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04.17.10

Links 17/4/2010: ClearOS 5.1 Reviewed; Stefano Zacchiroli the Leader of Debian

Posted in News Roundup at 2:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Editor’s Note: the Quest for the Perfect Desktop Linux

      Naturally, the perfect Linux is different for every user. I want something that Terry can use without having vexing little problems cropping up all the time. It is enough work learning to use applications like Audacity, Ardour, Digikam, and OpenOffice without also having to babysit a colicky Linux. It seems to me that the “noob-friendly” distros like Ubuntu, Mandriva, and openSUSE start out great, but the more you use them the more weird little glitches they exhibit. I want something with a reasonable degree of sanity, and something I can fix without having to untangle mare’s nests of distro-specific “improvements.”

      These are my criteria for the perfect desktop Linux distro:

      * Rolling releases and continual upgrades. I think fresh installs with new releases are silly and should be done only when it’s absolutely necessary, like a system that is hopelessly messed-up. A good Linux gets better with age, it’s not like Windows which runs down like a cheap wind-up clock.
      * Reasonably fresh package versions
      * Stable
      * Easy to maintain
      * Active dev team and community

    • Acer, and Others, are Surging Ahead

      If the old guard wish to remain relevant they must innovate and/or reduce prices. Both Dell and HP have obvious GNU/Linux expertise. There is a lot of room to innovate there. They could reduce unit prices $100 or more by switching to GNU/Linux. From what I have seen of Debian GNU/Linux, Squeeze (my recent bug has been fixed by an update), once the bugs are out in a few months, they could put out products as smooth as “7″ and much cheaper. Further, they could put ARM into mainstream products and cut prices another $100 or so. ARM+GNU/Linux would permit HP and Dell to put out units at about half their current price.

    • Late Night

      Six hours of fiddling instead of a 20 minute installation of GNU/Linux… Was it worth it? I do not know. Certainly the student is very aware of the high cost of maintaining that other OS. At my usual rate of pay, six hours would be worth roughly the value/price of the netbook so it could have been scrapped and replaced for the cost of “fixing” it until next time. His family is also aware that that other OS cost the boy an evening at home with family. I will write up an advertisement to send home with students promoting our “InstallFest” to be held next week. Such costs will figure prominently.

    • Installfest at School

      This installfest is for fund-raising for various projects like graduation expenses. At the last bazaar, I ran hockey target-shooting. This could be more fun and more profitable, I hope. By parallel processing I should be able to do 20 machines easily, about double the take on the last bazaar.

  • Server

    • Inside a Migration

      OSNews: Which brand of Linux is the company looking to implement and why?

      ZA: Most of the servers I have built for are being shared by multiple applications so I require a hearty and stable operating system. With that in mind, I have decided on 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (kernel version 2.6.18). The servers usually have 2x CPUs and have around 8GB of RAM. I try to get away with 50 GB of disk space. I have jobs that run, which regulate any of the disks from filling up with logs, by archiving them. I will usually build a web application server on these boxes with either Tomcat 6.x for simple Java applications, or for more of a heavier load of applications containing EJB or Cluster requirements, with Weblogic 10gR3. When Oracle bought out BEA, costs for the use of Weblogic in production environments rose quite high, so I only use it when I feel it is necessary to, and not as our primary application server.

    • Dell Acquiesces to Angry Mob Over Firmware Locked Raid Controllers

      While I wish they had not tried to do this in the first place, I do want to be sure to give kudos to Dell for listening to reason. Matt Simmons is reporting that Dell is reversing its position on 3rd party drives.

  • Audiocasts

  • Google

    • Google Chrome OS brings printing to the cloud

      The developers behind Google Chrome OS, the forthcoming cloud-enabled operating system from the internet giant, have explained how they are dealing with a key need for any computer – how well it plays with the printer.

      With Chrome OS on course for arrival at the end of 2010, the details of how the operating system, which is all about cloud computing, will do familiar computing tasks are an increasingly important factor.

      The Chrome OS developers are mindful of the interest and the latest blog post from Mike Jazayeri, group product manager for Chrome OS, explains the detail.

    • Update: Google drafts cloud printing plan for Chrome OS

  • Kernel Space

    • ALSA 1.0.23 Is Here With Better Linux Audio

      As the first update in 2010, ALSA 1.0.23 has been released this morning to replace ALSA 1.0.22 that was released last December. Like usual, this update to the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture brings mostly individual driver fixes but there is also support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and a few ALSA core fixes.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • ClearOS 5.1 review

        ClearOSClearOS is a network and gateway server distribution derived from RedHat and CentOS. Formerly known as Clark Connect, it is developed and maintained by the Clear Foundation, an IT solutions provider based in Wellington, New Zealand.

      • Fedora

        • Btrfs System Rollbacks In Fedora 13

          One of the benefits of Btrfs besides offering competitive performance against other Linux file-systems and SSD optimizations is its support for sub-volumes and writable snapshots. While Btrfs is still in development and is not yet used as a default file-system by any Linux distribution, Red Hat has been looking to capitalize upon the capabilities of Btrfs by introducing support for system rollbacks into Fedora. The Btrfs-based system rollback support has been a feature for Fedora 13 so with the release of the Fedora 13 Beta earlier this week we decided to further investigate this feature.

        • Desktop Enhancements in Fedora 13

          Simple scan is also a tool to make scanning fast and simple. This tool is like Deja-Dup maintained in the launchpad.net community, and if you want to use an newer version of the program just add the PPA. I will add a list of PPA´s that will be good to have when we got the release of Fedora 13.

        • Fedora 13beta mini-review

          But looking through the list of changes in Fedora 13, I’m really excited to try out Déjà Dup. It’s a new backup tool that should make life a lot easier. With it, you can do local or remote backups, including to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage. Everything is encrypted and compressed, and backups are such that you can restore from any particular snapshot.

    • Debian Family

      • Stefano Zacchiroli is new Debian leader

        Senior developer Stefano Zacchiroli has been elected the leader of the Debian GNU/Linux project for 2010-11, having defeated the other three candidates in the race.

      • Debian Project Leader Elections 2010
      • [Results]

      • Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 10.04: review

          There are more things to this version of Ubuntu, each time cleaner and smoother (I didn’t have any problems in spite I’m using the Beta version). Probably a 6 months schedule for a new version is too tight for fixing all the bugs. In the other hand the One Hundred Paper Cuts is obviously having good results and the system looks clean and professional.

          The system still doesn’t accomplishes what it promises: to work from the moment its installed. Nevertheless I discover a nice script that will make most of the task you have to do after install Ubuntu (like add repositories and install third party codecs, web browser plugins. Updates, etc.). But I think any people could use this OS without much problems (older versions of windows and even Mac use to have more problems and people still use to work with them without much problems).

        • A critique of some Ubuntu Critics

          The theme of most of the baseless criticisms is that Ubuntu is unstable for everyday use. Why you ask? Because either the author plugged in a peripheral that Ubuntu did not recognize right away or because there are some bugs that have not been fixed for period of time. This has even caused some to label Ubuntu as ‘garbage salad.’ I have no problem with people expressing their views, but then certain basic facts should never be misconstrued to the unsuspecting person out there.

          [...]

          Global powers like Dell and IBM are shipping Ubuntu preloaded computers, that should go a long way to attest to the reasonable reliability of the OS. Besides, those companies have more resources at their disposal to conduct even more rigorous testing on the OS than Canonical itself can. So on what basis can someone claim that Ubuntu is so unreliable that the project needs to be scrapped? Sure Ubuntu has problems, heck everything made by man has problems, but we must learn to be fair and give praise where it is due.

        • Girls like computers, too

          It’s especially appropriate from Ubuntu Women, as studies have shown women in open source development are even more underrepresented than in other tech fields.

          If women are going to change the future, they have to change the now. And this contest actually makes sense.

          It’s not asking for what many sneer at as a form of affirmative action, for girls.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • CloudPlug Wall Wart Backs Up Linux

      Let’s face it. Most people don’t back up their important computer files with any regularity. The time you do think about doing a backup is typically right after you discover your hard drive has crashed. At that point it’s too late. The only real way to consistently backup your files is to have it done automatically for you.

    • Linux AI robot baby dinosaur

      Watch this: a Linux powered baby dinosaur, with a arm processor heart. The robot runs Live OS. An embedded, linux based operating system which features a custom programming language, giving the possibility to interact with the robot on the programming level. It features Artificial intelligence,programmable emotions and lot’s more.

    • Android

      • How Could Android Ever Be Considered “The Evil OS”?

        Taking a quick look at the definition of “open source” provided to us by the Open Source Initiative – who is highly regarded as the authority in what “open source” is – I have to present the question: where is Google stepping outside of any lines to call Android so? Source code is readily available, compilable, downloadable, freely distributed, properly licensed, free to be modified (for use with any field without discrimination), and it definitely isn’t an OS that is restricted to be used on anything other than phones.

      • So, What’s a Little Android?

        Lately, it seems as if quite a few people are concerned about the status of Android as a Linux fork. There is quite a bit of talk about re-admitting the Android Linux kernel into the vanilla Linux kernel source.

        Chris DiBona commented on many things in Android being irrelevant to the majority of Linux users, such as mobile phone chipsets. Is most of the kernel relevant to most people, or is it that we de-select the majority of device drivers when we do our kernel configs? I think that the latter is more the case, and quite often we de-select the vast majority of filesystems. For most people, NTFS, FAT, Ext2/3/4, swap, proc, and sysfs are really all that is required. A few may get into Reiser (what a killer filesystem), JFS, Squashfs, and UnionFS for particular machines. So, why is there a fuss over certain things making little difference to main stream Linux users, when most things in the Linux kernel are irrelevant to start with?

      • Report: Google TV Is Coming to Your Living Room

        The TV technology will run on Intel’s Atom chips, the report says, and Google will develop a new version of its Chrome browser for the TV project.

      • Sprint Hero Getting 2.1 “First Week of May”
      • Dell Aero Due in June, Larger Streak Tablets Coming

        Engadget scored a couple bits of Dell-related Android news today and was only happy to share with the world. First up, the Dell Aero handset is due out in early June. You know the Aero, right? It’s that other locked down AT&T handset besides the Backflip.

      • Orange Copies AT&T, Stifles Openness On Android Devices

        This is asinine. Orange couldn’t find a better company to imitate than AT&T, seriously? As we know, AT&T has decided to lock down Android devices and limit app installation from the Android Market. Not that we support this notion, but fine. Orange is taking it one step further in stifling Android and its open nature, according to Android Community.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Choosing Open Source Solutions

    Finding the right open source product is just as important as the decision to use an open source product to begin with. In every business software environment there are a few common components. There is the commercial product we’ve all used for years. There are the two or three popular open source alternatives, and there is a list of migration headaches we all experience that eventually becomes the list of reasons why we should stick with what worked before. Occasionally there is a product that inspires us to stay in the fight. A classic example we can all relate to is a product most of us use all day, every day: the email client.

  • Using GIMP
  • Wave Goodbye to E-mail?

    Late last year, getting a Google Wave invite was reminiscent of getting a Cabbage Patch Kid in 1983. It was the newest gizmo everyone just had to have. As a geek, I was one of the kids begging the loudest. Thankfully, one of our readers from across the pond (Paul Howard, thanks!) sent me an invite, and I cleared my schedule for the product that was going to change the way I communicate. Only, it didn’t.

  • Memos for your Boss: Proprietary Problems & OpenSource Proposal

    Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available” (John Hopkins). Exploring software alternatives like open source is critical considering all business or personal information and finances may be dictated by private software companies agendas.

  • Mozilla

    • Security Features of Firefox 3

      Since its release, I have been testing it out to see how the new security enhancements work and help in increase user browsing security. One of the exciting improvements for me was how Firefox handles SSL secured web sites while browsing the Internet. There are also many other security features that this article will look at. For example, improved plugin and addon security.

    • How To Customize The Firefox Layout
    • Cool stuff coming soon.

      It looks like there’s a good chance the code will make it in to Thunderbird 3.1 beta 2, so with any luck, soon your Thunderbird will be a pretty as mine.

  • Oracle

    • [ogb-discuss] Call for Action

      So unless you can figure out how having OpenSolaris running on millions of devices everywhere ultimately translates to revenue, I doubt Oracle mgmt will be impressed. Business is only a popularity contest when people vote with dollars.

    • Solaris Licensing Changes: The Real Story

      Let’s move on to people that run Solaris on non-Sun servers: No Solaris for you, not yours! Items 1 and 6 make it clear that there is no possible way to legally run Solaris on non-Sun servers. Period. End of story.

  • Government

    • Open Source EU Funded Projects: FLOSSMetrics

      Looking into EU funded open source initiatives I stepped into few projects, included EDOS, QualOSS and few others around FLOSS metrics and quality. Over the last 7 years a number of open source software assessment methodologies have been proposed, and FLOSSMetrics definitely achieved some interesting results in this respect, and not only.

  • Programming

    • Introducing SourceForge Downloads

      SourceForge.net introduced a new service this week. Until now, if you wanted to distribute your software on SourceForge’s global network, you needed to set up a complete project, which for project leaders who preferred to develop elsewhere meant generating services for collaborative software development that they didn’t need. Now you can develop your software anywhere you like, but just distribute it via SourceForge, and get the benefit of our free, global distribution network, along with the visibility of being listed on the leading open source software directory.

    • Employers and Developers Alike Are Favoring Open Source

      Clearly, there is growing interest from employers in open source programming languages and platforms, not just from developers. I tend to agree with Asay that it will take time for these trends to lead to a seismic shift toward open source, but as long as the developers and employers, in tandem, favor open source, there is no stopping the shift.

    • Tech Comics: “A Day in the Life of a Coder”

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Notes from ODF Plugfest in Granada, Day One

      The ODF Plugfest is a Conference whose goal is to to achieve the maximum interoperability between competing applications, platforms and technologies in the area of digital document sharing, and to promote the OpenDocument format (ODF). This page, as the others that will follow on this website, is a short technical summary, primarily aimed at developers, of what happened during the first day of the conference. Later next week I’ll also post a non-technical summary of the whole event at the Stop.

    • Google May Free The World From Flash Slavery!

      Adobe Flash is one of those shackles which keep the ‘free’ citizens of the world tied to the chains of Slaveware (proprietary) technologies. You have to install proprietary software to watch videos and other rich content like animation.

      Apple bursted Adobe’s bubble when it refused to allow Flash on its mobile devices like iPhone and iPad. The reason Apple did that was not that it preferred Free Standard based HTML5, but because Flash would allow a lot of applications run in these devices without Apple’s permission.

Leftovers

  • Congress outlaws all Caller ID spoofing (VoIP too)

    The House has passed the “Truth in Caller ID Act of 2010″ (PDF), which does exactly what its name would lead you to believe.

  • Russian Authorities Raid HP Moscow Offices In Bribery Probe

    Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ)’s Moscow offices were raided by Russian authorities Wednesday as part of a joint Russian and German bribery investigation.

    According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the story, German and Russian authorities are investigating whether HP paid nearly $11 million in alleged bribes to win a lucrative government contract in Russia worth 35 million Euro, or approximately $47 million. Ironically, the contract, which HP won in 2003, was to supply computer equipment and software to Russia’s criminal prosecutor department in Moscow.

    The report states that authorities suspect HP of allegedly using a German subsidiary to win the Russian government contract and then using an assortment of shell companies throughout the globe to funnel the bribe payments to the intended parties in the Russian government.

  • Science

    • Midwestern Sky Sees Large Meteor Blaze

      One of the eyewitnesses commented on his You Tube account, that it was a tiny red dot with a tiny white tail traveling leisurely and then suddenly it became enormous and green and then travelled at a super fast pace.

    • Obama lays out bold revised space policy

      You may remember that his last revamping caused quite a stir, with people screaming that it would doom NASA. I disagree. Canceling Constellation still strikes me as the right thing to do, because it was becoming an albatross around NASA’s neck. Mind you, this was also the recommendation of the blue ribbon Augustine panel. You may also note that NASA astronauts are split over all this, with Buzz Aldrin, for example, supporting Obama, and Neil Armstrong and many others disagreeing.

    • Why We Can’t Do 3 Things at Once

      For those who find it tough to juggle more than a couple things at once, don’t despair. The brain is set up to manage two tasks, but not more, a new study suggests.

      That’s because, when faced with two tasks, a part of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) divides so that half of the region focuses on one task and the other half on the other task. This division of labor allows a person to keep track of two tasks pretty readily, but if you throw in a third, things get a bit muddled.

  • Security/Aggression

    • NSA Director Says Cyber Command Not Trying to Militarize Cyberspace

      NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander tells senators the U.S. Cyber Command aims to protect the privacy of American citizens despite the uncharted legal territory in cyberspace.

    • Home tutors boycott vetting and barring scheme

      In the Big Brother Watch manifesto released yesterday, we have written that we want to see the Independent Safeguarding Authority scrapped within the first 100 days of a new government. There are several reasons for this, but the main ones are:

      1. It encourages suspicion and fuels the paedophile-paranoia that infects our society

      2. It is an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy ,which is scarring public life and making it very difficult for adults to volunteer with children’s groups like after-school sports clubs and the scouts

      3. It is yet another state database, affecting 9 million people who will have to surrender their personal details to an unaccountable and expensive quango

    • ClamAV and the Case of the Missing Mail

      Rather than simply phase this geriatric version out (it was at least one year old, revised to versions .95 and .96 since release, and announcements about the need to upgrade had been made for six months) the development team put to halt instances of V0.94 in production yesterday, April 15, 2010. This was to protect users from an issue that existed with the older version in terms of its inability to be updated with fresh virus signatures.

    • Boy, 9, accused of hacking into Fairfax schools’ computer system

      Police say a 9-year-old McLean boy hacked into the Blackboard Learning System used by the county school system to change teachers’ and staff members’ passwords, change or delete course content, and change course enrollment. One of the victims was Fairfax Superintendent Jack D. Dale, according to an affidavit filed by a Fairfax detective in Fairfax Circuit Court this week.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • South Korea To Shut Some Video Games Off For Six Hours Every Night

      Apparently the curfew will help “eradicate video game addiction”, and will apply only to underage users.

    • Ex-NSA worker from Md. charged in classified leak case

      A former high-ranking National Security Agency employee was indicted on 10 felony charges Thursday for his alleged role in leaking classified information to a news reporter.

      The federal indictment does not identify the reporter, but several news organizations, citing government sources, named a former national security correspondent for The Baltimore Sun as the recipient of the leaks.

    • Putting up barriers to a free and open internet

      THE GOVERNMENT has had extensive private discussions on introducing internet blocking – barring access to websites or domains – according to material obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

      The approach is used by some internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile network operators to block access to child pornography. But increasingly, governments and law enforcement agencies are pushing for much broader use, ranging from blocking filesharing sites to trying to tackle cybercrime and terrorism.

    • Yahoo Beats Feds in E-Mail Privacy Battle

      Yahoo prevailed Friday over Colorado federal prosecutors in a legal battle testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail.

      Saying the contested e-mail “would not be helpful to the government’s investigation,” (.pdf) the authorities withdrew demands for e-mail in a pending and sealed criminal case. For the moment, the move ends litigation over the hotly contested issue of when a warrant under the Fourth Amendment is required for Yahoo and other e-mail providers to release consumer communications to the authorities.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Frontier Users Facing New 100, 250 GB Caps

      Note that this is apparently a trial, but it’s a very expensive one. According to the letter that’s now being sent to customers in the trial market, users (on any speed tier) who breach the 100 GB monthly threshold are being asked to suddenly pay $99.99 per month. Customers who breach 250 GB a month are being told they’ll need to pay a whopping $249.99 per month. Users who don’t respond in fifteen days to the letter get disconnected (how’s that for a business model?).

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Company That Sends Out Almost-Extortion-Like ‘Pre-Settlement Letters’ Sees No Problem With Almost-Extortion-Like ‘Pre-Settlement Letters’

      Germany-based DigiProtect has a long history of using a machine-gun approach to “fight piracy”, in which it sends out tens of thousands of letters to people it says have illegally downloaded its clients’ content, and demanding a “pre-settlement” payment to stop them from being sued.

      [...]

      These answers from Digiprotect are completely unsurprising, and it’s not clear if the BBC expected the company to have some sort of epiphany and shut down or what.

    • RIAA/MPAA Want Monitoring Software, Border Checks

      Another article on intellectual property enforcement? Yes, since I consider this to be the most important struggle technology has to face over the coming decade. We already know that content providers don’t care one bit about hard-fought concepts like freedom and privacy, but the joint proposals by the RIAA and MPAA to the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator really blew my brains out: monitoring software installed on people’s computers, border inspections – it’s all there, and then some.

    • ACTA

      • Acta copyright enforcement treaty to go public

        Negotiators will on Wednesday publish the first officially-released draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a new treaty designed to harmonise copyright enforcement around the world.

        The decision to release the consolidated draft on 21 April was made at the eighth round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) negotiations, which took place this week in Wellington, New Zealand. So far, the only publicly available information on the negotiating countries’ proposals and amendments have been leaked documents purporting to be drafts of the agreement.

    • Digital Economy Bill

      • Digital Economy Act: This means war

        With the rushed passage into law of the Digital Economy Act this month, the fight over copyright enters a new phase. Previous to this, most copyfighters operated under the rubric that a negotiated peace was possible between the thrashing entertainment giants and civil society.

        But now that the BPI and its mates have won themselves the finest law that money can buy – a law that establishes an unprecedented realm of web censorship in Britain, a law that provides for the disconnection of entire families from the net on the say-so of an entertainment giant, a law that shuts down free Wi-Fi hotspots and makes it harder than ever to conduct your normal business on the grounds that you might be damaging theirs – the game has changed.

      • Jo Shaw: why I opposed the Digital Economy ram through

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 1: Episode 10 (2004)


04.16.10

Links 16/4/2010: SimplyMepis 8.5 Reviewed by LWN; Goldman Sachs Accused of Fraud by SEC

Posted in News Roundup at 3:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Introducing the EVTV – A step forward in Linux-based Home Theater PCs

    EightVirtues.com Computers and ElementHTPC.com are proud to announce the EVTV! An innovative Home Theater PC designed to deliver a fully functional computing environment for your television alongside web media services like Hulu Desktop, Boxee TV, YouTube XL, and more.

  • The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest

    After posting the 15 Cool and Unique Linux Desktop Workspaces, I decided to officially launch today “The $100.00 (USD) Coolest Linux Workspace Contest”. This contest is open to everyone who can show and tell us something about his/her cool and unique Linux workstation setup.

  • LinuxCertified Announces its next Linux Device Driver Development Course

    With the increasing adoption of Linux in wide variety of environments, supporting Linux has become vital for device vendors. Being able to support Linux opens a rapidly growing market to these device vendors. For developers,the skill set to develop and maintain Linux drivers presents a lucrative career option.

  • Sony falls short with system update to PS3

    The issue isn’t that users are losing the ability to install Linux on their machines, but whether a company can remove a feature after purchase. Owners must agree to what is called an “End User License Agreement” upon purchase, which explicitly states that revisions to the firmware are expected; if the agreement also says that Sony can engage in some nefarious bait-and-switch scheme, though, the agreement can be challenged in court.

  • Could open source overtake the iPhone?

    “In a few years, you may just find that what happened to Sun happens to Apple as open source and Linux and this huge collective of companies comes back with some pretty stunning stuff,” Zemlin said.

  • Google and Sun differences are more than source deep
  • Google and Sun: Same vision, different results

  • Server

  • Google

    • Google: “With Chrome OS, Net access will be in a few seconds”

      The product manager Anders Sandholm behind the scenes development of Chrome and Chrome 5 OS. Two programs pursuing the same goal: faster access to Web applications.

      With 40 million users, Chrome is now the third most used browser in the world. A software that Google has managed to impose only a year and a half, thanks to a marketing campaign unprecedented for a browser. This is just the beginning.

    • Google Chrome Cloud Printing Enables Universal Printing

      Perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks of the anticipated Google Chrome OS has been the absence of computer peripherals compatibility. The drivers contained in printer software etc. simply haven’t been announced compatible with Google’s operating system, requiring printer owners to use Linux or Windows to print pages from the internet. Yesterday though, Google announced a significant step to repair this weakness in their operating system, with the introduction of: Google Chrome Cloud Printing.

  • Kernel Space

    • Collabora joins the Linux Foundation

      According to the Foundation, the open source development veterans will also contribute to the MeeGo mobile Linux platform. Collabora Ltd. director and co-founder Philippe Kalaf said, “The Linux Foundation provides a home for important projects such as the MeeGo platform,” adding that, “We’re excited to join the Linux Foundation so that we can participate directly in upstream development of the MeeGo platform, attend online and face-to-face meetings and do what we can to invest in the project’s success.”

    • Google

      • Android and Linux Foundation to Reunite?

        The Linux Kernel Archive hasn’t been too pleased with the direction Android has taken. Claiming Android’s developers offer little cooperation and are slow to patch and update their code, they parted ways last year.

        But all of that may change soon, as Google has extended the old proverbial olive branch at the Linux Collaboration Summit taking place today and tomorrow in San Francisco. Executive Director of the Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin and open source and public engineering manager for Google Chris DiBona both see hope for Android to rejoin the good graces of Linux.

      • Android and Linux Discuss Code Reunion

        The guardians of the Linux Kernel Archive, repository for the source code for the Linux open source operating system, turned the code for Google’s Android phone out the door last year. The guardians felt they were getting too little cooperation from Google and too few patches from its engineers.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Nvidia Releases OpenGL 4.0 Linux Drivers

        OpenGL was released just a month days ago. Now, Nvidia has released its latest OpenGL Linux driver with full support for OpenGl 4.0 on GeForce GTX 480/470. In addition to this, Nvidia has also release four new OpenGL extensions which provides additional capabilities to developers.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Debian Family

      • SimplyMepis 8.5

        In conclusion, while technically this was a minor version update, SimplyMepis 8.5 represents a big change for developers and users. As the last official KDE 3 holdout moves on, it signals the true beginnings of a new era. I still get emails every once in a while from users complaining about being forced to migrate to KDE 4 and for that body of users, SimplyMepis 8.5 is a wonderful transitional release. It presents KDE 4 in an environment that remains very similar in appearance to its previous KDE 3 desktop. For SimplyMepis users, it still very much like home. For new users, it could be a gentle introduction to KDE 4.

      • Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu One Music Store has arrived

          This morning I woke up to write an article for Ghacks. I was searching around for inspiration while I was updating my Ubuntu 10.4 beta install. Near the end of the update I thought “Let’s just check to see the status of the Ubuntu One Music Store”. So I fired up Rhythmbox and, to my surprise, there it was…all ready for me to start shopping!

          So…with that said, in this article I am going to introduce you to the Ubuntu One Music Store and how it works. It’s time for the real fun to begin.

        • Ubuntu One Music Store Open for Testing
        • The New Wallpapers of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

  • Devices/Embedded

    • 6WIND Speeds Time to Market for Multicore Processors

      6WINDGate, set up by tier one networking and telecom OEMs around the globe, is the commercial multicore packet processing software’s gold standard. The product enables OEMS to create multicore-based produced that attain the industry’s best integration, energy efficiency and cost-performance by offering a complete Linux networking software solution that brings a 7-10px packet processing performance improvement weighed against the standard Linux networking stacks.

    • SOFTWARE TOOLS: eSOL Unveils eSOL for Android

      According to company president Tsutomu Sawada, eSOL for Android consists of eSOL Adaptor for Android(TM), which enables Android to run on non-Linux OSes, and eSOL Professional Services for Android(TM), which offers technical services for Android-based software development. As a result, he said, eSOL for Android is expected to bring Android to a much wider market beyond mobile phones.

      eT-Kernel Adaptor for Android, the first in a series of eSOL Adaptor for Android products, permits replacement of a Linux kernel with the eSOL eT-Kernel OS, a high-performance, highly reliable POSIX- and TRON-conformant OS.

    • Phones

      • Linux gets mobile and starts to build a big following

        Linux is taking on the big boys of mobile technology, with most of the leading vendors using its systems.

        US software firm Adobe and three other firms joined the wireless Linux group LiMo, underlining the growing role of the Linux computer operating system in cellphones.

      • Nokia/Intel

        • Nokia, Intel demo MeeGo at IDF

          Nokia and Intel have demoed their upcoming MeeGo platform co-venture at the Intel Developer Forum 2010 in Beijing, showing not only how the platform is being developed for netbooks, TVs and smartphones, but how the system will be able to cooperate from device to device. In the demo video (below) an Intel spokesperson plays a video streaming to a netbook on a TV and a smartphone at the same time.

        • Intel shows off MeeGo devices

          MeeGo is a joint venture with Nokia and is built on their Moblin and Maemo mobile OSes. Unlike rival operating systems, MeeGo is intended to “support multiple hardware architectures across the broadest range of device segments, including pocketable mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.”

        • Intel shows off Meego
        • Linux-based MeeGo mobile OS makes its netbook debut

          The open-source offspring of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo gets its first public outing running an an Atom netbook, as well as a smartphone and a TV set…

        • MeeGo May Go Somewhere With New Partners and Updates

          MeeGo is a Linux-based operating system for portable devices. It’s the product of a partnership between Nokia and Intel which brings together Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin environment. This operating system could power your smart phone and your netbook as well as other devices you might not consider like a vehicle or an embedded system.

        • Comment: Has Intel’s Android move wrong-footed Microsoft?

          The news that Intel has got the Android mobile software stack from Google running on Atom-based smartphone designs as well as being important in its own right, could also be a sign of a break in the log-jam over Big Windows and ARM processors.

          Maybe Intel has wrong-footed Microsoft with the move, or maybe Intel is responding to a Microsoft move that has not yet gone public. But what does Intel and Google Android have to do with Microsoft’s full Windows operating system and ARM, I hear you ask?

          Well some observers have assumed that there was tacit understanding between Intel and Microsoft to the effect that Intel wouldn’t support the Microsoft-threatening Android software as long as Microsoft wouldn’t expand its support of the Intel-threatening ARM.

        • £55 p/m Nokia N900 Ultd Min Ultd Text + Free 32-inch Samsung LCD

          The Nokia N900 is a powerful smartphone running the Linux based Maemo OS. Featuring a vivid 3.5 inch WVGA touchscreen display, the N900 also features a slide out QWERTY keyboard which aids messaging and web browsing.

        • Mobile Linux collaboration gets a boost as MeeGo grows

          Opportunities for the open source Linux operating system in the mobile device market was a prominent theme of the keynote presentations at the Linux Collaboration Summit on Wednesday.

      • Android

        • Android/HTC Desire Question

          I’ve read it’s down to something to do with android being Linux based, with application piracy also to blame. This aint the case for the HTC devices running windows mobile as they can save to external memory cards.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why Open Source?

    Managers are quickly realizing the benefit that community-based development can have on their businesses. The real-time communication and transparency their developers are discovering in open source communities are exactly what internal development teams need in order to create in a more agile way and meet the increasing business demand for delivering higher-quality software with reduced development cycles.

  • What is the future of open source software?

    The open source movement has changed the course of modern software development. Certainly, Linux has been the most prominent example so far, but there is far more to come. Open source continues to infiltrate mainstream development at an ever faster pace. As that happens, the rules change too.

    Open source Eclipse tools overturned the IDE business. Open source frameworks helped drive Ajax. Open source unit testers are now par for the course. In the form of Hibernate and Spring, open source has challenged the conventional application server stack. Open source has penetrated the mysterious world of BPM in the form of BPEL and various rules engines. Open source software is on the evaluation list for more and more messaging and enterprise service bus projects.

  • HUBzero Open Source Release Is a Hub-in-a-Box, Without the Box

    It also is a tool now available to anyone, thanks to the new free, open source release of the software package — called HUBzero — underlying nanoHUB.org. The open source package became available Wednesday (April 14, 2010) on the HUBzero web site at http://hubzero.org/getstarted.

    Developed at Purdue, HUBzero is the YouTube of simulation tools — sort of a Swiss Army Knife for deploying and accessing computational research codes, and visualizing and analyzing results, all through a familiar Web browser interface. Built-in social networking features akin to Facebook create communities of researchers and educators in science, engineering, medicine, almost any field or subject matter and facilitate online collaboration, distribution of research results, training and education.

  • ImageWare Creates Open Source Biometrics Initiative

    The Open Biometrics Initiative (OBI) is an open source project and forum managed by ImageWare Systems, but available for inclusion by anyone participating in the open source community.

  • International

    • Will ‘Telecentros’ Transform Cuba’s Internet Access?

      Another new development is arriving by way of Brazil’s “Telecentro” program. Telecentros are public computer labs that use open source software and provide free Internet access.

      [...]

      Open source software is playing a key role in the Telecentros. Ryan Bagueros, the owner and founder of NorthxSouth, a software development company that describes itself as a “network of open source developers from all over the Americas,” said Brazil and other Latin American governments are unenthusiastic about the high cost and security leaks of U.S.-made proprietary software. (Bagueros joined me on a panel at the annual meeting of Roots of Hope.) He noted that these Latin American countries are investing heavily in developing open source alternatives, and expanded via email about the value of open source software:

    • Malta Open Source End User Group

      Free Open Source Software (Foss) has reached appropriate levels of maturity in terms of quality and reach; Foss is also being adopted as a mainstream solution and also an alternative to proprietary solutions. The Malta Information Technology Agency (Mita) seeks to adopt cost-effective and non-disruptive OSS within government and is therefore seeking open participation, collaboration and transparency through the creation of a Government of Malta Open Source End User Group to become a major driving force behind the evolution of Open Source initiatives.

  • Events

  • SaaS

    • Startup Pushes Hadoop via Spreadsheet

      A startup called Datameer is offering a simpler way for business analysts to use Hadoop, the open-source framework for large-scale data processing on clusters of commodity hardware.

  • Databases

  • Oracle

    • Oracle Analyzing MySQL, OpenOffice Partner Strategies

      When it comes to Sun Microsystems’ technology, Oracle’s top partner priority is to promote Sun servers and storage. But if you listen closely to Oracle Channel Chief Judson Althoff, you’ll discover that he’s already contemplating channel partner strategies for Sun’s MySQL, Java and OpenOffice offerings.

    • The viability of open source forking

      Although my feelings haven’t changed, based on the information currently available, questions regarding OpenSolaris are starting to generate notable discussion.

      [...]

      Said differently, “The source is available, so be warned, Oracle.”

      OpenSolaris community member Ben Rockwood wrote a measured response:

      Here is where I want to be careful. Asking for autonomy at this juncture would be very foolish I think. If they grant it, they will essentially expect us to fork and re-establish the community without Sun/Oracle resources. That means the website goes, communication is severed, employees are instructed not to putback to the autonomous codebase, etc. I think it would go very very badly and we’d essentially help kill the community.

      The size of the community at present is pretty small and relatively inactive. Support for Nexenta, Belenix, etc, is orders of magnitude less so. These projects are productive and active, but the numbers are tiny compared to the official community. Add it all up and I think we have little reason to think that an autonomous community would really have any real support unless we get a sudden and massive influx of contributing developers. So it is, imho, a non-starter.

  • Business

  • Government

    • Lib Dem manifesto focuses on ‘better’ IT procurement

      “As part of the review, we will seek to identify additional savings which can be used to pay down the deficit further, including better government IT procurement, investigating the potential of different approaches, such as cloud computing and open-source software,” Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrats leader, wrote in the manifesto.

    • Conservative manifesto aims for open data

      Large ICT projects would be opened to smaller suppliers by breaking them up into smaller components. All government tender documents worth more than £10,000 would appear on the Supply2Gov website, a far lower level than that currently used by the Official Journal of the European Union, and a “level playing field” would be created for open source ICT in government procurement.

    • Government remains vague on open-source commitments

      Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms has said in an interview with V3.co.uk that smaller firms should be given more opportunities to compete for public sector contracts, but he was vague when discussing the government’s open-source commitments.

      We asked Timms how Labour’s strategy compares with statements made in the Tory manifesto, which promises to open up the £200bn government procurement market to small and open-source companies, partly by breaking up large ICT projects into smaller components.

  • Applications

    • Open Source Video Conferencing

      Open Source Video Conferencing software are pretty new. Except the grand father Ekiga (former GnomeMeeting), the most promising Open Source Video Conferencing solutions have less than 2 years on the
      market.DimDim and Vmukti are the gorilla of the field, with aggressive features list.Open Source Video Conferencing software are pretty new. Except the grand father Openmeetings (former GnomeMeeting), the most promising Open Source Video Conferencing solutions have less than 2 years on the market.DimDim and Vmukti are the gorilla of the field, with aggressive features list.

    • Test VLC 1.1 With GPU Acceleration

      The developers of VLC are already working on the next iteration of the video player which could be beneficial in future comparisons as the developers plan to add gpu acceleration to the media player.

Leftovers

  • 10 things the Internet has ruined and five things it hasn’t

    For some people, the Internet is the killer app — literally. From newspapers and the yellow pages to personal privacy and personal contact, the Net has been accused of murdering, eviscerating, ruining, and obliterating more things than the Amazing Hulk. Some claims are more true than others, but the Net certainly has claimed its share of scalps.

  • Finance

    • U.S. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud in Mortgage Deals

      Goldman let Mr. Paulson select mortgage bonds that he wanted to bet against — the ones he believed were most likely to lose value — and packaged those bonds into Abacus 2007-AC1, according to the S.E.C. complaint. Goldman then sold the Abacus deal to investors like foreign banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other hedge funds.

    • Update: SEC says Goldman defrauded investors of $1 billion

      The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged investment banking titan Goldman Sachs with civil fraud over a pre-packaged mortgage instrument they say was designed to fail.

      Goldman Sachs created the derivative — called Abacus 2007-AC1 — in response to a request from a hedge fund manager who predicted that the housing market would collapse and wanted to bet against it. The trader, John Paulson, later earned $3.7 billion for his wager. Goldman’s practices cost investors $1 billion, according to the filing.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Internet becomes an election issue

      Downloading has become an election issue. Elsewhere in Europe ever stricter measures are being taken to protect copyright and security on the internet. Which way will digital freedom go in the Netherlands after the parliamentary elections on 9 June?
      “Prepare yourselves in The Hague! The Pirates are about to enter.” This is the Twitter warning with which the Dutch Pirates Party presented itself. ‘Captain’ Salim Allioui hopes to win 14 seats in June. The phenomenon began in Sweden four years ago, where the Pirate Party has the third largest membership in the country.

    • FOI shows Department of Justice planning internet blocking for Ireland

      In January we filed a Freedom of Information Request with the Department of Justice asking for all documents dealing with internet blocking by ISPs. Last month the response came back – refusing access to almost every internal document!

      Sometimes, however, it can be informative to know what is being concealed. When answering FOI requests, departments prepare a schedule of records listing each document they hold by data and title.

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 1: Episode 6 (2004)


Links 16/4/2010: Nouveau Power Management, New GNU/Linux Game

Posted in News Roundup at 7:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Link Tech Show #349 – Apr 15 [OGG]

  • Sony

    • Sony refuses to sanction PS3 refunds

      Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer fat PS3 users partial refunds because of the removal of the Install Other OS function.

      Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console.

    • Quotes of Sony promoting the OtherOS feature

      Taken from the Playstation.com forums (nice work!):
      —————-

      CREDIT goes to Xrobx who posted these in another thread and i wanted to make sure that everyone sees them…

      Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.:
      “In addition to playing games, watching movies, listening to music, and viewing photos, you can use the PS3 system to run the Linux operating system. By installing the Linux operating system, you can use the PS3 system not only as an entry-level personal computer with hundreds of familiar applications for home and office use, but also as a complete development environment for the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.).”
      http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html [playstation.com]

      (http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:byasL-PxEiMJ:www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html+http://www.playstation.com/ps3-openplatform/index.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=cln
      k&gl=us&client=safari) – google’s cached page of the above hyperlink from March 30th 2010 which does not say anything about FW 3.21 removing Other OS. I’ve saved the page in case it goes offline, copy http address into browser as link probably won’t work. Or, just search google and get the cached page. – kiyyto.

      Phil Harrison, February 2007,
      President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios 2005-2008:
      “One of the most powerful things about the PS3 is the ‘Install Other OS’ option.”
      http://kotaku.com/235049/20-questions-with-phil-harrison-at-dice [kotaku.com]

      Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., 2006-2009:
      “The Linux Distributor’s Starter Kit provides information, binary and source codes to Linux Distribution developers who wants to make their distro support PS3.”
      http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux [kernel.org]

      Izumi Kawanishi, Sony, May 2006:
      “Because we have plans for having Linux on board [the PS3], we also recognize Linux programming activities… Other than game studios tied to official developer licenses, we’d like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3.”
      http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9290 [gamasutra.com]

      Geoffrey Levand, August 2009,
      Principal Software Engineer at Sony Corporation:
      “Please be assured that SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the “Install Other OS” feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases.”
      mailing list to PS3 customers using Linux

      Phil Harrison, May 2006,
      President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios 2005-2008:
      “The Playstation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC.”
      http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,418642,00.html [spiegel.de]
      SONY
      Make.Believe… you didn’t see that

  • Desktop

    • A Reminder to Purveyors of Linux

      Those who want to use Linux, Unix, or any one of the BSD distributions, are expected to know how to read with comprehension, know how to use a search engine – using actual arguments – and, above all else, have some level of patience.

      Today’s average user has none of those skills.

  • Server

  • IBM

    • IBM and the labors of TurboHercules

      The story starts with the Hercules emulator, which lets PC-type systems pretend to be IBM’s System/370 and ESA/390 mainframe architectures. Hercules is good enough to run systems like z/OS or z/VM, and, according to the project’s FAQ, it has been used for production use at times, even if that’s not its stated purpose. The project is licensed under the OSI-certified Q Public License.

      Enter TurboHercules SAS, which seeks to commercialize the Hercules system. The company offers supported versions of Hercules – optionally bundled with hardware – aimed at the disaster recovery market. Keeping a backup mainframe around is an expensive proposition; keeping a few commodity systems running Hercules is rather cheaper. It’s not hard to imagine why companies which are stuck with software which must run on a mainframe might be tempted by this product – as a backup plan or as a way to migrate off the mainframes entirely.

  • Kernel Space

    • Long-Time Open Source Contributor Collabora Joins Linux Foundation

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Collabora Ltd., has become a member and will participate in the MeeGo project (http://www.meego.com).

    • Linux Graybeards? Yes, But Also A Wisdom Circle

      Linux is in a strong marketplace position, despite the graying of some of its key maintainers, thanks to cloud computing and other trends that favor it over Windows and older versions of Unix, claimed Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation.

      Zemlin didn’t bring up the fact that key maintainers of the Linux kernel are getting older. That was for Jonathan Corbet, editor in chief of the Linux Weekly News, to point out later during a panel Wednesday at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, in San Francisco.

    • Linux Kernel Devs: We Need New Blood

      Morton does have a solution for the problem. In his view, Linux kernel developers need to document the work that they do better. He wasn’t talking about offline documentation, but rather documentation within the code itself.

    • Graphics Stack

      • The Real Need For Nouveau Power Management
      • Nouveau Is Power Hungry On Desktops Too

        This morning we talked about the real need for Nouveau power management as with a notebook bearing a NVIDIA GPU this open-source NVIDIA driver can easily consume 10~30% more power than using NVIDIA’s official binary driver. While power management is more important on the mobile side, a quick test was carried out on a desktop too.

        For this Nouveau desktop testing of the power consumption a AMD Sempron box was used running a NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was used comparing its Nouveau KMS driver (using the Linux 2.6.32 kernel but with the 2.6.33 DRM back-ported, and no Gallium3D driver in use) to the NVIDIA 195.36.15 binary driver. Ubuntu 10.04 was used for some variation in the test results and the Red Hat Anaconda installer with Fedora 13 Beta would hang with this AMD system when it came to detecting the Serial ATA hard drive.

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • 4.5 updates so far

      I’m not going to make a detailed post, just a screen-shot based overview of the new features you can expect in KDE 4.5.

  • Distributions

    • Bootchart on Archlinux

    • Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • In loving memories: Phil Lavigna (1963-2010)

        I just learned that Phil Lavigna, author of the nice ulteoadmin.com website has passed away on April, 1st. Phil was a very talented, humble and perfectionist guy. He wrote several books on Linux, including “Test driving Linux” at O’Reilly. I knew him for a long time, we spent many nights on writing contents and press-releases for Mandrakesoft.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Options Alert for Red Hat Inc

        RHT options saw interesting call activity today. A total of 251 put and 1,292 call contracts were traded raising a low Put/Call volume alert. Today’s traded Put/Call ratio is 0.19. There were 5.15 calls traded for each put contract.

    • Debian Family

      • The role of the Debian ftpmasters

        Linux distributions don’t simply appear on mirrors and BitTorrent networks fully formed. A great deal of work goes on behind the scenes before a release sees the light of day. Linux users who aren’t involved in the production of a Linux distribution may not fully appreciate all of that work. Take, for example, the work done by Debian’s ftpmasters team.

      • Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 10.04 OS has enterprise appeal

          Open source operating system Ubuntu 10.04, otherwise known as LucidLynx, slated for availability end of April as a Long Term Support (LTS) release, will be particularly appealing to enterprises dealing with large server deployments, said one analyst.

          Enterprises running data centres or managing many servers will welcome the new LTS release because they’ll be “more interested in stability and less interested in updating,” said Jay Lyman, open source analyst with research firm The 451 Group.

        • Ubuntu 10.04 delivers usability, strength

          Every time I tried to use Ubuntu, it felt like I’d stepped into a kiosk machine: it looked like Linux, but the functionality I needed just wasn’t there. Sometimes that absence was drastic: I remember having great hot docking support for my laptop in Ubuntu 8.04 that somehow vanished in 8.10.

        • Ubuntu 10.04 beta – Over 100 updates today … and the buttons moved again

          I turned on my laptop running the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid beta (I think we’re still technically on “beta 2″) and found more than 100 updates ready for me.

          I did these from the console with apt, and I had to remove Thunderbird before the apt-get upgrade would work. I hadn’t started using Thunderbird yet, so that was no problem. Once I removed Thunderbird, the upgrade went forward without incident.

          But when I rebooted, I noticed that the button order in application windows changed again. The picture above shows what the buttons look like at the time of this entry.

        • Why Use Ubuntu?

          I’ve been asked why I use Ubuntu a few times. When asked I ask why not. The answers to that are usually different but always follow the lines of, “Well, I was just curious because you know everything about Linux.” That answer makes me laugh a little. My follow up is, I use Ubuntu because it works and does what I want it to. Thats not the only reason though. It’s not that I haven’t tried other distributions. It’s not even that I haven’t liked certain things in others more. The real reason is much deeper than that.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • A Sneak Peak At the Black Box Inside Your Phone

        About two months ago, Harald Welte announced a project called OsmocomBB which intends to close what might be called the missing link between the free GSM network implementations and the free mobile phone operating systems. When accomplished, the projects aims to have a fully functioning and free GSM baseband software stack in the mobile phone.

      • Nokia

        • Mobilizing Open Source: Intel, Nokia Dish on MeeGo’s Progress

          The two companies’ goal is to press forward on MeeGo, the joint project resulting from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) move to combine their respective mobile Linux efforts. Even before they joined forces earlier this year, Intel and Nokia have been working closely with a number of high-profile open source projects — putting the two in prime position to share some insight on productizing open source.

      • Android

        • REPORT: HTC adding 1080p recording to its 2011 phones, also planning Android tablet

          According to a report on a site identifying itself as Phone Report, HTC’s South African MD Quinton Leigh came out with a huge shopping list of next-gen features the smartphone giant is planning to add to its forthcoming models.

        • Orange To Launch Android Handset Boston

          The Boston is expected to ship with Google’s Android 1.6 operating system on board, which might not sound that great, though it seems that software updates are set to arrive after launch. I can’t wait to hear more about this phone, it looks very attractive.

        • Why Verizon’s Skype client forces Android Wi-Fi shutdown

          Verizon Wireless users with Android-based devices – most notably the popular Motorola Droid – are not able to run the new Skype Mobile client with the phone’s Wi-Fi radio turned on. The consequence: Users can either turn Wi-Fi on the device off completely, forcing all data services to run over the Verizon 3G network, or leave Wi-Fi on and be unable to use Skype Mobile to make calls or even have it running in the background, the major of appeal of the app in the first place.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Linux-ready netbook touted for eight-hour battery life

        ZaReason is shipping a Linux-ready, 10-inch netbook that uses the Intel Atom N450 processor and is claimed to offer eight hours of battery life. The ZaReason Teo Netbook offers 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB hard disk drive (HDD), 802/11n wireless networking, Ethernet, three USB 2.0 ports, and a 1.3-megapixel webcam, says the company.

Free Software/Open Source

  • SugarCRM 6 Gives a New View on Open Source CRM Software

    The new Sugar 6 release includes a revamped user interface and other tweaks that aim to make the system more efficient for users. To SugarCRM, the project’s chief commercial backer, the new version marks the latest step in the evolution of both the company and its core CRM offering, though to the layman, the improvements might at first seem relatively minor.

  • Crowdsourcing

    • Why the open source way trumps the crowdsourcing way

      A while back, I wrote an article about why the term crowdsourcing bugs me. Another thing that drives me nuts? When people confuse crowdsourcing and open source. My friend David Burney wrote an interesting post on this subject a while back highlighting the differences.

      It finally hit me the other day just why the open source way seems so much more elegantly designed (and less wasteful) to me than what I’ll call “the crowdsourcing way.”

    • Crowdsourced Project Relies On Fans For Rotoscoping A Johnny Cash Video

      Digital artist Aaron Koblin has a fantastic knack for creating innovative, beautiful, fascinating works that merge the worlds of data and technology with art. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, he created The Sheep Market by commissioning 10,000 online workers each to draw a left-facing sheep. Ten Thousand Cents created a representation of a $100 bill, also drawn by 10,000 turkers. Now, he’s back with a video project, and is creating a crowdsourced music video for Johnny Cash’s song, “Ain’t No Grave.”

    • The Case for Being Disruptively Good

      What’s different, immediately, about a hyperconnected world is that information flows much faster and more freely. So it’s less costly to ascertain who’s really evil — and who’s really good. So the first force is information.

      [...]

      Google’s just climbed back up to the third rung, competition — by leaving China, it is once again competing not just to gain more share, but to do more good, by offering higher quality services, instead of compromised ones (in turn, amplifying pressure on rivals like Microsoft).

      Apple’s on the fourth rung, disruption. It is utilizing radical new building blocks, markets — the Apps Store, iAds — and their great promise is to reinvent the deep economics of media and advertising. Will they live up to it? Only time will tell whether Jobs’ insistence on heavy-handed control is hubris — or whether it really does radically rewrite the balance of good and bad. If the former, Apple will likely stumble back down the ladder of next-gen strategy.

    • Grand Challenges of the 21st Century — Your Ideas Welcome

      One of the goals of President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation is to harness science and technology to address the “grand challenges” of the 21st century in areas such as health, clean energy, national security, and education and life-long learning. Grand challenges are important national goals like putting a man on the Moon or sequencing the human genome that require advances in science and technology to achieve. They also have the potential to drive sustainable economic growth and the creation of quality jobs.

    • Evan Williams: “Twitter Is the Ecosystem”

      Twitter’s fundamental tenet, Williams said, is that “The open exchange of information has a positive impact on the world. Our goal as a company is to maximize this impact, that’s what we’re about and it’s what drives everything we do.” That’s why Twitter made those deals with Google, Bing and Yahoo, though investors worried that the licensing deals would be “giving away the farm.” Williams said his team was swayed by the idea that putting the Twitter firehose in front of those engineering teams and their millions of users would “maximize value for end users.”

  • Mozilla

  • Education

    • How Hard Can it Be? DIY OCW

      One of the miracles of free software is that it always begins with one or two people saying: “hey, how hard can it be?” The miracle is that they say that even when “it” is an operating system like GNU, or a kernel like Linux, or a graphic image manipulation package like the GIMP. Despite the manifest impossibility of one person writing something that usually requires vast, hierarchical teams, and months of planning, they just start and the miracle continues: others join in and the thing grows until one day, with the help of a few hundred friends, they achieve that impossibility.

  • Releases

    • GNUmed 0.7.0 released

      I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of
      GNUmed 0.7.0 (server v13).

  • Government

  • Licensing

    • 3% of open source software ever created use Apache Commons libraries

      TOP 5 most reused components from Apache Commons

      * Logging: Wrapper around a variety of logging API implementations.
      * Collections: Extends or augments the Java Collections Framework.
      * Lang: Provides extra functionality for classes in java.lang.
      * BeanUtils: Easy-to-use wrappers around the Java reflection and introspection APIs.
      * Httpclient: HttpClient is a HTTP/1.1 compliant HTTP agent implementation based on HttpCore (Httpclient is now an independent project)

    • Binary Analysis Tool checks component licenses

      More details about the release, including limitations of the tool and a demonstration video, are available on the project web site. The Binary Analysis Tool is available to download from the project’s web site and is released under the Apache license. Documentation is also provided. The project is sponsored by the Linux Foundation, the NLnet Foundation, Opendawn and Loohuis Consulting.

  • Open Data in Governments

    • data.norge.no
    • Open government data in Germany: what next?

      Quite a lot has happened since last September, when we founded the “Open Data Network”, a non-profit organisation to promote open data, open government, transparency and citizen participation here in Germany. This new initiative gained a lot of attention and positive feedback from all across the society: among the founding members we have representatives from civil society organisations, the public sector, private companies and representatives from all 6 major german political parties. Since then we have established a wide network, continually reporting on open data issues on our well known Open Data Blog, and have been invited to present at a wide variety of meetings, workshops and conferences.

    • The Europeana Public Domain Charter

      The Europeana Foundation has published a policy statement, the Public Domain Charter, to highlight the value of public domain content in the knowledge economy. It alerts Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual collections to the fact that digitisation of Public Domain content does not create new rights in it.

    • Case Study: How Open data saved Canada $3.2 Billion

      Why does open data matter? Rather than talk in abstract terms, let me share a well documented but little known story about how open data helped expose one of the biggest tax frauds in Canada’s history.

    • Government transparency: Using search data to connect with your audience

      A couple of weeks ago at Transparency Camp, I gave a talk on using search data to help ensure that the information the organizations in attendance were opening up could be found by the right audiences. It’s awesome that organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, Open Congress, and Follow the Money are making details about government actions easily accessible by citizens. And the government itself has made great strides in opening up data with sites such as recovery.gov and data.gov.

    • Datadotgc.ca Launched – the opportunity and challenge

      Today I’m really pleased to announce that we’ve launched datadotgc.ca, a volunteer driven site I’m collaboratively creating with a small group of friends and, I hope, a growing community that, if you are interested, may include you.

      As many of you already know I, and many other people, want our governments to open up and share their data, in useful, structured formats that people can actually use or analyze. Unlike our American and British peers, the Canadian Federal (and provincial…) government(s) currently have no official, coordinated effort to release government data.

  • Transparency

    • When transparency can save lives

      Dan Froomkin has a good write-up of the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s (MSHA) failure to release certain notes related to violations that Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine was cited for in the past year. The Upper Big Branch Mine was the site of the worst coal mining disaster in the United States in the past forty years.

  • Programming

    • Analyst: New developer demographics favor Linux, PHP

      But there does appear to be a definite expiration date on these old-school programming languages. Interest in dynamic languages like PHP and Ruby is not complementary to Java and .Net, as Savio Rodrigues found, but rather is happening at their expense.

      The “youthquake” threatens to shake up old hierarchies.

      This demographic shift is indicative of much more than a passing fad in lightweight development, reflecting, rather, a deep and abiding interest in open source, as I’ve written, but one that is maturing.

    • IcedTea6 1.8 Released!

      We are proud to announce the release of IcedTea6 1.8.

      The IcedTea project provides a harness to build the source code from OpenJDK7 using Free Software build tools. It also includes the only Free Java plugin and Web Start implementation, and support for additional architectures over and above x86, x86_64 and SPARC via the Zero assembler port.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • US Broadcast Groups to Develop National Mobile TV Service

    ­Twelve US broadcast firms have announced plans to form a standalone joint venture to develop a new national mobile content service. Utilizing existing broadcast spectrum, the service will allow member companies to provide content to mobile devices, including live and on-demand video, local and national news from print and electronic sources, as well as sports and entertainment programming.

  • Schools

    • Schools: Too Big To Fail

      “Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 teachers?”

      “That money could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers…with benefits.” The wealthy will have placed an estimated $2 trillion into hedge funds by the end of this year, while schools experience cutbacks everywhere. “That’s about $6,500 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.” To add insult to injury, they pay only a 15 percent tax rate on their “earnings” while an experienced teacher will be paying 28 percent-plus.

    • Who Really Failed?

      Students in introductory biology don’t need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university’s administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor’s right to set standards in her own course.

  • Security/Aggression

    • Brutality probe into epileptic’s tasering

      The police tasering of a man having an epileptic fit has sparked an investigation into claims of officer brutality.

      The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) confirmed it was investigating officers at Greater Manchester police for using “excessive and unnecessary force” in firing the stun gun at the unnamed 40-year-old man in November last year.

    • Identity cards, identity databases, biometric passports and compulsion: Some clarifications

      At one level, scrapping identity cards is a fairly trivial activity as the card is simply a piece of plastic, currently with limited functionality (there are very few ‘readers’ available that the card can be used with, and no online verification capabilities for card holders, so current advice on security checks for the card involve visual and physical inspection of the card and, potentially, phoning a telephone hotline to check that the card has not been reported as lost or stolen). There are no current plans to upgrade the cards either to provide more useful functionality.

  • Environment

    • Forensic DNA blow to commercial whaling proposals

      Proposals to resume commercial whaling have been dealt a blow by DNA detective work showing that restaurants in the US and South Korea illegally sold whale meat from Japan.

      In June, Japan, Iceland and Norway are expected to ask the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for permission to resume commercial whaling. They say they can prevent smuggling by matching the DNA of whale meat sold in markets to a register of all legally caught whales. But all have refused to make their DNA registers public.

      To find out the origin of whale meat being sold outside Japan, Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues secretly took samples from two restaurants, one in Santa Monica, California, and another in Seoul, South Korea.

    • Anti-Tar Sands Protests Gather Momentum

      Tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada is already the world’s largest industrial project, requiring the removal of vast areas of ancient forest and consuming enough natural gas per day to heat 3.2 million Canadian homes. Extracting usable fuel from the oily soil emits 3 to 5 times as much carbon dioxide as conventional oil drilling, the lakes of toxic waste it produces are so large they are visible from space, and the pollution from the project is poisoning the Indigenous people who live in its shadow. There is enough oil in the Alberta tar sands to push us over the climate tipping point even if we keep all other fossil fuels in the ground. Grassroots resistance has been taking place on the ground in Canada for years, led largely by Indigenous communities, but has attracted limited international attention – until now.

    • Audit Finds Vulnerability of EnergyStar Program

      Does a “gasoline-powered alarm clock” qualify for the EnergyStar label, the government stamp of approval for an energy-saving product?

    • EnergyStar Program Flunks Test

      Most of the applications were approved without questions or challenges, leading auditors to conclude that the EnergyStar program is highly vulnerable to fraud. Another problem auditors found with the program is that once a company gains registration as an EnergyStar partner, it can download the EnergyStar logo from the government’s Web site and paste it onto products for which it had not even requested approval.

  • Finance

    • ‘Innovation in New York’ Revisited

      While the New York area has long been one of the world’s major financial centers, it was also preeminent in a number of other major areas, including health care, law, arts, entertainment, publishing and media. But then, over the past twenty years, financial services started to dominate the NY economy to an unprecedented degree. While the numbers employed in the industry grew modestly, their overall compensation went up significantly. For example, according to NY State Department of Labor statistics:

      “In 2007, [Wall Street] was responsible for almost 30 percent of private sector wages in the City. Between 2003 and 2007, total wages paid on Wall Street more than doubled, increasing from $35.8 billion to $73.9 billion. Similarly, average salaries in the industry jumped more than 77 percent over the period to top $400,000 in 2007; the rate of increase in average wage level was more than three times faster than growth in the rest of the City’s private sector economy. During this period, Wall Street accounted for almost one-half of all private sector wage growth in the City as well as approximately 20 percent of the tax revenue for the state as a whole.”

      The concerns expressed in this NY Times article from November of 2006 seem prescient in retrospect: “The 280,000 workers in the finance industry collect more than half of all the wages paid in Manhattan, although they hold fewer than one of every six jobs in the borough. The pay gap between them and the 1.5 million other workers in Manhattan continues to widen, causing some economists to worry about the city’s growing dependence on their extraordinary incomes.”

    • Wall Street tires of penitence and turns on Washington

      As stock markets surge, debt markets thaw and corporate deal-making picks up pace, trading floors are back at near record levels of profitability even if, as JP Morgan’s figures showed on Wednesday, the financial environment for the general public at high street banks remains bleak. Most of those who work at financial institutions think it’s only fair they should be rewarded – and they want more than last year’s average bonus of $123,850 (£80,000).

    • Lehman Examiner Sees Possible Grounds for Suit

      In a portion of the Lehman examiner’s report unsealed Wednesday, Anton Valukas, appointed to investigate the circumstances surrounding Lehman Brother’s collapse and liquidation, says that the failed investment bank might have cause to sue Goldman Sachs and Barclays for what might be a “fraudulent transaction.”

    • Goldman Director Examined in Galleon Case, Report Says

      Add another name to the long list of companies reportedly tied to the federal prosecutors’ continuing investigation into the Galleon Group: Goldman Sachs.

    • Goldman Sachs Director Gupta Under Investigation For Passing Inside Info To Rajaratnam

      A Goldman Sachs director, Rajat Gupta, is now under investigation for passing inside info to Galleon head Raj Rajaratnam, says the WSJ.

      Gupta is also a board member of Procter & Gamble and American Airlines parent, AMR. He is the ex-head of consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

    • Goldman Sachs Director May Have Passed Insider Info to Galleon

      A Goldman Sachs (GS) board member may have passed sensitive data to Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam (pictured), according to The Wall Street Journal.

      Rajaratnam has been accused of insider trading by the government and, as part of its investigation, “the government is examining whether Rajat Gupta — a current Goldman director, former head of McKinsey & Co. and close associate of Mr. Rajaratnam’s — shared inside information about Goldman, the people close to the situation say,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Another former McKinsey employee has already been charged in the case.

    • Galleon case reveals Wall Street’s connections

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in the Galleon hedge fund insider-trading probe is great headline fodder, but the takeaways from the case shed light on an industry-wide issue.

      [...]

      Whether Goldman had a role in the alleged insider trading or was just a bystander is something prosecutors will determine. But the Feds are employing more tools in trying to find out. If suspicions turn to convictions, Wall Street will feel the chill. Phone conversations and other communication could come with a question: who’s listening?

    • Goldman Director Gupta to Leave

      Rajat Guptatold Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in March he wouldn’t stand for re-election as a director, after receiving notice from prosecutors that they were reviewing recorded conversations between him and Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, people close to the matter say.

    • Goldman Sachs Real Estate Fund Vaporizes 98% Of Client Capital

      A Goldman Sachs real-estate fund, Whitehall International, has incinerated almost all of the $1.8 billion invested in it.

      Remarkably, it’s not just Goldman clients who have gotten hosed: Goldman itself invested $436 million in the fund, 98% of which is now gone.

      The culprit?

      Highly leveraged bets on international real estate.

    • Goldman Sachs Would Like To Remind Noted Thespian/Former Client Of A Few Things, And Vice Versa

      Earlier today actor Alan Cummings told New York magazine that he’d taken his money out of Goldman Sachs because he was disgusted with how they conducted themselves before during and after the crisis. Cummings knew writing to Lloyd Blankfein and telling the CEO how disappointed he was would accomplish nothing, and that the only way to send a message that would actually penetrate senior management was to speak their language. The language of cash-money.

    • White House Asks Blankfein, Dimon To Halt Bill Fight: Sources Bloomberg

      White House officials have urged the chief executive officers of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) to stop lobbying against a financial regulatory bill in Congress, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday on its Web site, citing unnamed people who attended a meeting on the matter.

    • Legislation would bar taxpayer bailouts of derivatives ponzi schemes

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and their biggest rivals would be forced to wall off derivatives trading operations from their commercial banks under a measure to be introduced by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, a congressional aide said.

      Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat, will propose a “no-bailout provision” as part of an overhaul of derivatives regulation she plans to unveil today, according to the aide, who declined to be identified because the plan isn’t public. The measure aims to ensure banks don’t endanger depositors’ money with risky trading of over-the-counter derivatives, the aide said.

    • Is it Time to Pull the Plug on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission?

      Last week, in the middle of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s testimony in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), the lights went out.

      According to Greenspan, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were to blame for the housing bubble. The Fed may have noticed, but it couldn’t really do anything about it. “Regulators cannot successfully use the bully pulpit to manage asset prices, and they cannot calibrate regulation and supervision in response to movements in asset prices. Nor can they fully eliminate the possibility of future crises,” said Greenspan.

      After that self-serving drivel, no wonder the God’s zapped the electrical system. There was a lot Greenspan could have done to rein in the housing bubble, not the least of which was simply telling people there was a bubble as housing prices began following an unprecedented and unsustainable path.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Marketing to Distrust

      Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, Monsanto, Blackwater, Bank of America, Citigroup, Cigna, Aetna, Enron, Arthur Andersen, Mercury Insurance, Philip Morris …These are just a few corporate names that engender feelings of distrust, anger and betrayal. They represent scandals, greed, blatant disregard for public welfare, lavish spending of taxpayer money and other negatives, and serve as reminders about how corporate wrongdoing has brought shame on our country and harmed millions.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • U.S. Leaders Should Heed Their Own Advice On Internet Filters

      It has been kind of entertaining (some would say frightening) watching the Australian government’s futile efforts to clean the Internet of its naughty bits. As part of their filtering plans, the government conducted trials with a handful of ISPs, many of whom have been very vocal in their beliefs that the filters won’t technically work. These ongoing trials had no quantifiable metric to determine whether the trials were a success or failure, so obviously, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy proudly announced that the trials proved the filters to be 100% effective. Political leaders in favor of the filters haven’t exactly been open to feedback on the dangers of filters, and the country learned nothing early on, when a teenage kid hacked their original filter system in all of half an hour.

    • UK MPs call for ID cards and surveillance, but demand privacy for themselves

      Guy from Power2010 sez, “Power2010 have released a brief report showing examples of hypocrisy by UK ministers and MPs when it comes to privacy and personal information. We are timing the release of the report alongside a ‘speak out’ campaign targeting all parliamentary candidates which allows people to message their candidates asking them to take a different approach to privacy and transparency and end the ‘one rule for us, one rule for them’ approach. ”

    • Thousands wrongly labelled by CRB checks

      The Criminal Records Bureau has paid out compensation of £290,124 to people wrongly labelled criminals during background checks by the agency.

    • British Chiropractic Association v Singh – BCA admits defeat.

      The BCA today served a Notice of Discontinuance bringing to an end its ill-fated libel claim against Dr Simon Singh arising out of criticisms he made of its promotion of treatments for childhood ailments.

    • British Elections Neither Free Nor Fair

      In my diplomatic career, I spent a great deal of time assessing the democratic merit of elections in various countries abroad. That gives me a peculiar perspective in looking at elections in the UK, and wondering what a foreign observer would make of them. I can do this also with the insight of having twice run as an independent parliamentary candidate.

    • McKinnon’s mum stands against Straw at general election

      Gary McKinnon’s mum is standing for Parliament against Jack Straw in the UK’s upcoming general election.

      [...]

      McKinnon faces the latest in a long series of court hearings on 25 and 26 May, three weeks after the general election. The next two months promise to be extremely busy and stressful for Sharp, a point she readily acknowledges. “It’s something I feel I have to do. If we don’t stand up we all might wake up in a Nazi style police state,” she said.

    • Labour manifesto: More ID cards, less NHS IT

      Businesses have had VAT cuts and the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme to help them access loans, as well as increased capital tax allowances in 2009/10. For the future, there will be a number of different support measures, such as reduced business rates for start-up.

    • Whistleblower Wins Again

      Good news stories aren’t so frequent here in the Caucasus region, so when they do come along, they’re worth celebrating. Last year, Armenian environmental activist Mariam Sukhudyan was facing a possible five-year prison sentence for slander after exposing alleged abuse at a children’s home. The charges were finally dropped a few weeks ago, and in another welcome development, Sukhudyan and her colleagues won first prize at the Social Innovation Camp event here in Tbilisi last weekend with their web project aimed at combatting ecological damage to forests.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Why Hollywood Doesn’t Want You Betting on Hollywood

      Basically, the M.P.A.A. believes that such a movie exchange would not just be purely a speculative prediction market that operated in isolation, but that it could actually harm the filmmaking and distribution process itself. Some of the movie industry’s biggest headaches over the exchange seem to come from concerns about “market manipulation.” With so many investors/speculators invested in box-office numbers, studios are worried this could be just another incentive for pirates to steal an advance copy of a movie and post it on YouTube. Last year’s Wolverine debacle was a case in point: it’s one thing to keep the latest comic-book blockbuster from the eyes of curious fans, another to withhold it from a million Gordon Gekkos betting that a given film will fail and then making that happen by leaking a copy to YouTube.

    • Copyrights

      • Activists oppose ‘discriminatory’ amendment to Copyright Act

        Opposing the upcoming amendment to the Copyright Act, 1957 that proposes to exempt only the ‘specially designed’ formats like Braille to help the disabled read, a group of disability rights activists on Thursday said that the move is “discriminatory” to people not knowing Braille and will be “counterproductive”.

        The National Access Alliance (NAA), an umbrella body campaigning for an appropriate amendment to the copyright Act, said it believes that the proposed clause, 52 Z (a) will hamper rather than help the print-impaired (people with any form of visual, cerebral or orthopaedic disability that deters normal reading) in accessing books.

    • ACTA

      • [OpenACTA]

        We are writing to bring to your attention the European Parliament Resolution of 10 March 2010 on Transparency and State of Play of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) [1], showing the growing concern of European citizens regarding ACTA. We are aware that this is an unconventional request but considering the circumstances, we would like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to provide an expert assessment and analysis of the current provisions of ACTA from your institutional viewpoint as one the two specialised organisations entrusted with the issue of norm-setting in the field of intellectual property rights and related issues.

      • ACTA’s Acts of Stupidity

        Alongside the UK’s Tom Watson, New Zealand’s Clare Curran is shaping up as one of the leading net-savvy politicians in the world. Here’s a typically clueful post about ACTA and her country’s role in the negotiations, concluding:

        Why are law-makers heading down this route? It flies in the face of reality. What lies behind the Digital Economy Bill and ACTA?

        The best thing the NZ Govt could do is to release its negotiating position to its citizens. Let’s all be in this discussion. Transparency is by far the best policy.

      • Will ACTA end the purchase of foreign titles by libraries?

        With the release of leaked versions of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), opposition to the drafting process continues to grow. Recently IFLA issued a statement arguing that while it is appropriate for governments to act to stop commercial counterfeiting, the copyright and patent issues at stake in ACTA would be better addressed through the World International Property Organization (WIPO). They also object to the secrecy of the negotiations. The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) has also been active in its opposition to ACTA, most recently joining in a letter complaining about provisions in the leaked text and issuing a statement of LCA concerns. Earlier, Janice Pilch had prepared an issue brief on ACTA for the LCA.

    • Digital Economy Bill/UK

      • This website has been blocked by your government
      • Anti-Piracy Letters: Could Services ‘Sponsor’ ISP Warnings?

        This section only specifically names BBC iPlayer for TV downloads, and – somewhat remarkably – tells alleged infringers: “You may be interested in the following links [sponsored links]”…

        “Sponsored links”? Surely the government isn’t expecting that online services – let’s say, Spotify or Lovefilm or ITV.com – could advertise in warnings sent to ISP subscribers?

      • ACS:Law Anti-Piracy Hunt Takes Toll On Legal Profession

        Today, anti-piracy group DigiProtect are again quoted by the BBC as having no regrets about their controversial campaign file-sharing hunt in the UK. Nevertheless, their actions don’t come without cost. Their lawyers, ACS:Law, have had more than 280 official complaints filed against them with the UK legal regulatory body, dwarfing all comers in the IP sector.

      • Law firm defends attacking pensioners

        The firm employed ACS:Law, a company that has been widely criticised for its carpet-bombing approach and bullying tactics for extracting money on behalf of its client, Digiprotect. Again talking to the BBC, the firm justified its disgraceful behaviour simply by saying that its approach is the “the only proven effective proceeding”.

        Unsurprisingly, the law firm has a statement on the recent passing of the Digital Economy Bill, saying it is “delighted” and hailing it the start of a “new age of prosperity”, no doubt for the firm rather than the artists, who are well known to get shafted out of their dues.

      • Digital Economy Act: Built on Sand

        Bad statistics are not the basis for good law, and this latest analysis from the US is just one more reason why the extraordinarily ill-thought out Digital Economy Act needs to be repealed in its entirety, and the entire process of drawing up legislation that will truly stimulate the UK’s digital economy started afresh.

      • Why Content Is a Public Good

        This post has been two years in the making. I had the insight for it about two years ago and have been meaning to blog about it since then, all the time wondering why no one has twigged this yet, or whether they have and were too scared to say, or whether I just didn’t know that they had. Anyway, what with the Digital Economy Bill having become the Digital Economy Act last week, it’s about bloody time I get my act together and put this out there.

      • Measures to Tackle Online Copyright Infringement: Terms of Reference

        The Digital Economy Act (the Act) has created new responsibilities for Ofcom to adopt measures aimed at significantly reducing levels of unlawful file sharing via peer-to-peer online networks. The Act has set out two initial obligations on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in order to secure a coordinated approach, involving both copyright owners and ISPs. Should those initial measures fail to significantly reduce levels of unlawful file sharing the Secretary of State may require that ISPs implement technical measures against serious repeat infringers.

      • The Digital Economy Bill has betrayed the young

        Sutton, who at 22 is a first-time voter with little prior political experience, organised the Stop Disconnection Demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on 24 March. Hundreds of young people assembled, wearing gags and holding black placards to symbolise their fear of being “silenced”. Yet despite this pageant of political passion, many young voters intend to remain silent on election day.

        Most of the available polling data predicts that turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds in 2010 will follow the dismal pattern established in 2005, when only 37 per cent of young voters went to the polls, down from 39 per cent at the previous election.

      • Time to Re-Boot British Politics

        For rather than passing crucial parts of the Digital Economy Bill, and leaving out the controversial ones that are likely to have a major negative effect on the British economy, the government chose to do precisely the reverse, using a three-line whip to force the worst measures through. The result was a travesty of the Parliamentary process that any tin-pot dictator in a banana republic would have been proud of.

        This means that the longer-term goal has to be to reform the system itself. Fortunately, the very flaws that made the passing of the Digital Economy Act possible also map out for us what needs to be done.

        For example, that fact that some clauses were pretty much drawn up by the media industries, and that much of the rest was framed purely to shore up outdated recording industry business models based on scarcity, means that we must address the issue of lobbying.

      • How File-Sharers Will Bypass UK’s Anti-Piracy Act

        In an apparent attempt to stop piracy from bankrupting the music industry, the UK Government passed the Digital Economy Bill last week. Despite their good intentions, the lawmakers have come up with a legislative equivalent of DRM that will not have the slightest effect on seasoned file-sharers.

      • The silent spring of the internet: cyberspace needs its stewards

        Maybe it’s because of the events leading up to the Digital Economy Bill becoming an Act here in the UK. It’s been a bit like Chinese water torture for many months; then, more recently, as the BPI saw their chance to corrupt parliamentary process and took it, it felt more like being waterboarded. I have had it up to here with people who think the internet was built to become a distribution mechanism for Hollywood and Universal Music and David Geffen.

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 3 – Episode 6: Environmental Cost of War (2006)


04.15.10

Links 15/4/2010: GCC 4.5 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Podcast Season 2 Episode 6

    In this episode: The Android-based WePad takes on the mighty Apple iPad while Nokia and Intel launch MeeGo. Hear the results of our music-making challenge and ask yourselves, is Linux sexy?

  • Why I Want My Daughter to be a Hacker

    Let’s define what I mean by the term “hacker” first. There is so much FUD out there around this term. Large controlling institutions want you to fear hackers, want you to think the hacker mindset is dangerous. This could not be farther from the truth. Hackers are simply empowered individuals that want to figure things out for themselves. With hacker properly defined, let’s get to the meat, why I want my daughter to be a hacker:

    1. Hackers are not consumer lemmings – As large institutions continue to brainwash American citizens into becoming slaves to the systems they’ve created; hackers know that there is a life outside these systems of user dependence, a better life. Institutional dependence is literally killing us. Our dependence on the institutional food system has left us disease ridden and physically incapable. Dependence on western medical systems is bankrupting us. Our two major political parties both preach institutional dependence; one insists dependence on big government institutions, the other dependence on big corporate institutions. Hackers preach self and small community dependence. i.e. independence.

  • Cooking with Marcel

    In 1999, Gagné happened to get access to an advanced copy of Corel’s NetWinder, a GNU/Linux-based appliance computer. He pitched a review to Marjorie Richardson, then editor-in-chief at Linux Journal, who rather tentatively told him to submit the review.

    “Well, it was a big hit,” says Gagné. “I have an unusual style in presenting technical information, very tongue-in-cheek and irreverent. I don’t have a classical approach to presenting technical information. I tend to think this stuff should be fun and approachable and readable.

    [...]

    Gagné wasted no time finding new ways to occupy his writing time. He remains a much-in-demand speaker at conferences, and now writes for Linux Pro Magazine, and has recently become senior editor at its sister quarterly Ubuntu User, for which he also blogs.

  • Desktop

    • Testing a New Notebook

      He spake to me thusly, “Install Linux on it.” I advised him to consider dual booting or virtualizing GNU/Linux to try them both. I was asked to check out the possibilities.

    • Ready to switch to Linux?

      Tired of Windows? Ready to look for an alternative? As a desktop user there are really only two options: Linux or Mac OS X. The second pretty much requires that you buy some Apple hardware before you can run it. Linux, on the other hand, will run on most hardware, even some of the older hardware that lurks around homes and offices. Linux is also free to download so you can try it out before having to spend any money.

  • Kernel Space

    • Is Linux graying?

      Too old is, of course, a vague term. After all, Linus Torvalds, Linux’s creator and leader, is just 40. Still, it is a clear that Linux’s top kernel leaders aren’t kids anymore.

      Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Novell engineer and head of the Linux Driver Project, replied, “Turnover at the upper level is not happening.” James Bottomley, another Novell engineer and the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board Chair, agreed that: “There are more gray beards. The graying of the Linux kernel is going to continue until people start dying.”

    • You Can’t Control Linux

      10 years ago, IBM had a single mission for Linux: Make it better. Now in 2010, IBM (NYSE:IBM) has a decade of experience in working to do just that, and is sharing its knowledge about how companies and developers can better participate in the Linux community.

      Speaking in a keynote session at the Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit, Dan Frye, vice president of open system development at IBM, provided his insights into some do’s and don’t when trying to work with Linux.

      For IBM, one of the hardest lessons it had to learn was one about control. Mainly, there is none.

      “There is nothing that we can do to control individuals or communities, and if you try, you make thing worse,” Frye told the audience. “What you need is influence. It goes back to the most important lesson, which is to give back to the community and develop expertise. You’ll find that if your developers are working with a community, that over time they’ll develop influence and that influence will allow you to get things done.”

      Frye noted during his keynote that an early question that IBM asked internally about Linux was how it could control a chaotic development process. As it turns out, Linux development isn’t a chaotic process, though it may appear that way to some looking from the outside.

    • Linux Desktop Virtualization Shootout

      Computer Virtualization has many uses, from increasing server capacity and reducing power consumption to making it easier to test and develop software or to simply run a different Operating System on your computer. Virtualization has become an important aspect of the functionality of todays computers and computer Operating Systems. Many that are new to Linux or new to Virtualization often are overwhelmed by the number of Virtualization options the Linux Desktop has and often ask: “What Virtualization Solution is best suited for my needs”. This article will hopefully answer this question and others like it.

    • Linux Foundation Head Says OS Can Be ‘Fabulous and Free’

      Where is Linux headed? That’s a question the Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, is focused on as his organization gears up for the Linux Collaboration Summit this week.

      In Zemlin’s view, Linux is strategically placed at the intersection of a number of major IT trends that will serve to bolster adoption of the open source operating system. With the increasing growth of the mobile web and cloud services, Zemlin thinks Linux will end up the big winner.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Taking A Hit With ATI Graphics In Fedora 13 Beta

        In this article, we have ATI R500 tests using their open-source driver stack as we test out the OpenGL performance and the power consumption, compared to Fedora 12.

      • The Real Need For Nouveau Power Management

        We have already published a look at the Fedora 13 Beta, delivered ATI Radeon benchmarks atop Fedora 13 Beta, and have other articles on the way covering this new Fedora release, while in this article we are investigating Nouveau’s power performance using this newest Fedora release. If you are a mobile user planning to use the Nouveau stack right now, or you care the least bit about energy savings with your desktop, its power consumption alone may rule this open-source driver out as even a current possibility.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Confessions of a Clonezilla addict

      I think I may be addicted to Clonezilla. I don’t know what the symptoms are, but if they include bouncing between operating systems more than twice a day, scrounging a 256Mb USB drive off your friends just to have one that exactly fits the Clonezilla boot image, or dedicating one whole external drive to an array of system backups spreading out over the last two or three months … then I’m in the club.

    • The Linux Alphabet

      We’ve already been talking about the number of Linux distributions, and the cost, in terms of confusion that so much freedom can bring. Today I’d like to see the distributions number with a little of humor: I often wondered if the Linux distributions names could cover the whole alphabet and be used as sort of “ spelling alphabet”. The answer is … “Yes we can!” here is my personal list compiled after a little research on DistroWatch.com site.

      A – Arch Linux

      B – BackTrack

      C – CentOs

      D = Debian

    • Red Hat Family

    • Ubuntu

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Is That Embedded Software GPL-Compliant?

      Open source software is everywhere these days. In particular, Linux is being used increasingly to power embedded systems of all kinds. That’s good, but it’s also a challenge, because the free software used in such products may not always be compliant with all the licences it is released under – notably the GNU GPL. For companies that sell such embedded systems using open source, it can be hard even finding out what exactly is inside, let alone whether it is compliant.

    • Phones

      • Nokia

        • New Atom platform opens I/O to third parties

          Intel also announced today that Chinese auto manufacturer, Rongcheng HawTai Automobile will incorporate an in-vehicle-infotainment (IVI) system in its in its B11 luxury sedan (above) based on an Intel Atom processor and the Linux-based MeeGo stack.

        • MeeGo, Android operating systems takes stage at Linux conference

          Advocates for duelling open source mobile platforms Android and MeeGo championed their technologies on Wednesday, with a MeeGo spokesman offering a product roadmap, and a Google technologist emphasising Android’s release schedule and addressing fragmentation questions.

          Both platforms were touted at The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit conference in San Francisco in separate presentations.

        • Google: Android, MeeGo don’t have to fight

          Google open source chief Chris DiBona said he’s not in the killing business and expects that Android, MeeGo and other open source cell phone operating systems to play nicely together in the sandbox.

          “MeeGo doesn’t have to lose for Android to be great and Android doesn’t have to lose for MeeGo to be great,” DiBona told hundreds who gathered in San Francisco for the Linux Foundation’s :Linux Collaboration summit.

      • Android

    • Tablets

      • Toshiba prepping Android, Windows tablets

        The company already offers similar products, including the Journe Touch, in European markets. The device is focused on mobile Internet activities, running a version of Windows CE that does not support third-party apps. The US Android offering will take advantage of the range of content available through the respective Market.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Is Your Site’s FAQ Helpful or Useless? Improving the Lowly FAQ

    Gracey suggests that you ask whether you really need a FAQ or not. The answer for any FLOSS-related project is yes, yes you do. There’s a strong expectation in the open source community that any project or product will have a FAQ associated with it, so it’s a bad idea to skip them entirely.

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox plugin decodes malicious Web sites

      A computer security researcher has released a plugin for Firefox that provides a wealth of data on Web sites that may have been compromised with malicious code.

      The plugin, called Fireshark, was released on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference. The open-source free tool is designed to address the shortcomings in other programs used to analyze malicious Web sites, said Stephan Chenette, a principal security researcher at Websense, which lets Chenette develop Fireshark in the course of his job.

  • Databases

    • Will enterprises support Drizzle?

      Former mySQL architect Brian Aker keynoted the mySQL Con in Santa Clara this week and pushed Drizzle, a mySQL fork he hopes to build a company around by the time of June’s OSCON in Portland.

  • Releases

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google funds OGG Theora

      The player as well as development tools are freely distributed here. The OGG Theora codec takes its name from Theora Jones, Amanda Pays’ character on “Max Headroom.”

Leftovers

  • Street View photos used for amazing Google Earth 3D cities

    3D textured cityscapes are nothing new to Google Earth users: international cities such as New York have displayed this type of imagery for a while now. But now Google has made an important, but critical change to Google Earth – adding high resolution Street View imagery to existing 3D city textures and improving the resolution of the facades.

  • Security/Aggression

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Somali radio stations bow to Islamist ban on music

      All but two stations in Mogadishu comply with order to cease broadcasts that militants say violate Islamic principles

    • Japanese Porn Actress Entices Chinese Net Users To Scale Great Firewall

      But apparently it’s also helping teach Chinese folks how to scale the country’s Great Firewall. A few days ago, the Twitter name of a Japanese porn actress got “discovered” in China, and thanks to her apparent popularity, tons of people started trying to access her Twitter page. Twitter, though, is blocked in China, and since the woman is a porn actress, information on her is blocked as it “could cause harm to youngsters’ mental and physical well-being”.

    • The End Of Impunity

      Right. Last week, on the eve of the Easter break, the summit of Ministers of Culture from the 27 European Union countries, and their meeting with the Forum of Cultural Industries, came to an end in Barcelona.

      The parallel citizen summit, the (D’) Evolution Summit – which was organized in order to put forward specific proposals and urgent demands on fundamental rights in Internet, and to give a real-time account of what was being said inside the official congress – allowed civil society to keep an eye on what was being said about its future.

      [...]

      So for them, things didn’t go as planned.

      We were able to verify, live, that when they are watched over, our rulers are not able to favour private interests with impunity, or to implement simplistic control policies based on obsolete formulas.

      What we saw:

      1 – The speeches supporting the interests of lobbies start to get a bit uncomfortable. What they usually do behind closed doors (and will continue to do). turns against them when it is discussed in public and has to contend with arguments.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Homeland Security Depends On Broadcast

      More than eight years after 9/11 and four years after Katrina, the nation is no closer to providing reliable emergency information to its citizens, a population increasingly fractionalized by diverse electronic communication devices. As the nation looks toward a new broadband policy, it would do well to consider a policy that balances the strengths and weaknesses of broadband, of broadcast, and of the impact on homeland security.

    • Should the US govt force all cell phones to carry TV tuners?

      So it is The Year of Our iPad 2010, and we’ve all got mobile phones, netbooks, laptops, desktop computers, and hybrid devices like PS3s and Xboxes. Given all our gadgets, does this mean that in the event of a tornado or terrorist attack, we’ve got a better emergency information communications system?

    • How Third Party Liability Can Stifle An Industry

      An article in the Times Online highlights the situation in Ireland, where there aren’t safe harbors against secondary liability for defamation — and it’s leading internet companies to blatantly censor or to avoid doing business in Ireland out of fear for the liability. Now, some in the entertainment industry seem to think this is just fine — because they think that the internet should be a broadcast medium for the big “professional” producers of content, and all these internet companies and user-generated content things should really all fade away.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The Entertainment Industry’s Dystopia of the Future

      We’re not easily shocked by entertainment industry overreaching; unfortunately, it’s par for the course. But we were taken aback by the wish list the industry submitted in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s request for comments on the forthcoming “Joint Strategic Plan” for intellectual property enforcement. The comments submitted by various organizations provide a kind of window into how these organizations view both intellectual property and the public interest. For example, EFF and other public interest groups have asked the IPEC to take a balanced approach to intellectual property enforcement, paying close attention to the actual harm caused, the potential unexpected consequences of government intervention, and compelling countervailing priorities.

    • Copyrights

      • ‘Star Wars Uncut’: Fans Recreate Classic Flick With Legos, Dogs, And More (VIDEO)

        If you haven’t heard of “Star Wars Uncut,” here’s the deal: fans selected 15 second clips of “Star Wars: A New Hope” and reshot them in any style they wanted. The organizers then took each clip and pieced the whole movie together as seamlessly as they could. It’s scheduled to premiere in Copenhagen in the near future. And when we say “Copenhagen,” we mean “someone will bootleg and put online because the internet comes through every time.”

      • YouTube ‘Star Wars’ Sensation Explains Copyright Issues
      • Pomplamoose: Making A Living On YouTube

        You can add the band Pomplamoose to the long and growing list of YouTube sensations, with its cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” Its members don’t have a record deal or a publicist, but that song’s video has been viewed almost 4 million times on YouTube alone.

        Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn are Pomplamoose, and they recently sat down with Weekend All Things Considered guest host Linda Wertheimer to talk about their success. When it comes to Pomplamoose’s videos, what you see is what you get.

      • Photographer Makes One-Third Of His Living Expenses Off Only 94 Fans
      • Copying Is Not Theft

        Big Media has been producing (mis)educational videos since it’s early non-hit, “Don’t Copy That Floppy.” Most of us have seen those “Piracy: It’s a Crime” clips that incorrectly equate downloading with stealing. The Copyright Alliance offers a whole series of propaganda videos for school children. It’s no surprise that Big Media is ahead of ahead of copyright reform advocates in propaganda.

    • Digital Economy Bill

      • Why My Union Is Wrong

        Over at the Writers’ Guild website, Bernie Corbett (General Secretary of the WGGB) has written a piece called ‘In Defence of the Digital Economy Bill’). It fundamentally misunderstands both the effects of the legislation and the manner in which it was passed, and is a worrying display of ignorance of the facts and issues that surround the Bill. The Bill is bad, that my union should be so maladroit in its defence is worse.

        Mr Corbett begins by calling the Bill ‘much-debated’. This is a coy misdirection. Although the legislation has been much debated in various online forums it has not been afforded full debate in the place it should have been: Parliament. It was rammed through as part of the ‘wash-up’ process at the end of a Parliament despite being hugely controversial.

      • One Stupid Thing About The Digital Economy Bill

        This fails to take into account the fact that a family who has been disconnected because someone has infringed copyright aren’t doing the following. They aren’t downloading TV or songs from iTunes. They aren’t buying books or DVDs from Amazon. They are not listening to songs on Spotify. They aren’t watching ad-supported videos or reading blogs which are supported by GoogleAds. They aren’t bumping up viewing figures through iPlayer, 4OD or ITV.com. They aren’t downloading free samples of the things creators make to advertise what they are making. They aren’t watching movie trailers. They aren’t emailing each other links to exciting and interesting things they have found. They aren’t clicking the ‘donate’ button on my or anyone else’s website. In short, they aren’t consuming media any more.

      • Bernie Corbett’s Response to WMUIW
      • Shame Peter Mandelson didn’t download some common sense

        What happens when an inadequate legislative process meets networking technology? Answer: the Digital Economy Bill (aka Mandy’s dangerous downloaders act), which finally staggered, slightly frayed, on to the statute book on Wednesday night.

        For those who haven’t been following the story, here’s the gist. Many moons ago, Stephen (now Lord) Carter, the former Ofcom boss, was commissioned to produce a report on the communications and networking strategy Britain should follow in order to drag itself into the 21st century. He duly produced the Digital Britain report which, although remarkably unambitious on some issues, such as aspirations for nationwide broadband speeds, was also judicious and sensible on hot topics like file-sharing and “piracy”. The stage was set for a deliberative path to legislation, probably timed for the next parliament.

Links 15/4/2010: Linux Foundation’s Collaboration Summit, Dragora Linux 2.0, ZEN-mini 2010

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • The death of Linux and other predictions

      Firstly, this is NOT the year of Linux on the desktop, because frankly it has been on the desktop many years already. Read my recent article: Why Linux on the Desktop is Wrong! So can we lay to rest the phrase “the year of the desktop” and all variations? May it rest in peace!

      Secondly, the desktop is NOT dying because someone came up with another clever idea. People sliding their greasy fingers all over their iPad touch screen while drinking coffee isn’t going to somehow end people sitting at a desk and typing on a keyboard.

    • How to switch your small or home office to Linux

      With Linux and free software making a name for itself in the world of big business, many people are testing the feasibility of switching small and home office software to their open source equivalents.

      Regardless of how you feel about the Linux desktop, this is one area in which Linux can have a real impact, both financially and productively, and any small or home office has the potential to be transformed by just switching one application or two to their open source equivalents.

      [...]

      Free software is full of alternatives, because developers like choice. And because the code that’s used to create this software is open, once one application has invented a new kind of wheel, you often find its open source competitors catching up and providing many of the same features.

    • Acer Aspire AS5738PG Netbook review

      That said, Ubuntu 9 worked flawlessly on this laptop and ran quite fast thanks to the dual-core processors and higher-than-normal RAM allocation. For developers, the system represents a forward-looking laptop that could well provide the hardware required for testing touch applications, especially for creating kiosk applications or for contributing to a Ubuntu touch-screen version at some point.

    • Linux Live USB Media

      It is pretty common these days for laptops, and even desktops, to be able to boot from a USB flash memory drive. So you can save a little time and a little money by converting various Linux distributions ISO images to bootable USB devices, rather than burning them to CD/DVD. Oh, and one other reason – it is getting more common, especially with pre-releases, for the Live image to be too large to fit on a CD so it requires a DVD, and I don’t keep blank DVD media as close at hand as CD.

  • Server

    • Cray Releases Latest Version of Its Linux Operating System Equipped With New Cluster Compatibility Mode

      One of the most important features in this latest version of the Cray Linux Environment is the introduction of the new Cluster Compatibility Mode, which provides users with a full-featured cluster environment. Cluster Compatibility Mode is a fully standard x86 Linux environment that allows for simple, out-of-the-box installation and running of parallel ISV applications without porting, re-linking or recompilation. Cluster Compatibly Mode also allows for multiple MPI libraries.

    • Build It And They Will Come

      I’m talking about purchasing and installing a brand new Linux cluster in a pure Windows shop and having any expectations that it will be used. Your co-workers will probably look at you funny, and they might stand way over on the other side of the elevator during that ride up to the fourth floor, but don’t count on them knocking your door down begging for access to your shiny new Linux resource.

      [...]

      Finally, it was time for our first full production run. Voila! In just two hours our little 176-core 64-bit cluster ate up data and spit out the results for 1,500 runs — previously a task that took 3 – 4 people three days. Yesterday I checked on the cluster and noticed that our new users had recently finished their 4,400th run. I called on them to pass on my congratulations and was told that their P/I was thrilled at the increase in productivity the cluster was providing.

      Now that word of this is out we have new application porting activities identified and in the works. A Linux success story!

  • Kernel Space

    • Q&A with Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation

      CG: As Linux gets more “productized” in the mainstream, where is the sense of community that was such a fundamental part of early Linux success? Everywhere we look we see more and more people using Linux for their embedded solutions, but fewer and fewer people seem to be actively engaging with the open source development communities. There are exceptions (the folks at PogoPlug, for example, seem to be doing a good job cultivating a community with their user enthusiasts), but I think the bulk of Linux deployment is following the Google model: use it for hosted solutions, and only share a tiny fraction of your customizations. Will Meego only exacerbate this? How are the big mobile companies adopting Android and Meego “giving back” to the larger open source community?

    • Linux: Strong and getting stronger

      At the Linux Foundation’s annual collaboration summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Executive Director Jim Zemlin kicked off the event with some interesting perspectives on the state of the Linux marketplace today.

      The short version: Linux is going strong and getting stronger.

      [...]

      Zemlin argues that the new PC economics look much more like the cell phone industry than it does the PC value chain. One example of this is Apple’s 30 percent take of the gross revenue of App Store apps. The new model takes the value off the platform itself and instead moves it to the applications.

    • File-System Benchmarks With The Linux 2.6.34 Kernel

      File-system benchmarks have become quite common to Phoronix in the age of EXT4 and Btrfs with these new file-systems driving much of the interest and as we have also been finding the Linux file-system performance to change between kernel releases (and in some cases, the performance has changed a great deal). Most recently we delivered benchmarks of EXT4 vs. Btrfs vs. Reiser4, but now a month later we are back with more Linux file-system benchmarks as we look to see if the disk performance has changed with the Linux 2.6.34 kernel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • LXDE, the New Lightweight Linux Desktop

      LXDE (the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is new to the Linux desktop scene, having been launched in 2006. It aims to provide a fully-functional desktop environment whilst being as lightweight as possible, to both speed up your desktop and reduce its environmental impact (by using less CPU and RAM). A quick-and-dirty benchmark courtesy of the LXDE edition of Linux Mint indicates that it measures up pretty well on speed and RAM usage. In the third of my series on desktop alternatives, I took a look at it to see how it shapes up from the user’s point of view.

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

      • [Plasma] On screen keyboard

        In in an old screencast for Plasma Mobile, you seen a demonstration of an on-screen keyboard, it was a working proof of concept, but the interactin was still a bit wonky…

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Dragora Linux 2.0: 100% Free

        Even the embedded Linux-Libre kernel includes no elements that aren’t explicitly under a free license. In the new Dragora release, the kernel is version 2.6.32.11.

      • ZEN-mini 2010 released !

        ZEN-mini 2010 final release is ready for downloading !

        What’s New in This Release:
        - GNOME 2.30
        - kernel 2.6.32.11 bfs
        - addlocale
        - ISO size only 343mb!
        - fixed pulse audio

    • Red Hat Family

    • Ubuntu

      • Regional Membership Boards!

        One thing I always loved about the Ubuntu community is that whatever you did to contribute to Ubuntu, you could become an Ubuntu member and be part of the big circle of friends quite easily. In the earlier days of the Ubuntu project the Community Council was handling the approval of Ubuntu membership and I loved meetings where you heard inspiring stories of what people had contributed to Ubuntu.

        Over time those meetings, inspiring as they were, got a bit long. It got up to four hours every now and then. That’s why we set up the Regional Membership Boards who take care exlusively of membership approval and they are doing fantastic work.

      • Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx gets 14 new wallpapers
      • I’m running the Ubuntu 10.04 beta

        I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

        I needed to get the laptop back into usable shape, and I did that by installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS beta 2.

      • Initial impressions of Ubuntu 10.04 beta 2

        All in all the system seems faster than Karmic and pretty darn stable for a beta release. I took the unprecedented-for-me step of making this the actual working system on this machine; I dd’ed it from the spare drive onto the system’s main hard drive and am now using it on this machine full time. I’ve never found a beta release that I liked enough to do that with, until now. So I think Canonical has a winner here.

      • Variants

        • Linux Mint 8 KDE (Helena)

          If you’re a Linux Mint KDE user then this upgrade is pretty much a no-brainer. This release gets you up to date with the latest version of Ubuntu (though Ubuntu 10 isn’t far off so I’ll be reviewing this again soon enough) and KDE.

          If KDE isn’t your thing though, there’s nothing here that will make you want to use it instead of the GNOME version.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia

        • Pics of Nokia MeeGo interface

          Pictures showing how the smartphone and netbook versions of Nokia’s MeeGo operating system (OS) will look have surfaced on the internet.

        • QA with Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi: MeeGo Revs Up

          Can you tell us more about Qt and what it brings to the MeeGo project?

          Jaaksi: Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide looking to create amazing user experiences on Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Maemo devices. Qt will be the primary application framework for MeeGo and both Intel and Nokia are committing their investment in it. For developers interested in MeeGo, Qt helps increase the scope for their applications and services across multiple platforms, all using consistent application APIs.

      • Android

        • A fragmented Android universe

          Three months ago, these same statistics showed version 1.6 leading the field with more than 50% of users, with version 2.1 not even listed. Such statistics are useful for developers, who need to test their applications on different versions. They also reveal, however, that companies selling Android smartphones seem to have little interest in supplying existing customers with updated versions of the OS.

        • HTC Incredible Close to Release, Will Pack Market’s Best Phone Hardware

          The HTC Incredible brings some powerful hardware to America’s largest network, Verizon, and should help Android continue its campaign of rampant growth.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Zombies are open source; humans are proprietary

    After last month’s Pwn2Own Contest, Mozilla once again was the first to issue patches for the bug found in the hacking competition, beating Microsoft and Apple to the punch for the second year in a row.

  • Free and Open Source Project Management Software

    Free and Open Source Project Management Software: A project management software is a program that can help apply knowledge, techniques, skills, and tools for planning and controlling resources, costs and schedules to meet the requirements of a particular project. It includes integrated functions such as calendars, charts, budget management, scheduling, and quality management and documentation.

    Project management software can be implemented as either a desktop or as a web-based application. The advantage of using a desktop-based project management software is that it gives the most responsive and graphically-intense style of interface. Meanwhile, web-based project management software has the advantage of being accessible from just about anywhere with internet connection and without the need to install software on user’s computer.

  • COSSFEST, A Calgarian Tale of FOSS, Betrayal, and Murder

    The talks were fascinating as well. Aaron Seigo’s talk on creating Plasma widgets with Javascript almost made me want to get back to coding. Almost. Bruce Byfield’s presentation on sexism in FOSS was enlightening. Dafydd Crosby, in his oddly quiet way, managed in two separate talks to get people totally wired and jumping in to the conversation with enthusiasm; there was more than a little pontificating going on as well. Meanwhile, Daffyd smiled quietly and wrote one liner comments on his notebook, projected in Matrix green on the big screen (beware those quiet types). Richard Weait’s enthusiasm about the Open Streetmap project was palpable and I suspect more than one person will be attending a mapping party sometime soon.

    The surprise panel for me was one given by Brad “Renderman” Haines. It was a surprise because it didn’t really have anything to do with FOSS and yet was utterly and completely fascinating. If you thought the locks on your front door, on your locker in the gym, or guarding the entrance to the server room with all its secret corporate data was safe, think again. Every lock I own and every lock I’ve ever installed is suspect now. Who knew you could open a Master combination padlock in five seconds with a shim cut out from an empty beer can. Spooky! I will be booking an appointment with a locksmith shortly.

  • SaaS

    • Fonality Repositions: Goodbye Open Source, Hello Cloud

      * Before: Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Culver City, CA, Fonality is a leading developer and marketer of open source IP PBX business phone systems and unified communications solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital and Azure Capital Partners.

      * After: Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Culver City, Calif., Fonality is a leading developer and marketer of cloud-based business phone systems and unified communications solutions for small to medium sized businesses. Investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners.

  • Mixed

    • Memcached Vendors Bulk Up for Web 2.0

      A pair of vendors that offer proprietary solutions based on the open source memcached project are updating their products this week. While both Gear6 and Schooner are adding their own proprietary bits to enhance their respective memcached-based offerings, both vendors are also ensuring that they also are contributing back to the open source core.

  • Oracle

    • OpenSolaris free CDs halted

      Oracle has stopped the free OpenSolaris CD shipping program. A posting on the OpenSolaris website discussion mailing list by Oracle’s Derek Cicero says the related links and icons have been removed from the opensolaris.org site. Downloads of OpenSolaris are still available from the OpenSolaris downloads site.

  • Education

    • A Trip Through The Cathedral & The Bazaar

      That parallel is why this ten year old book is still worth reading. The open source process is still creating magic, marshalling armies of creative people who work for nothing — or rather, as C&D points out, for gains that are not material. The technical prowess of the OSS world is not in doubt: Linux, Firefox, Apache, and a host of other projects show that the bazaar can still out-code the cathedral.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Releases

    • FreeSWITCH Advances “Free” Speech With 1.0.6 Release

      The FreeSWITCH team is proud to announce the official release of version 1.0.6, the latest release of the popular open source soft-switch library. FreeSWITCH 1.0.6 builds upon previous FreeSWITCH releases and brings dozens of new features and scores of enhancements in codecs, SIP processing, CPU utilization, TDM hardware support, and more. In the eight months since the release of FreeSWITCH 1.0.4, the core developers and key contributors have made improvements in almost all areas of the project.

  • Programming

    • Perl 5 development continues as version 5.12 released

      The Perl 6 project, which aimed to radically reinvent the open source programming language, first began to take shape in 2000. A decade later, there are several implementations with varying levels of completeness, but it is still not ready to replace Perl 5 in production environments.

      In order to ensure that Perl doesn’t completely stagnate during the protracted revamp, a group of developers have decided to pull Perl 5 out of maintenance mode and begin actively enhancing it with new features. The result is Perl 5.12, which was officially released this week. It was preceded by 5.11, an experimental development release that was issued last year.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Did Google Just Kill Ogg Theora?

      Montgomery is right. It’s unlikely that open sourcing VP8 is going to kill Theora. There will still be a small but dedicated community supporting the format, and there are going to be cases when it actually makes sense to use Theora and not VP8. What it will kill however, is the notion that Theora could one day become the standard of the HTML5 video web. For that, it would need to be a codec that’s superior to existing commercial solutions, and Theora just never was up to that challenge.

    • The importance of there being another open source codec

      Google’s apparent decision to open source the VP8 video codec will mostly be discussed today in terms of Google’s ambitions, about Google TV, and about HTML5.

Leftovers

  • Paper: Anatomy of contemporary GSM cellphones

    During the last days, I was working on an introductory paper on how a GSM cellphone actually works. It is titled Anatomy of contemporary GSM cellphone hardware and should provide a good technical text for anyone who generally is into technology and understands a bit about both software, computer architecture as well as radio, but who still feels like he has no clue what is actually happening inside the phone, particularly the hardware side.

  • Science

    • NASA to rocket humanoid robot to International Space Station

      Perhaps taking a page from a Star Wars script, NASA said today it will send its newest humanoid robot known as Robonaut2 – or R2 — capable of using the same tools as humans letting them work closely with people into space onboard the space shuttle’s final mission.

    • Armstrong: Obama hurting space effort

      Former astronaut Neil Armstrong has issued a strongly worded rebuke of President Barack Obama, criticizing the president for proposed revisions to the U.S.’ space program.

  • Security/Aggression

  • Environment

    • Bayer admits GMO contamination out of control

      Drug and chemical giant Bayer AG has admitted that there is no way to stop the uncontrolled spread of its genetically modified crops.

      “Even the best practices can’t guarantee perfection,” said Mark Ferguson, the company’s defense lawyer in a recent trial.

    • US study warns of excessive GM crop use

      Farmers in the United States are being told they’re in danger of negating the benefits of genetically modified crops by overusing them.

      The warning is contained in a major report from the US National Research Council.

      It’s being described as the most substantial review of GM crop use in the country. It warns that some weeds are becoming resistant to herbicides.

  • Finance

    • CME, Lehman Book Bidders Likely Protected From Lawsuits

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Barclays PLC, DRW Trading and CME Group Inc. are likely to be protected from lawsuits seeking to recoup losses associated with the auction of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ futures book, according to a court-appointed examiner.

    • Lehman May Have Grounds to Sue Goldman, Barclays, Examiner Says

      Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may have grounds to sue Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc after they obtained assets from CME Group Inc. for less than half their value, bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas said.

    • Goldman Sachs Exec Tries Interesting New Tactic Re: Bonuses

      Goldman Sachs has done a lot to try and stem the rage over some people’s belief that the Masters of the Universe did not deserve their nicely-sized bonuses this year. They’ve taken away the cash portion of Lloyd and Co’s, they’ve made senior management fork over a bunch of their money to charity (including a special fund set up specifically to “help Matt Taibbi get the help he needs”), they canceled plans for the annual DuckTails-esque money pit for the distribution of the young employees’ comp, and so on and so forth. And yet. People still won’t get off their asses.

    • Goldman Sachs to Harry Reid: Back Off

      According to people with direct knowledge of the incident, during the event, which was held in a private room at a lower Manhattan restaurant, Reid was verbally harangued by several senior Goldman executives, including Cohn himself, for being part of the growing chorus of politicians who are using anti-Wall Street rhetoric to score political points.

      One of the attendees told Reid that Wall Street, and Goldman in particular, is being “persecuted by the Democratic Party.” Another complained that Goldman, as a “long-term, major supporter of the Democratic Party,” was tired of being publicly attacked.

    • WaMu execs speak candidly about Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and others

      Killinger replied about an hour later: “I don’t trust Goldy on this. They are smart, but this is swimming with the sharks. They were shorting mortgages big time while they were giving CfC [Countrywide Financial Corp.] advice. I trust Lehman (Lehman Brothers news) more for something this sensitive. But we would need to assess if they have the smarts we need.”

    • White House Urges Blankfein, Dimon to Stop Bill Fight

      Top White House officials last week pressed the chief executive officers of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to stop lobbying against a financial-regulatory bill advancing in Congress, according to people who attended the meeting.

      President Barack Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers met with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and about 12 other executives at an April 6 event in Washington hosted by the Financial Services Forum, said the people, who declined to be identified because the meeting was private.

    • Fed ends Goldman, Greece probe with no action

      The Federal Reserve has ended its probe of Goldman Sachs contracts with the Greek government that distort the country’s debt levels, without taking any action, said Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday.

    • Bankers’ Ailing-Client Deals End With Greece: Alice Schroeder

      Greece’s fiscal debacle and rescue package aren’t just about national finances. They also say a lot about Wall Street’s investment banks.

    • Another View: We Need a ‘Blankfein Amendment’

      We are the sponsors of a shareholder resolution that seeks pay-disparity disclosure from Goldman Sachs, which was a major beneficiary of taxpayer largesse when the federal government intervened to avert the collapse of the nation’s biggest banks and much of Wall Street.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • China’s Internet Paradox

      On March 23, the day after Google pulled its search operations out of mainland China, a woman who uses the online pseudonym Xiaomi arose in her Shanghai apartment and sat down in her bedroom office for another day of outwitting Internet censorship. She leads a confederation of volunteer translators around the world who turn out Mandarin versions of Western journalism and scholarly works that are banned on China’s Internet–and that wouldn’t be available in Mandarin in any case. That day, working in a communal Google Docs account, she and her fellow volunteers completed translations of texts that ranged from a fresh New York Times interview with Google cofounder Sergey Brin to “The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience,” a seven-year-old analysis of China’s Communist Party from the Journal of Democracy.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus

      We’ve all seen the studies trumpeting massive losses to the US economy from piracy. One famous figure, used literally for decades by rightsholders and the government, said that 750,000 jobs and up to $250 billion a year could be lost in the US economy thanks to IP infringement. A couple years ago, we thoroughly debunked that figure. For years, Business Software Alliance reports on software piracy assumed that each illicit copy was a lost sale. And the MPAA’s own commissioned study on movie piracy turned out to overstate collegiate downloading by a factor of three.

      Can we trust any of these claims about piracy?

      The US doesn’t think so. In a new report out yesterday, the government’s own internal watchdog took a close look at “efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods.” After examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, the Government Accountability Office concluded (PDF) that it is “difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts.”

    • GAO Concludes Piracy Stats Are Usually Junk, File Sharing Can Help Sales

    • Copyrights

      • Disability rights activists oppose copyright regime

        The proposed amendments to the Copyright Act (1957), slated to be tabled in the second phase of the budget session of Parliament that begins on Thursday, has disability rights activists up in arms.

        The copyright exception, which aims at allowing persons with disability easy access to copyrighted material, is “restrictive and discriminatory,” disability rights organisations believe.

        Their demands for reworking this “exception,” that leaves out a large section of disabled persons who cannot access “special formats” (which include only Braille and sign language), have thus far gone unheeded. While a sub-committee was formed to look into the film industry-related parts of the legislation, the demands of disability activists have been ignored. In the run-up to the budget session, disability rights activists cutting across party lines are lobbying for their cause.

      • PPCA Statement Regarding Party Registration Status (AKA: Good News, Everyone!)

        We are pleased to announce that as of April 12, 2010, the Pirate Party of Canada (PPCA) is officially eligible for Party Status.

        After ten months of dedication and hard work, we have reached eligible status, which only leaves a 60-day “purgatory” period. After that, we will field candidates in subsequent federal elections, and begin the real work of a political party.

    • ACTA

      • The Truth About ACTA: My PublicACTA Keynote Address

        Even better, all the videos from the PublicACTA conference can accessed online.

      • Netizens: How ACTA will make a criminal of you

        The ‘Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’ (ACTA) might sound like it’s aimed exclusively at the crooks selling pirated DVDs at the markets, but it’s really about curbing the behaviour of individual internet users, according to one of Australia’s leading legal academics.

      • Q & ACTA, with Michael Geist

        With the Wellington round of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) talks underway, organised opposition to the proposed treaty on intellectual property rights and enforcement is also gathering in the New Zealand capital.

        Long-standing ACTA critic Dr Michael Geist from Canada is also in Wellington, and iTnews.com.au caught up with him there and asked him a few questions on the proposed treaty and what it means for all of us.

      • How ACTA could sneak in a three strikes system

        Internet users that download pirated material can expect a “three strikes system” in the wake of ACTA even if it isn’t legislated, according to one of Australia’s top legal authorities on the controversial trade agreement.

        As reported yesterday on iTnews, University of Queensland law lecturer Kimberlee Weatherall has written a 37-page comprehensive analysis of the latest leaked draft text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and concluded that netizens do indeed have a lot to be concerned about.

        Despite assurances from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that Australia has no intention of introducing a “three strikes” system compelling ISPs to disconnect users suspected of file-sharing, Weatherall’s reading of the leaked draft of ACTA suggests the agreement will likely allow rights holders to achieve the same result through different means.

      • IIA to ask members to sign ACTA petition

        Internet Industry Association (IIA) chief executive officer Peter Coroneos has said he plans to ask his members to sign a declaration calling for more transparency in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) talks being held this week in Wellington, New Zealand.

        The agreement aims to establish international standards on how to enforce intellectual property rights given the changes the internet has brought to copyright. There have been a number of rounds nutting out details for the agreement, involving delegations from multiple countries such as Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Switzerland, Morocco and the US.

Clip of the Day

A Fair(y) Use Tale — Novell Explains COPYRIGHT protections.

04.14.10

Links 14/4/2010: Fedora 13 Beta/Previews, RabbitMQ Bought

Posted in News Roundup at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Schooner adds DR to SQL and cache appliances

    This is the add-on to Linux that Schooner has created that mashes up the cores and threads in the Xeon processors and the main memory and flash drives and controls access to threads and memory and interleaves them in a more efficient manner than a typical Linux box can do. This SOE does not modify the Linux kernel itself, but creates very efficient and thread-aware userspaces for Schooner’s own blackbox, reverse-engineered, Memecached clone or Oracle’s MySQL Enterprise Edition database (which it licenses from Oracle) to run.

  • Choosing The Best Linux Filesystem For Your PC

    If you’re a Linux user, you’ve likely been asked at some point if you want Ext3, Ext4, XFS, ReiserFS, Btrfs, or one of many other filesystem acronyms. This choice confuses new and old users alike, and like all software, the options change as technology improves. Many people probably don’t care what filesystem they use as long as it’s stable and reasonably fast, but how do you know which one that is? This guide will attempt to cover the basic differences between the most common options, and provide the pros and cons of each choice.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

      • Aaron Seigo on the Future of KDE

        Another example is the new direction for Krita, KOffice’s rasterized graphic program. For a long time, Seigo says, the sub-project wasn’t sure “If they were a drawing app, or maybe a photo retouching app, or what-the-hell were they?”

        At a recent developers’ sprint, Krita enlisted design expert Peter Sikking, who has also worked with the GIMP, to help the sub-project find direction.

      • The Future of KDE

        This is an example of where I would like to see more effort put into the PR end of KDE. Instead of defending 4.0, move on and break down and hype up some of these new features! They are worth talking about – and they are worth explaining to potential users.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • (Yet) Another redesign of Nautilus

        So Nautilus is long overdue for a redesign and many people like Izo and the elementary project have had a crack at what they think makes a good Nautilus and you will no doubt notice some similarities in design. I hear you scream “Well why are you jumping on the bandwagon and doing something others have already done?!” There are two reasons: firstly, I want to learn more about User Interface design and Human Computer Interaction – Nautilus is a fairly easy application to redesign. Secondly, this is going to be an example of why we need better user usage statistics, and how we can get them that I will be discussing at the next Ubuntu Developer Summit in Brussels next month.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Antix M8.5 for Lite Computers is Available

        9 months since the release of antiX-M8.2, the antiX-team announce that antiX MEPIS 8.5 ‘Marek Edelman’ – a fast, light, flexible and complete desktop and livecd based on SimplyMEPIS and Debian Testing – is now available in full and base versions (686 and 486 kernel). This release defaults to a fully customised icewm desktop (fluxbox, wmii and dwm are also installed) using a SimplyMEPIS 2.6.32-11 kernel, tweaked MEPIS Assistants for better compatibility in antiX and the usual range of applications for desktop use. Iceape for internet needs, Abiword and gnumeric for office use, xmms and goggles music manager for audio, gxine, mplayer and gnome-mplayer for video, wicd and ceni for network connection, pidgin for chat. Many cli apps are also included such as Alpine for email, moc for audio, links2 for browsing, abcde and ripit for cd ripping and much more. New features include live with persistence, ‘remaster on the fly’, new boot cheatcodes for setting dpi and desktop windows manager, antix2usb to easily install to usb stick. 12 languages are fully supported out of the box with the language chosen at live CD boot carrying over to install.

      • VortexBox 1.3 released

        VortexBox 1.3 released today. This release includes lots of new features and bug fixes. We have the latest version of SqueezeBox Server and all the latest versions of the 3rd party projects that make up VortexBox. We have also added Subsonic a new GUI that allows you to manage your music collection and stream it to iPods and Android players. New features include

      • Parted Magic 4.10

        Parted Magic 4.10 updates to grep-2.6.3, busybox-1.16.1, simpleburn-1.5.0, sshfs-fuse-2.2, linux-2.6.32.11. There are a few new programs as well. They are encfs_1.5.2, gencfs-1.0.0, gsshfs-1.0.0, rlog-1.4, unetbootin-429, and emelfm2-0.6.0. Parted was patched with updates from Ubuntu to reverse a decision to use a BLKRRPART instead of the BLKPG ioctls that worked. GPicView doesn’t segfault anymore. FAT32 file systems now mount as UTF8 by default. Many enhancements were made to the handing of SCSI device at boot. Creating bookmarks with Chromium no longer crashes the program.

      • MOPSLinux 7.0
      • Dragora GNU/Linux 2.0
      • PelicanHPC GNU Linux

        # 12 Apr. 2010. Version 2.1 is out

        * uses the simplified make_pelican
        * back to a Lenny base
        * Open MPI, Octave, openmpi_ext are latest versions, compiled from source
        * ganglia, slurm and ifenslave have been removed. The emphasis is back on simplicit

      • Xange (formerly Vixta) 2010.04
      • PLoP Linux 4.0.5 released

        update: kernel 2.6.33.2, cvs 1.12.13, fsarchiver 0.6.8, ntfs-3g 2010.3.6AR.4, partclone 0.2.8, parted 2.2, syslinux 3.86, lz utils 4.999.9, dhcp 4.1.1, bind 9.7.0-P1, samba 3.5.2, openssl 1.0.0, openssh 5.4p1, grub2 1.98, useavast script, usefprot script, usb zip file, splash screen

      • Distribution Release: GParted LiveCD 0.5.2-7
      • SystemRescueCd 1.5.2
      • [Freenas-announce] FreeNAS 0.7.1 (Shere) Available

    • Red Hat Family

      • Advantage: Red Hat

        Linux software company Red Hat is in the enviable position of benefitting from several near-term trends in the information technology industry, according to an analyst who recently initiated coverage of the Raleigh-based business.

        UBS analyst Brent Thill rates Red Hat shares a “buy” and has a 12-month price target of $35. Red Hat shares were trading at $30.94, up 13 cents, at mid-day today. The company’s shares were hovering around $17 last May.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 13: Beta and graphics driver test week

          The Fedora project has released the beta of the Fedora 13 Linux distribution, named after rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard, and it is now available to download. Like the alpha version released five weeks ago, the first and only beta has been released a week later than originally planned. This has prompted the project administrators to postpone the final release date of Fedora 13 by a week and it is now rescheduled for the 18th of May.

        • Announcing the release of Fedora 13 Beta
        • Fedora tempts fate with Apollo 13 beta
        • Fedora 13 Beta Released
        • Fedora 13 beta released with many goodies for the enterprise

          The popular Linux distribution, Fedora 13, has been released to its final beta and is chock full of features for enterprise use. Code-named Goddard, the beta version was released on Tuesday with the final version slated for May 18.

        • The Joy of Betas: Fedora 13 Beta Released Today

          Fedora 13, also known as “Goddard,” comes packed with a bunch of new features that are going to benefit not only Fedora users, but most Linux users no matter what distribution they’re using. For example, F13 offers Zarafa — a groupware offering that’s meant to be a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange. Testing in Fedora will help everybody using Zarafa, not just the Fedora community.

        • Fedora 13 Beta – First installation

          That was my first installation of Fedora 13 Beta. I also updated 136 programs. I will test Fedora 13 Beta more the next days and sum it up in another post. If you have any good tips or ideas about Fedora 13 Beta, please let me know.

        • Fedora 13 – Ubuntu’s smart but less attractive cousin

          Other features in Fedora 13 include automatic printer driver installation – which means if you plug-in a supported printer the driver is downloaded and installed automatically. It’s not the most exciting feature we’ve seen, but it does add another, “it-just-works” element to the already very user-friendly distro.

    • Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu: Up and Running

        This popular Linux-based operating system is perfect for people with little technical background. It’s simple to install, and easy to use — with a strong focus on security.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Will Palm Wave Goodbye?

        Comparison with the iPhone are inevitable but, unlike Apple, Palm offers:

        * a multi-tasking OS (that’s coming to the iPhone, but the Pre had it from day 1)
        * a Flash player (coming soon)
        * a pull-down qwerty keyboard as well as the touch-screen
        * a free SDK and virtual phone available to Windows, Mac and Linux developers
        * a less restricted App Catalog which permits emulators — such as one which allows users to run thousands of legacy Palm OS applications
        * a ‘homebrew’ application market without an approval process.

      • Nokia

        • MeeGo Linux coming to netbooks, smartbooks soon

          The folks behind the MeeGo Linux project launched the first public beta version of the operating system recently. But that’s just the first step. MeeGo is backed by Intel and Nokia, and they have big plans to get the paltform on all sorts of devices including netbooks and smartphones soon.

          The netbook version of MeeGo doesn’t look like anything all that new if you’ve been following Moblin Linux for a while. MeeGo was born out of the merger of the Moblin and Maemo projects. And it looks like the UI is mostly Moblin-based, with a heavy dose of home screen widgets for checking your email, seeing status updates from your contacts, and launching apps. There are tabs along the top of the user interface for launching different zones, including a people zone (for your contacts) or a media zone for playing music and movies.

      • Android

        • Speakers Corner: First on the Android bandwagon

          Google’s open source Android platform was an intriguing prospect for a manufacturer right from the beginning. The fact it is open source means it has huge potential. But, at the time of launch, it was totally unknown and totally unproven, even if it had the Google brand attached to it.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • OLPC’s Negroponte Honored by Lego Group

        Today the Denmark-based Lego Group, of plastic brick fame, announced that it has awarded its $100,000 Lego Prize to Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child Foundation.

    • Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • No Permission Needed: Contribute Without Fear

    This came up in Randal Schwartz’s keynote and in Amber Graner’s talk about her work with Ubuntu, as well as some of the “hallway track” during the fest. Talk to any successful contributor, and you’ll find someone who has been motivated enough to jump in without waiting for an invite. Look at any successful and healthy open source project, and you’ll find that it’s a permissive culture that invites fearless contribution.

  • Seismic Tool-Kit Helps Scientists Research Earthquakes
  • BigBlueButton Brings Video Conferencing to Classrooms

    BigBlueButton is a free, open source, server-run project designed to run on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It’s built on more than 14 open source components like Asterisk, MySQL, ActiveMQ, and more. BigBlueButton integrates with open source content management system Moodle and a handful of other popular open source projects.

  • Ball Aerospace Expands Opticks Open Source Software

    Ball Aerospace launched Opticks in 2007 as its first open source software project designed to enable detailed analysis of remote sensing data and complement strategy promoted by the Department of Defense’s Open Technology Development Roadmap. Opticks is used by scientists and analysts within the DoD community to analyze remote sensing data and produce actionable intelligence.

  • IBM proclaims middleware dominance

    If the technology achieves the same result and is cheaper, users will sooner or later catch on. This is the basic adoption model that we’ve seen for the last 10 years in the open-source world as OSS vendors focused on providing a “good enough” solution at a substantially lower cost.

  • Elance: Mobile development, open source, social media skills in high demand

    Elance also reported that open source technologies represent 20 percent of the IT Top 50 skills list. “Open source content management systems like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are currently driving the movement with extremely high demand; while database, mobile, eCommerce, and web server technology platforms closely follow,” the company said.

    Read more: Elance: Mobile development, open source, social media skills in high demand – Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

  • Elance Report Reveals More Businesses Turning to Online Talent to Drive their Economic Recovery

    Open Source on the Rise – Businesses and entrepreneurs continue to adopt open source platforms for a variety of reasons, including complete customization and community development. Currently, open source technologies represent 20% of the IT Top 50 Skills list. Open source content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal, are currently driving the movement with extremely high demand, while database, mobile, eCommerce, and web server technology platforms closely follow.

  • Free and Open: 18 No-Cost Solutions for Your Enterprise Network

    There are many ways to save money on the network. Small businesses can even get enterprise features without spending top dollar. In this piece, I’ll highlight many different operating systems, routers, services, applications and servers — all of which are free — most open source.

  • Communications for the rest: Rowe and the Mesh Potato

    He is also involved in a free telephony project using similar components, building a network in East Timor, and developing an open source low bitrate speech codec.

    [...]

    And again, his wry humour kicks in: “The idea of having a lot of money horrifies me. Too much responsibility.”

    Rowe has given presentations at the last three Australian national Linux conferences. “I still remember the thunderous applause from the first presentation on the Free telephony Project. Meant a lot. Just getting _into_ LCA means a lot – the standard is so high,” he says. “Not sure about the long term effect on my project, but mixing with geeks at LCA is a good thing. I think I am getting more out of LCA each year as I mature as an open source developer.”

  • Open innovation is coming of age

    The admirable wikihow.com, which uses crowdsourcing to generate “How to” videos that attract 25 million visitors a month, won the Co-creation award, while Open Office, the open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office, won the Open Source Software section in recognition of the progress that has been made over the years to make it more user-friendly.

    [...]

    The trouble is that this Kremlinesque approach has resulted in such beautiful game-changing products as the iPhone and iPad that are a delight to use as reported in the Observer. Contrast that with Google’s adoption of open source software for its Android phones. This is much better in theory as it allows developers to do their own thing but in practice, at least so far, this results in all sorts of different software versions that don’t always work too well on the varying sizes and hardware of different Android phones. As Steven Johnson has pointed out, Steve Jobs has turned a walled garden into a rainforest.

    There is no doubt that open source solutions are on a roll and there are lots of areas where they will sweep all before them. The problem yet to be solved is how to harness the freedom and creativity that open collaboration offers with the need to have consumer friendly products that non-geeks will want to buy with their own money.

  • SunGard Higher Education Launches Industry’s First ERP Community Source Initiative

    SunGard Higher Education and its customers have launched a Community Source Initiative — the first and only vendor-supported community source forum dedicated to higher education Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. The initiative is designed to bring together the insights and experience of SunGard Higher Education’s extensive user community for the benefit of all institutions; make functionality available faster; and help ensure product quality through functional and technical review.

  • India

    • Tech students out to give software firms run for money

      They are the new whiz kids on the block and offer a “better and more affordable” version of popular software. Meet the team of Open Source Software, a community initiative started by a group of engineering students who were in the city to promote their programme during a one-day camp held at Chitkara Business School today.

    • The Guard That Costs Nothing

      FOSS is not just about cost, it is also about freedom. Your freedom to modify the software to your needs. Most big businesses that I know of are deploying or have deployed open source software not only for security but for mission-critical applications as well. The mascot of the open source world–the Linux operating system, is relatively more secure from threats such as viruses and can be deployed for free. Linux distributions such as Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, etc, cost nothing and provide greater security.

    • Crafting the right code

      The precise reason that Software craftsmanship lays its emphasis more on the individual coding abilities of the professional, devoid of financial concerns like direct remuneration, ability of the code to translate into financial gain – short term or otherwise – and the overall ‘health’ of a software code, has seen its popularity among Open Source enthusiasts.

  • Mozilla

    • Beyond the Browser: Messaging As A Future For Mozilla

      Mozilla has long been developing its free, open source Thunderbird e-mail platform, which is much improved in its latest version. It isn’t a revolutionary game-changer, though, and doesn’t have some of the plumbing needed to supplant Microsoft Exchange-centric e-mail deployments in enterprises.

  • Events

  • Business

    • VMware SpringSources for open source Rabbit

      Rabbit Technolgies CEO Alexis Richardson tells us that the company’s open source messaging system, dubbed RabbitMQ, is used by NASA’s Nebula project, a private infrastructure cloud that will apparently be used to power applications across the US federal government.

  • Releases

    • Xen.org updates open source Xen hypervisor

      Xen.org has released a new version of open source Xen hypervisor software, which leverages new network cards optimised for virtualisation and promises users performance and scalability gains for any level of enterprise or cloud application workload.

  • Government

  • Openness

    • Does the world need another chair?

      He then introduced the evening’s theme “Design x Sustainability x Open Source,” and explained how the four Japanese speakers are pioneers in adapting to the open source movement and implementing their creativity in actual projects.

      Collaboration and Open Source is the fundamental mindset behind Designers Accord. According to Yosh, when we talk about sustainability, the same mindset should be applied. We are entering an era of “unsustainability” and a point of no return, when sooner or later we would all have to think about how we are going to sustain our own lives and the planet we live in.

  • Programming

  • Google

Leftovers

  • Environment

    • 100+ Groups Join Scientists and Development Experts in Urging Senate to “Strip the GM Mandate” from the Global Food Security Act

      Experts, scientists and advocates from around the world petitioned the U.S. Senate today in a concerted attempt to strip what they term a “stealth corporate giveaway” embedded in a foreign aid bill which is expected to hit the Senate floor soon. The “Global Food Security Act” (S.384), sponsored by Senators Casey (D-PA) and Lugar (R-IN), is intended to reform aid programs to focus on longer-term agricultural development, and restructure aid agencies to better respond to crises. While lauding the bill’s intentions, the petitioners object to a clause earmarking one agricultural technology (genetically modified – GM crops) for potentially billions of dollars in federal funding. $7.7 billion in U.S. funds are associated with the bill and no other farming methods or technologies are mentioned.

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 2 – Episode 8: Justice for Whom? (2005)


Links 14/4/2010: Linux 2.6.34 Reviewed; OpenGL 4.0 Linux Driver; Lightworks Open Source

Posted in News Roundup at 4:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux system flaws can’t pass Buck Security
  • Bisigi Themes Remix Linux in Eye-Opening Ways

    Finding new, good-looking, and complete themes for Linux systems can be a serious scavenger hunt. The Bisigi Project provides 13 free, well-rounded themes you can install all at once, customized for your monitor size. Take a peek at five of them.

  • It’s the 21st Century. Do you know where your files are?

    This does not mean that you can easily find everything that you might consider a “file” or similar entity in Linux. There is a good chance that your email software uses some bizarro file that you can’t easily see inside of. (I use alpine which puts the emails inside a text file, but hardy anybody does that.) There are “hidden” files in Linux just like in Windows (in Linux, everything that starts with a “dot” (“.”) is automatically “hidden” …. meaning you can’t see it unless you “unhide” that which is hidden). There are other strangeosities as well.

  • New Site Launch: LinuxExchange.org

    I’m happy to announce that I just launched a new site: LinuxExchange

    LinuxExchange is “StackOverflow for Linux and Open Source” and is built on the StackExchange platform. That means it’s a collaboratively edited question and answer site about Linux and Open Source with a workflow somewhere between the forums of LinuxQuestions.org and the Mediawiki-based LQ Wiki.

  • rPath Enhances Intelligent Linux Patching Capabilities in Next-Generation System Automation Platform

    rPath, an innovator in automating system provisioning and maintenance, today announced enhancements to the intelligent patching capabilities of its next-generation system automation platform. Specifically, rPath now automates inventory discovery, allows users to “cherry pick” updates and errata for incremental updates, and simplifies the user experience for Linux patching and system administration. To encourage Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite users to try the rPath platform, the company has launched its “Satellite Swap-Out” promotional offer. For existing RHN Satellite customers, rPath will match or beat their current subscription to RHN Satellite with a richer, more complete solution.

  • Desktop

    • Adobe, Choose Your Allies in the Apple War

      Two clear Allies for Adobe come to light immediately — desktop Linux, in the form of Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system, which has been making significant strides in usability of late, and of course Google’s Android smartphone OS.

    • Cool free stuff

      Going through the article brought me back to my Windows days, when I would scour download sites (CNET’s Download.com being a favorite) for free applications and utilities. Nowadays, since I only use Linux and Mac OS X, I’ve done a lot less of that. After all, there are boatloads of free programs for Linux, and I mostly use OpenOffice for work on my Macbook.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux: 2.6.34-rc4, “Hunting A Really Annoying VM Regression”

      “It’s been two weeks rather than the usual one, because we’ve been hunting a really annoying VM regression that not a lot of people seem to have seen, but I didn’t want to release an -rc4 with it,” began Linux creator Linus Torvalds, announcing the 2.6.34-rc4 Linux kernel. He explained, “we had the choice of either reverting all the anon-vma scalability improvements, or finding out exactly what caused the regression and fixing it. And we got pretty close to the point where I was going to just revert it all.”

    • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.34 (Part 1) – Network Support

      Expected for release in May, Linux kernel version 2.6.34 contains several new network drivers and various advancements designed to improve network performance or increase network configuration flexibility, which will particularly impact virtualisation.

    • Graphics Stack

      • NVIDIA Puts Out Its OpenGL 4.0 Linux Driver

        The OpenGL 4.0 specification was released towards the middle of March alongside an OpenGL 3.3 update, which NVIDIA was quick to capitalize upon the 3.x update just days later with new drivers for supported operating systems. NVIDIA wasn’t immediate in delivering OpenGL 4.0 support, since they didn’t have any hardware at the time capable of supporting this newest specification. Now that the GeForce GTX 470/480 GPUs are out there and other new DirectX 11.0 / OpenGL 4.0 capable hardware is on the way, NVIDIA has put out its OpenGL 4.0 driver update for Linux and Windows.

      • Reworking OpenGL ES In Mesa, Gallium3D

        In May of last year there were Gallium3D state trackers published for OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0. These were among the first major working state trackers for this new graphics architecture, but in the months since they have continued to receive much affection from a few developers and continue to improve. The OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 support though may now be reworked by Kristian Høgsberg.

  • Instructionals

  • Distributions

    • Fedora

      • Fedora presents…Graphics Test Week this week

        The Fedora project announces that this week is Graphics Test Week. This is the highlight of the Fedora 13 Test Day cycle, with Test Days for NVIDIA, ATI/AMD and Intel graphics all falling this week. Tuesday April 13th is NVIDIA Test Day, Wednesday April 14th is ATI/AMD Test Day, and Thursday April 15th is Intel graphics Test Day.

      • It’s Time To Test The Graphics In Fedora 13

        Fedora 13 will be officially released next month and while we have already used it in testing out the Nouveau Gallium3D drivers and trying out the new Intel graphics, this week Red Hat is hosting community test days for the graphics stack in Fedora 13.

      • Never a dull moment, no. 98.

        At 10:00 am US Eastern time (1400 UTC), Fedora 13 Beta is released. The Beta is our last milestone before the final release of Fedora 13. We’d like to have as many people test it as possible. It’s available in a “Live ISO” format you can write not only to CD DVD, but also to a USB key, and boot off the USB key. I really prefer the USB key, because you can update the key with fixes as you use it using the “persistence” feature. It also gives you nifty options we created along the way, like an encrypted user data area, very fast booting, and very fast installation to hard disk as well. Who loves ya, baby?

    • Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu on a Dime
      • From Dapper To Lucid, Four Years Of Ubuntu Benchmarks

        Last week we shared that we were benchmarking Ubuntu’s current and past LTS releases and began by running graphics benchmarks looking at how the proprietary drivers from the past compare to open-source drivers from the present, but now we have our assortment of system benchmarks to publish from the Long-Term Support releases of Ubuntu 6.06.1, Ubuntu 8.04.4, and an Ubuntu 10.04 development snapshot. In this article, we are looking at how Ubuntu’s performance has evolved over the past four years.

      • An Empirical Investigation of Cloud Computing (C2) as an Option for Liberia

        I opted to use Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Server which includes the Enterprise Cloud Server powered by Eucalyptus as the operating platform.

      • Ubuntu’s New Web Office Integration

        Desktop Integration with the cloud is hot news. Ubuntu One is a great example of this. Currently Ubuntu One integrates file storage, contacts and notes sync, and now you can even buy music from the online store, delivered straight to the Rythmbox media player. But for some devices, integration with the cloud isn’t just a nice feature, it completely changes the user experience (UX). Take for instance a low powered, possibly mobile/embedded system with limited processing power and memory. A cloud based service for these devices could allow resource intensive tasks to be offloaded to an online server somewhere, greatly improving the UX. One set of tasks that are used often but can put a strain on resources are related to office document editing.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Why iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad Owners Should Use Linux

      And as for missing functionality, this is open source. Where there are itches they are going to be scratched. Now that this library has reached its 1.0.0 release, developers are more likely to start incorporating it into their applications. There are python libs for libimobiledevice and related infrastructure, which will enable rapid application development utilising the functionality of this library. I know that it’s already part of the install for Ubuntu Lucid. Furthermore, with the plans for the UbuntuOne service to incorporate a music store, the environment for the iPhone on linux is looking a whole lot healthier. So to butcher an overused film reference, “if you come, they will build it”.

    • Linux-ready trace port analyzer supports Intel CPUs

      Arium announced a new JTAG debugger In-Target Probe (ITP) trace port analyzer device for debugging Linux-based devices. The LX-1000 stores events in on-board high-speed RAM, and initially targets Intel processor platforms.

    • pocket hd multimedia dream device

      If you’re looking for a handheld hd multimedia device, your search ends here. This is such a cool device.
      The only downside is apparently the korean manufacturer can’t keep up with demand as it’s fully sold out at the moment of this writing.

    • Satellite STB streams HD video to smartphones

      Marusys is shipping a Linux-based, PVR-ready satellite set-top box (STB) with a DVB-S/S2 tuner and HDMI output. The initial MS630S and MS850S versions of the DVB-S/S2 HD PVR receiver design are equipped with a Magnum Semiconductor DX6225 transcoder chip, and offer HD recording, as well as WiFi streaming to the Apple iPhone.

    • Nokia

    • Android

      • Motorola Revises Android 2.1 Details for Handsets
      • HTC launches Desire – at last, an iPhone killer

        The company at the centre of the war between Google and Apple launches its latest handset in the UK this week – with experts saying that it is the equal of the iPhone.

        The HTC Desire is similar to Google’s Nexus One smartphone – indeed HTC is the company that manufactures the Nexus – but it has several extras that have reviewers salivating, and the handset is being touted as a real alternative to Apple’s all-conquering iPhone.

      • Intel Ports Android to Atom-Based Smart Phones

        After dominating the desktop market for years, Intel recognizes they have a long road ahead of them in terms of smart phones. Android, as a platform, was initially designed to run on handsets powered by processors made with Arm technology.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Lenovo’s Ideapad U1 Hybrid “coming soon”

        Lenovo’s much anticipated Ideapad U1 Hybrid device looks like it may be hitting retail shortly. The official Lenovo shop website is listing the U1 Hybrid as “coming soon” and is letting people register their interest. As a quick reminder, the U1 Hybrid is a mashup between 11.6-inch CULV notebook and Snapdragon tablet.

    • Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Republicans Turn to Open Source Asterisk

    Open source software is being used today by all types of companies and organizations—even the Republican Party is an adopter.

  • ZapThink Startup Clinic: How to Make Money By Giving your Product Away for Free

    ZapThink has spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs at IT startups over the last decade, and occasionally executives tell us they are giving away their product or service for free, sometimes (but not always) as open source. Our response? We ask what their business model is. If their reply is that “free” is their business model, that clues us into what they’re really doing. ZapThink has a word that describes companies that confuse free with a business model. That word is hobby.

    A business model, after all, is nothing more than how a company plans to make money. The old dot.com era joke that we’ll give away our product but make it up on volume doesn’t wash in today’s more sober times. You have to make money somehow! However, giving away your product or service for free can be a successful strategy, as long as you truly have a rational business model to back it up.

  • Online Office In Ubuntu With Zoho Webservice

    Canonical developer Jamie Bennett presented a new project 2 days ago: Zoho Webservice, which is basically the online office suite Zoho (which comes with tools such as: Presentations, Spreadsheet and Word Processor), but with Ubuntu integration.

  • Twitter Open-sources the Home of Its Social Graph

    Twitter today open-sourced the code that it used to build its database of users and manage their relationships to one another, called FlockDB. The move comes shortly after Twitter released its Gizzard framework, which it uses to query the FlockDB distributed data store up to 10,000 times a second without creating a logjam.

  • Lightworks

  • Apache/Hadoop

  • SaaS

    • Eucalyptus, GroundWork As Allies: Cloud Stack Coming?

      An important alignment occurs April 7 that will probably win little fanfare. Eucalyptus Systems, the supplier of open source APIs that are Amazon EC2 compatible, has teamed up with GroundWork, a supplier of data center systems management. GroundWork wants to gaze into the private cloud, which in the future, may often be a Eucalyptus-based stack.

  • Databases

  • Business

  • Government

    • Space Available: NASA Embraces Open Government Initiative

      Whether using social networks to allow students to interact directly with astronauts, or creating a cloud computing platform to give unprecedented access to scientific data, NASA’s embrace of Open Government has made it a leader among federal agencies.

  • Licensing

  • Programming

    • Resetting PHP 6

      Rightly or wrongly, many in our community see Perl 6 as the definitive example of vaporware. But what about PHP 6? This release was first discussed by the PHP core developers back in 2005. There have been books on the shelves purporting to cover PHP 6 since at least 2008. But, in March 2010, the PHP 6 release is not out – in fact, it is not even close to out. Recent events suggest that PHP 6 will not be released before 2011 – if, indeed, it is released at all.

Leftovers

  • Google Unveils New Google Docs Platform, Ditches Gears
  • Mini-review of the iPad

    The gadget lover in me wants one, but the part of me that cares about open source and tinkering is stronger. I’m with Cory Doctorow on this one. The iPad is gorgeous, but it’s still not worth it for me.

  • Security/Aggression

    • Juxtaposition of the day award…

      …today comes from Liverpool, where the local council (who we have praised in the past for facing-down the surveillance state) have mooted the idea of banning the word ‘obesity’ from council literature.

    • 15,000 wrongly branded criminals

      The blunders by the Criminal Records Bureau, a Home Office agency, amount to around seven smears every day.

      The victims discovered they had been branded sex offenders, violent thugs or fraudsters when they had a CRB check before a new job. Many went through lengthy appeals to clear their names.

      Our Freedom Of Information probe found the CRB coughed up an incredible £290,000 last year alone in “apology payments” to the worst-affected victims.

    • Holidaymakers Back Use Of Full-Body Scanners

      The approval rate was far higher for the UK than many other countries, according to a poll by security group Unisys.

      Of the 10 other nations investigated, as many as one in three people in Germany and Belgium would object to the machines.

    • Endpoint Security: How to Protect Data on a Laptop

  • Environment

    • Ethanol industry rolls out national ad campaign

      Growth Energy, a producer group based in Washington D.C., unveiled six TV commercials at ten press conferences across the country, including an event at the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul.

    • Corn Ethanol Industry Trying to Butter Up Congress, Public

      The ad campaign seeks to put a positive spin on ethanol, increase the market for ethanol, and counteract the idea that growing corn and other crops for fuel displaces food crops and causes higher food prices.

    • Dispatch: Environmental In-Fighting

      “I have to admit to some schadenfreude when the organic, ‘environmentalist’ crowd turns on itself,” says Stier. “Ms. Waters was a hero of the sustainable food movement, but now they are turning on her because of very low levels of heavy metals in this compost, less even than you’d get from a vitamin supplement. The irony, of course, is that using biosolids is a wonderfully environmentalist thing to do, since it safely recycles waste materials; the ‘environmentalists’ are on the wrong side of this environmental issue.”

    • ACSH Makes Alice Waters a Poster Child for Toxic Sludge

      Blogger Jill Richardson has also appealed to Waters, writing that ACSH still thinks “DDT should be legal. Don’t let them count you as being on their side” in the sewage sludge fight. Richardson notes that San Francisco’s own testing found nasty toxins including dioxins in its phony organic compost.

  • Finance

    • Banks Falter in Rules Fight

      Senate Democrats, resisting a last-ditch lobbying push from big Wall Street firms, are moving toward a sweeping revamp of financial regulation that would squeeze banks’ lucrative derivatives-trading business.

    • As losses slow, big banks eye big profits in Q1

      Banks have been taking advantage of low rates to borrow cheaply and plow the funds into higher-yielding bonds and other securities, a practice known as “playing the spread.” If rates rise this year or next as some analysts predict, that revenue source could be threatened, Ely said.

    • Pulitzer finalist: McClatchy probes of Goldman Sachs, Moody’s and SEC

      McClatchy Washington Bureau reporters Greg Gordon, Chris Adams and Kevin G. Hall were named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting Monday for their stories examining Wall Street’s role in the nation’s financial collapse.

    • WaMu Chief Killinger Didn’t Trust Goldman Sachs, E-Mails Show

      Washington Mutual Inc.’s former Chief Executive Officer, Kerry Killinger, didn’t trust Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to give the bank advice in 2007 as it slid toward collapse, according to e-mail released by congressional investigators.

    • Goldman co-head of IB Asia ex-Japan to retire
    • Your Tax Dollars at War: More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military

      If you’re like me, now that we’re in the week that federal income taxes are due, you are finally starting to collect your records and prepare for the ordeal. Either way, whether you are a procrastinator like me, or have already finished and know how much you have paid to the government, it is a good time to stop and consider how much of your money goes to pay for our bloated and largely useless and pointless military.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Tea Party and GOP Working Together in Wisconsin

      Even though most Tea Partiers insist they are independent from mainstream political parties, members of Wisconsin’s tea party are openly working hand in glove with Republican leaders.

    • Wisconsin Tea Party Members Work Closely With GOP

      Despite trumpeting their independence from the political mainstream, Wisconsin tea party members are taking a different tack than those in other states by working hand-in-glove with GOP leaders.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • The Real Problem With Internet Comments Isn’t Anonymity

      As we’ve noted before, Techdirt gets a lot of comments, including the occasional unfriendly one from a jerk. Sometimes this jerk is anonymous — but if they’re a jerk, it doesn’t much matter if they’re anonymous or using their real name. With that in mind, it’s nice to see that some of the sites in the NYT article above are actually looking at ways to tackle the real issue, and not just anonymity — though there are plenty that still seem to think everybody will be nice if they use their real name.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • RIAA Insists That Musicians Can’t Make Money Without The RIAA

      First of all, there aren’t that many folks who claim that touring alone is enough of a business model, and the rest of the post doesn’t focus on “touring alone,” but on a variety of alternative business models, which makes it a weird and entirely misleading title. In fact, a year ago, we explained why (just like the RIAA is pointing out) touring alone probably isn’t enough to replace the revenues of the recording industry — but that if you combined touring with other business models, it certainly could work quite well. But by using “touring” as the peg, the RIAA can debunk touring alone and pretend (falsely) that it’s debunked the entire space of alternative (smarter) business models.

    • Give It Away And Pray: Maybe Not A Business Model, But Still Important For Artists

      We never know what the world will bring us. Adhering to a business model may make us feel secure, but the most exciting possibilities and opportunities are in the space of not knowing. In Art, unlike Business, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re doing it right.

    • Feds raise questions about big media’s piracy claims

      Congress tasked the GAO in April 2009 with reviewing the efforts to quantify the size and scope of piracy, including the impacts of Web piracy to the film and music industries. In a 32-page report issued Monday, the GAO said most of the published information, anecdotal evidence, and records show that piracy is a drag on the U.S. economy, tax revenue, and in some cases potentially threatens national security and public health. But the problem is, according to the GAO, the data used to quantify piracy isn’t reliable.

    • Newspapers/Copyrights

      • Online newsroom earns Pulitzer, Post trumps Times

        ProPublica, an independent, non-profit online newsroom, became the first online organization to win a Pulitzer Prize.

      • Icon Hank Williams receives Pulitzer citation

        Hank Williams, the country pioneer who is among the most influential singer-songwriters in music, was given a special Pulitzer Prize citation.

        The Pulitzer board awarded the late singer for his lifetime achievement, based on a confidential survey of experts in popular music.

      • In Aggregation Case, Israeli Court Says Online Ads Aren’t Copyrightable (Guest Blog Post)

        Aggregation/index sites are popping up everywhere, trying to solve this problem while aggregating ads (and other materials) from various sites. Yet those aggregation sites encounter potential legal hurdles, such as trespass to chattels (as we saw in eBay Inc. v. Bidder’s Edge, Inc.) or copyright infringement.

      • The Bias of Veteran Journalists

        But within those caveats, I’ve always maintained that the majority of professional print journalists, anyway, try very, very hard to get the story right. But recently, I had an experience that gave me a new perspective on the issue.

      • How To Piss People Off: Publish A Book Using Their Tweets Without Asking Them First

        So, by not involving the Tweet authors in the publishing of Tweet Nothings, the publishers not only attracted the ire of the wronged authors, but also missed out on a huge opportunity for free, viral promotion. After the exchange with Barnes, the publisher, Peter Pauper Press, issued an official apology in which it said:

        We regret that we did not contact the people whose quotes we used in advance. We will be contacting each one with an apology. In the meantime, we are ceasing to sell the book in all venues and will not resume sales until everyone quoted in the book is satisfied with our response.

      • Australia anti-piracy group tries to threaten EarSucker, fails

        Reproduced in full is our communications between Music Industry Piracy Investigations Pty Limited (MIPI), the anti-piracy organization for the Australian music industry and our crack legal adviser (unaccredited) who watches a lot of Judge Judy and should be fired. Regardless of his shoddy credentials, he does a marvelous job of explaining why we’re not quaking in our boots from some hollow legal threat from Australia. Here’s the original post where someone leaked Lady Gaga’s Sydney, Australia itinerary that spawned such insane legal actions. As per our disclosure policy, we are reporting this legal exhange in full for the benefit of our readers.

      • What Is So Special About A Movie’s Theatrical Release?

        Given the example of how Paranormal Activity only screened in nationwide cities after fans demanded it, offering movies that people actually want to see in theaters may be a better way of filling seats. Or maybe there really is no reason to go to movie theaters anymore.

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 3 – Episode 10: Immigration Emergency? (2006)


04.13.10

Links 13/4/2010: KDE 4.5 Schedule, Fedora 13 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 4:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • RE: 10 Linux commandments

    8. You shall not steal.

    Run only free, open-source software. Do not go after payware or cracks.

  • The Unity Linux Build Server

    One of the new additions to the Unity Linux packaging process is the introduction of the Build Server (or buildserv for short) The main purpose of the buildserv is to provide users with the ability to package content following our established procedures without being burdened by the overhead of doing so. The buildserv really consists of two parts: a backend server and a frontend web interface.

  • Linux MPX Multi-Touch Table

    Peter Hutterer, PhD Student Wearable Computers Lab at the University of South Australia and MPX developer, granted an interview with Gizmodo recently. Peter discussed the technology more in-depth and explained many of the features (and bugs) that exist.

    This is definitely something to keep your eye on as development progresses. It will be interesting to watch how it evolves.

  • Secure virtualized operating system launched

    The Qubes operating system is currently in the alpha stage, according to Rutkowska, who blogged about the release on her website. The system is based on the Xen hypervisor, X, and Linux, and can run most Linux applications, according to the project website. It uses a concept that she calls security by isolation, allowing users to separate security domains into lightweight virtual machines, which she calls AppVMs. Files and clipboard items can be shared between the virtual machines (VMs).

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 92

    · Announced Distro: Calculate Linux 10.4 Now Has a GNOME Version
    · Announced Distro: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 Has GNOME 2.30 and Revamped Installer
    · Announced Distro: ArchOne 2010.04 Is Available Now
    · Announced Distro: Parted Magic 4.10 Released
    · Announced Distro: SystemRescueCd 1.5.2 Comes with New Linux Kernels

  • Sony Admits Wrong

    This is a prime example of bait and switch.

    How can Sony be allowed to do this to consumers and not face legal issues.

  • Linux Outlaws 145 – Big Meerkat Balls

    This week on the show: Did IBM break their patent promise?, is SCO finally dead?, Songbird drops Linux support, Meerkats, stiffies in burqas and more…

  • Cheap linux hosting is perfect for the businesses as linux platform

    While hunting a cheap website hosting provider, it is a good idea to rely upon the cheap linux hosting solutions. There are different platforms for hosting a website but at present linux platform is considered

  • Kernel Space

    • Meyer Sound Joins Linux Foundation

      If you take a look at all the audio processing and supportive devices, you will see some very complex and useful software. Not just in audio effects that are commonly know, like reverb and delay, but also in things like spectrum analysis.

    • Meyer Sound Joins Linux Foundation
    • Linux File Systems

      LINUX FILE SYSTEMS are an essential operating system resource. Modern file systems and disk drive technology are robust and reliable — so, most administrators put little effort into planning or worrying about them once the operating system is configured. This makes me both smile and cringe.

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • KDE 4.5 Release Schedule Ready

      Last week we finished the KDE 4.5 release schedule. The good news is that you can start organising your release party now, the expected date for KDE 4.5.0 is August 4th 2010.

    • 3 KDE Add-ons Worth Trying

      One of the remarkable features of KDE 4 is the extensibility. Developers or even regular users can contribute to the rich collection of artwork, software, widgets, and visual improvements. Ever so often, I look around for rather random add-ons that make my desktop experience more pleasant or occasionally even serve a meaningful purpose. They range from full applications to very basic widgets.

    • solving a little problem with a slightly bigger solution

      Then I tore out the hard-coded default layout in plasma-desktop and re-wrote it using a Javascript run on first start due to being installed into share/apps/plasma-desktop/init/. This new script makes a loadLayout call to load the default panel template, and so I made such a template and set that to be installed as well. This dropped a few dozen lines of C++ and turned them into about half as many lines of Javascript.

    • File Transfers in KDE 4

  • Distributions

    • [news] ArchBang 2.01 Alpha1

      Major changes: Grub2 replaces grub-legacy and firefox instead of chromium. Also slim is added.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 13 Beta Release tomorrow

        What are you looking forward to get in this new version? Gnome 2.30, KDE 4.4, Better Webcam support, NetBeans 6.8, Better Bluetooth support, Enhanced NVIDIA and Radeon support, Zarafa, new Upstart version, Automatic Print Driver Installation or just a more stable system (maybe not the first month, or?).

      • Fedora research survey: LAST CALL! :)

        As some of you may know, professors at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University have been conducting a study of Fedora, and have put together an online survey based on interviews they conducted with several dozen folks from the community.

      • Graphics Test Week coming up: April 13th to 15th

        As with Fedora 12, we’re smooshing all the graphics card Test Days into one week to save space on the schedule and make everything feel that much more momentous.

    • Debian Family

      • Wayback machine for Debian repositories

        The Debian project has announced the availability of a new archive snapshot service at snapshot.debian.org. With the new service, users can access older packages based on dates and version numbers.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Game Console With Linux in Development

      Heard about the console Pandora? Made by computer geeks who want the ultimate portable gaming console. This hobby project has just begun mass-producing and the dream is becoming real.

    • Nokia

      • MeeGo project garners new industry participants

        MeeGo, the unification of Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo, and shepherded by the Linux Foundation, is getting a lot of support from a variety of companies. From hardware developers to software houses, from games to automotive to embedded solutions providers, the recent announcement indicates an influx of potentially millions of developer-hours. Some of the new participants are no-brainers, while some are a bit surprising. Whether it’s an effort to hedge bets for or against Android, or just widening the market potential for their products, the end result is hopefully a better MeeGo, which is better for you and me.

      • Chromium ported to N900

        As reported over on Engadget, the move is an unofficial port of the Chromium sourcecode to run on the Maemo Linux platform that forms the core of Nokia’s top-end N900 smartphone.

      • Nokia Launch: Symbian ^3, Or Just Maps?

        Nokia’s recent N900 Linux device is currently generating more excitement than its Symbian smartphones.

    • Android

      • Square Motorola Device Codenamed “Twist”, Due in June

        We’re anxious to see what Motorola has in store for Motoblur, 1.5 if anything. Judging by the picture of the phone, we expect to see widgets to allow one-touch access to turning off WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. It’s hard to picture a radically different experience this early on. Our guess is that it’s subtle add-ons a la HTC’s Sense UI update.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Why Google is a Big Part of Linux’s Future On Netbooks

        Both of Google’s mobile operating systems are Linux-based, and both could have a profound, enduring impact on the netbook landscape. Before we count Linux netbooks out of the game, we should give them a chance to perform.

    • Tablets

      • Apple iPad, Google Android to Grab 75% of Tablet Market in 2010

        Dell’s Android 2.0-based Mini 5 tablet is expected in the U.S. this year, while several Android models will feature Nvidia’s delayed Tegra chipset, including the Adam from Notion Ink. ViewSonic offers the VTablet 101.

      • My week with an iPad

        For instance, I opened an SSH session to a Linux server with iSSH to check on some things, then received a colleague’s IM, served up via push notifications. This required me to quit iSSH to return the IM, then go through the reconnection process to get back to where I was. The same thing happened with RDP sessions — not cool at all. Apple’s April 8 iPhone OS 4 event showed off multitasking features in the new OS version, but I’m going to reserve judgement until I can see it myself.

        Also, several high-profile iPad apps are simply buggy and slow. One of the apps touted at the iPad announcement was MLB at Bat 2010. It was visually impressive and offered features, such as pitch trajectories, not found in the original iPhone app. Being a baseball fan, I bought it for $14.99 on the first day I had the iPad. Since then I’ve found it lacking in many areas. It’s slow, it consistently fails to update game information, it crashed several times, and the video quality lacks luster. Oh, and there’s no sign of that pitch trajectory feature demoed at the announcement.

      • Neofonie launches the WePad tablet at a German press event

        Honestly, at this point I didn’t feel like there was much I didn’t already know about the WePad, the German iPad competitor with a kind of almost clever name. We already knew it would have an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 multitouch display and 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU and run a custom version of Linux with a touch-friendly interface. And we knew it was based on a Taiwanese design.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The 20 Best Firefox Extensions : The Firefox Universe

    Accounting for roughly 30% of the total Web browser market, Firefox has gone from being a niche player a few years ago to a present-day browsing powerhouse. Firefox has seen three major releases and a bevy of smaller but still important updates along the way. Firefox 3.6 was released back in January, and like after all major Firefox updates, the Firefox-tweaking ecosystem has been revamped to accommodate the new code.

  • Sun MySQL Head Joins EnterpriseDB

    Karen Padir, a key software leader at Sun Microsystems, has joined Oracle’s competition, open source EnterpriseDB.

  • Educating on open source: Not as easy as it seems

    So Schroeder and Ibáñez have worked with some OSS communities to develop lists of “junior jobs” on any given project — jobs that a student, a newcomer to OSS can come in an do with little oversight and in a relatively short period of time. It will give the students much-needed exposure to the community and provide the community labor to do some small tasks and concentrate more on the larger issues at hand.

    “We’re working in collaboration with people we know … [to] create a system where you can rapidly absorb the students,” Ibáñez said.

    Problem is, he said, college really is too late to start teaching many of these things. In fact, kindergarten wouldn’t be too early to start instilling the basic tenets of open source:Share everything and play fair. But the standardized assessments in every state make it difficult to weave new aspects into the curriculum in middle or high school.

  • BSD Magazine April 2010 Released: Hosting BSD

  • Releases

    • Radio Tray 0.5.1

      Radio TrayIt is with great pleasure that I announce the release of Radio Tray 0.5.1!

    • Oracle freshens its VirtualBox

      The VirtualBox hypervisor now under the control of Oracle – if any open source software project can be said to be under control of any corporation – has been updated with a 3.1.6 release.

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Imagine the Bailouts Are Working

      Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist who was among the doomsayers, still isn’t willing to declare victory, and he probably never will.

      “I think this is disingenuous and a real attempt to distract people,” Mr. Stiglitz, the author of “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy,” said of the latest claims.

      Mr. Stiglitz, who has made a career of seeing every glass as half-empty, said we’re looking at the numbers wrong. Even if we get our money back, he says, that doesn’t tell the full story. To calculate the real cost, he insists, we need to add in the lost interest on the money spent.

      “Did we get back anything commensurate with the risk?” he asked almost rhetorically, before answering his own question. “Clearly the answer is no.”

    • US bank accounting ‘masks true debt levels’

      Major Wall Street banks are using accounting techniques similar to those utilised by Lehman Brothers in its final days to mask the size of their balance sheets at the end of reporting periods.

    • PhillyDeals: ‘The Big Short’ author counsels patience

      On his way to the Free Library of Philadelphia on Thursday to plug his best seller, Lewis told me his book tour shows America as a different country, compared to 1989.

      “The popular anger is unbelievable,” Lewis said. “It’s orders of magnitude different from what I saw with Liars’ Poker, in the attitude, in the tone of the crowd, in the level of interest in the details that people have. This is a political force that will not be denied.”

    • AIG, Goldman Unwind Soured Trades

      The derivatives unit of American International Group Inc. has unwound most of its soured mortgage trades with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. still left after the insurer was bailed out by the U.S. government in 2008, according to people familiar with the matter.

    • AIG Said to Terminate Most of Goldman Sachs’s Remaining Swaps

      American International Group Inc., the insurer rescued to prevent losses at bank counterparties, has retired most of its mortgage-linked trades with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said a person with knowledge of the matter.

    • I am from Goldman Sachs, and I am here to help you

      Yet Lloyd Blankfein and his estimable employees are surely there to help you when you decide to gamble in the Goldman Sachs casino. In fact, they love to take you into their confidence so that they can bet against you as you foolishly entrust your hard-earned wealth to their trusted care.

    • Goldman Sachs Says Japan Chairman Asuke to Step Down on June 30

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Akio Asuke, its chairman for Japan, will step down on June 30. He will become an adviser to the company, Goldman Sachs said in a statement.

    • ‘Misgivings’ at N.Y. Fed Over Board Chairman’s Goldman Stock Probed

      Some senior officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York apparently weren’t happy when their board chairman purchased stock in Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and they had “misgivings” about granting a waiver that allowed him to keep it, according to a congressional panel.

    • With friends like this, who needs enemies

  • Copyrights

    • Freedom Communications’ Valley Morning Star Drops Its Pay Wall

      The Valley Morning Star in Harlingen, Texas, which was a test-bed for Freedom Communications’ plans to potentially charge users for online access to its papers, returned to a free site last week less than a year after beginning to charge for online content. The paper is a small daily (circulation 23,000) but when it instituted its paywall in July 2009, it said it had been “selected to be the first newspaper in a Freedom Communications’ initiative to use its online edition to boost readers’ subscription values.” At the time, publisher Tyler Patton said, “The days of giving content away, which costs money to create and for which we charge our print subscribers, I think, are just over” and added that other Freedom papers would likely follow his paper’s lead.

Clip of the Day

SourceCode Season 3 – Episode 9: New Orleans: Civil Rights from Ruin (2006)


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