ethernet and VGA port found on the bulkier netbooks already out there. Because the target is those considering tablets, this netbook is lacking anything that is going to add bulk to its form.

  • [Exclusive] Toshiba’s Sexy New Tablet To Be Called The Excite

    Back in April, before Toshiba had officially revealed the name of its upcoming tablet, one Babyfacemagee did some serious detective work to figure out that it would be called the Thrive – and ended up being dead-on. Fast-forward a few months, and we’re hearing rumors of a new, slimmer, sexier Galaxy Tab-fighter from Toshiba.

  • Huawei Honor leaks into the wild, prepares for ascension to the flagship throne?

SGI Dives Into Open-Source CFD Software

The company, a longtime technical computing leader often credited with putting 3D graphics workstations on the map, has purchased OpenCFD Ltd., which provides open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. OpenCFD has a large, very active user base that spans the commercial engineering, science, and public sector markets. The OpenFOAM CFD software comprises more than 80 solver and 170 utility applications. It’s used for solving everything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions to turbulence and heat transfer problems and engineering challenges around solid dynamics and electromagnetics.

New Kickstarter Project: iEmu – An Open-Source iOS Emulator

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox for Tablets

    Mozilla Mobile Team is working tirelessly to make Firefox awesome on tablets, and I wanted to take a moment to share some of the design decisions we’ve made with the UI thus far. Firefox for tablets is an evolution of its phone based predecessor, with some added enhancements that take advantage of a tablet’s larger screen size.

  • Why Firefox Could Own Browser-Based Gaming

    Google and Microsoft are heavily pushing the creation of HTML5 games for Chrome as well as IE9 and IE10. However, the opportunity is much greater for Mozilla, which isn’t nearly as active in this space as its rivals.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Wikileaks Cable Offers New Insights Into Oracle-Sun Deal

• Oracle v. Google – Not a Good Day for Google on the Lindholm Emails

  Google took a hit on the Lindholm email issue when the magistrate entered an order 354 [PDF] favored by Oracle requiring Google to (re)produce the emails. Google indicated its intention to appeal the ruling and to withhold production until such time as Judge Alsup makes a final determination, but the magistrate stated such delay was improper and ordered Google to produce the emails immediately.

• LibreOffice user research – Results vol.2

CMS

• Alert: What’s Coming for Open Source CMS in September 2011

Funding

• Exclusive: Hadoop Companies Multiply as MapR Lands $20M in Funding

Openness/Sharing

• Open source Wi-Fi aims for affordable connections

• Harnessing citizen participation via social media and open source tools

• Open Data

  • How to create sustainable open data projects with purpose

    There has been much hand-wringing of late about whether the explosion of government-run app contests over the last couple of years has generated any real value for the public. With only one of the Apps for Democracy projects still running, it’s easy to see the entire movement being written off as an overly optimistic fad.

• Open Hardware

  • Mobile DRAM Market Hits $2 Billion Threshold in Q1

  • HP upstream suppliers suffered from piled up TouchPad components

    As first-tier PC brand vendor Hewlett-Packard (HP) has recently halted all its TouchPad projects, upstream suppliers are currently suffering from the component inventory, which is prepared for the production of the upcoming TouchPad including the 7-inch model, according to sources from upstream component players.

Standards/Consortia

• EU parliaments consider open source XML tools for legal documents

  The OpenOffice-based Bungeni was presented at the UK parliament in March this year. Those attending were from the Parliament ICT, Hansard Section, Information Management and Table Departments. The main goal of the meeting was to assess ways in which the UK parliament can provide technical assistance and support to the Bungeni project. The project states that one of its aims is to make parliaments more open to citizens, the name of the project itself conveying this idea: “Bungeni” is the Kiswahili word for “inside Parliament”.

The end of the OS is nigh

Gone with Windows 7 : RunAs for Explorer

But, with Windows 7, suddenly this no longer works. Running Explorer with RunAs, simply opens a new instance of Explorer as the currently logged in user. Back when we started migrating users from XP to 7, we searched and searched for the solution for Windows 7 that works like XP. But, even today, none has been found. The workaround? To use Switch User and log in to the PC as an administrator account, and run Explorer. But, the drawback is when trying to switch back to the regular user that is logged in, their password needs to be typed in. This is counterproductive if the user is not at their desk while the admin is troubleshooting.

Developer Q&A: Syllable OS

Health/Nutrition

• Monsanto Interests Guide U.S. Diplomacy, WikiLeaks Cables Show

  We know Monsanto and other biotech giants have been pushing genetically modified crops around the globe, but new diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks last week make it clear how entangled our government is in corporate agricultural interests.

Security

• The Apache Web Server’s Not-So-Secret Weakness

• Akamai employee tried to sell secrets to Israel

  Starting in September 2007, Elliot Doxer played an elaborate 18-month-long game of cloak-and-dagger with James Cromer, a man he thought was an Israeli intelligence officer. He handed over pages and pages of confidential data to Cromer, providing a list of Akamai’s clients and contracts, information about the company’s security practices, and even a list of 1,300 Akamai employees, including mobile numbers, departments and e-mail addresses.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• In Spain, police violence against press sparks concern

  Spanish press associations have expressed concern about recent episodes of police violence against journalists covering demonstrations against Pope Benedict’s four-day visit to Madrid and protests staged as part of the anti-corruption 15-M movement.

  Freelance photographer Daniel Nuevo was covering August 18 protests in Madrid against the Catholic Church-sponsored World Youth Days, which featured Benedict XVI and attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. Grassroots church groups and civic organizations organized the demonstrations to denounce the “waste” incurred by the celebration, which is partly financed by government and corporate sponsors.

• Bahrain king pardons protest abusers

  King Hamad of Bahrain said Sunday he was pardoning all those who insulted him during a month of Shiite-led pro-democracy protests, in a bid to bring normality back to the Gulf kingdom.

  He also said that civilians that were being tried in military courts for their participation in the protest which was crushed in mid-March, will eventually be handled by civil courts, while those who were dismissed from their jobs will be reinstated.

• Thugs break hands of Syria’s top cartoonist for Assad lampoon

  Syria’s most renowned political cartoonist, who recently drew a sketch comparing President Bashar al-Assad to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, had both his hands broken in an attack yesterday by masked gunmen who dragged the 60-year-old out of his car.

  Ali Ferzat, whose satirical art once drew death threats from Saddam Hussein, was treated in hospital. He was attack as he left his Damascus studio at four o’clock yesterday morning.

• The City: Beijing

  Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their neighbors are; they don’t trust you. The other city is one of desperation. I see people on public buses, and I see their eyes, and I see they hold no hope. They can’t even imagine that they’ll be able to buy a house. They come from very poor villages where they’ve never seen electricity or toilet paper.

  Every year millions come to Beijing to build its bridges, roads, and houses. Each year they build a Beijing equal to the size of the city in 1949. They are Beijing’s slaves. They squat in illegal structures, which Beijing destroys as it keeps expanding. Who owns houses? Those who belong to the government, the coal bosses, the heads of big enterprises. They come to Beijing to give gifts—and the restaurants and karaoke parlors and saunas are very rich as a result.

Cablegate

• US forces repeatedly ‘commit crimes’ in Iraq

  The chief executive of the Cordoba Foundation says a WikiLeaks report which accuses the U.S. forces of killing ten people in cold blood in Iraq in 2006 is just the tip of the iceberg.

• WikiLeaks Down Under

  There’s been a sudden explosion of interest in Wikileaks cables down under, after every single one of the US diplomatic cables on Australia was suddenly released online to the public this week. While hardened Aussie journalists insist there are no major “bombshells,” plenty of intriguing new stories are now exploding onto the media landscape. Overall, the US cables reveal a sovereign nation absurdly subservient to US foreign policy, with Australian ministers queuing to discuss confidential party deliberations with their friends in the US embassy.

• ‘WikiLeaks docs embarrassing, not perilous’

  Israeli experts downplayed the security risk posed by the leaked documents, which name alleged Israeli, Iranian and Jordanian intelligence agents, but said that WikiLeaks has definitely taken a more brazen stand vis-א-vis Washington.

• Malaysia judgement looms amid Wikleaks furore

  A wealth of Wikileaks revelations have embarrassed Labor and the Coalition, while a High Court ruling could further damage Labor.

• A response to recent comments by Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland.

  Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland bemoans having his department being publicly caught out, ratting out, 23 Australians to the US embassy without due process.

• Attorney-General Robert McClelland has attacked a WikiLeaks list of Australians linked to al-Qa’ida

  ATTORNEY-GENERAL Robert McClelland has accused WikiLeaks of “incredibly irresponsible” conduct after the self-styled whistleblower group released a cable that named 23 Australians accused by ASIO of having contact with Yemeni terror group al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula.

• Wikileaks Reveals The Strange Story Of 120 Chinese Children Who Disappeared in Stockholm

  A recently released WikiLeaks cable from 2006 reveals 120 Chinese children vanished from Swedish immigration centers within a period of 18 months.

  The Embassy of Stockholm believes the disappearing acts were managed by organized traffickers residing in several European countries.

  The children — ages 10 to 18 — arrived in Sweden unaccompanied and, oftentimes, without travel documents, to seek political asylum. They all claimed they had relatives who were victims of religious persecution and seemed “very professionally coached” during questioning, according to a Swedish official.

• Ten More WikiLeaks You Missed

• Cables Reveal 2006 Summary Execution of Civilian Family in Iraq

  Women and children had their hands tied behind their back and were shot in the head in house raid, which was covered up by the military

• Terror alert on local women

  SIX women living in Australia have been named by American intelligence agencies as potential targets of an al-Qaeda plot to recruit women for terror attacks, according to a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Is China’s nuclear power risky?

  By settling for cheap technology, China has “vastly increased” the risk of a nuclear accident, claim diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, The Guardian newspaper reports.

  The U.S. Embassy cables from August 2008, released by WikiLeaks, warned that China’s choice of technology would be a century old by the time dozens of China’s reactors come to the end of their lifespan.

• CLIMATE SHOCK: UC-Berkeley Scientist, Dr. John Harte, Puts the World on Notice

  Dr. John Harte is based at the University of California-Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management. With a PhD in physics, his research encompasses the most serious biochemical and climate-ecosystem feedback processes of global warming and theoretical ecology. He has been at the forefront, for decades, of some of the most important studies pertaining to the biological impacts – particularly in alpine environments – of climate change, as well as humanity’s role in the disruption of critical ecosystems.

Finance

• U.S. Cities Criminalize Homelessness, Violate Human Rights Agreements

  The challenges poor and homeless Americans often face accessing clean drinking water and restroom facilities violate international human rights standards, according to a report issued by a United Nations investigator this month.

  Catarina de Albuquerque, a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, visited the United States in late February at the invitation of the U.S. government.

• Matt Taibbi on the Explosive Investigation Revealing the SEC’s Cover-Up of Wall Street’s Crimes

  MATT TAIBBI: Under the authority of the enforcement division. Now, this—there’s no legal authority to do this. And, you know, apparently, according to my sources, this was illegal. You can’t just unilaterally shred any government document, no matter how insignificant. And these are significant law enforcement investigatory files that they were unilaterally destroying.

  AMY GOODMAN: Talk about just what the SEC does, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  MATT TAIBBI: Well, they police the financial markets. They’re the main cops on the beat on Wall Street. It’s basically a two-tiered structure. It’s—you know, for Wall Street crime, it’s the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York are the two main sort of policing organizations that prevent things like insider trading, market manipulation, securities fraud. They also make sure that all publicly traded corporations—they have to make regular disclosures, you know, every year, and they make sure that those disclosures are accurate, that you don’t have an Enron situation, for instance, where a company is reporting profits that they don’t have and hiding losses that they do have. The SEC is supposed to be the number one cop on the beat preventing all of this stuff. And if they’re not doing their job, which they apparently haven’t been, you know, what results is a situation like 2008, where just corruption overwhelms the markets, and you have this explosion of, you know, a lack of confidence all around the globe.

• First Federal Reserve Audit Reveals Trillions in Secret Bailouts

  The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations.

• How Rick Perry became a millionaire

  He’s very good at making investments that look remarkably like examples of blatant corruption.

Censorship

• Apple Has Finally Pulled Financial Times From iOS

  It is a blow to the FT, whose apps had processed subscription transactions independently. Last year, 10 percent of its new digital subscriptions were taken out on iPads. But the publisher says its model is premised on owning data about customers that goes through along with transactions. This was more important to it than Apple’s 30 percent take, CEO John Ridding told me recently.

• Thailand cracks down on ‘insults’ to royal family

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Xbox 360 reset glitch hack, Xbox 360 Linux on its way?

This means it’s now possible to run homebrew & backups on all Xbox 360s, no matter which firmware is loaded, in the past this was only possible on Xbox 360s with a certain firmware-level. This also opens the possibility to run quite easily Linux on your Xbox 360!

As Linux Moves Into a New Decade, Companies Look for Linux Talent

The Linux community has been united around the globe over the last few weeks in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Linux. As we head into a new decade, many of The Linux Foundation’s members are looking for Linux talent to help advance the OS for everything from cloud computing to virtualization and super computing to embedded development and mobile computing.

Desktop

• The Linux Setup – Dusty Phillips, Developer

  Dusty Phillips certainly falls into the power user category and his answers reflect that status. Dusty runs a tight system that’s optimized for his workflow. And it’s fascinating that he does so much with just one machine.

Kernel Space

• Six Months With OpenBenchmarking.org

  There’s a variety of features and other enhancements to OpenBenchmarking.org that are still forthcoming. I’ve been talking about several of them over the past six months that I look forward to implementing as soon as time allows.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Graphics Stack, Requirements For Ubuntu 11.10

    If you’re thinking about trying out the Ubuntu 11.10 Beta release later in the week or are beginning to wonder about what the graphics driver options for Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” when released in October, here’s a collection of information you’ll want to know about the graphics drivers to be found in Ubuntu 11.10.

    [...]

    The Linux 3.1 kernel isn’t making it out for a few more weeks and just before the final release, so Canonical is playing it safe and sticking to the Linux 3.0 kernel although the still-in-development release does provide some nice improvements to the DRM graphics drivers and other areas of the kernel. Users can manually upgrade to the Linux 3.1 kernel and it should be relatively safe.

Applications

• NUT-Nutrition Software

  If you’re watching your weight, monitoring your health and dietary habits, or simply unconvinced by flashy food labels that don’t tell the whole story, this is the project for you. According to the Web site:

• Double Commander 0.5, Released (Dual Panel File Manager)

  Double Commander is a very interesting cross-platform file manager inspired by Total Commander (it even supports Total Commander plugins). It uses two panels side by side and comes with a huge feature list: tabbed interface, multi-rename tool, embedded terminal, internal text editor and file viewer, browse archives (ZIP, TGZ, LZMA, RPM, RAR, DEB, etc.), extended search and is fully customizable.

• Gwibber The Ultimate Microblogging Client

• The Perfect Tools for the Linux Geek’s Blog

  You have decided it is time to start your blog, and you are not just any person. You are a Linux geek, so which is the best platform for your blog?

• Proprietary

  • iEmu Aims To Emulate iOS On Android, Windows, and Linux

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Installing Fedora 15 on the Thinkpad T520

  • Using An Android Smartphone As A WLAN Hotspot

  • Installing Proftpd with MySQL in Ubuntu Linux

  • Howto- Configuring BIND master and slave DNS servers

  • QEMU—Part 3

  • USEless flag: static-libs

  • Generating Web Charts with Gnuplot and Web Scripting

  • Restore DELETE Key For Moving Files To Trash In Ubuntu 11.10 / Fedora 15 [Quick Tip]

  • Custom kernels in Ubuntu & Debian – how, when and why

  • How to use Conky for automatic system notification and administration

  • How to use Conky for automatic system notification and administration

• Games

  • Shiny new UI in Empathy 3.2

Desktop Environments

• Linux desktop progress: Innovation vs. power-user backlash

  Recently word spread like wildfire across the net that Linus Torvalds, Father of Linux himself, had proclaimed GNOME 3 an “Unholy Mess.” The hatred for all things GNOME 3 didn’t stop there. Pundits, grand-standers, tinkerers, and media-types alike went on and on about how GNOME 3 had become nothing more than a failure. At the same time, Ubuntu Unity had been given a similar title as a nearly worthless desktop.

  Let’s step back in time a year or so ago when KDE 4 came out of the starting gate. Yes it was hampered by a complete rewrite, but like it’s GNOME brethren, KDE was lambasted as too buggy to ever work correctly.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • New ‘Cool’ Developments

    “World must be crazy” say fellow hackers when realized that one day I left Samsung’s Linux Mobile Lab to work on Smart Refrigerators.

    But well, it’s still in the same company, the same city. Yet this does not mean I am stopping to dig in Linux stuff for living: we’re talking about Linux fridges.

    However, there is something even less expected: these are full four-doors Qt fridges. I dare to say, except for cars or airplanes with infotainment modules, for me these cooling monsters are one of the biggest ‘Qt devices’ available on the consumer market.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Important GNOME Shell, Mutter Updates

    Owen Taylor announced a new version of the GNOME Shell and Mutter releases this afternoon for what will be incorporated into the GNOME 3.2 desktop. While it’s late in the development cycle with the final GNOME 3.2 release coming next month and the beta release being set for Wednesday, the Mutter 3.1.90 carries two important changes along with prominent changes to the GNOME Shell.

Distributions

• New Distribution: Dream Studio Introduced

  Lost in all the news of and attention paid to Mandriva 2011, a new distribution was added to the Distrowatch database. This Ubuntu-based distribution is designed to provide users the means to “create stunning graphics, captivating videos, inspiring music, and professional websites.” Version 11.04 was released the other day, so let’s take a peek.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2011 arrives with Systemd

    After several months of delays, the developers have released Mandriva 2011. The distribution includes Linux kernel version 2.6.38.7 and X.org 7.6 with X Server 1.10.3. Systemd has replaced the traditional SysVinit in version 2011.

  • How to customize Mandriva 2011

  • Mandriva 2011 Linux Release Finally Comes

    Mandriva 2011.0 also introduces the PiTiVi video editor, replaces DigiKam with the Shotwell photo manager, incorporates KNetworkManager, and guts out KDE’s Amarok for the Clementine music player instead. KMail has also been ditched for Mozilla Thunderbird.

  • Mandriva Desktop 2011 in round figures

    * more than 22600 packages in repositories;

• Gentoo Family

  • Gentoo: GNOME Keyring And Subversion

  • Quick Look at Sabayon 6 Continued (KDE)

    This spin of Sabayon on the other hand, although the better one, feels average when compared to other KDE 4 distributions like Kubuntu, Kanotix, Debian and in particular when compared to SimplyMEPIS which is just unreal. SalixOS does KDE 4 faster with only 512 MB ram. Kongoni is snappier and also allows to compile updates and any additions via its ports system. So does Slackware with sbopkg. So choose your poison, if for whatever reason you like Sabayon more than any other distribution you’re going to use it anyway, regardless the resource usage and speed. (Slightly updated 30/08/11 15:03)

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Google Won’t Pwn Me!

      • Ubuntu-powered Tablet Computers: Will they work or won’t they?

        With the iPad, Apple started a new revolution in the world of technology. Swarms of Apple-fans and tech enthusiasts ran to the Apple store just to grab, what was then, simply a bigger version of the iPhone. While the iPad may have been a big success worldwide, it has undoubtedly touted its competitors to come up with tablet computers of their own.

        Although essentially every other software company (except Microsoft of course) has been relying on the good old Android, there have been some whispers about the porting of Ubuntu to these sleek gadgets. What’s more, a Chinese company is already working on a fully functional Ubuntu-powered tablet computer.

      • [Ubuntu In the Wild] Knitted Ubuntu Hat

      • Is This Ubuntu 11.10′s Default Wallpaper?

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Fair Use Face-Off, Canadian Edition

      As professors and librarians in the United States await a judge’s ruling on a copyright lawsuit by publishers against Georgia State University over its e-reserves practices, a similarly themed battle in Canada has seen a number of high-profile research universities walk out on licensing agreements with that country’s major copyright clearinghouse.

      More than a dozen Canadian universities — including heavyweights such as the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary and York University — have said they will not renew their agreements with Access Copyright, a government-created nonprofit that sells licenses to its library of copyright-cleared content.

    • Best Free Android News Aggregators

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Fujitsu’s Android tablet is ready for bathtub readers

    Fujitsu and Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo will next month release an Android tablet you could use in the bathtub, featuring a 10.1 inch touchscreen and dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4430 processor, according to the Datacider.com website. Meanwhile, Toshiba’s poised to release a slimmer followup to its chunky Thrive, according to a Notebook Italia report.

  • Amazon.com Tablet Could Ship 5 Million Units

    Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) could sell anywhere between 3 million and 5 million Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android tablets in the fourth quarter, making it far and away the most successful slate provider on the open-source platform, according to Forrester Research.

  • Fujitsu Prepping Rugged Honeycomb Tablet

    Fujitsu, known for making lower-end computers and other devices, is apparently ready to throw its hat into the Android tablet game, with the Fujitsu “Arrows Tab,” a rugged Honeycomb tablet. They’ve announced the 10.1-inch device, and it’s set to launch next month on NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese carrier. The tablet could have HSPA, UMTS, and LTE connectivity, as well as GSM and GPRS capabilities, for roaming and such. The Arrows Tab will also be packing a TI IMAP 4430 1GHz dual-core processor, so it won’t be slow by any means.

  • Toshiba Thrive Review

    One of the biggest obstacles Toshiba faces with the Thrive is that the company has no Android presence to help the company gain a foothold. They have no track record of Android phones or tablets to speak of and nothing reputable to bring to the table. At $429 the 16GB version is roughly $70 less than its Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 counterpart. Is it worth paying the extra money for Samsung’s 10-inch tablet? That depends on what’s most important to you. Do you want a functional tablet with great hardware and function? Or do you need to look cool and hip with the slimmest, sexiest tablet on the market?

  • As PCs Wane, Companies Look to Tablets

Open Source for America Awards

OSFA recently celebrated its second anniversary and would once again like to recognize some of the individuals, projects and deployments that support OSFA’s mission.

Web Browsers

• Extreme tab browsing

  I have a pathological use of browser tabs: I use a lot of them. A lot is probably an understatement. We could say I use them as bookmarks of things I need to track. A couple weeks ago, I was saying I had around two hundred tabs opened. I now actually have much more.

  It affected startup until I discovered that setting the browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs pref to 0 was making things much better by only loading tabs when they are selected. This preference has/will become browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand. However, since I only start my main browser once a day, while other applications start and while I begin to read email, I hadn’t noticed that this was still heavily affecting startup time: about:startup tells me reaching the sessionRestored state takes seven seconds, even on a warm startup.

• Shiny new UI in Empathy 3.2

  *

  One of our main goals during this developement cycle was to continue improving Empathy’s user experience by re-designing different parts of the UI. To do so our Empathy team at Collabora worked closely with designers from the awesome GNOME Design Team.

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 6: A Firefox too far? (Review)

  • Mozilla, Firefox Criticized for a Pestilence of Bugs

  • Web Browser Grand Prix VI: Firefox 6, Chrome 13, Mac OS X Lion

  • Thunderbird 7 enters beta

    Mozilla has released the first beta of version 7.0 of its open source Thunderbird news and email client. The Beta channel release adds the ability to print a summary of selected messages and brings several improvements to the user interface. Other changes include updates to attachment handling and various Gecko platform fixes.

SaaS

• Hortonworks looks to grow Hadoop ecosystem

  As big data becomes more and more top of mind, a number of new companies have popped up to support Hadoop, the leading open-source platform for data-intensive distributed applications. One of the newer entrants is Hortonworks, a company spun out of Yahoo, with a $15 million-plus cash infusion from both Yahoo and Benchmark Capital.

• SOA in 2011: Enterprise IT Increasingly Open to Open Source Integration

• Open Source As A Cloud Weapon

  Citrix acquired Cloud.Com in July. As an independent entity Cloud.Com had been holding some software proprietary. Now, to win new business, Citrix is opening the entire code base.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Cable: US pressured EU to approve Oracle-Sun merger

  The US Government met with European competition officials to lobby on behalf of Oracle during its purchase of Sun Microsystems, according to leaked diplomatic cables.

  The cables, released this week by whistleblowing site Wikileaks, reveal that the Obama administration had monitored the European Union’s investigation into the competition issues that could arise from the merger and tried to convince them to let the deal go ahead.

  The EU had investigated the merger due to concerns for the future of Java and the open source MySQL database.

Healthcare

• VA, DoD take next step to open source EHR

  The Veterans Affairs Department is set to make its open source agent operational Tuesday and make available the software code of various applications in the electronic health records of VA and the Defense Department.

  Users of the applications will also have a method to report back to the open source agent changes to the software.

BSD

• GhostBSD: not “just another BSD”

  This article continues series of reviews of non-Linux operating systems which you can find existing. Another big family of OSes is based on BSD core. PCBSD, BSDanywhere, FreeSBIE… you can read more about them. It’s time to start our today’s adventure.

  [...]

  Forum, Documentation and FAQ sections are pretty much empty on official site. I have not found any information about LiveUSB creation process for GhostBSD in the Internet either.
  Finally, I decided to look at DVD-RW option. This means the test could only be carried out on Toshiba L500 laptop. Expectedly, it would be a hard task for BSD since not every Linux distribution worked fine on that laptop so far. This laptop has Realtek 8191 WiFi card which is not the most popular among free open source software developers. But let’s talk about this later.

Public Services/Government

• Open source is illegal?

  While the Slovak Republic is slowly moving forward on the issue of open licenses, Romania appears to have taken a step backwards. The Romanian Ministry of Internal Affairs recently banned open source solutions from a public tender of almost 3 milion euro due to ‘internal and European interoperability requirements’. The tender specifically says “All versions of software that are part of the offer may not be published under a ‘free software license’ – GPL or similar”.

Standards/Consortia

• The OGC and OpenMI Association to advance computer modelling standards

Syllable OS developer interview: Building a better operating system

Microsoft bashes VMware at VMworld, again

In what has become an annual tradition, Microsoft celebrated the start of the VMworld show in Las Vegas this week with more satirical bashing of VMware. This year Microsoft launched a Web site called VMlimited in which it likens VMware to a guy who still thinks it’s circa 1977. However, Microsoft’s viewpoint doesn’t jive with the news of new partnerships and wares streaming out of the VMworld show this year.

Disney factory faces probe into sweatshop suicide claims

Disney’s best-selling Cars toys are being made in a factory in China that uses child labour and forces staff to do three times the amount of overtime allowed by law, according to an investigation.

One worker reportedly killed herself after being repeatedly shouted at by bosses. Others cited worries over poisonous chemicals. Disney has now launched its own investigation.

It is claimed some of the 6,000 employees have to work an extra 120 hours every month to meet demand from western shops for the latest toys.

Security

• Debian patches Apache bug, upstream yet to react

Defence/Police/Aggression

• 83 Died in U.S.-Guatemala Syphilis Experiments: “We’re talking about intentional deception.”

  It made headlines when historian Susan M. Reverby of Wellesley College discovered a decades-old program run from by the U.S. Public Health Service’s studies in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. That’s because the researchers deliberately inoculated subjects with syphilis in order to study sexually transmitted disease, and they did so without informed consent for the procedure.

• Warrantless Surveillance Memos Stay Classified

  The Justice Department is refusing to release legal memos the George W. Bush administration used to justify his warrantless surveillance program, one of the most contentious civil liberties issues during the Republican president’s time in office.

  In responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the department is withholding two legal analyses by then-government lawyer John Yoo, and is revealing just eight sentences from a third Yoo memo dated Nov. 2, 2001. That memo is at least 21 pages long.

• Another ‘Collateral Murder’ Incident Highlighted in the WikiLeaks Cables

  The communication logs show the admirable but futile efforts of UN Special Rapporteurs to gain answers and information on horrific incidents of torture and possible war crimes or crimes against humanity. The incidents Special Rapporteurs are seeking information about are not necessarily unknown, but what makes them significant is how the US has done little if not nothing to address and investigate the killings of journalists in the Iraq War.

• Fears grow over Britain’s last inmate at Guantanamo Bay

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks: Embassy’s “Privatization Update” Shows Shock Doctrine in Action in Haiti

  IGOH refers to Interim Government of Haiti, the unelected government installed after a US-backed coup ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

• Apple reportedly assembled anti-counterfeit team in 2008 to combat fakes

  CNN is reporting that recent Wikileaks cables have revealed that Apple assembled an anti-counterfeit team in 2008 to combat counterfeited iPhones and iPod touches. Apple’s early plans to attack Chinese counterfeits were to go after retailers and street vendors, work with police to raid manufacturing facilities, and to go after online retailers.

• Timeline: Daniel Domscheit-Berg

  This is the story of Daniel Berg aka Daniel Schmitt aka Daniel Domscheit-Berg, one of the many collaborators with WikiLeaks in the ‘nascent period’ up to but not including the big releases of 2010.

  Daniel was an employee of the US storage giant EDS in Rüsselheim Germany when he heard about WikiLeaks. Daniel’s not a programmer – and certainly not a hacker – but seemed to ‘dabble’ in political topics such as ‘anarchy’ and transparency.

  But we’re getting ahead of our story. The following data was culled over the past few months when the opportunity (and the inclination) came to research Daniel’s bizarre life and relationship with WikiLeaks and the website’s founder Julian Assange. All items are referenced online save Domscheit’s own book.

• WikiLeaks: Russian Foreign Ministry ‘Bastion’ of Sexism and Low Pay

Privacy

• Child Pornography Bill Makes Privacy Experts Skittish

  The bill requires all Internet service providers to save their customers’ IP addresses — or online identity numbers — for a year.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • ACTA

    • If ACTA Is Approved In The US, It May Open The Door For The President To Regularly Ignore Congress On International Agreements

      On of the sneakier parts of ACTA is that the White House has insisted from the beginning that the document is not a binding treaty. Instead, it insists that ACTA is merely an “executive agreement.” Of course, the only real difference is that an executive agreement doesn’t require the Senate to ratify it. Basically, the US is calling it an executive agreement so that the administration can sign on without any oversight or scrutiny on the treaty. The Europeans, in the meantime, never got the “ix-nay on the inding-bay eaty-tray” notice from the US folks, and have been happily declaring ACTA a binding treaty as it clearly is.

      However, many legal experts have noted that this raises serious constitutional questions, as the Constitution simply does not allow this kind of agreement to be signed without Senate approval. Amusingly, Senator Biden — back during the previous administration — was one of the leading voices in trying to prevent President Bush from signing an “executive agreement” with Russia, without getting Senate approval. One wonders if he’s magically changed his mind.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 162

Linux and the financial crisis

The financial industry is out-innovating regulators, experts and common investors. For years, the financial industry hired the best hackers it could find. They have a sizable share of the most creative and smart engineers on the planet. And Linux is one of their favorite tools. It is not difficult to understand: you can literally rewrite, or help rewrite, the Linux kernel. Today, Wall Street runs on Linux and it thrives thanks to its elite programmers.

Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

Jailbreak Only: Linux – Coming Soon To Your iPhone, iPad

A team of jailbreak developers has recently managed to install the Linux desktop operating system on Apple’s A4 equipped iOS devices. The news comes as the image of an iPad running Linux was tweeted by one of the team’s developers.

Linux spotted running on an iPad

Server

• UNIX Special 4: Linux vs. UNIX

  Although many still consider UNIX the best option for high-demand applications, the technical differences between Linux and UNIX are “going to be pretty minimal” going forward, argued Gartner analyst George Weiss in a recent report.
  Things going in favour of Linux were – better hardware features, internal multitasking and multiprocessing, less expensive resource requirements, stronger application independence and other such bullets.

  Gabriel Consulting Group takes the same vein.

• In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options

  The breaking of ties between Unix flavours and specific RISC processors was the stand-out example, and Linux OSes on commodity x86 servers were the agent of change to bring this about in the early part of the last decade.

Kernel Space

• Linux 3.1-rc4

  Or how about the wiimote driver changes? Or the iscsi target changes?

• Stable kernels 3.0.4, 2.6.32.46, and 2.6.33.19

• Graphics Stack

  • Nouveau Fan Management Code Published

    At long last, if your computer has previously sounded like a jet engine when using the open-source Nouveau driver with your NVIDIA GeForce/Quadro graphics card, there is a solution. Fan management code has now been published by the Nouveau developers to support controlling the graphics card’s fan speed when using this in-kernel Linux driver.

    Martin Peres writes to the Nouveau mailing list this morning, “Just saw the bitching on Phoronix about lack of fan management in nouveau (no offence Michael, it was justified ;)). Since it has been working flawlessly for more than a week on my desktop, I decided to let you guys know about it and ask for testing.”

  • A 40-Way Gallium3D Graphics Card Comparison

Applications

• Kiwix: An Offline Reader for Wikipedia!

• Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

  Music composition and audio editing software can be quite expensive. There are professional open source alternatives to expensive commercial applications. Open source applications do not get the exposure as commercial applications and may not have the same features or operate in the same way. Deciding if open source software is appropriate is the same as deciding what commercial software to buy, the features of the software need to meet the needs of the user.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Run Linux on Windows without Virtualization using andLinux

  • Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server

  • Run a local DNS resolver with OpenWRT

  • A crash course in PostgreSQL, Part 1

  • How to… re-energise your Android smartphone’s OS

  • Installing PowerDNS (With MySQL Backend) And Poweradmin On Debian Squeeze

• Games

  • Music Composition and Audio Editing in Linux

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • chinese language blogs on planet kde

    On my recent visit to Taipei, I worked with some of the local KDE community members to identify ways in which we could help support both the various Chinese-speaking KDE communities as well as the local KDE community in Taiwan. One of the things we identified was getting the same level of support and exposure for Chinese language community content, such as blogs, as we do for other language groups.

  • system tray icon hiding

  • collect.kde.org is live!

• GNOME Desktop

  • Faience: New GNOME 3 Icon Theme By Tiheum

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Chakra 2011.09

  • Puppy 5.1.4

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2011 is here!

  • Mandriva Linux 2011 Officially Released, Screenshot Tour

    Mandriva proudly announced last evening, August 28th, the immediate availability for download of the final and stable release of the highly anticipated Mandriva Linux 2011 operating system.

  • Mandriva Linux 2011.0 Released

  • First look at Mandriva Linux 2011

    I have mixed feelings about Mandriva Linux 2011. On the one hand, I can understand the developer’s motivation to simplify the distribution in order to create a more uniform, newcomer-friendly and easy-to-support installation class. This would be a perfect scenario for schools and government offices and with Russia’s highest political echelons reportedly encouraging more free software deployment in the country, one can easily see the reasons for having a simple, easy-to-use and pre-configured desktop system provided locally. On the other hand, long-time Mandriva users are likely to be disappointed with the sudden lack of options previously available to them. Yes, the hybrid live/installation DVD image is a step in the right direction, but those users wishing to use Mandriva in a different deployment scenario than the default KDE desktop might be discouraged by the amount of post-install customisation work and the unequivocal endorsement of KDE as the only supported desktop.

    This inevitably brings up the subject of comparison between Mandriva Linux 2011 and Mageia 1 (read our review of Mageia 1 here). As always in these situations, it is best to try both releases and decide which of the two better meets the user’s needs, but in my view, it’s clear that Mandriva 2011 has departed too far from its roots. In fact, Mageia 1, which resisted the temptation to make large scale changes to its first release, is now a more genuine “Mandriva” than Mandriva itself. Those users who enjoyed the older Mandriva Linux releases will undoubtedly feel more at home with Mageia 1 than with the latest Mandriva release.

    Mandriva 2011 feels like a completely new distribution, extravagantly disconnected from its past and with dramatically new values, concepts and orientation. I suspect that it’s targeted mainly at larger organisations with a need to have a uniform desktop setup across dozens of computers and, to a lesser extent, at newcomers to Linux. The only thing that still links this release to the old Mandriva is its superb control centre, but everything else has changed or, as in the package manager’s case, is about the change. This is not necessarily a bad thing and it’s entirely possible that this new philosophy will find acceptance among certain users and organisations where too many choices would present a new set of problems. Furthermore, the Rosa Labs set of desktop tools is an interesting addition, perhaps not entirely bug-free, but presumably well-tested on less technical users. As such, Mandriva could be in a good position to attract new Linux converts, but in the process it has probably shunned many of the more technical users.

  • Five Good Reasons to Try Mandriva Linux 2011

    Canonical’s Ubuntu may frequently dominate the headlines in the Linux world, but the fact remains that it’s just one of many popular desktop distributions of the free and open source operating system.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat 5 STIG: Network Settings

    The draft release of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) “Red Hat 5 STIG” earlier this year has a few system administrators panicking. For Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 administrators, this Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) has supplanted the generic UNIX STIG.

    The generic UNIX STIG had the single potential discrepancy indicator (PDI) “GEN003600 – Network Security Settings.” The checklist document required you to check four network settings in the running kernel. The new Red Hat 5 STIG, however, has many more settings and provides better explanations.

  • Red Hat’s biggest enemy? VMware

    Let’s play a game. Who do you think Red Hat’s biggest enemy will be in a few years? Will it be Microsoft, Linux’s traditional enemy? Could SUSE, the number two business Linux distributor, make a try for the top? Might Ubuntu’s Canonical make its big break into corporate Linux? All good guesses, but Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, is pretty sure that Red Hat’s biggest competitor in 2016 will be VMware.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • A closer look at Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric with Jono Bacon

      • Google Music App For Ubuntu with Sound Menu and Native Notifications Support

        Google Music Frame runs Google Music web interface in its own window and provides integration with Ubuntu sound menu and notifications. It also remembers last session and the current view (album, genre list, etc.)

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Bodhi Linux: First Impressions

          What I like the most about Bodhi Linux are freedom of choice for applications and profiles (Bare, Desktop, Laptop and Tablet/Netbook) that I truly need, the familiar Synaptic Package Manager and vast choices of themes and icons for customization. It’s a great surprise for such a minimalist OS with such highly customizable aesthetic interface! There are more to learn about the lightweight Enlightenment Desktop and other configurations, though.

Devices/Embedded

• Video: Eben at the Bletchley Park Educating Programmers Summit

• Phones

  • Android

    • LG Enlighten Spotted in Walmart Catalog

      We first heard about the LG Enlighten earlier this month, and we got a better look at it on Tuesday. It appears that the Enlighten will be making its way to Big Red through Walmart, as someone has gotten their paws on a Verizon catalog that’s advertising the device.

    • Rumour titbits: Sony Ericsson Nozomi is global phone; SK19 is cancelled

      Secondly, we recently wrote about the Sony Ericsson SK19 suggesting it could be a Xperia ray pro. However, he says this model is now cancelled. It was a keyboard slide phone being developed for AT&T in the US and would have sat in between the Xperia mini pro and Xperia pro. The reason we trust him? He told us all about the Xperia neo V before today’s announcement including the difference between it and the Xperia neo. We’ll bring you more news as we have it.

    • CyanogenMod Team Gets Android Working On HP TouchPad

      There have been a flurry of efforts in recent days aimed at getting a workable version of Android up-and-running on the webOS-based HP TouchPad. The mission has been funded in part by modding community called HackNMod, which is hoping to give the tablet’s early adopters an operating system with a more certain future: Android.

      It appears that the CyanogenMod team has finally made that happen. According to a public statement and accompanying video, the developers say they now have an alpha version of the CyanogenMod 7 firmware running on the TouchPad.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Sony S2 Tablet is the Tablet P, Specs Continue to Leak

    More specs have recently leaked about the upcoming Sony Tablet S and the codenamed Sony S2 which are expected to launch next month. The S2 will launch as the Sony Tablet P, the dual 5.5″ screened clamshell will weigh 370 grams, have 512Mb RAM, 4GB of storage with a 2GB SD card and connectivity over 4G or WiFi. Both the Tablet P and Tablet S will use Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and have 0.3MP front-facing cameras. The Tablet S will weigh 600g, have 1GB of RAM and come in 16GB or 32GB flavours. No word on price or exact shipping dates, but it shouldn’t be too much longer before they’re known.

  • Samsung unveils LTE-equipped phone, tablet

    Samsung announced LTE (long-term evolution) editions of its Galaxy S II smartphone and Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet computers, claiming potential download speeds of up to 100Mbps, and uploads of 50Mbps. The phone also upgrades to a 4.5 display and eight megapixel camera, while the slate weighs only a pound and is just over a third of inch thick, the company says.

Events

• Ohio LinuxFest Celebrates 20 years of Linux

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla introduces WebAPI

  • Rapid Releases: How Are They Working for Firefox and Thunderbird 6?

Databases

• CUBRID Bug Bash Event!

  Today at CUBRID we are very happy to announce yet another contest which will start on September 1st, 2011, and will last for one month.

  The idea of this Bug Bash event is to fix potential bugs which may exist in the latest version of CUBRID Tools and Web Apps, thus, increase the quality of this software, and engage users in CUBRID development.

• EnterpriseDB Brings PostgreSQL to the Cloud

  Managing the open source PostgreSQL database has often been the domain of command line tools and scripts. That’s now about to change thanks to the release of Postgres Enterprise Manger from commercial PostgreSQL firm, EnterpriseDB.

  EnterpriseDB is also taking PostgreSQL beyond the confines of traditional data center deployments with a new Postgres Plus Cloud Server service. The new services and tools come as EnterpriseDB ramps up their PostgreSQL offerings in the wake of Oracle’s takeover of Sun and the MySQL database.

  “What we’re trying to do at EnterpriseDB is to really make it easier for the user to deploy more PostgreSQL,” Karen Tegan Padir, Vice President, Products and Marketing at EnterpriseDB told InternetNews.com.

Public Services/Government

• Untapped: Why the developing world must treat IT as a national resource

  The open source movement has the potential to empower developing countries to use IT as an important national resource — to communicate to its citizenry, expand its educational platform and address national disasters. Open source software is not only free from license restriction; it is also free to be used as a basis for innovation, allowing custom solutions for the unique context of specific issues faced by developing nations. But for many nations, software is not enough.

• Defence conducts OpenOffice.org trial

  The Department of Defence has reportedly conducted an informal trial of the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite involving some 100 users.

  According to iTNews (click here for the full story), the initiative was kicked off by Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos over the past year. However, it does not appear likely the initiative will immediately broaden into a wider rollout at Defence, with Yannopoulos noting it would be a major decision for the department, which has long been a Microsoft shop.

Licensing

• Desktop Summit: Copyright assignments

  Copyright assignment (or licensing) agreements for projects is a rather contentious issue that reflects differing views of how free software will be best-positioned to grow over the coming years. Several perspectives were on display at the “Panel on Copyright Assignment” held on August 6 at the Desktop Summit in Berlin. The panel consisted of two opponents of such agreements, Michael Meeks and Bradley Kuhn, as well as perhaps their most outspoken proponent, Mark Shuttleworth, with GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler handling the moderation duties. In the end, each position was well-represented, but, as might be guessed, neither side convinced the other; each will likely continue to pursue its path over the coming years.

• The Mozilla Public License – almost 2.0 (part 1)

  Over the past 18 months, the Mozilla community has been revising the Mozilla Public License. See earlier post. We recently announced, in true community development fashion, a release candidate–the text that we hope will become MPL 2.0 after one last set of eyes review it. This piece is a brief backgrounder on what has changed in the new MPL, explaining why we’re proud of this work and we hope you’ll consider reviewing it – and maybe even using it for your next project.

• Citrix CloudStack Shifts to Single GPLv3 Flavor

Programming

• Five easy ways to get you coding

• Getting Started with the Fuel PHP Framework

  Regular PHPBuilder readers are well aware of my personal affinity for framework-driven development. These days I opt to use a framework for every conceivable web project, no matter how minor. Thankfully many other developers feel the same about the framework’s amazing breadth, because a wide range of framework solutions are available for projects large and small. For large projects, you might consider using CakePHP, Symfony, or my personal favorite, the Zend Framework. Smaller projects might take advantage of one of the many microframeworks, such as Fat-Free or Limonade.

• Opa – a unified approach to web programming

• Retiring the DLJ

  With Java SE 7 and JDK 7 out of the door, and with OpenJDK as the official Java SE 7 reference implementation, and OpenJDK serving as the basis for future Oracle JDK 7 update releases through the now up and running JDK 7 Updates Project it’s finally time to retire the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ).

• Oracle retires licence for distributing its Java with Linux

  With a brief news item, Oracle has retired the “Operating System Distributor License for Java” (DLJ) that was created by Sun in 2006. The non-free licence had allowed Linux distributors to package and distribute Sun’s, and later Oracle’s, Java versions in their Linux distributions. Sun made this licence available after releasing Java as open source at the JavaOne conference in 2006. It was designed to ensure that users had easy access to packages containing the well-tested Sun Java during the development of the free OpenJDK.

• sun-java6 packages removed soon from Debian/Ubuntu (and all other linux distros)

• An LLVM backend for Sparse

Standards/Consortia

• TransferSummit: Innovation, commoditisation and value creation

  In the second of a short series of articles introducing some of the topics which will be discussed at the upcoming TransferSummit in Oxford, IBM’s Don Harbison discusses the benefits of an open approach to the development of document standards.

Science

• Republicans Against Science

  Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

Health/Nutrition

• Mr PM, what’s in our food?

  Last week, I visited Vanashree, an eco-farm about a 100 km outside the city. Run by IT professionals Srikanth and Priti, the place is an embodiment of minimal human interference with nature. The duo use no pesticides — chemical or otherwise — on the lush eight-acre farm that has bananas, coconuts, chikoo, betelnut, poultry, dairy and bee-keeping, among other things. They’ve been running the place for about six years and by now, a lot of their methods have made the land more fecund, the soil soft and fertile. In their rainwater harvesting ponds, the fish are jumping.

• Volunteer Doctors Can’t Keep Up with Needs of Uninsured and Underinsured

  A few months before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, I was working on a “white paper” to try to persuade people — especially lawmakers and candidates running for office that year—that the problem of the uninsured in this country was not a big deal.

  At that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were an estimated 47 million Americans who were uninsured, a number that has increased since then by about 4 million. My job was to slice and dice the Census data in such a way to convince people that most of those without coverage were just shirking their personal responsibility to buy it.

Security

• Gopher problem in Squid

Defence/Police/Aggression

• UK diplomats in Tripoli as 50,000 rebels listed missing

• Gaddafi bunkers and tunnels an elaborate setup

  The entrance is hard to find: To get there, you go past the front door equipped with a fingerprint reader, through the garden and behind neatly trimmed shrubs, where there is a mysterious passageway. From there, it’s three flights of stairs down until you arrive at a one-foot-thick steel door. Behind the door, there’s a lair straight out of a James Bond film.

Cablegate

• 00. Editorial – Wikileaks Statement on the 9 Month Anniversary of Cablegate: Release of 133,887 Cables

  Over the past week, WikiLeaks has released 133,887 US diplomatic cables from around the world – more than half of the entire Cablegate material (251,287 cables). The new release was met with a sustained Denial of Service (DOS) attack during the first 36 hours. WikiLeaks had to rely on back-up servers for some hours. With supporters’ help, WikiLeaks was able to bring in additional servers to stave off the attack.

  For the first time, the diplomatic cables are available from every country that has US diplomatic representation. Until now, many countries had been excluded from the news stories, partly due to WikiLeaks media partners’ geographical bias, and partly due to Wikileaks’ resource constraints in establishing new media partnerships (there are now over 90).

• Will the guilty try to implement ways to suppress freedom of speech?

  I write this letter to commend Wikileaks founder Mr. Julian Assange in his brave role in leaking highly confidential and important information in the Embassy of Georgetown cables.
  Wikileaks has been described by Time Magazine as “Could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”

• 00. Editorial – 30 new revelations from #wlfind

• Fairfax hoards explosive cable

• How WikiLeaks has changed the role of journalism

  “The timidity of the New York Times came as a surprise and disappointment to me,” Hrafnsson told the assembly of 60 news executives, editors and reporters. “It was not the New York Times of the early 1970s where the Times was willing to take on the Nixon administration by publishing the Pentagon Papers.”

  It’s pretty much a given that Hrafnsson, or any WikiLeaks official, would be arrested if he set foot in the United States. Hrafnsson also is certain that the National Security Agency monitors every email he receives.

  After his presentation, I asked Hrafnsson, a veteran journalist from Iceland, why he was singling out the Times for criticism. (I spoke to the same group a few hours later.)

  When WikiLeaks released 77,000 Afghan War documents to news organizations in July 2010, the New York Times was accorded the right to publish the scoop on its website. Instead, Hrafnsson said, the Times apparently was so worried about the likely furor over release of the Afghanistan war logs that critical minutes passed, and the Times decided to report the news only after other publications had done so.

• Diplomatic cables claim Australia has failed to stabilise ‘fragile’ Solomons

  MORE than a billion dollars and eight years of effort by Australia has failed to build political and economic stability in the Solomon Islands, according to secret United States diplomatic assessments.

  The assessments say Australia’s intensive policing and aid effort has not succeeded in stabilising the country and predict it would relapse into turmoil within weeks if the multinational Regional Assistance Mission were withdrawn.

• WikiLeaks: USA made “enormous concession” in talks on Czech radar

  The Czech team negotiating on the SOFA treaty in 2008 achieved “an enormous, unprecedented concession” of the U.S. delegation by limiting the treaty’s scope to a planned missile defense radar site, according to a Prague U.S. embassy’s cable released by WikiLeaks on August 25.

  The U.S. negotiators pointed out that the USA has general, broad-scoped Supplemental Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) with other NATO allies, the embassy’s cable from April 29, 2008 says.

• 240 Wikileaks cables on pharmaceutical data exclusivity

  The following are the cables identified in an August 29, 2011 search of the wikileaks cables, from http://cablesearch.net, using the search terms data exclusivity and pharmaceutical. This search identified 240 cables. Some 40 countries are mentioned in the cables. More than half of the cables involve 5 countries: Turkey (76), Taiwan (21), El Salvador (11), Honduras (11) and Tunisia (10).

• The Guardian blames Wikileaks for the arrest of Bradley Manning

• US interested in what makes American-born settlers tick

• WikiLeaks: Washington and Brasilia Monitoring Chávez in the Caribbean

  As more and more WikiLeaks cables get released, the Brazilian-U.S. diplomatic relationship has become increasingly illuminated. Though somewhat wary of each other, Washington and Brasilia sometimes saw eye to eye on matters of geopolitical importance. Take, for example, both countries’ handling of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Under the helm of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil cultivated a strategic alliance with Venezuela and publicly the two nations embraced South America’s “pink tide” to the left. Yet, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Brazil may have shared Washington’s concern over Chávez’s rising geopolitical importance, particularly in the Caribbean theater.

Finance

• Goldman Sachs targeted as ‘Jaws’ joins battle over banking crash

  He is known as “Jaws”, the perfect nickname for a lawyer entangled in a lawsuit filed against a massive investment bank that has been dubbed a “vampire squid” by its critics. But Jacob Zamansky, a renowned Wall Street defender of the little guy, with a record of extracting large settlements from giant firms, does not fear the tough reputation of Goldman Sachs.

  Indeed, he is happy to be helping on a class-action lawsuit against the bank taken out on behalf of a group of shareholders seeking millions of dollars in damages for alleged illegal behaviour. “Goldman misled these investors. So they came to me,” Zamansky said.

  However, Zamansky’s lawsuit is just one o

• Ceiling at 16: California’s Lack of Recovery

  Total employment in California fell in June from 15.974 million to 15.910 million. The bigger story however is that, in addition to making a lower low in 2010, California employment never regained the 16 million mark first achieved early last decade.

Civil Rights

• Revealed: the secrets of Scotland’s dna database

  Given exclusive access to police information, the Sunday Herald today reveals that one in 10 Scottish adult males now has their DNA held on a database containing 300,000 profiles – with 3000 a day being added to the total By Judith Duffy

Copyrights

• Web-blocking and Illegal Sites

  In the last week there have been three stories in the news concerning copyright infringement and “illegal websites”. In each case, a group with an interest in enforcing copyright has called for or announced measures against such websites, but this raises an important question of what makes a website illegal. In terms of copyright infringement this is a very tricky question as there is no easy way to tell whether content or a service is unlawful.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kids today need a licence to tinker

Back to school time and millions of British kids are heading back to classrooms to embark on the national curriculum so beloved of busybody ministers. One item in particular on that curriculum will bemuse the youngsters. It goes by the initials ICT, short for information and communication technology. If they are in primary school, they will have to get through key stages 1 and 2. Secondary pupils have to get through stages 3 and 4 which, the soon-to-be-abolished Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency tells us, “have been developed to enable schools to raise standards and help all their learners meet the challenges of life in our fast-changing world”. Michael Gove, the government’s education supremo, has set in train a root-and-branch overhaul of the national curriculum, but for the time being our kids are stuck with the current version.

[...]

Another takes students through converting their paper-based designs for data entry forms and invoices into “the real thing”, using “a spreadsheet program”. Guess which spreadsheet program? If you answered Microsoft Excel, go to the top of the class, because that’s what the vast majority of British schools have.

[...]

How we got to this ridiculous state of affairs is a long story. It’s partly about how education departments, like generals, are always preparing for the last war. Thus, while we’re moving into a post-PC age, our ICT curriculum is firmly rooted in the desktop computer running Microsoft Windows. It’s also partly about the technophobia of teachers, local councillors and officials. But it’s mainly about the chronic mismatch between the glacial pace of curriculum change in a print-based culture, and the rate of change in the technology.

There might have been a time when computers and networking were so exotic that ICT deserved a special roped-off space in the curriculum. But those days are long gone. Retaining it nowadays as a discrete subject is as absurd as it would be to have “books” as a special component of the national curriculum – a point nicely made by the educational research group Alt-C in its recent submission to Michael Gove.

[...]

When will the Raspberry Pi go into production?

We are hoping to start shipping them in November. The first customers will be probably hobbyists, but I have had hundreds of emails from all over the globe. I’ve had inquiries from headmasters in Kenya asking where they can get 1,000 units for their schools. Moreover, at £15 it could help get a computer into low-income households in the UK and create opportunities for children in those families to develop an interest in programming.

What kind of stuff can you do with it?

You can program it using scripting languages like Python, or compiled languages like C and C++. You could write a game of a similar level to Angry Birds or Quake 3. You can run Firefox on it and free office software such as OpenOffice.org.

Linux Australia to live stream SGM

Linux Australia is holding a special general body meeting tonight to vote on some pending issues – and for the first time the organisation will be live-streaming the meeting.

Desktop

• What’s Wrong With This Picture?

  These fail to notice that GNU/Linux does make it on the desktop around the world in particular markets, like the BRIC countries. All of the “reasons” vanish when monopolistic control of retail shelves and OEMS is weak. The reasons GNU/Linux makes it on the desktop are many:

  * the four freedoms work for real people,
  * because GNU/Linux is Free Software it may be freely copied, lowering the cost of acquisition for everyone,
  * there are millions of developers of FLOSS working cooperatively around the world to deliver software the world needs,
  * the four freedoms also ensure the software is flexible and can be used for optimal benefit to users, not restricted by the marketing plans of a business,
  * the low cost of acquisition is a huge advantage for the poor, students and young people who are not rich,
  * the low cost of acquisition keeps the bulk of expenditures for supply and distribution in the local economy, where the software is actually used, maximizing benefits of the activity,
  * the software works on ARM just as well as it works on old and new computers of all kinds, and
  * the software works faster and more reliably because the only objective for its existence is to run, not to lock-in users to some corporation’s plan for world domination.

Kernel Space

• 20th Anniversary of Linux Gallery Tour

• Linux at 20: the quiet giant

  Linux, the operating system that grew out of Linus Torvalds’ “hobby”, now runs the majority of the world’s web servers, including those (CDN networks) that deliver The Telegraph website.

• Graphics Stack

  • Mesa Kills Old Hardware Support: No More 3dfx Voodoo

    The death sentence to legacy Mesa drivers was carried out over the night. All DRI1 drivers have been removed from the Mesa tree along with support for BeOS and other old code, in an effort to remove drivers that receive little maintenance and are just causing a greater burden in re-factoring core Mesa code for the modern drivers. This means though that the Linux desktop loses its support for hardware like VIA Unichrome and 3dfx Voodoo graphics cards.

Applications

• Stellarium: setting up your very own Planetarium at home.

  Star Gazing has always been an authentic hobby of many people around the globe and it is indeed one of the oldest hobbies known to man. We all must love gazing stars at night, most of them don’t make it as their hobby, but many of us still try hard to look out for the constellation, or even spot out a planet or a galaxy, and for amateur’s like me it is even difficult to spot a planet in the night sky.

• KNemo – Network interfaces monitor for KDE’s systray

  KNemo displays for every network interface an icon in the systray. Tooltips and an info dialog provide further information about the interface. Passive popups inform about interface changes. A traffic plotter is also integrated.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Guest account and user management on Mandriva 2011

  • Improve font rendering in Fedora 15 KDE

  • How to Pin a Package in Debian or Ubuntu — to stop automatic upgrades of the package

  • Save Pidgin Passwords In GNOME Keyring Instead Of Plain Text

Desktop Environments

• “The Changing Desktop Trends” – A Linux Perspective – KDE vs Gnome3 vs Unity

  UI enhancements and eye candy has always been proprietary OS turf, but with time and massive development developers has turned the table and made the free and open source environment an eye candy galore. Ranging from the black terminal to the regal and boggling 3d effect, the Linux desktop experience is now far cry from its counterpart. We jump in to get a sneak peak of the UI developments.

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Thoughts about KDE Plasma on non-Linux Systems

Distributions

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2011 “Hydrogen” is out!

    Hooray! As promised earlier, we are happy to announce that Mandriva 2011 is out. You can download ISO images from here.

• Gentoo Family

  • Quick Look at Sabayon 6 (GNOME)

    A bit more than a year ago I had a look at the LXDE and Xfce spins of Sabayon 5.3 and came away quite unimpressed as they even refused to install on my low end hardware, but to be fair both these editions are still experimental and the advice is to use the more mature main GNOME and KDE editions.
    So today, with number 6 out, I’ll finally write about those, and without hardware restrictions because I do not expect them to perform with less than 512 MB RAM. Some distributions still manage to do so, but Sabayon is known to be on the heavy side, and it isn’t a problem on this Acer Aspire 5551 with 4GB.

    Sabayon is a customized distribution spin based on Gentoo, for those who don’t fancy doing the whole compile and configure from absolute scratch. That’s also already where the problem lies for me. What’s the point of wanting to use a distribution whose strength it is apparently that everything is custom compiled for the machine it is on, when you then use a pre-compiled version of it done by somebody else on their machines. Why not just use any other binary distribution or ArchLinux as a happy medium, which does provide ready made packages but is both faster and just as configurable, with the option of compiling extra packages that you want to add to the small base should you be so inclined, or just go with what’s available in the repository. Anyway, the choice is yours.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • A Complete Review of Bodhi Linux With Screenshots

      Bodhi Linux was recommended to me as a possible solution to try after I mentioned having system resource issues with Ubuntu One. I have to admit I’ve been rather curious about Bodhi as I have read several rave reviews on it.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Full Circle magazine #52 is out!

      • Ubuntu One Developer Evening In Manchester On Thursday

        On Thursday 1st September at 7pm in Lecture Theatre C014 at Manchester Metropolitan University the ever-enjoyable Stuart Langridge will be giving a presentation about how to write applications that harness Ubuntu One. He will talk about the different APIs, how to write web, desktop and mobile apps using the technology, and the interesting ways in which Ubuntu One can empower your apps.

Devices/Embedded

• Demo – Raspberry Pi running Quake 3

  Here’s something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We’re still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn’t quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we’re working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we’re making great progress getting the boards running smoothly.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Ten… budget Android tablets

    Tablets, eh? A nice idea but a shame about the price. From the iPad to the Xoom, the PlayBook to the TouchPad prices starting at or near £400 are a little on the steep side for many folk. Well, the TouchPad maybe an exception these days but only very recently.

    You’ll pay a premium to buy into fondleslabs from Apple, HP or RIM, but Android users have another option, a cheap tablet. These can be picked up for anything between £100 and £230 and sometimes less if you are in the right place at the right time.

    Across the board cheap Android tablets are nowhere near as ghastly as they were just a year ago. Of course, there are sacrifices. You are not going to get Honeycomb or a glass screen or a true multi-day battery life. Increasingly, what you will get is a capacitive rather than resistive screen, Android in it’s 2.2 or 2.3 incarnation – rather than antediluvian 1.6 version – and even access to the Android Market and Google mobile apps.

It’s Not About the Software

A few days ago, I had an epiphany. I, like many of my readers, have spent a good portion of my life advocating for libre software. There has always been a particular glow to the idealistic concept of information flowing through society, and to the possibility of adaptation to a particular context. Unfortunately, as most advocates and critics alike have come to learn, a good portion of libre software is known to few beyond the developer, and modifications to suit a particular need are not nearly as common as advocates would have one believe.

What, then, is the allure of libre software? Is it the simple possibility of these theoretical ideals? Why should we use, develop, or recommend libre software over the alternative proprietary platforms that my have more features? “The development model,” claim some, “is collaboration based, and ensures no malignancies will enter into the codebase.” However, only some libre software is developed this way. Many projects are quite unforgiving to new contributors, and most projects never pique the interest of anyone at all for contributions. Because of this, malignancies cannot necessarily be avoided. When nobody is interested in or capable of (without a fork) making changes, the hypothetical options available to prevent intentional dysfunctions dissolve in practicality.

Mozilla

• Why Mozilla’s Firefox Rapid Release Cycle Works and Why it Doesn’t.

  There has been a lot of discussion this week about Mozilla’s Rapid Release cycle. Much of that discussion was fueled by a blog post from Mozilla Chief, Mitchell Baker.

  Baker’s post is a defence of the new cycle, which has caused lots of concern in the Mozilla community and elsewhere. Baker’s view is that the browser needs to be more like the Internet.

• Light Switch, Dim Everything But Media In Firefox

  It can sometimes be very irritating to interact with elements on a web page if other page elements catch your attention as well. Have you ever tried to watch a video on a web page only to be distracted by an animated banner on the same page? Or maybe you have played games and more than once failed to complete your objective because you have looked over at the auto-updating chat window?

• Future Firefox Features, What I’m Looking Forward To

• Open Fire Fox inside Fire Fox Tab -Firefox Tips and Tricks

• About Firefox About

• Firefox 7.0 Beta 2

  Firefox Beta is the build for those who like a little bit of jeopardy, but who don’t want to risk everything by trying out Firefox Aurora. It gives you a sneak peek at the next version of Firefox with a relatively stable build that’s not quite ready for primetime, but still pretty solid.

• Firefox 6 already sees bump in traffic soon after debut

  Firefox 6 officially debuted last week with a host of new features and security fixes. Internet users must already be flocking to the latest version of Mozilla’s browser at a rapid pace — at least according to Chitika Insights (a.ka. the research arm of online advertising network Chitika).

• Firefox Ships with 6000 Potential Bugs, Community Lead Departs

  A blog post published by Community Lead Tyler Downer rocks Mozilla as he claims that Mozilla Triage QA process is broken and he believes that the current rapid release process drowns Firefox in a sea of bugs with no land in sight.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• LibreOffice Hackfest 2011 in Munich

CMS

• Hacking Joomla! — the fast and easy way

  Popular open source Content Management Systems (CMSs) like Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, are regularly subject to source code reviews as well as blackbox pentesting. Thus, vulnerabilities in these systems are quickly identified and fixed. And security updates are frequently released.

Public Services/Government

• Defence bolsters search for open source software

  The Department of Defence has stepped up its push for open source software to reduce its $100 million annual software licensing bill.

  Last week, it joined five other government agencies in forming the Open Technology Foundation, which aimed to facilitate collaboration and interoperable technology in the public sector.

  Defence chief technology officer Matt Yannopoulos said the department had been considering open source software for more than three years.

  Prior to the Federal Government’s introduction of a more aggressive open source policy in January, Defence had not “specifically encouraged” open source software tenders from the market.

• “Giving Back” Instead of Paying for Licences

  We all know The City of Munich is in the process of migrating the majority of its PCs to GNU/Linux and has migrated all its employees to OpenOffice.org. DBI Gmbh is a business that provides IT services especially software migration. These are two examples of organizations giving back to the FLOSS community to make better software for the world.

Say What? Top Five IT Quotes of the Week

H-P’s One-Year Plan

Let’s say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here’s how you do it:

Fire well-performing CEO Mark Hurd over expense-report irregularities and a juicy sexual-harassment claim that you admit has no merit. Fire four board members, as publicly as possible. Foment a mass exodus of key executives who actually know how to run the giant computer company.

Hire new a CEO from German competitor, SAP, which sells business software, not consumer products. Tell the new CEO, Leo Apotheker, that Mr. Hurd “left H-P in great shape.”

Security

• Defending Against The ‘Apache Killer’ Exploit

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Prosecuting War Crimes? Be Sure to Read the Fine Print

  Especially if they’re convicted. Justice is better than revenge. And justice must be done for the relatives of the victims as well as for the dead. Part two of the Mubarak trial this month was a case in point. Egyptians want to know exactly who ordered the killing of innocent demonstrators. Who was to blame? And since the buck stops—or is meant to stop—at the president’s desk, how can Mubarak ultimately escape his just deserts? The same will apply to Gaddafi when—if?—we get him.

• WikiLeaks: U.S. Embassy asked State Department to vet IDF chief Gantz in 2008

  The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv asked the U.S. State Department to carry out a background check on current Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in October 2008, according to a diplomatic cable leaked by the WikiLeaks website.

  Gantz, then the IDF’s attache in Washington, came under scrutiny due to the Leahy Law, which bans the United States from assisting foreign military units that violate human rights.

• New WikiLeaks Cables Show US Diplomats Promote Genetically Engineered Crops Worldwide

  Dozens of United States diplomatic cables released in the latest WikiLeaks dump on Wednesday reveal new details of the US effort to push foreign governments to approve genetically engineered (GE) crops and promote the worldwide interests of agribusiness giants like Monsanto and DuPont.

  The cables further confirm previous Truthout reports on the diplomatic pressure the US has put on Spain and France, two countries with powerful anti-GE crop movements, to speed up their biotech approval process and quell anti-GE sentiment within the European Union (EU).

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks’ classified cables on abortion politics worldwide

• WikiLeaks cables expose Washington’s close ties to Gaddafi

Finance

• Madoff whistleblower: Here’s the next big fraud

  The man whose e-mails detailing Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme were ignored by the Securities and Exchange Commission has a new target — foreign exchange fraud.

• Wikileaks: Speculators Helped Cause Oil Bubble

  When oil prices surged to a ridiculous $147 a barrel in the summer of 2008, conventional wisdom held that normal supply and demand issues were the cause. Both the Bush administration (in the form of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and most of Wall Street (through both media figures and market analysts) blamed such factors as increases in oil demand from the Chinese industrial machine, and the failure of Americans to conserve, for the surge in crude prices.

• Let’s Get Political…Government Should UPHOLD the Law NOT Help Break It.

  Politics and our government specifically has, in my opinion, done more to break and circumvent laws. This complete disregard for our laws and the protection of our people has been led by the leaders of our government from the President on down to our Congressmen, Senators, Governors, Mayors and even Judges. This has been gong on for quite some time but became blatantly evident during the George W. Bush administration. It matters not Republican or Democrat. Both sides are guilty and seem to work from the same play book in what I have called a Democratic Dictatorship.

  From illegal wiretapping to allowing white collar crime (for a select group of elite primarily in the finance industry), our government – past and present – continue to violate our Constitution and our constitutional rights if it works to their advantage.

• Dylan Ratigan Interviews Director Charles Ferguson – How Wall Street Took Over Government

  Both Glenn Hubbard and Laura Tyson have played major roles in American economic policy, and both also, unfortunately, exemplify the disturbing, opaque conflicts of interest that pervade the economics discipline.

  Over the last thirty years, academic economics has been penetrated by special interests, particularly financial services, in the same way that America’s political and regulatory systems have been compromised by campaign contributions and the revolving door. In fact, the “revolving door” is now a triangular trip between industry, government, and academia.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• A Brief History of My Life on Linux: Part II

  Two distributions I found myself playing with time and time again were Ubuntu and Mepis. Ubuntu was still a fledgling at the version Breezy Badger, so I restricted it to a separate partition from Mepis. Mepis quickly became my main squeeze in the place of Mandriva. It came on a Live CD (which many distributions had yet to do at this time period), came with handy tools for repairing botched installations (which happened a lot with all my tinkering and learning), was easy to use, and was blazingly fast. Best of all though the community welcomed me with open arms and never in the entire time I spent there made me feel like a “stupid noob”.

Server

• BICTU readying for eTRACS deployment, holds Linux Training

  Linux systems have long been used as server operating systems, and have risen to prominence in that area. They have become increasingly popular in the last decade due to pricing, compared to other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. In fact, the ten fastest supercomputers in the world run on Linux.

  The development of Linux has been one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed, both commercially and non-commercially, by anyone under an appropriate license.

Kernel Space

• Samsung Puts Out New Open-Source ARM DRM Driver

  Samsung has published the code to a new open-source DRM driver for its EXYNOS4210 System-On-a-Chip. The EXYNOS4210 has impressive 3D graphics capabilities, uses the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, and is used in various smart-phones. The Samsung Galaxy S II is one of the smart-phones using the Exynos 4210 SoC. Samsung is hoping to push this DRM driver into the mainline Linux kernel.

Applications

• Interview: Lucian Langa, gnoduino lead developer

  Lucian: My name is Lucian Langa, I’ve been involved with GNOME for a few years. I’ve been working on a few free software projects over the time:evolution, evolution-plugins (rss,rpsam,tray). Find a more complete list over here: https://www.ohloh.net/accounts/cooly. I also have been involved with electronics, micro-controllers and embedded projects for some time, mostly software related.

  F4S: What is gnoduino?

  Lucian: Gnoduino is basically an implementation of the arduino IDE in Python. We are trying to emulate upstream as best as we can. However there are things we do differently as the primary target is GNOME desktop integration.

• Top 6 Web Vulnerability Scanner Tool

• Instructionals/Technical

  • GNU make: sample Makefile

  • Using Character Classes to Create Matches

  • How To Extend Size Of The Storage File

  • New toy: Arduino (packages fixed)

• Games

  • Dirk Dashing 2: E.V.I.L Eye is available for pre-order!

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Digikam : premier photo management on GNU/Linux

    In Fedora Linux 14, the default photo manager and digital camera application is Shotwell. I tried using it, I really tried, but I ended up giving up because it was not easy to use in my opinion. In fact, I also tried to run one of my relatives through it on his desktop which also runs Fedora 14, and I concluded it just wasn’t worth fighting. For one, Shotwell seems to want to keep all information about photos and their data in its own database. That’s fine, but it makes it non-intuitive when you want to move photos into folders and sort them in ways that are different than Shotwell sorts them (which by default is to create one folder per year, month, and day). When simply moving photos to subfolders, Shotwell loses the thumbnails and doesn’t know where the photos are moved to. Also, Shotwell has its own Trash folder which makes it confusing when trying to clean up photos. While Shotwell’s features could be an advantage to some, in this case it did not work out so well.

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME3 and AMD – in a nearby future…

    A long time has gone since I posted the (in)famous bug regarding graphical corruption on GNOME3 seen only by ATI users who use the proprietary case. After long hours of frustration I’ve decided to jump into Intel chipsets which work very nicelly out of the box and leave ATI behind, but new developments suggest that ATI/AMD has fixed the bug and it’s under internal testing, so it seems that within one or two releases this bug will be fixed.

Distributions

• AppSet: a refreshingly nice package manager for Arch Linux in the times of app stores

  I’m a rather outspoken user of Arch Linux after having used and tried many other distributions (MandrakeSoft/Mandriva, Suse, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, SLAX, Chakra and even a few others) and I think I got to like the rolling release concept quite a lot. The rolling release concept essentially takes away the notion of milestone release for a Linux distribution and replaces it by incremental and almost continuous updates. Which means that everyday I can update my system and it’s thus almost always running the most recent stable software versions. Note that the upgrade is my choice only, I could stop doing this for 3 weeks instance and that would be fine. Using Arch Linux does not only mean embracing the rolling release distribution model. It also means being ready to install your system from the command line (granted, you only do that once in theory) which can be tedious but not reall difficult. Another “side effect” of using Arch Linux is that the distribution’s package management is done entirely through the command line and with the help of the excellent package manager pacman. Pacman is however not a graphical package manager, or rather, it does not come with a default, out of the box graphical front-end. Several of them do exist but it does not seem to be in the culture of Arch Linux to use one on a regular basis. Enter AppSet. AppSet is a very nice graphical package manager written in Qt; it even got me use KDE again on par with Gnome. AppSet does not only run on Arch Linux, it also supports Chakra (a very close fork of Arch Linux) and works in theory with any other packaging system.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Looks Good Approaching Value Levels

    One good thing about a market collapse is that it exposes value in what had been speculation.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • 12 Things New in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric[Screenshot Tour]

        Ubuntu 11.10 Oneric Ocelot is marching ahead. Through our detailed reviews of Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 releases, we followed Ubuntu 11.10 in its each and every developmental phase so far. A lot of things have changed since the third alpha release and as we had promised, here is a preview of latest round of changes in Ubuntu 11.10 and a quick screenshot tour.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • ENT: Bodhi easy to install, operate – Online with Bob Vaillancourt

          There is a new Linux distribution making the rounds and it is pretty impressive for a number of reasons.

          The first is the minimal requirements it has and the second is the clean look and feel of this distribution.

          It is called Bodhi Linux and is available at bodhilinux.com.

          Among its many features is that this distribution will run on just about any piece of hardware. It has reportedly been successfully installed on a 386 machine from decades ago. In fact, the stated minimum requirements for this free operating system are a 386 processor, with 1.5 gigabytes of hard drive space and only 128 megabytes of ram.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Most phones shipped in 2015 will be smartphones

    Most phones shipped in 2015 will be smartphones
    ANALYST OUTFIT IHS Isuppli claims that smartphones will make up the majority of mobile phone sales by 2015.

  • Android

    • HTC Flyer and Motorola Xoom prices are slashed

      TWO IPAD RIVALS, the HTC Flyer and Motorola Xoom tablets have had their prices slashed by several retailers.

      Although the tablets haven’t seen the same deep price cuts as HP’s Touchpad, which was reduced to around $100 last week and is now sold out, the Flyer can be picked up for £150 less at Carphone Warehouse.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • Is this what Amazon’s tablet will look like?

    It remains to be seen if it’ll materialize and cannibalize Amazon’s own bestselling Kindle e-reader, or if those two devices will remain separate draws for buyers (as a recent Nielsen survey suggests). Msnbc.com’s own Wilson Rothman thinks that when it does appear, it’s going to give the iPad a run for its top spot, mostly because of its might as a retailer. It’s a major factor that Kravitz agrees with: “Not only does Amazon have the name and reach to get an attractive piece of hardware into millions of hands at a competitive price, but they also have the content and retail inventories to sweeten the pot with all sorts of tie-ins.”

Your Zorp remains strong

ICE FOSS 11 inaugurated

He said that world class open source digital resources are developed and used in the education sector in India.

ICFOSS to prepare roadmap on future of FOSS in India

As part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in India, the Technopark, Trivandrum based International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) recently held a consultation on ‘Future Directions of FOSS in India’ at Technopark, to establish future directions for use and promotion of FOSS in India.

The consultation session is first of a series of similar sessions that build on Kerala’s early lead in FOSS initiatives and serving to consolidate and leverage the lead with international initiatives. The participants of the consultation, representing a cross-section of stakeholders from the Government, technology organizations, institutions of Higher Education, NGOs, and the FOSS community, outlined their vision for the future of FOSS in their respective domains, highlighting gaps and limitations to be resolved, and making suggestions on the way ahead.

Lemma a Free Open Source Twitter Client For the PlayBook

If you are not satisfied or want more options for PlayBook twitter clients here is a new one called Lemma. The application is free and offers quite a few options. The creators also said they created the app as a proof of concept to show the PlayBook potential. They promise to release the source code so that the BlackBerry development community can keep improving the app. So far the app has received good reviews from PlayBook users.

Computer and internet briefs

The site, which is run by the US-based company Geeknet, lists Open Source software broken down in various categories such as ‘Audio & Video’ or ‘Graphics’. All told, there are more than 300,000 programs available for download on the site, which also includes short summaries about the applications and the developers. The site also allows programmers the chance to manage their projects.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Want a Faster Firefox? Pale Moon 6.0 Can Help

    It’s been almost two weeks now since the release of Firefox 6, and there’s no doubt it has a number of compelling advantages to recommend it.

Project Releases

• Announcement: RapidDisk (rxdsk) 1.2b Stable release

An Introduction to Giganews’ & Golden Frog’s VyprVPN!

Steve Jobs: a reality check

Hard-core journalists appear to have put all their scepticism aside and wallowed in trying to outdo each other in superlatives.

The emotional tributes give Jobs the credit for anything and everything that Apple has ever done, especially its achievements in the noughties.

The reality is a bit different. And if one strikes a sour note, there are no apologies – this is not a reality TV show where selective reality is played out. No, this is life and the warts and sores are as real as the plastic and the botox.

Security

• Linux Headache Is Latest Cyber Security Challenge

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Britain enacts blanket ban on protests

  The British government has applied a blanket ban on all kind of marches and protest gatherings in London amid fears of violence and disorder.

Cablegate

• Wikileaks: Kenya still paying ghost Anglo leasing Companies

  Kenya continues to lose millions of shillings in corrupt payments to Anglo Leasing companies, according to a new cable by online whistleblower, WikiLeaks.

• US Top Diplomat Monitored Internet in Cuba

  Chief of Mission of the US Interest Section in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, monitored the Internet for possible subversive actions, according to a cable released by Wikileaks and reproduced by Cuban websites on Saturday.
  Farrar’s monitoring of the Internet along with his wife occurred in August 2008, when he addressed a memorandum to the US State Department described as sensitive, without reporting any obstacle from Cuban authorities.

• Full Commission Of Inquiry Report Released

  More than two years after it was completed, Sir Robin Auld’s complete Commission of Inquiry Report 2008-09 of alleged corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands government has been made public.

  “I believe that the people of the Turks and Caicos Islands deserve to see the entirety of the final report,” His Excellency the Gov. Gordon Wetherell said Aug. 19 in one of his last actions before leaving office and the country Aug. 22.

• Armenian police forced homosexuals to reveal gay public figures – US Embassy

Finance

• Factbox: Goldman faces myriad legal challenges

  Conventional wisdom in legal circles has long held that Goldman Sachs (GS.N) might escape further large fines or criminal charges for its role in the 2007-2009 financial crisis after reaching a $550 million settlement with securities regulators in July 2010.

  But news that Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and other senior executives have hired their own lawyers — separate from the army of attorneys already retained by the company — was a powerful reminder for markets that Goldman is still the subject of myriad investigations.

• Nurses Take the Message “Heal America Tax Wall Street” to 60 Congressional Offices

  Across the country on September 1, nurses will converge on local congressional offices to demand a tax on Wall Street financial speculation, a move they say is a step towards healing the nation, trimming the deficit, and preserving social programs.

  National Nurses United (NNU) is planning a day of action in over 60 congressional offices in 21 states. In Wisconsin, the group is sponsoring a soup kitchen outside of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Janesville office “to provide residents with the sustenance they are not getting from Paul Ryan,” says NNU spokesman Charles Idelson.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Paul Ryan’s Office Locks the Door on Unemployed Constituents

• Since 9/11, Koch Industries has fought against tougher government rules on chemical plants

• Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at Risk of a Poison Gas Disaster

  In 2010 Koch Industries and the billionaire brothers who run it were exposed as a major funder of front groups spreading denial of climate change science and a key backer of efforts to roll back environmental, labor, and health protections at the state and federal levels. Through enormous campaign contributions, an army of lobbyists, and funding of think tanks and front groups, David and Charles Koch push their agenda of a world in which their company can operate without regard for the risks they pose to communities, workers, and the environment. This report, Toxic Koch: Keeping Americans at risk of a Poison Gas Disaster, examines how Koch Industries has quietly played a key role in blocking yet another effort to protect workers and vulnerable communities; comprehensive chemical security legislation.

• The Lewis Powell Memo: Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

  Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.

  Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Why Michael Robertson of Mp3Tunes deserves our gratitude

    To recap the decision in the Mp3Tunes case, EMI sued the company for what it said were a number of copyright-infringing features of the service — including that users could “sideload” songs to their online lockers, by transferring them directly from online sources such as Amazon, and that the service “de-duplicated” songs stored on its servers, so users who shared a specific song would simply access one copy instead of having to store two separate copies. As with many similar music-sharing lawsuits, EMI also argued that the simple act of copying a song to a cloud service was an infringement of copyright.

  • Hey, Music Industry. You’re suing the wrong people

    You’d never know this by watching the Recording Industry Association of America, the music industry’s trade organization, which has spent over a decade launching lawsuits against individuals and groups within the United States. And although the RIAA decided to drop its strategy of mass lawsuits back in 2008, it continues to collude with the MPAA to hound ISPs into spying on their users in an effort to fight piracy.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Microsoft’s 800-pound gorilla

As Brian points out in his article, Linux is not really out of the picture when it comes to affecting Microsoft’s bottom line. Google’s ChromeOS is Linux and . . . um, there something I’m forgetting about how Linux is trouncing Microsoft in an area where Microsoft can’t get a foothold. Wait, it’ll come to me.

Oh yeah: Android. Based on Linux, Android is cleaning everyone’s clock in the mobile realm, including Apple, and is light years ahead of Microsoft in a category where Microsoft has yet to leave the proverbial runway. Need I say more?

So Microsoft can put a red line through Linux and FOSS and tell the SEC that Linux no longer matters, while Windows partisans pop their corks and chalk up another one for their side. Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, the reality is much different.

Linux a threat to Microsoft? No way!

Over the years, Microsoft has made numerous attempts to thwart the growth of Linux and the open source culture in general and now after about 20 years of intense battle, Redmond has emerged victorious. How can Linux ever be a threat to Microsoft? Their Windows Operating System runs more than 90% of the desktops worldwide and Linux just 1-2%. Not even close. And so what if 100% of the top 10 supercomputers in the world are running Linux? They still have more than 90% desktop users. And what if that blasted Android runs half of the phones worldwide? They still have 90% destktop share, they’re still no 1. Hey and don’t start bragging about the 60% market share Linux has on the server front. They’re still the kings of the desktop; still ruling the world. From NASA to Wall Street, from Facebook to Google, Linux is everywhere, but Microsoft, they’re still obsessed about their desktop dominance. Time to wake up little puppy.

Desktop

• Desktop Revolution: Stage 1: Notifications Bar

  I have a lot of ideas about how the Linux desktop can be improved, perhaps revolutionized, and these ideas all come from running up against walls repeatedly. I’m going to write the best ones down, the ones I will eventually turn into an open-source project (years down the road, mind you) if no one else does.

  The Linux tech world has come up with numerous solutions for notifications, and I use as many as possible to satisfy my needs. Chrome has TweetDeck, Linux has libnotify, or notify-osd if you’re using Ubuntu, and all operating systems have an icon “tray.” They all serve similar purposes: they want to give you information about what’s going on right now, and that’s incredibly useful.

• A Windows User’s Guide to Getting Started with Linux

  There are countless Windows users who have never once tried using Linux, and in many cases, they are unaware of the benefits they can get from either switching to Linux entirely, or using both operating systems (as I do). The Linux community doesn’t tend to focus its evangelism on winning Windows users over, either. However, there are a number of free resources available for Windows users who want to take the Windows plunge. In this post, you’ll find several of them worth looking into.

Server

• Demand for Servers Continues to Improve Around the World.

  Linux server demand increased for the seventh consecutive quarter in Q2 2011, with revenue growing 47.5% to $2.7 billion when compared with the second quarter of 2010.

Kernel Space

• A Happy Birthday Linux Post Written By A Linux Script

• Linux 20 years on

  On servers, however, Linux tells a completely different story. Take for example the bi-annual list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers. In 1998 there was just one top-500 supercomputer that ran Linux. Today 456 of the world’s biggest supercomputers run a variant of Linux.

• Commemorating 20 Years of the Linux Operating System

Applications

• Proprietary

  • Adobe Unwanted Application Installation Draws Fire

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to tweak Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, part 2

  • Mandriva 2011 installation and disk partitioning guide

  • How to setup ejabberd on Ubuntu / Debian

  • How to install Urban Terror in Fedora

  • HOWTO: Create a Debian Meta Package

  • The Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol

  • Weekend Project: Record Podcasts with Traverso

• Games

  • Top Free Android Chess Software

    Chess is a recreational and competitive board game played between two players. It is one of the most popular games in the world, played by millions across the world, in clubs, by correspondence, in tournaments, and increasingly over the internet.

  • Open source flight sim, FlightGear, reaches 2.4

    If you think that flight simulators are a dying breed then you have missed out on the rise of FlightGear, an open source flight simulator started in 1997 that can be regarded as a game or as a research tool.

Desktop Environments

• Wrap Up – Desktop Summit 2011 Berlin

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 21st August 2011

• GNOME Desktop

  • Gnome 3 Extensions for Traditionalists

    Shortly after Fedora 15 was GA’d, I decided to take the plunge and give Gnome 3 a try. Gnome 3 is, in my humble opinion, such a drastic change from the traditional desktop environment that I have had a very difficult time adjusting to how different it is. Call me old fashioned, but I like a few icons on my desktop, a fixed dock for shortcuts to my favorite applications, and a minimize button. My first Gnome 3 experience on my laptop, which I use for testing new releases, was a failure. Therefore, when it came time to upgrade my main desktop at work, I chose to once again attempt a conversion to KDE 4.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • Arch Linux supports Linux 3.0

  • ephcom-2.0.1 has been released

  • BlankOn 7.0 (Sajadah)

• Red Hat Family

  • Telstra Cloud Gets Red Hat

    The fledgling cloud service has just received ‘Red Hat Enterprise’ Linux certification, offering “certainty” to users moving into cloud environments.

  • Telstra cloud certified by Red Hat

  • Telstra adds Red Hat to cloud offering

  • Finnish city’s Red Hat virtualisation roll-out illustrates open source in local government

    Local government IT directors in the UK can learn a lesson in open source deployment from the City of Kankaanpää, the main centre for trade, education and the commercial heart of Northern Satakunta, Finland.

    To simplify and centralise the management of desktops, Netorek, a Red Hat Advanced Partner, deployed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation for Desktops, which allows the city’s IT department to deploy, configure and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows desktops in public institutions throughout the city. To virtualise the city’s server environment, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation for Servers has been implemented in the city’s datacentre.

  • Fedora

    • A Look Through Fedora 16 Alpha

      Fedora 16 Alpha was released earlier this week while the final release is not due until early November. If you have not yet tried out this latest Fedora development release, in this Phoronix article is a brief look through the Red Hat sponsored Linux distribution.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu eyes ARM servers

        In the constant battle for performance and lower power consumption some OS makers are preparing for ARM-based server clusters

      • Ubuntu 11.10′s Default Wallpaper

        Today’s updates for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system added a new default wallpaper to the existing ones.

        With this morning’s updates, the current development release of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system got a new default wallpaper.

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Dream Studio 11.04 Official Release

          DickMacInnis.com is proud to announce the official release of Dream Studio 11.04. This exciting new version of Dream Studio (http://dream.dickmacinnis.com) has all the features that have made past releases one of the most successful multimedia software packages out there, including: multi-user, pulseaudio-integrated realtime audio via JACK, for use with programs like Ardour; the renowned Cinelerra video editor, a full graphic and web design suite; photography tools; and hundreds of assorted audio and video effects, fonts, and utilities for everything from multimedia file conversion to simple office work and web browsing. Not only that, but this latest version of Dream Studio also included hundreds of bug fixes and the following new features:

        • Ultimate Edition 2.6.3

          Why Ultimate Edition 2.6.3 the 2.6 series is based on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 a Long Term Support (LTS).

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Android conference announces speakers

      O’Reilly Media opened registration for its Android Open Conference, scheduled for Oct. 9-11, in San Francisco, and announced speakers from companies including Arduino, Adobe, BestBuy, Google, Intel, LinkedIn, Motorola, Twitter, and WalMart. Meanwhile, the 10th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 10x) has issued a call for papers for its Jan. 20-22, 2012 show in Los Angeles.

    • Sony Ericcson unveils Xperia Neo V, promises Gingerbread for other phones too

      Sony Ericsson announced a mid-range, 3.7-inch Xperia Neo V phone — equipped with a Facebook-enhanced Android 2.3.4 release that will also be rolled out to all its Xperia phones in October. Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless decided not to offer the Samsung Galaxy S II that’s expected to be unveiled on AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile on Aug. 29.

    • Windows OS Shows Biggest Decline in August as Mac OS X, iOS, Android Grow

    • Google TV Coming to the UK…Finally!

5 Free and Open Source Software Downloads

Here are 5 free and open source software downloads to consider for your computer.

Open source storage users break free of vendor lock-in

Open source storage: It’s an idea that makes so much sense. After all, the storage systems most of us buy simply comprise a bunch of disks with proprietary controller software on top. Such disk systems cost people the largest chunk of their storage spending, and a proprietary system locks them into their vendor’s roadmap and support structure.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma

At the start of the summer, you may recall Project Harmony causing a certain amount of controversy on the subject of contributor agreements in open source communities. My position on them was and is that they are a rarely needed and exceptional tool that should be avoided unless essential, because of their negative effects on the dynamics of open source communities.

[...]

I can understand why an old-fashioned corporation trying to come to terms with open source in the early stages of the road to freedom might think they need a contributor agreement. But it’s churlish and contrarian to start a new business today that relies for its revenue on the artificial scarcity of yesterday. There are plenty of scarcities to monetise – cloud infrastructure, operations skill, stack integration, jurisdictional differences and many more – without the need to try to apply a gateway to open source software. The requirement for a contributor agreement in order to create an artificial scarcity is the genetic marker for a desire for control. In the meshed society that the internet is creating, that’s a sign of damage that needs working around.

Events

• SCALE Call for Papers Opens Today

• SCALE Call for Papers Opens Today

• LPI Hosts Exam Labs at Ohio LinuxFest 2011

• Reflections from LinuxCon

  I just returned from a great trip to Vancouver for LinuxCon North America 2011. Here’s a quick (and visual) report on the proceedings, with a bias toward the FOSS compliance presentations.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Mozilla WebAPI: Champion of open source freedom

    Who cares if Google isn’t necessarily the patron saint of openness? However much Google may depend upon open source, due to the advantageous development economics it fosters – as recently highlighted by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst – is Google somehow wrong to disproportionately benefit from open source even as it churns out closed products and services based thereon?

    It’s not as if Google is alone. Facebook, for example, is no different, and some argue it’s using mountains of open source code to create a Compuserve-esque Internet experience that some feel fundamentally threatens the freedom of the web.

    Open source, the great enabler of serious lock-in?

  • Version numbers in Firefox aren’t going anywhere

  • Speed Dial Coming In Firefox 9

    Speed Dial is a feature first introduced by Opera almost four years. It is basically a grid of the top websites you visit. From my experience, this is a very convenient way to get to my favorite websites after firing up the browser. This feature has been adopted by Google Chrome as well. Recently, Opera added more features to its Speed Dial by introducing Live Speed Dial.

  • Mozilla Won’t Jettison Firefox Version Numbers

  • Open source key to faster Firefox releases: Mozilla founder

    “(Open source) has been helpful for us as we accelerate our development,” the Ottawa native says, pointing out features like translation are done by volunteers. Firefox 7 was just released in beta form this month; the 11-year-old browser also had versions 4, 5 and 6 released in 2011.

SaaS

• Eucalyptus 3.0 Advances Private Cloud Availability

Databases

• Management tool for PostgreSQL

  PostgreSQL specialist EnterpriseDB’s new Postgres Enterprise Manager aims to simplify management of large database deployments. The tool can manage both the open source PostgreSQL and EnterpriseDB’s commercial Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

• Enterprise DB Announces New Product to Manage Multiple Servers at One Time

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• What’s New in Oracle VM 3?

  Oracle VM 3 doesn’t quite have the same name recognition as its primary competitor, VMware vSphere. It’s an enterprise-focused virtualization solution that comprises Oracle VM Server for x86 and Oracle VM Manager. Oracle’s VM Server for x86 is a bare-metal virtualization solution. VM Manager provides the centralized management environment for configuring and managing the server, network, and storage infrastructure using browser-based tools.

• Oracle Unveils Oracle VM 3.0

Funding

• Giving Dreamfish a Grant

  Grant will also take the reins of FOSS promotion as well. He says he’d like to facilitate connections with OLPC too, and connecting with FOSS groups in Nairobi as well.

Openness/Sharing

• Open source Wi-Fi aims for affordable connections

  Geeks Without Frontiers, an initiative by Manna Energy Foundation, is at the final stage of building a low-cost, open source Wi-Fi software that aims to provide affordable broadband for all, especially in areas where legacy broadband models have not been considered economical.

• Open Hardware

  • Hobby Robotics with Free Software: Part 1 – Lego Mindstorms

Top 10 Announcements to Expect from HP CEO Leo Apotheker

Science

• Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, condemns British education system

  The chairman of Google has delivered a devastating critique of the UK’s education system and said the country had failed to capitalise on its record of innovation in science and engineering.

Security

• An updated Apache DOS advisory

• Threat presented by F-Secure ActiveX component

• 10 Secure Linux Distributions You Need Know About

• Cyber Security Challenge announces start of Linux contest

  The Cyber Security Challenge UK has launched its first competition, testing participant’s ability to detect hacker activity on Linux systems.

• Report: Chinese military developing cyberwarfare tools

  A Chinese military television program has hinted at cyberwarfare against China’s “enemies,” as it included footage of what appears to be software meant to target specific IP addresses, a news site reported.

Civil Rights

• Dangerous Cybercrime Treaty Pushes Surveillance and Secrecy Worldwide

  As part of an emerging international trend to try to ‘civilize the Internet’, one of the world’s worst Internet law treaties–the highly controversial Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on Cybercrime–is back on the agenda. Canada and Australia are using the Treaty to introduce new invasive, online surveillance laws, many of which go far beyond the Convention’s intended levels of intrusiveness. Negotiated over a decade ago, only 31 of its 47 signatories have ratified it. Many considered the Treaty to be dormant but in recent years a number of countries have been modeling national laws based on the flawed Treaty. Moreover, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are amongst those who have ratified within the last year. However, among non-European countries, only the U.S. has ratified the Treaty to date, making Canada and Australia’s efforts unique. The Treaty has not been harmless, and both Australia and Canada are fast-tracking legislation (Australia’s lower house approved a cybercrime bill last night) that will enable them to ratify the Treaty, at great cost to the civil liberties of their citizens.

• Update on the Home Secretary’s social media ‘riot summit’

  Following the meeting, the Home Office said in a statement that ”the discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and cooperation to crack down on the networks being used for criminal behaviour.’ It looked like the Home Office were backing away from suggestions that they are seeking powers to cut off access to communications networks.

  The absence of any talk about blocking access to social networks is of course a victory. In principle giving the state greater powers to prevent people using the means to communicate with each other is worrying. And in practice, there’s little evidence that simply cutting access would have prevented some of the unrest.

DRM

• Spotify is Defective by Design

  The music streaming service Spotify uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM); push back by saying NO to Spotify’s invitations.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Getting Connected to Illinois State University ISUNET from Linux

Me: “I need the manual configuration instructions for ISUNet.”

Him: “Are you sure? Are you running Windows or Mac?”

Me: “Linux.”

I was slightly surprised at this point, normally saying that “L” word to customer support for tech trips them up a whole lot, this guy seemed to know his stuff though.

Him: “Oh, well the setup will vary with your system – but what you are looking for is WPA2 Protected EAP (PEAP) in your security settings. Once there just use your ISU login for the user name and password.”

A Windows user’s guide to Linux

This is your first step. Linux is not homogeneous like Windows or OS X. Linux comes in a range of different versions, called “distributions”. The majority of the underlying code in each of these distributions is the same with most of the differences being in the interface and some of the management tools. Choosing the right distribution can be tricky, especially as there are literally hundreds of versions of Linux available. Fortunately most of those you can forget about, for now. What you need is an easy to use version of Linux, which leaves you with a short-list of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Mandriva and Linux Mint. Picking one of these will make you life easier as they are all easy to install and pretty simple to maintain.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Link Tech Show Episode 417

Kernel Space

• As Linux Turns 20, Hopes and Wishes for Its Next 20 Years

• What We Know For Sure on Linux’s 20th Anniversary

  Today, the Linux kernel is the most pervasive piece of software in all of computing. It runs the world’s stock exchanges, transportation systems, consumer devices, smart grid technologies, 90 percent of the world’s supercomputers and much, much more.

• March of the Penguin: Ars looks back at 20 years of Linux

• The history of Linux

  When Linus Torvalds released Linux 0.01 on the internet 20 years ago, his idea of a free Unix clone to which anyone could contribute touched a creativenerve in people. Today, it would be impossible to imagine an IT world without Linux.

  It has been twenty years since Linus Torvalds programmed the first few lines of what would become the Linux kernel. An IT student at the time, Torvalds wasn’t yet thinking of an operating system, he just wanted to explore the capabilities of his PC’s 386 processor. Eventually, his memory management, process switching and I/O experiments developed into something that resembled a rudimentary operating system kernel.

• Twenty years of Linux

• Twenty Years of Linux according to Linus Torvalds

  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, started the celebration of Linux’s 20th anniversary at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, but when is Linux’s real birthday? Is it August 25th, when Linus announced the project? October 5th 1991, when 0.02, the first public release was made? I decided to go straight to the source and asked Linux’s creator, Linus Torvalds.

• At 20, Linux is invisible, ubiquitous

• As Steve Jobs Steps Down, Linux Turns 20: Which Changed the World More?

• Linux Turns 20 Today—And Shut Up, Yes, It Still Matters

  Your TiVo? Linux. Along with a lot of the other cable and set top media boxes you might have stuffed under your TV.

  The New York Stock Exchange? The whole shebang runs on a cluster of HP Linux boxes. Those boxes are more important than the ones under your TV.

  Google something. Go ahead! That search? Executed on servers running customized Linux.

  That ATM you withdrew cash from last night? An increasing number are using a Linux variant.

  And of course, there is the tremendous number of servers powered by Linux that run the websites you frequent daily.

• Graphics Stack

  • The Sad State Of GPU Drivers For BSD, Solaris

    Developers on the mailing list and end-users (in the forums) have been largely positive about this move to drop the aging and not actively maintained Mesa code. The only developer actively objecting to stripping out the old code is Luc Verhaegen. Michel Dänzer raises a (minor) interesting point though, “DRI1 is basically the only reason for the r300 and r600 drivers to still live in the light of r300g and r600g, but I believe they (along with radeon and r200) are still pretty far from dead on non-Linux OSs.”

Applications

• Music Player Tomahawk 0.2 Tweaks Appearance, Adds New Features

  Yeah folks, we know it often feels like that there are too many music players available for Linux, but when they’re as innovative as Tomahawk we’re more than happy to take them for a spin…

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Data Deduplication with Linux

  • Burning UDF Video DVD in Linux

  • Encrypting data on USB flash drives with LUKS

  • Red Hat 5 STIG: Kernel Modules

  • How to Speed Up Package Downloads and updates with Apt-fast

  • Generating a random MAC address

  • Using PyGame in a PyGtk App

  • How-To: Create ISO Images from Command-Line

  • Download all the shortlisted ubuntu 11.10 oneiric wallpapers in zip file

• Games

  • Interview: OpenXcom developer Daniel

  • Server Monitoring With Icinga On Debian Squeeze

  • My Favorite Little Games

    “Little games” is a term I use to describe those that are quick to start, easy to play, and quick to exit. These are the ones that usually come installed by default with most Linux distributions. Some have GNOME and KDE counterparts, but all are fun. Here are a few of my favorites.

  • Best In Show Solitaire Coming To GNU/Linux !

    Graduate Games are soon going to release their unique dog solitaire game Best in Show Solitaire, you can preorder the game at lower price and play the beta now !

Desktop Environments

• Five Things the Enlightenment Desktop Does Best

  I am a huge fan of the Enlightenment desktop. The following items in this post are things I believe the Enlightenment desktop (and it’s developers) are doing better than some of the other open source desktops.

• Linus Ditches KDE and Gnome (so what?)

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KMail – A Different Kind Of Email Client For KDE

  • Aaron Seigo talks about the KDE SC 5.0 – and more

    Applications and workspaces will follow the frameworks – Plasma Active’s influence and why the traditional desktop won’t be killed by the mobile space

    After years of focusing on further improving KDE4 two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer – and Plasma team leader – Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum, making it easy for developers to port their applications. He goes on to explain that Frameworks 5.0 is only the first step and new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later, talks about Plasma active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME.

  • Testing out Amarok 2.4.3′s Dynamic Playlists

    I’ve spoken about Amarok’s Dynamic Playlists before. Despite my best attempts, I couldn’t quite get it to work correctly. However, Amarok 2.4.3 has revamped the dynamic playlists engine and interface, so I wanted to check it out and see if it worked better as well as testing out some of the new features. For one thing, they changed the interface to more closely match the interface for static playlists. See:

  • Flash 11: It contains a kcmodule for KDE !

Distributions

• New Releases

  • IPFire open source firewall improves network throughput

    The IPFire project has announced the release of an update, Core Update 51, to version 2.9 of its IPFire open source firewall. According to Project Leader and developer Michael Tremer, the latest update addresses several security issues in the Linux kernel – Core Update 51 is based on the 2.6.32.45 longterm Linux kernel – and improves the distribution’s overall stability and performance.

  • Arch Linux moves up to Linux 3.0

    The Arch Linux team has released the first new all-in-one update for its minimalist, rolling-release distribution in 15 months. The Arch Linux 2011.08.19 installation media features support for Linux 3.0 and the syslinux bootloader, and offers experimental Btrfs and NILFS2 file-systems, and more flexible source-file selection.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Getting to Gold

    Today, in celebration of 20th birthday of Linux, we totally freezed Mandriva 2011 repository. No more additions, no more fixes, no more anything. We started the final countdown till “copying to gold”.

• Gentoo Family

  • Digging deeper with Gentoo Linux

    Gentoo is not like other Linux distribution. The Gentoo swims faster than other penguins, and dives deeper. Where more fashionable distributions worry about fast installation and ease of use, Gentoo worries about efficient compilation and degrees of customisation. Richard Hillesley explains its history.

    Gentoo is not about ease of use or making installation easier for the new user. Computers are what you do with them, and most users have little or no knowledge of how their systems are put together, and care even less. Gentoo is for the users who want to reach under the hood, get their hands dirty, and learn.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat and Telstra Partner to Bring Enterprise Solutions to the Cloud

  • Finnish City of Kankaanpää Cuts Project Hardware Costs by 50 Percent with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

  • Red Hat will move to downtown Raleigh

    The two biggest corporate and real estate stories in the Triangle converged Thursday as software maker Red Hat agreed to occupy one of Progress Energy’s two downtown Raleigh office towers.

    The deal will bring hundreds of high-paid technology workers downtown and help offset the job losses that are expected to occur as a result of Progress’ merger with Charlotte-based Duke Energy.

  • Fedora

    • Free as in sake: The story of Koji

      Koji is an open source build system. While many are familiar with Koji because of the Fedora Project’s use of it, Koji is a generic system that is used by different groups around the world.

    • Who uses Fedora as a server?

      Is Fedora really not a good choice for a server? I think it all depends on the situation. But first, let’s try to figure out what are the requirements for a distribution to be called server-worthy.

      Some things that servers require are: stability, security updates, mature software, long-term deployment, support, no incompatible changes, point-in-time release, etc. But what do these attributes really mean? Stability means that the server performs well, without unexpected and unknown issues causing downtime. Timely security updates must be provided in forms of package updates, etc. Mature software is one which has been pounded upon by many, many users in different environments and has performed well. Long-term deployment means that if you plan to deploy your server for many years, it should be able to handle the length of time without needing constant attention. Support includes software and knowledge support: can you find people to help you if something does go wrong? No incompatible changes refers to package updates, where no major functionality changes are made. Point-in-time release means fixing the design of your server, from hardware to OS to applications; if a package is at major version 1.2.3 then it should remain at 1.2.3 (it could be 1.2.3.1 or 1.2.3.10 but always 1.2.3) and not become 1.2.5 or something newer when an update is applied.

• Debian Family

  • Derivatives

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu 11.10 (So Far) Screenshot Tour

        So here we are in the thick of the Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot development cycle, and I am really excited about the progress that is being made. I thought it could be interesting to show off some of the work that is going on with a quick screenshot tour.

        This cycle has been very much focused on integrating GNOME3 into Ubuntu and focusing on fit and finish both at a software and design level on Unity and it’s components. The goal with Ubuntu 11.10 is to build on the accomplishments in Ubuntu 11.04 and to continue refining the experience.

      • Ten things to do after installing Ubuntu (humor)

        There’s nothing you need TO DO after installing a new Linux distribution. Ubuntu, as well as many of its counterparts, offer a complete common experience, with a very decent set of programs, tools, drivers, and aesthetics. In recent Ubuntu versions, you get to install codecs and updates while installing, so there’s even less fuss. A handful of useful applications has been removed from the default installation, like GIMP, but then, it’s not meant for everyone out there. Regressions must never happen, but then again, this applies to every distro out there.

      • Ubuntu Development Update

      • Minimized Window Thumbnails in the Switcher

      • Running Wayland On Ubuntu 11.10

        It’s approaching the one-year anniversary of when Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu is going to deploy Wayland with Unity, eventually. As those know that pay attention to the continual flow of information from Phoronix regarding the next-generation Wayland Display Server and Linux graphics drivers in general, it’s being developed at a brisk pace and with several key open-source projects now betting big on its adoption, but how’s it playing in the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu 11.10?

      • Distro Breakdown in the Netflix/Linux Petition

        Ubuntu 11433 69.2%
        Fedora/RH/CentOS 1600 9.7%
        Mint 1092 6.6%
        Arch 891 5.4%
        Debian 856 5.2%
        SuSE 596 3.6%
        Other 50 0.3%

      • Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot frozen

        Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” has been frozen: now that the beta and user interface (UI) freezes have been announced, any further changes to the range of new features or user interface will require explicit approval by the release team. However, bug fixes will continue to be accepted so that they can be integrated into the forthcoming Beta 1 of Ubuntu 11.10, which is now being finalised. The first beta is scheduled for release next Thursday (1 September).

      • Flavours and Variants

        • Quick Look at Bodhi Linux 1.1.0

          A lot has been written about Bodhi Linux in its short existence. Bodhi appeared out of nowhere not even a year ago it seems and quickly gained followers aplenty. Usually there’s a good reason for something like this. So much has been written in such little amount of time, I’m not going to go into all the aspects of this little distro, for example that Bodhi means Enlightenment, a nice word play on the default desktop environment of choice E17, just a quick look.

          Actually, mentioning or for that matter running Bodhi without this desktop would make little sense as it is its sole purpose to bring us a nicely customized and integrated Enlightenment desktop that the lead developer and founder Jeff Hoogland evidently is so fond of. This is tightly wrapped around a Ubuntu 10.04 LTS core with an updated 2.6.39 kernel in 1.1.0, a good choice that guarantees utmost stability, at least in Ubuntu terms, and steers clear of potential pitfalls later versions might have introduced with all the upheaval moving from Gnome to Unity. Thus, after almost all earlier releases were test releases, this latest one promises a degree of maturity, which is probably underscored by the fact that it hasn’t been updated for nearly three months, which for the Bodhi project is a long time.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • SKorea building new Open-Source OS for smartphones: report

  • Android

    • Android is on fire

      Because Linux is free software and belongs to no-one, it is often assumed that Linux is “surrounded by legal uncertainties,” but Linux is no more or less prone to legal uncertainties than any other software. Richard Hillesley looks at the latest attempt to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt around the GPL and the Linux kernel…

      The Linux kernel is released under the GPLv2. The GPL was devised as a means of enhancing and protecting the freedoms of the user, the coder, and the code.

• Sub-notebooks/Tablets

  • $200 Android tablet features 1.2GHz Cortex-A8 processor

    X10 has begun selling a seven-inch Android 2.3 tablet for $200. The X10 AirPad has a 1.2GHz, Cortex-A8-based Rockchip 2918 processor, 4GB of flash storage, a seven-inch, 800 x 480 pixel capacitive display, a two-megapixel camera, plus an HDMI output delivering 1080p, says the company.

New Options Available for Mobile Open Source Apps on USB Drives

Are you using a pocket USB drive to store applications and backup data? If not, the time is ripe to do so. You can get entire sets of useful open source applications in one download for free on a USB Flash drive, and the drives themselves offer a lot of capacity now for very little money. Here are just a few good, free resources you can take advantage of with a pocket USB drive and a few minutes to do a download.

TransferSummit: Evolving open innovation in software

In the first of a short series of articles introducing the upcoming TransferSummit in Oxford, Ross Gardler and Sander van der Waal explain the principle of open innovation and how this applies to free and open source software.

HP Should Put WebOS into the Open Source Pot

Modders offer bounty for HP TouchPad Android port – Update

Following the recent fire sale of HP’s TouchPad tablet, members of the Hack N Mod hacker and modder community have setup a cash bounty for the first functional port of Google’s Android OS to replace the default Linux-based webOS mobile operating system. The Hack N Mod prize is intended to “speed up the porting process” and is currently valued at a total of $1,500.

HP’s webOS Decision Sends Shock Waves Through Developer Community

Events

• Desktop Summit: Claire Rowland on service design

  When thinking about user interface design, many will focus on the application itself, but Claire Rowland, an interaction designer and researcher, looks at things a bit differently. She came to the Desktop Summit in Berlin to describe “service design”, which encompasses more than just the interface for a particular application. Looking at the service that is being provided, and focusing on the “touchpoints” for that service, makes for a more holistic view of interface design. That will become increasingly important as we move into a world where more and more “ordinary” devices become connected to the internet.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Rapid Release Process

    Recently Mozilla implemented a rapid release process, where we release a version of Firefox every 6 weeks. This has involved changing a number of our processes. It’s also raised some new issues. For example, some enterprises find the idea of rapid browser change to be disconcerting at best and potentially unmanageable at worst. Add-on compatibility is another. I acknowledge these issues are complex and difficult. There is work to be done to make the rapid release process smoother and hopefully more useful to more of our userbase. I’d like to describe why I believe the rapid release process is important enough to pursue despite these difficulties.

  • On Second Thought Firefox Will Keep Its Version Numbers

  • reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.

  • That UK.gov Firefox cookie leakage snafu explained

    If you’ve used the latest version of Firefox to visit a UK government website in the last few weeks, you may have noticed something unusual in the browser address bar.

Databases

• Can PostgreSQL pickup where MySQL left off?

  EnterpriseDB, a provider of enterprise-class products and services based on PostgreSQL, today announced Postgres Plus Cloud Server, which the company has billed as “a full-featured, Oracle-compatible, enterprise-class PostgreSQL database-as-a-service for public and private clouds with support for Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, Rackspace, and GoGrid.”

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Oracle Does Some Open-Source Good With TTM

  While Oracle is most often criticized since their acquisition of Sun Microsystems for shafting the open-source community, in particular for OpenOffice, MySQL, OpenSolaris, and other projects, not everything they do is bad for open-source and Linux. They have VirtualBox, various kernel developers, Chris Mason works for them on Btrfs, etc. They also still employ some graphics developers. One of these developers for some time now has been working on improving the GPU memory management situation in virtualized environments.

Healthcare

• Open source continues to thrive in health care

  As the Linux kernel celebrates its 20th anniversary today, the impact of open source and free software in broad areas of technology continues to be felt. A new report from Black Duck Software reveals that in the health care sector, the number of open source software projects has risen by 31 percent since last year.

  According to Peter Vescuso, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, open source software projects are accelerating the pace of software development in the health care industry, which is typically a slower-moving sector than other technologies, such as mobile.

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • New interface for Nagios fork, Icinga 1.5

    The developers behind Nagios fork, Icinga, have released version 1.5 of the open source monitoring package. Icinga 1.5 has a new user interface which includes a pre-installed integrated reporting tool, a guide to which can be found on the Icinga wiki. It is based on Jasper Reports and includes 20 frequently used templates, such as a list of available services and the top 10 problematic hosts or services.

Open Hardware

• Exclusive: How Facebook is open-sourcing its data centers and servers

Quitting With No Notice

Apple may or may not change without Steve. Assuming he was OK with suing the world instead of innovating, I won’t miss him. If I were his employer, I would not mind him quitting with no notice. I would say, “Good riddance!” Perhaps his replacement will realize that having half the world hate the company is not good for business. Think of all the people loving Android who see their “fix” in terms of importations from the Far East jeopardized by groundless legal suits. Are they ever going to feel the same about Apple? Nope. Cross Apple off their shopping list forever. How about the suppliers of Android/Linux hardware components? Are they going to want to support Apple when Apple is trying to take away their livelihood? Nope. What about the many distributors of Android/Linux? One even asked the US president to block the ITC on this. What about Google? Is Google ever going to want to cooperate with Apple on anything after 2011? Nope. Apple is sawing off the limb on which it rests, people being comfortable with Apple’s existence.

Apple’s Jobsless Future

As a FOSS supporter, I’ve often found myself POd by actions taken by Steve Jobs, especially in recent months as he’s pulled out his patent portfolio and declared war on Android. However, I’ve never viewed his actions through the same lens I’ve used to see the anti-FOSS moves made by the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Larry Ellison. Indeed, I’ve always viewed Jobs as something of a kindred spirit and have understood that his commitment to protecting Apple has been brought about because he knows what it’s like to be ripped off by the likes of Microsoft. It’s happened to him in the past and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let it happen to him again. I like Jobs. I admire him. But he still pisses me off sometimes.

Mac Lion blindly accepts any LDAP password

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Secrecy, leaks, and the real criminals

  Shane notes that the government’s censorship effort “amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath,” particularly given the imminent publication of a book by CIA agent Jose Rodriguez — who destroyed the videotapes of CIA interrogations in violation of multiple court orders and subpoenas only to be protected by the Obama DOJ — that touts the benefits of the CIA’s “tough” actions, propagandistically entitled: “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.”

• Why IP Addresses Alone Don’t Identify Criminals

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks: US links Australia’s Afghan partner to drugs

• WikiLeaks cables reveal fears over China’s nuclear safety

  China has “vastly increased” the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology that will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its reactors reach the end of their lifespans, according to diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beijing.

  The warning comes just weeks after the government in Beijing resumed its ambitious nuclear expansion programme, that was temporarily halted for safety inspections in the wake of the meltdown of three reactors in Fukushima, Japan.

• WikiLeaks uses Twitter to crowdsource latest releases

  What to do when you have been given a plethora of official communiqués and you need to read each one of them to uncover a potential story?

  The answer: crowdsource.

• WikiLeaks Cables Deal Fresh Blow to Yudhoyono, Indonesian Government

  Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been heavily criticized in a new batch of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday.

Finance

• Rothschild Is Now In TBTF Plunge Protection Business

  Following the already failed attempt by captured pan-European regulators to stop the local bank Friend-o treatment by instituting a short-selling ban, whose effectiveness as we pointed out lasted, oh, about 7 days, we find just what Plan B is. And, yes, Rothschild is involved. From the WSJ: “Societe Generale SA, whose shares have come under severe pressure in recent weeks, said Tuesday that it had signed a liquidity contract with Rothschild & Cie. to prevent excessive volatility in its stock price.” That’s right: Rothschild is now in the Plunge Protection business. And they all have the ECB to thank for it: after years of not learning from the New York Fed-Citadel Joint Venture, which “never” steps in at precisely the right time (wink wink), they have opened the market for third party PPT incursions. It only seems fitting that the bank that started it all, would step in and fill the void. Because after all if SocGen falls, Rothschild will sooner or later follow. That said, the official explanation is worth its weight in laughter: “The idea is not to keep the stock price high, but rather to keep it steady” a representative for Societe Generale said. After hearing such… brilliance… what really is there to say?

• What’s Really Bugging Goldman Sachs Investors: The Ticker

  Late Monday afternoon, after word broke on Reuters that Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., had hired Reid Weingarten, the criminal defense attorney with an especially scary list of white-collar clients, Goldman’s stock plunged and the firm went into damage control mode.

• Goldman Sachs VP Moonlighting as Issa Staffer, Working Hard to Make Elizabeth Warren Look Bad

  Think Progress had a fun story last week about Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs VP now working for Darrell Issa on the House Oversight Committee and advocating for the interests of the banks. Haller changed his name shortly before moving to work for the Oversight Committee.

  Now we learn that Haller was involved in the weak attempt by Patrick McHenry to embarrass Elizabeth Warren. Back in May, McHenry chaired a hearing with Warren and rescheduled the date several times, leading to Warren having to leave the hearing early. McHenry accused Warren of lying about the scheduling of the meeting.

• USDA Signs MOU with Rockefeller’s Council on Foundations to Exploit Rural America

• Inquiry over prisoners who painted home of ex-minister