02.18.10
Posted in DRM, GNU/Linux, Hardware, Kernel, Mail, Microsoft, Standard at 8:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More cornerstones of Microsoft’s lock-in break apart and Outlook too is suffering from serious issues
DEPARTURES from Microsoft carry on as the company is failing [1, 2, 3, 4]. The latest Microsoft manager to jump ship will add to Amazon poison (many former Microsoft executives are moving there, e.g. [1, 2]), but the most interesting detail was his professional focus at Microsoft:
Microsoft has lost another key employee to Amazon.com. George Stathakopoulos, a computer security expert who’d been with Microsoft for nearly two decades, took a job at Amazon, Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos confirmed. Stathakopoulos was general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft and was front and center in Microsoft’s efforts to combat the Conficker worm last year.
“Trustworthy Computing Group,” eh? What an Orwellian title/name for the group.
For those who have not heard yet, Microsoft’s Xbox DRM is going down the loo. Here is one report about the subject (published yesterday):
Hardware hacker Christopher Tarnovsky just wanted to break Microsoft’s grip on peripherals for its Xbox 360 game console. In the process, he cracked one of the most heavily fortified chips ever put into a consumer device.
[...]
Its genesis came when Tarnovsky learned that manufacturers of video game controllers had to obtain a license from Microsoft for the peripherals to work on the Xbox 360. The requirement offended his sense of fair play, so he put his reverse engineering muscle to breaking it.
“I was very surprised they would put a security chip in a wired controller, as well as a wireless controller,” he said. “It’s very monopolistic what they’ve done. They have a right to do it, but I have a right to break it too.”
[...]
Using the tungsten as microscopic bridges, Tarnovsky said, he can digitally clone chips used to prevent piracy of satellite TV service, to disable unauthorized cartridges in printers – or to make Xbox game controllers.
“You could counterfeit this chip,” he said, although he stressed he had no plans to use the hack for illegal purposes.
One of our readers “thought that the boot sequence in WinTEL hardware was restricted such that unauthorised software couldn’t get on to it,” according to mail he sent us last night regarding TPM getting cracked. He adds: “Remember how dual-boot couldn’t work anymore if Bitlocker was active? It’s called Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and utilised a ‘trusted boot pathway’. Why isn’t the big story that TPM is broken?”
Well, actually, is it being reported and circulated more widely while we write this. Attempts to put TPM in Linux will hopefully fail too; it’s a case of security as lock-in, to use the words of Bill Gates. Our Linux DRM warnings go a while back as it's a curse, not a feature or a blessing. There is a similarity here.
For those who think that Microsoft DRM/TPM is the only thing breaking today, here is another one to have a field day with:
Outlook bug creates monster e-mail files
Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the e-mail program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space.
They just cannot implement things properly, can they? They also ignore mail storage standards, which helps not at all. █
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Posted in IRC Logs at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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Posted in Google, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Patents at 8:31 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Addressing the problem of Google’s love affair with software patents; news about Yahoo! and Microsoft, as well as its effects on Hadoop
SOFTWARE patents proponents like IBM and Novell (IBM has a lot of influence on Novell) are almost as much trouble as Apple. But one company which we rarely criticise for supporting software patents would be Google, which pretends to be a friend of Free software (which is hard to dispute) while at the same time doing things that are obviously harmful to Free software. It’s not much different from IBM in that regard. Google also plays along with Microsoft's ActiveSync, which makes it spread patents and stifle standards. GNU/Linux doesn’t need any of this trouble, as it was put right here yesterday:
With most jurisdictions still lax about violations of software patents by Linux users, who remain a quantatively negligible group, the popularity of products like Fluendo’s may be limited. But as Ubuntu’s user base grows, especially in the workplace, legal solutions for multimedia playback will become more and more important.
Well, actually, in most jurisdictions software patents are simply illegal, not just immoral. Google must be paying for those patents no matter where the buyer of Google products like Android or Chrome OS actually lives. That’s a dangerous slope to take.
Google’s idea that it can "invent" software algorithms was mentioned here earlier today and now comes this revelation that Google’s most important patent is just a reinvention of something which goes back to World War II (if not earlier, just like Hewlett-Packard). [via]
Google’s PageRank algorithm was developed in 1998. But a project to trace the history of such algorithms reveals an example from the 1940s.
This is a typical story.
Google was sued by Red Bend for software patent violations that affect Chrome. It’s very doubtful that Google will be able to respond with its patent arsenal to a company as small as Red Bend, so the whole excuse about the patents being “defensive” often seems like unadulterated garbage. It does not ‘compute’ in real-world scenarios.
A month ago we showed that Google had earned a patent (monopoly) that it did not deserve. It’s a monopoly on MapReduce. A startup called Cloudera builds a GNU/Linux distribution that offers some very powerful functionality based on Free software (Hadoop). Based on this new interview, Cloudera is aware of the supposed violation in MapReduce, but its response is that “Google has no track record of using patents offensively.” Well, Microsoft could also say this until a few years ago; it’s only when companies are dying that they become patent aggressors, so no-one can rely on mere promises that are not a legal contract.
I also asked Olson about Google’s recent move to patent the MapReduce algorithm for working with large data sets that underlies Google searches. Hadoop is based on a variant of MapReduce, and there have been suggestions made that everyone using Hadoop or MapReduce is in danger following Google’s patents. As we noted here, Hadoop really isn’t threatened, though. “Google has no track record of using patents offensively,” Olson noted.
The software patent from Google is troubling enough… Microsoft’s hijack of Yahoo! withstanding, as it may have an effect on the Hadoop project. It is now finalised that Zimbra is in the hands of former Microsoft executives (Yahoo! gave it to them) and given that the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is now approved, it might make one wonder if Yahoo! will still require Hadoop for search. Will it be actively maintained and developed? What will be the impact on many Free software projects that depend on Hadoop? That is another example of the poisoning of Yahoo's Free Software endeavours, courtesy of Microsoft’s bullying and unwanted intervention.
“What would be the impact on many Free software projects that depend on Hadoop?”One of our readers wrote to tell us that there is a connection between “News International -> Yahoo -> BBC -> Microsoft,” as he puts it.
“The BBC Trust has been urged to block the corporation’s plans to launch phone apps for its news and sport content. The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) said that the corporation would “damage the nascent market” for apps,” says this article. “The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) is the trade association for British national newspapers and its role is to represent, protect and promote the national newspaper industry. It was founded in 1906 and its current members comprise Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Financial Times, Guardian Newspapers, Independent Newspapers (UK), MGN (Trinity Mirror national titles), News International and Telegraph Group,” says this reference page. Microsoft’s strong ties with the BBC (and overlapping staff [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]) were last covered in [1, 2]. But that’s another story altogether. It will be treated separately some day. █
“The day that the software sector forms a clear front against software patents, as pharma does for a unitary patent system… will be the day our cause comes close to winning.” —Pieter Hintjens, Fosdem07 Interview
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents at 7:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How Microsoft cuddles up to GNU/Linux using its MVPs, usually in order to insert some insults and Trojan horses into it
Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza has some news to share about Mono’s infiltration into devices. Mono and Moonlight both pose issues that are related to control. They give Microsoft control over devices and other code. We are quite thankful that Miguel de Icaza is not just a CodePlex board member; his Microsoft MVP award makes it so much easier to explain to people who he works for. It’s those insider “MVPs” which Microsoft executives characterise as their favourite (Microsoft staff extension that has the dubious “independent” label).
“We are quite thankful that Miguel de Icaza is not just a CodePlex board member; his Microsoft MVP award makes it so much easier to explain to people who he works for.”Speaking of Microsoft MVPs, watch out for this known Microsoft MVP and anti-GNU/Linux shill (Jason Hiner), who says he will ‘try’ GNU/Linux after mocking it repeatedly. Prepare for some trouble and some complaints. It’s the same whenever Microsoft-bribed bloggers like Ed Bott ‘try’ GNU/Linux. Speaking of which, the Microsoft-bribed Tim Anderson, who sometimes writes for the Google-hostile Register, is adding some more scare mongering in his personal site. Microsoft is no better, but he’s making a monster out of Google while hoping that nobody will pay attention to the sheer hypocrisy (Microsoft is worse than Google when it comes to privacy).
Anyway, from the latest post of Miguel de Icaza (he has his eyes on more gadgets in which he wants to put .NET [1, 2], just like with Apple’s products and MonoTouch):
MeeGo/Moblin Support
We have been working closely with the MeeGo (previously Moblin) team at Novell to offer a streamlined developer experience for developers on Windows, Mac and Linux to target MeeGo devices.
Developers will be able to develop, test and deploy from their favorite platform software for MeeGo devices.
[...]
Mono for Mobile Devices
We recently shipped Mono for the iPhone and we continue to develop and improve that platform. Our goal is to provide developers with a great experience, so we are doing everything in our power to make sure that every wish and whim of the iPhone developer community is satisfied. We are working to expand our API coverage, write helper libraries to assist developers, tune existing .NET libraries to run on Mobile devices, reduce startup time, and reduce executable sizes.
But we have also just started an effort to ship MonoDroid: Mono for the Android platform. This will include a comprehensive binding to the Java APIs, but accessible through the JIT-compiled, 335-powered runtime engine.
Our vision is to allow developers to reuse their engine and business logic code across all mobile platforms and swapping out the user interface code for a platform-specific API. MonoTouch for iPhone devices and the Monodroid APIs for Android devices.
Here is a Comes vs Microsoft exhibit which explains why Microsoft wants to put .NET/Mono in devices. Novell et al have already attempted to sneak Mono into Android [1, 2, 3] and into LiMo. As Jeremy Allison explained a few weeks ago, devices that happen to include phones are an area of huge growth for Linux, so Microsoft wants to rob Linux using software patents and associated “tax” that suddenly make Windows look more attractive (or makes Linux a Microsoft cash cow). As a worthwhile reminder, Microsoft does sue device makers for using Microsoft-compatible software whose legal situation is made blurry before the assult. Moreover, promoters of Mono are Microsoft employees, former Microsoft employees, and Novell employees whose wage comes from Microsoft.
Lucas Rocha has just announced his resignation from the GNOME Board and Microsoft’s mole [1, 2] has just announced that Microsoft will give a keynote talk at OSBC two years after Matt Asay invited them to spew FUD in there [1, 2, 3].
Microsoft will be active at the Open Source Business Conference, acting as a sponsor and providing a keynote speaker.
I will never forget my arguments with Matt Asay over this. Microsoft was brought in by Matt Asay (who also helped Microsoft enter OSI) and this precedented affair has been rather harmful ever since. Other like-minded Web sites such as Groklaw also complained. And by the way, it’s not a matter of "intolerance" because people are actually choosing to participate in what they very well know is a convicted and abusive monopolist, which is continuing to abuse the freedom of developers using lawsuits and racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Microsoft can pretend to play nice (when this suits its own products) and it can carry on pretending that CodePlex is independent from Microsoft (which it’s not, even if it added the well-funded DotNetNuke). Microsoft uses money to force itself upon the community which it is also attacking. Just look what company had itself positioned at the centre of this new mesh. That’s just repellent and maybe that too is intentional. █
“Microsoft is asking people to pay them for patents, but they won’t say which ones. If a guy walks into a shop and says: “It’s an unsafe neighbourhood, why don’t you pay me 20 bucks and I’ll make sure you’re okay,” that’s illegal. It’s racketeering.”
–Mark Shuttleworth
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Posted in Deception, Microsoft, UNIX, Videos, Vista, Vista 7, Windows at 6:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Data from Devil Mountain Software shows that Vista 7 is a memory hog, which is therefore a lot slower for most users
A NEW study (data analysis rather) confirms what we’ve been saying all along. On many occasions we produced and shared evidence to show that Vista 7 was just too damn bloated (slower than Vista sometimes, except for cases where the reviewers had very modern hardware or received high-end hardware as bribe from Microsoft, in which case the bloat was harder to sense).
Anyway, the study at hand was covered by Gregg Keizer, who is one of the best guys at IDG/ComputerWorld.
Most Windows 7 PCs max out their memory, resulting in performance bottlenecks, a researcher said today.
Citing data from Devil Mountain Software’s community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company’s chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.
The above from Barth says that Vista 7 is “larger and more complex”, which is a gentle choice of words for “bloated”.
In the following new video from Linux Magazine (“Andrew Tanenbaum on Bugs and Minix’ Reincarnation Server”), the inspirer of Linux explains that many operating systems have become too bloated. Sorry about Flash alone being an option for viewing. █
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 6:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A lot of security headaches caused to lot of people, all due to Microsoft Windows being so vulnerable
Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft's risk that impacts people's lives. Blame Microsoft’s utter negligence [1, 2, 3] for it. Where there is deliberate negligence there is also liability and responsibility.
It has been surprising to some network experts that the Internet has yet not come under an attack that fragments or altogether suspends it at root level [1, 2]. It’s not as though it is impossible; it’s just that nobody has dared to trigger it just yet and the United States considers bombing (in the physical sense) any botmaster who may attempt this. According to this latest report, the United States is not prepared for an attack from Windows botnets.
During the simulated cyber attack that took place yesterday in Washington and was recorded by the CNN, one thing became clear: the US are still not ready to deflect or mitigate such an attack to an extent that would not affect considerably the everyday life of its citizens.
Already, there are some notable attacks that show up in the news. Here is an article that will appear in the New York Times tomorrow:
A malicious software program has infected the computers of more than 2,500 corporations around the world, according to NetWitness, a computer network security firm.
It’s a John Markoff article, so neither Microsoft nor Windows are mentioned, as usual. Under some pressure he once made an exception. Here is a similar report from Reuters:
Virus has breached 75,000 computers: study
A new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites, according Internet security firm NetWitness.
Here is another Windows disaster unfolding:
City of Norfolk hit with code that takes out nearly 800 PCs
Malicious code that mysteriously found its way onto an internal virtual print server took out nearly 800 computers used by the city of Norfolk, Virginia, last week.
The code apparently was activated when workers shut down their computers, said Hap Cluff, IT director for the city of Norfolk. “It was triggered by the action of logging off,” he said. ”
The code nearly wiped out the C drives of the 784 affected computers and essentially deleted the Windows operating system. The contents of the system folders on those machines, normally about 1.5GB in size, shrunk to 500 MB, he said.
Yes, all the above indicates that it’s a Windows problem. More here:
Hap Cluff, director of the information technology department for the City of Norfolk, said the incident began on Feb. 9, and that the city has been working ever since to rebuild 784 PCs and laptops that were hit (the city manages roughly 4,500 systems total).
Wonderful, eh? Here is an article about source of vulnerabilities, based on data that we mentioned in yesterday's post about security.
Just as they did last year, over thirty international security organisations have come together, to publish a list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors leading to vulnerabilities that can be exploited for cybercrime and espionage. The 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors has been updated with a number of improvements to how the errors are graded, prioritised and categorised. For example, new “Focus Profiles” allow readers to quickly see the listed errors sorted for particular professionals’ interests.
As we pointed out yesterday, Microsoft is not well positioned here and its general programming practices and use cases (e.g. clicking attachment to execute) are part of the problem. One might add to this the fact that Microsoft’s patches vulnerabilities poorly and sloppily, often hiding known flaws until they are actively exploited. █
“Our products just aren’t engineered for security.”
–Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive
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Posted in OpenDocument at 5:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Courtesy of Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance (18 February 2010)
DENMARK OPTS FOR ODF
Beginning 1 April 2011 governmental authorities in Denmark will be required to send and receive documents in formats designated in a list now including ODF. ODF is unique as the only editable document format listed in the decision of the Danish Parliament. To the extent Danish government authorities publish editable documents on their home pages, they must also do so using ODF and, optionally, using other document formats that may be included on the list at a later date. For a format to be included on the list, a five-part “openness” test was developed. This included a requirement that any other format considered for inclusion be interoperable with the existing standard on the list, meaning that it must be interoperable with ODF. For non-editable published documents PDF/A-1 is listed. The action was taken in accordance with Danish parliamentary decision B103 of 2006 requiring the government to ensure that the use of information technology by the public sector is based on open standards.
OPEN STANDARDS A “FIRST-CHOICE” SOLUTION FOR SWEDEN’S E-GOVERNMENT STRATEGY
Citing the opportunities for long-term cost reductions, the avoidance of lock-in and dependence on individual suppliers, a government-appointed group of senior officials, the so-called E-Government Delegation (“E-Delegationen” in Swedish), has recommended that Sweden make open standards a “first-choice” solution in the public administration. ODF is specifically referenced as an example of an open standard, the designation of which is included in the list of actions that the E-Delegation recommends should be carried out by the end of 2014. The report – “Strategy on the work of the Public Agencies in the field of eGovernment” – proposes ways of increasing the efficiency of the Swedish public administration and promoting societal innovation through eGovernment.
OOXML UNSUITABLE FOR USE BY NORWEGIAN GOVERNMENT, ACCORDING TO STUDY
A study published by Norway’s Agency for Public Administration and ICT (“Direktoratet for forvaltning og IKT”) has concluded that OfficeOpen XML (OOXML) is not suitable for use by the Norwegian government. Among the reasons cited were the lack of alternative office applications able to process and edit docx files in a satisfactory manner, OOXML’s unsuitability for collaboration, and its “unstable” nature given the number of changes to the format currently being considered. Norway recently affirmed its policy that, beginning 1 January 2011, it will be obligatory to use ODF when exchanging editable files between government institutions and users, PDF/A for non-editable (read-only) files, and HTML for publication of public information on government websites.
OBAMA ADMINSTRATION GIVES GREEN LIGHT TO OPEN FORMATS
U.S. federal government agencies will soon be required to make information available in open formats. According to the Open Government Directive issued by the Obama Administration, each agency will be required to “take prompt steps to expand access to information by making it available online in open formats……..To the extent practicable and subject to valid restrictions, agencies should publish information online in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by commonly used web search applications.” An open format is defined in the directive as one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information. Within 45 days of the publication of the directive on 8 December 2009, each agency was required to identify and publish online in an open format at least three high-value data sets. Agencies are required to produce a first draft of an Open Government Plan by April 2010.
ODF APPROVED FOR USE BY SLOVAK GOVERNMENT
Slovakia has approved amendments to a decree on the use of standards for information systems in the public administration. Government bodies in Slovakia must now be able to receive text documents in ODF, PDF 1.3, RTF and HTML. They may publish documents in any of these formats, though PDF is preferred. For intra-governmental document exchange, the use of DOC will continue to be allowed, though its use as a format for published documents is explicitly prohibited. A working group of the Committee for Information Systems in the Ministry of Interior was able to reach agreement on the amendments to the decree, which is legally binding and took effect 1 February 2010.
UK GOVERNMENT TO SUPPORT OPEN STANDARDS BASED SOLUTIONS, ODF
In a refresh of the “Open Source, Open Standards and Software Re-Use: Government Action Plan,” part of the Government’s ICT Strategy, the UK has reiterated its support for open standards and ODF. According to the plan, the UK government will use open standards in its procurement specifications and require solutions to comply with open standards. Regarding formats, the government “will support the use of HTML(ISO/IEC 15445:2000), Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) as well as emerging open versions of previously proprietary standards (eg ISO 3200001:2008 (“PDF”) and ISO/IEC 29500 (“OfficeOpen XML formats”). It will work to ensure that government information is available in open formats, and it will make this a required standard for government websites.” The strategy applies to all of the UK public sector, whether central government, local government, wider public sector or devolved administrations.
HUNGARY TO MAKE OPEN STANDARDS MANDATORY
The use of open standards in public-sector infrastructure will now be mandatory in Hungary. According to an amendment passed by the Hungarian Parliament on the law governing electronic public services (Act LX of 2009), open standards are now required in electronic communication conducted through the central governmental system between public administrative bodies, public utility companies, citizens, and private entities, who may comply on a voluntary basis. The modification was supported by the Open Standards Alliance and ODFA Hungary.
ASSAM GOVERNMENT TO CREATE AND STORE DOCUMENTS IN ODF
The Government of Assam’s policy requiring government departments and bodies to ensure adherence to ODF in creating and storing editable documents has now come into force with the publication of the state IT policy on 4 August 2009. Open source also received a major boost under the new policy, which commits the government to promote the use of and workforce training in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in all public bodies in Assam, India’s fourteenth largest state.
MUNICH COMPLETES MIGRATION TO ODF
ODF is now Munich’s primary internal document exchange format, with PDF used for non-editable files. According to the deputy leader of LiMux, the city’s project for migrating its 14,000 workstations to free software, the migration involved 20,000 templates that were consolidated and converted into new templates, macros or web applications. The standard workstation for Bavaria’s capital and Germany’s third largest city now consists of OpenOffice, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.
NEW YORK STATE TO HOLD OPEN GOVERNMENT SUMMIT
The New York State Chief Information Officer/Office for Technology (CIO/OFT) and the NY State Archives will host the Open Government Summit in Albany, NY, on March 19, 2010. The one day summit will address the many hot-button issues in the “open government” discussion, including the meaning of “open government” in the digital age, operationalizing digital openness, and archival implications of digital records. A report published by CIO/OFT in May 2008 – “A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State” – recommended that the state identify open formats as a technology feature specifically desired by the state and integrate the acquisition of this feature of openness into the state’s technology planning and procurement processes. More information concerning how to register to attend the Summit will be available shortly.
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT 2.0 TASK FORCE ENDORSES OPEN-STANDARDS BASED APPROACH TO PUBLIC-SECTOR INFORMATION
Starting with the premise that “public-sector information is a national resource, and that releasing as much of it on as permissive terms as possible will maximize its economic and social value and reinforce a healthy democracy,” the Australian Government 2.0 Task Force, in its report “Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0,” has recommended that public-sector information should be free, based on open standards, easily discoverable, machine-readable and freely reusable.
SPAIN TO PROPOSE GOVERNMENT-WIDE STANDARDS FOR INTEROPERABILITY
Spain’s national interoperability framework for eGovernment (“Esquema Nacional de Interoperabilidad en el ámbito de la Administración Electrónica”), published 29 January 2010 by decree in the country’s official journal, establishes criteria and recommendations, together with the specific principles necessary to enable and encourage the development of interoperability in public administrations. They include the development at a later date of a catalog of technical standards that will enforceable by the government, the selection of which will be based on specific criteria set out in the decree. Public administrations are encouraged under the framework to use open standards and, where appropriate, standards that are widely used by citizens to ensure freedom of choice from competing technologies. It is recommended that documents and other electronic administrative services be made available via open standards under conditions satisfying the principle of technological neutrality.
PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD BEGINS FOR ODF 1.2, PART 1
Potential users, developers and others, whether OASIS members or not, are invited to comment on ODF 1.2, Part 1, which defines an XML schema for office applications and its semantics. The 60-day public review period ending 26 March 2010 is necessary before a Committee Draft can be approved as a Committee Specification and ultimately as an OASIS Standard. The public review period for ODF 1.2, Part 3, which included digital signature support and an RDF-based metadata framework, among other significant enhancements, ended 12 January 2010. The public comment period for Part 2 (OpenFormula for spreadsheets) is next on the agenda.
ODF OLYMPIAD ENTERS FINAL STAGE
Students from schools across India, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Indonesia are participating in the ODF Olympiad. The contest, supported by The Knowledge Commons, Sun Microsystems, IIT Delhi, IIM Ahmedabad, Malaysia Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), Bangladesh Open Source Network, Free Software Foundation and the ODF Alliance, required students to submit presentations on 9 November 2009 on specific topics using the ODF format (.odp). The submissions are now being evaluated by a jury in each country based on specific criteria. Winners from each of the countries will then compete against each other for the Software Freedom Trophy for their respective school and other prizes, including netbooks and other high-tech gadgets.
NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPS SUPPORT
Box.net, a web-based service for accessing and sharing content, has launched a new integrated file view feature allowing users to view various file types, including ODF, without ever leaving their browser.
OfficeReader is an open source viewer of ODF files for Symbian phones.
Office Viewer for the Nokia N900 mobile device supports text files, spreadsheets and presentations in ODF.
Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 now provides support for .ods and .odp files on Blackberry devices.
Sun PDF Import Extension for OpenOffice 3.0 or above allows you to import and modify PDF documents.
Abl2Extract v6.0 is the latest version of the data conversion tool allowing you to convert PDFs to ODF and other editable file formats.
ODT2DAISY, which enables export of ODF documents to the DAISY Talking Book Format for people with visual impairments, is now available for OpenOffice 3.0 and higher.
OfficeShots, now in public beta, is an initiative of the OpenDoc Society and the Netherlands in Open Connection (NOiV) program of the Dutch government. The web service generates the output of an ODF file using various office applications, enabling the user to check for interoperability issues.
ODF Import imports ODF files into drupal nodes. Future releases will support other ODF formats as well as importing styles from an ODF file.
Open Search Server v1.1, the first stable version of the free Web and document search engine, now includes ODF support in addition to other major enhancements.
ODF-XSLT Document Generator is a library written in PHP 5 that brings the full power of XSLT to your ODF files.
odtPHP, now in version 1.0, is a PHP API that allows you to generate automatically ODF text files from templates.
JasperReports 3.5, an embeddable Java reporting library for developers, now outputs to multiple formats including ODF.
Atlantis Word Processor project announced it will implement support for ODF.
KOffice 2.1, the latest version of the open source office suite now available on the Mac, Windows and Linux, offers better support for ODF, including improved handling of lists and embedded objects.
AbiWord v2.8.2, the latest release of the word processor, includes improved support for ODF.
IBM’s Lotus Symphony 3.0 beta 2 has been launched with improved ODF support.
OpenOffice.org 3.2, the latest version of the open source office suite, is now available for download.
Tables 1.5.4 , a spreadsheet for the Mac OS X, offers improved import and export of ODF files.
Gnumeric 1.10, the latest version of the GNOME Office spreadsheet application with improved ODF support, is now available for download.
NEW ODF ALLIANCE MEMBERS
Please welcome the following new ODF Alliance members: Hunt MOT Wandsworth (UK); Dorsey Metrology International (USA); GemaButiks AB (Sweden); IENSIS Instituto Tecnologico Computacional (Brazil); Jura Magazin (Germany); Ashborne Photograpy (UK); New Format AB (Sweden); Inurface Digital Signage (UK); Council Website Design (UK); Abstroose (UK); Retshjælpsselskabet s.m.b.a. (Denmark); Intire Property Management (UK); New-Report (Germany); Quimifactor (Brazil); Datasoft Solutions (Malaysia); Proyecto GNU Venezuela; PC Masters (Germany); Universidade de Estado do Pará (Brazil); Instituto Permaish (Brazil); and Jaya Engineering College (India).
ODF IN THE NEWS
Open Norway: Norwegian Broadcasting Moves to OpenOffice and ODF [Linux Magazine]
European governments help increase ODF interoperability [Gijs Hillenius, OSOR.eu]
Dutch government launches ODF service [Sam Varghese, iTWire]
German government wants open standards and open source [OSOR.eu]
Netherlands Helps Denmark with Open IT [Jasper Bakker, IDG]
Bologna achieves vendor independence for its office applications [OSOR.eu]
Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So [Glyn Moody, Computerworld UK]
Microsoft EU dispute to last into 2010 [EurActiv]
Google: Firms can ‘get rid’ of Office in a year [Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia]
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Posted in News Roundup at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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In the books I am reading I am very surprised at how much Open-source, GPL, OpenOffice, Mysql, Firefox, Gimp and Ubuntu/Linux are mentioned. Not just as a side note but as a featured program(s) that they discuss in detail. Not only is it in the text but I have also found that many people are very aware of these Open-source programs and most use them regularly. I overhear conversations like; “Dude just download OpenOffice or I’m dual booting Ubuntu and Windows” all the time.
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Introducing Linux Journal’s penguin gallery contest. That’s right — penguins. Real, virtual, 2D, 3D, with fish, without fish, etc., etc. Submit your penguin photo or artwork and be entered to win some pretty cool LJ goodies.
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This week on the show: Moblin and Maemo now MeeGo, Google launches Buzz, the Olympics on Linux, no more freeze in Fedora Rawhide and more…
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Events
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In addition to over 50 seminars and tutorials at SCALE this year, there will be a number of events colocating at the conference. These include UbuCon, Zenoss Community Day, Women in OpenSource, Open Source in Education, StatusCamp Los Angeles, and a ClearHealth 3.0 training day. With so much going on there really is something for everyone at SCALE 8x.
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Mark Shuttleworth and Antonio Rodriguez keynote at PyCon 2010, the world’s largest conference of the Python programming community. Over 1,000 Python programmers are gathering now at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta for eight days of intensive education, cooperation, and networking.
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ViBGYOR, being a socially conscious platform for expression of art, values freedom. True to its spirit, Free Software is used whenever and wherever it can be used. The media centre at the main venue is setup using Ubuntu GNU/Linux, with VLC for playing the movies and AUdacity for audio recording. The online media desk is powered exclusively by GNU/Linux.
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It is no coincidence that a lot of Free Software people are present here at ViBGYOR. Its the same spirit that drives them – a thirst for freedom and a vision of free society.
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Our ambition for 2010 is to create a world-changing event, clearly demonstrating that OPEN IS THE FUTURE, with three main themes: Open Innovation, Open Enterprise and Open Society. In addition to the main conference event, we are also seeking proposals for short presentations (FLOSS Vision) and associated events, which are aligned with these themes. This call for proposals is open to all.
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Search
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I have created a handful of Google Custom Searches in past couple of years. These are really handy ways of narrowing your search to a particular field, or set of websites.
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Graphics Stack
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This morning we reported on AMD revealing forthcoming Catalyst driver changes, particularly a set of new features that applied to Windows users. However, we hinted that there might be some changes coming to the Linux driver and now Catalyst 10.2 for Linux is out there so we have the first confirmation of what may be to come.
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Applications
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As an administrator, sometimes you’d like to have a tool to log everything that you or another user does. For instance, when you’re installing or configuring software, you may to tweak several things to get everything working. When you finish, you often can’t remember each and every step you took. Shell history files provide some useful information, but if you open more than one SSH session to the system with the same username, most of the history is lost. But Snoopy Logger will save everything for you.
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PeaZip 3.0.bet features faster archive testing, more informations about job’s progress and speed, and more descriptive error messages.
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Instructionals
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The moral of this story is. When things go wrong with your Linux system the first thing you should do is make sure that your configuration files are in order. Often the easiest and quickest way is to backup the configuration file and delete it then restart the program or service. This will generally restore the defaults and the desired behaviour.
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Desktop Environments
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K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)
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I’ve gotten quite a few responses to my quickie look at KDE 4.4 under Mandriva written for this week’s Distrowatch Weekly. One of which came from Aaron J. Seigo himself. I thought I might share some of what he said since several people expressed similar concerns on the topic here in comments. I also found one really super-duper neato new feature in Akegator in 4.4 that deserves a mention.
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Akregator used to display polls and such as plain text, but with 4.3.2 polls rendered in radio-button or clickable format. That was kinda nice. But today I discovered something even better.
For Webmasters/bloggers/whoever that allow such, videos can now be watched right from Akregator. I don’t know any real details, if only certain formats are supported and such, but I’m almost thinking they’d have to be oggs. I’m not sure if Flash videos would work as I disable all such in Konqueror/KDE. I’ll check next time I see where someone embeds one in a feed.
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Sticking with our KDE theme this week, it’s time to learn how to make KDE 4.4 yours. You’ve downloaded it, you’ve used it, and now you want to personalize it. You might find things are a bit different than the KDEs of yore (especially if you’re just coming into KDE from 3.5). But no matter what release you’re coming from, it’s always good to know where and how to configure the look and feel of your desktop.
In this article I am going to show you how to make KDE 4.4 look and feel just the way you want it to. We won’t bother getting into setting up Compiz, this is just straight up KDE goodness. Nor will we discuss the installation of KDE – I will assume that is already complete.
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21,000 closed bugs later, the KDE team has announced the new KDE 4.4 and I simply had to take a look. After all, the last time I took KDE 4 Series for a spin was back when I still thought open source was one word. To think I actually praised this thing:
Most of you will remember the flak KDE got for releasing an immature desktop environment experiment as “gold”, and rightfully so: even though many Linux distributions almost immediately included it, nobody could really fit the unstable KDE 4.0 into their workflow.
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This review of course depended greatly on the quality of the KDE 4.4 integration in Fedora 13, so take it with a pinch of salt, though I’m confident you will get pretty much the same experience on production releases. I recommend you try KDE 4.4 only if you have a decently powerful machine, I wouldn’t run it on a netbook, to be honest, it consumes more resources than other lighter desktop environments. The KDE guys are doing an excellent job and they deserve more users, so give v4.4 a try, it might just be a keeper!
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This release fixes a lot of bugs reported against Kdenlive 0.7.6, including timeline corruption and various crashes. We also fixed a compatibility issue with Qt 4.6. We hope that this new release will make the video editing experience easier and more comfortable for everyone!
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GNOME Desktop
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If you’re not using the incredibly awesome eHomosapien metacity chances are you’re using the default Elementary metacity. You may be interested to know then that this will be getting a bit of a makeover soon (and you can install it now!)
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SAM Linux suffers from all the ailments of a small distro. It has many great things, but the integration is missing. The sum of all parts is lower than the value of each. Proper quality control is missing sorely, beginning with the website design, via hardware compatibility, all the way to small details and annoyances that reduce the professional look and feel of the final desktop.
Xfce is not the best choice, it seems, due to cross-platform issues that arise, time and again. Combined with other quirks that arose during the testing, SAM Linux makes for an odd choice. Gnome desktop would have been much better, but then, there’s PCLinuxOS already.
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With a mixed experience and a slight fear, I must conclude that SAM Linux is indeed what it is, a small distro, floating precariously on the thin cusp of the twilight zone. With a little more work in the polish department, it could be a very decent choice. But today, SAM Linux probably makes sense only to hardcore followers and experienced users.
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Red Hat Family
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CentOS, not just the distro but the process of building a server itself was quite an interesting and entertaining task. I’m becoming increasingly interested in this area of the linux world as well as in webhosting, I will learn more about those topics in the near present.
I must say CentOS keeps it’s word when it comes to stability, the kernel and software can be old, and it actually runs quite un-smoothly on my hardware, which was almost all detected, but it is stable. It crashed recently though, the only crash I’ve had in the 4 days I’ve been using CentOS, I think it was triggered by firefox, everything stopped responding except the mouse, I couldn’t even go to another tty or kill x, so I hard rebooted. But not counting that incident it was above-average in stability, especially since I was not using it as a server, but as my personal system as well.
So, I guess I understand more now why server distros are better for mounting a server, I can see why CentOS is very popular in that area and I would recommend it as such, even to myself.
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If you blamed Redmond for late release of Vista (almost 6 years after XP) then think again, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is the new XP of Linux World. And the same user-reaction is building towards it.
As per official documents Red Hat declares of following a 18-24 months release cycle. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 was released on 2007-03-14, and it’s about 3 long years now, still there is no official announcement. The question here is how long will Red Hat possibly stick with 2.6.18 kernel line and the contemporary packages. The present status of Red Hat Desktop is a stable but obsolete distribution.
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Debian Family
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If you are looking for a release with the latest kernel and the latest desktop, Mepis is not for you. Mepis uses Linux kernel version 2.6.27, with the KDE 3.5 desktop. For older machines, it is an excellent alternative. Mepis is a Debian derivative, and uses the Lenny repositories.
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On the consulting front, The Linux Box of Ann Arbor, Mich., has vowed to “sell, install and support customized Ubuntu-based solutions to organizations running Linux systems. It will also provide businesses with large-scale migration deployment support and training services for cloud computing infrastructures and enterprise desktop alternatives.”
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Ubuntu
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I have some great news for everyone today. As you can see by the title of this article, OpenShot is now officially included in the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) repository. If you have an alpha version of Lucid, you can already find it in the Software Center. Just search for “openshot”.
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Prey helps you locate your missing laptop by sending timed reports with a bunch of information of its whereabouts.
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Who’s to say? There was, a very very long time ago, a manifesto somewhere in the Ubuntu wiki that set out those same terms for Xubuntu. I used to have a link to it, but last time I looked the page was dead. And of course, mob rule crept into that project too, and steered it away from its original plan. 
Look, I’m all for brotherhood, helping out the new guy, group hugs and the need to sit down with a box of tissues every few years and watch “Titanic.” But starting an open source project is not that time. Allowing the public to steer the project is insane. No good can come of it. Tell the people from the start: This is what we will do. Do it with us, or do it on your own.
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Mobile
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Not even a fortnight after we saw Android 2.0.1 slapped onto Sony Ericsson’s all-but-forgotten Xperia X1, along comes a port that makes the other look like child’s play.
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Canonical developer Jamie Bennett announced in his blog post The New UI for ARM Based Ubuntu Devices how Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) enabled rich graphical user interfaces even on non-3D-accelerated ARM devices.
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Today I’m going to be taking a look at the Linux powered Patriot Box Office (PBO), a Personal Video Player (PVP) designed for the home entertainment or theater system. The device is small, easy to use, and provides all the basic features that someone would want in a PVP system. So, let’s move on to the system and take a look around.
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That’s not the only place we’re seeing open source play a role in the latest embedded virtualization technology. Another example is use of the OK Labs’ hypervisor and virtual desktop technology from Citrix in the vendors’ joint effort for the Nirvana Phone. The idea is to quickly and easily transform a handheld device to a full-featured, high-performance PC via docking station. We may also see Linux play an important role as these vendors navigate operating system licensing.
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The popular Linux distribution already serves as the basis of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, as well as a number of virtual appliances, and here we see yet another use of it in Ubuntu Electronics Remix, which is centered on electronics development and devices.
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Android
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I recently purchased an HTC Magic, my first device running Android, Google’s Linux-based mobile operating system. Although there are a lot of things I like about Android, I also quickly realized that there are also a lot of things that either require urgent improvement or are going wrong altogether. Below is my not-so-small list of Android issues. A lot of them are related to the Android market because it is in my opinion the part of Android that requires the most urgent efforts.
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Despite all this, Android is still my smartphone OS of choice because of the openess of the platform (at least compared to Apple offerings). I would however like to see all these issues sorted quickly so that Android has a chance to truly rival the iPhone and create real competition in the mobile and tablet market.
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At FOSDEM 2010 in Brussels, Linux Magazine Online pulled Android commentator Jan Wildeboer and kernel staging tree maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman away from the daily events to talk with them on camera.
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I’m pleased to say with confidence that Oracle will continue to invest in Lustre. From engineering to sales to deployment and support, it’s the same great people working together to make Lustre a success at Oracle.
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The introduction in the book states that the reader requires no previous experience of Blender to make use of the book. However further on in the book it is said that the book is not a beginners book and that many things will not be described in detail as the reader is expected to know the basics of how to use Blender in terms of its interface and various buttons and keypresses. After having read the entire book I would say that a beginning Blender user would be able to understand most of the book as most of the time things such as key presses and the basics of how to use Blender are explained in a way a new user to Blender would be able to follow.
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Note-taking applications are often dead-simple apps that do little more than display typed characters on a screen. NoteCase does more than that, though it also doesn’t let itself get bogged down with so many features that it would qualify more as a word processing app. NoteCase’s forte has to do with organizing your notes in a sensible, tree-like system.
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Education
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Guzdial suggests, for instance, that the myth that FOSS developers work for free might discourage students from entering computing science.
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The fact that only 15.7% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are female is not used as a reason why young women should avoid studying business management. So why would the low percentage of women be a reason to avoid studying FOSS? While the percentage of major female CEOs may be ten times greater than the number of female FOSS participants, the number is still dismal.
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I read with interest today when Linux Weekly News linked to Greg DeKoenigsberg’s response to Mark Guzdial’s ACM Blog post, The Impact of Open Source on Computing Education (which is mostly a summary of his primary argument on his personal blog). I must sadly admit that I was not terribly surprised to read such a post from an ACM-affiliated academic that speaks so negatively of FLOSS’s contribution to Computer Science education.
I mostly agree with (and won’t repeat) DeKoenigsberg’s arguments, but I do have some additional points and anecdotal examples that may add usefully to the debate. I have been both a student (high school, graduate and undergraduate) and teacher (high school and TA) of Computer Science. In both cases, software freedom was fundamental and frankly downright essential to my education and to that of my students.
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If someone has an interest in programming for open source, Terry said, they try to get right into it. They don’t start with beta testing, reporting bugs, flagging usability problems, doing all the pre-programming things that lead to a disciplined approach later on. Stuff that’s boring but useful and educational.
Reading Mike Guzdial’s recollections of Terry’s talk, I began thinking of how people used to start out in restaurants. They washed dishes, they took out garbage, they peeled vegetables, they observed the pros at work before getting any opportunity.
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Mozilla
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Sometimes geeky technical details matter only to engineers. But sometimes a seemingly arcane technical decision exposes deep social or political divisions. A classic example is being debated within the Mozilla project now, as designers decide whether the Mozilla Firefox browser should trust a Chinese certification authority by default.
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Databases (Not F/OSS)
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VC firm Open Ocean Capital, backed by MySQL founder Michael “Monty” Widenius has invested an undisclosed sum in MoSync, a provider of mobile application tools for standardisation.
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Business
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Miriam Tuerk sat down with Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL AB, to get Marten’s thoughts on how to break thru the sub $10-15 revenue plateau and achieve the hyper growth promise of Open Source.
Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL AB, has the rather unique experience of having grown a commercial Open Source company to sales above $100 million over his 8-year tenure. Other than Red Hat, MySQL is the only company to have independently achieved this milestone, pre acquisition. Many market pundits comment on the difficulty Commercial Open Source companies have in breaking thru the $10-$15 million revenue plateau. I sat down with Marten to get his thoughts on the strategies for success at that stage of growth.
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Software forges are tool platforms that originated in the open source community. Many corporations are improving and extending their software development practices by adopting forges internally.
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FSF/FSFE/GNU
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Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier speaks with Bradley Kuhn, policy analyst and tech director at the Software Freedom Law Center. Learn about the Software Freedom Conservancy and how it helps open source projects from Amrock to Wine focus on development while benefiting from non-profit status.
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Thinking back, probably our most important decision affecting community health was made early in the year, when we decided to dump our AGPL license in favor of Apache.
Although we had never gotten direct feedback that the community didn’t like AGPL, we had more forum posts than we thought was healthy that asked pointed questions about our licensing. This let us know that people were confused, and if there was any doubt in our minds, the licensing debacle at Ext js convinced us that Keep-It-Simple-Stupid is the only way to go here.
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Releases
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If you’re still not familiar with Boxee or the Boxee Beta, check out our first look at Boxee Beta.
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Programming
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I read a book proposal years ago on the subject of teaching kids to program with C++. “After a week,” it said, “children will know enough to create their own simple text games and animations.”
I was perhaps six years old when I saw my first minicomputer. I flipped open the first page of the manual and typed in the lines verbatim—except I left off the line numbers, likely thinking that they were merely a convenience for readers. Perhaps I’ve had good taste from the beginning.
My typing skills were, as you might expect, abysmal. Even so, I had feedback from the computer within fifteen minutes or less. If I’d had to spend a week learning things to move characters around on the screen, I’d have given up.
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Science
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Astronauts have completed their third and final spacewalk of the current shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
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The cupola observatory module is considered the ultimate observation deck. It is attached to an Earth-facing side of the International Space Station and has seven windows — six around the sides and one on top — that can be shuttered when not in use to protect them from micrometeoroids and the harsh space environment.
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Security
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So who’s the new bidder? Rumor has it that IBM may be looking at Sourcefire now. While the pairing has been making the rounds, we have our doubts about whether Big Blue would actually reach for the security company. Its $1.3bn acquisition of Internet Security Systems in mid-2006 has never generated the returns that IBM had hoped. (The ISS business, which was centered on the company’s Proventia boxes, never really fit well inside IBM Global Services.) Having little to show for that purchase of an intrusion-prevention system (IPS) vendor, we doubt that Big Blue would double down on another IPS vendor, Sourcefire.
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Environment
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By the time the final version of the bill came to a vote, cooler heads apparently prevailed. The bill dropped the word “conspiracy”, and described climate science as “questionable” rather than “flawed”.
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Finance
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A controversial currency swap undertaken by the Greek government in 2001 had no bearing on the country’s eligibility for entry into Europe’s single currency because Greece was already a member at the time, Greek officials said on Wednesday.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be a “scandal” if banks helped Greece massage its budget, as European officials investigate Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s role in Greek efforts to conceal the size of its deficit.
“It’s a scandal if it turned out that the same banks that brought us to the brink of the abyss helped fake the statistics,” Merkel said in a speech in northern Germany late yesterday, without naming Goldman Sachs directly. Greece “falsified statistics for years.”
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With European finance ministers meeting in Brussels today and tomorrow to discuss ways to prevent a debt crisis threatening the eurozone as a whole, a spotlight has been shone on techniques used by Greece and other indebted countries to give the appearance of lower budget deficits and debt levels.
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As a result of such shenanigans back in 2001, Greece was allowed to join the European Union while running up enormous debt that went undetected. Greece’s neighbors will now be forced to bail it out, much as U.S. taxpayers have done for banks as a result of the scams Goldman and other financial houses pulled off in this country.
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The $690,000 spent compares with $530,000 the New York-based bank spent during the same quarter a year earlier when the credit crisis was peaking. Goldman spent $840,000 to lobby the government during the third quarter.
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Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed $15 billion of bond sales for Greece after arranging a currency swap that allowed the government to hide the extent of its deficit.
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Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights
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The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet.
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Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM
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When we heard of Ubisoft’s plan to require an internet connection for all their future PC games, we hoped they’d abort it or scale it back in the face of the outrage and astonishment it caused. They haven’t, and it’s here. Details are below.
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Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights
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A brief report from the European Commission authored by Pedro Velasco Martins (an EU negotiator) on the most recent round of ACTA negotiations in Guadalajara, Mexico has leaked, providing new information on the substance of the talks, how countries are addressing the transparency concerns, and plans for future negotiations. The document (cover page, document) notes that the Mexico talks were a “long meeting with detailed technical discussions, which allowed progress, but parties not yet ready for major concessions. Due to lack of time, internet discussions could not be concluded.”
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The Special 301 Review is a process that the USTR undertakes every year to review the enactment and enforcement of copyright, patent, and trademark laws throughout the world. The office then produces a report placing countries on a Watch List—or even a Priority Watch List—if the USTR feels the laws and enforcement aren’t forceful enough.
Christian Einfeldt’s DTP presentation in Berlin 2004 06 (2004)
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