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01.23.11

Links 23/1/2011: Pardus 2011 Reviews, Skolelinux Interview

Posted in News Roundup at 5:32 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • How to develop for Linux

    Apple built this platform from scratch, but thanks to the work put in by the GNU project and countless others, we already have a platform. We have a rich set of development tools, a range of desktop environments and a wide range of development forges packed with source control, bug tracking and other features.

  • Linux: Successful Upgrade – SBS 2003 to Linux

    Late in 2010 one of our charitable organization clients, a local church, came to these decisions: 1) The aging XP Professional systems in their office needed to be replaced with new systems. 2) The existing XP Professional systems that were not so old needed to be upgraded to newer operating systems. 3) The existing SBS 2003 system needed to be upgraded to a new OS as well.

    We at ERACC made the pitch for Linux on the desktop and the server but the staff at this client thought they “needed” to stay with something “famliiar like Microsoft” and voted for Windows 7 Professional on their new and “upgraded” desktop systems. (I knew they were not going to see fuzzy, cuddly familiarity with a migration from XP to W7. But I also know when to stop promoting Linux and move on along.) However, the fellows in charge of decision making about their server decided they wanted to try Linux and not spend money to “upgrade” SBS 2003 to Windows Server 2008. We considered this latter victory enough for our Linux sales pitch and laid out an upgrade plan for their office. Funds were procured and the parts for new systems were ordered from ERACC in late December. The work began the first week in January 2011.

    [...]

    At this point the upgrade from SBS 2003 to Linux is done. Some call this a “migration”, but we here at ERACC think of any move from Microsoft to Linux as an upgrade, so that is what we call it. Over the next few weeks each user’s PC will either be replaced with a new PC running W7 Pro or migrated to W7 Pro from XP Pro. To date, two of these are done and we are working on the third one this weekend. In case you are wondering, the W7 Pro installations work just fine with SAMBA 3.5.3 on Mandriva 2010.2 Linux.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Qt in the land of Gnome-based desktops: The issue of copyright in Free software

      Recently Mark Shuttleworth wrote about how Qt will become part of the Ubuntu 11.10 desktop, and that Qt-based apps will eventually be considered as possible default Ubuntu apps. Obviously, this would be a big change from using GTK-only applications (that is, aside from Firefox and Open/Libreoffice applications), but Mark encourages GNOME developers to consider using Qt, too. He writes, “Perhaps GNOME itself will embrace Qt, perhaps not, but if it does then our willingness to blaze this trail would be a contribution in leadership.”

      I agree on this, and think that enabling usage of Qt in GNOME projects would be a contribution in leadership. It would be great if developers had the option of using tools like Qt Creator and Qt Quick when building applications for GNOME-based desktops (or other devices!).

    • My way or the highway?

      2 days ago I wrote an enthusiastic blog about a cross-distribution collaboration meeting on App Stores we’ve organized in Nuremberg. Then, a day later, Canonical decided to ship Qt with Ubuntu. While not anything special from an openSUSE pov (we give both GTK and Qt equal treatment and offer the best platform to develop for both), it’s a nice move. In the announcement Mark Shuttleworth emphasized Qt integration with Ubuntu. I specifically write Ubuntu, not GNOME/GTK – Aaron Seigo responded to that with a blog post showing a bit of frustration with Canonical’s policy, the push for dconf & Ubuntu-specific Qt integration in apps.

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • Why I Use Gentoo: Unused Dependency Removal

      Perhaps with the exception of Slackware, today’s modern distributions have completely mastered the fine art of installing a package’s dependencies automatically. The installation of a package and all its required dependencies is no more difficult than a single command.

    • Skolelinux interview: Morten Amundsen

      This time the Tromsø office of the Free software Centre and the newly elected board member of the association FRESH I’ve been speaking in my interview series with Skolelinux -people.

      How did you connect with the Skolelinux project?

    • Pardus

      • Review: Pardus 2011

        It’s stable, smooth, reasonably quick, and extraordinarily newbie-friendly. Plus, it has goodies that most people would need on a daily basis. That said, there are a lot of applications that will need to be uploaded to the repository soon. Otherwise, I can only recommend this to people who will only be surfing the web and creating documents (and nothing else).

      • Pardus2011- A Linux distro that needs your attention
      • Pardus 2011, Independent Distro Releases Latest and Greatest

        All in all, Pardus is a truly underrated and underused distribution. It’s a wonderful offering that everyone should try. And everyone can, because it comes with support for about every language in the known world.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Meld Diff Viewer – Compare and Merge files/directories in Ubuntu

          Fudcon 2011 will be coming up next weekend. I’m looking forward to it, and hope to see lots of Fedora folks I talk with on irc and on mailing lists, as well as new folks I haven’t met yet. ;)

        • Stripes Fedora^WInfinity, Gnome 3, Owl, etc.

          I’ve made Fedora branded stripes to submit it for potential inclusion in F15. Unfortunately, Mairin (the famous Fedorartist) explained that wallpapers need to be published under a free license, and since mine contained Fedora logo, it can’t be (that is, Fedora logo is TMed).

    • Debian Family

Free Software/Open Source

  • Oracle

    • The Oracle scorecard: One year after Sun

      To be fair to Oracle, it shouldn’t be expected that the company carry all the projects forward that Sun sponsored. It would have been nice if Oracle could have seen fit to continue sponsoring activities like GNOME a11y — but hard to argue that GNOME is particularly strategic to Oracle. But the list of projects that Oracle has stopped investing in entirely, or have stopped contributing to the FOSS project, is fairly long.

  • Project Releases

Leftovers

  • Silvio Berlusconi defended by Italian porn star

    The debate raging in Italy about Silvio Berlusconi’s alleged taste for teenage girls and prostitutes has taken a surreal turn, after the country’s top porn star weighed in with high praise for the prime minister. “The truth is,” said Rocco Siffredi, “that Italians are proud of someone like Berlusconi who is 74, loves sex and has a good sex life – and I don’t just mean working-class Italians.”

    [...]

    Two years after Berlusconi’s wife left him over his friendship with teenager Noemi Letizia, and a prostitute, Patrizia D’Addario, claimed to have slept with him, Berlusconi is again facing criticism after accusations that he had sex with pole-dancing prostitutes at parties at his mansion near Milan. One guest, Nadia Macrì, described Berlusconi lying on a bed calling out “Next” as women queued to have sex with him.

  • Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google?

    Was Eric Schmidt pushed or did he jump? Both. According to close advisors, the Google C.E.O. was upset a year ago when co-founder Larry Page sided with his founding partner, Sergey Brin, to withdraw censored searches from China. Schmidt did not hide his belief that Google should stay in the world’s largest consumer marketplace. It was an indication of the nature of the relationship Schmidt had with the founders that he—as Brian Cashman of the Yankees did this week—acknowledged that the decision was made above his head. He often joked that he provided “adult supervision,” and was never shy about interrupting the founders at meetings to crystallize a point. In the eleven interviews I conducted with him for my book on Google, he freely told anecdotes about the founders, sometimes making gentle fun of them, never seeming to look over his shoulder. Yet he always made clear that they were “geniuses” and he, in effect, was their manager.

Clip of the Day

Drupal: Colour Enabled


Microsoft’s Attacks on Google and Android: Ben Edelman, ‘Flagrant Misdirection’, and More

Posted in Deception, FUD, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Oracle at 1:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Disregarding the truth allegedly for financial reasons

Gretchen CarlsonSummary: Ben Edelman is accused of working on behalf of Microsoft and Microsoft Florian too seems to be flogging the same agenda, even if they both distort the truth

GOOGLE is under attack. Techrights is not a defender of Google (in fact we challenge Google to change for the better and to abolish software patents), but when the attacks on Google affect Free software, then everyone in the community should view these attacks as somewhat personal.

In 2010 we wrote a great deal about the Edelman-backed “Consumer Watchdog” attacking Google, probably at someone’s behest (Microsoft is a major client of Edelman) and days ago we also showed Microsoft Florian libelling Google as part of a series of his disgusting attacks on Android/Linux. We’ve been tracking many of them and also addressed the lies they contain. We’ll do so again in a moment.

First, we wish to draw attention to this article from the MSBBC (which everyone ought to know is biased in favour of Microsoft due to entryism). It says that someone called Ben Edelman has launched a little smear campaign against Google and Google says he is working for Microsoft. Yes, we have seen this before and the MSBBC insists on denying it. It writes:

The Californian company responded by suggesting he was actually working on behalf of its rival, Microsoft.

But Mr Edelman told the BBC that Google was launching “personal attacks” to distract people from its own behaviour.

And yet, he does not deny a payment from Microsoft. Bear in mind that Microsoft has done that before, even recently in LSE [1, 2, 3]. It’s not unusual for Microsoft employees on full-time payroll to do that too. Many of them are disguised as “researchers”.

Microsoft is unable to catch up with Google, so the strategy shifted to characterising Google as an evil empire. There’s nothing new in this strategy and we gathered dozens of examples.

“No doubt that’s the goal of “closed source partisans” for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press.”
      –Pamela Jones, GroklawThe second person who is attacking Google these days (regarding patents, codecs, Android, etc.) is “closed source partisan” Microsoft Florian, which is what The Inquirer called him. Not so easily deceived by the name “FOSS patents” then, eh? “No doubt that’s the goal of “closed source partisans” for all the recent anti-Android musings in the press,” wrote Groklaw. “Here’s my advice: consider the source, and stay tuned.”

Assume it’s a case just like TurboHercules, which turned out to be partly owned by Microsoft. It was the same with T3 and with SCO, which later turned out to have been paid by Microsoft too. Going back to Microsoft Florian and examining the news, before his latest lies got exposed (he helps pull another SCO while communicating with the people who helped SCO in the same way), Groklaw wrote: “Folks, like I said earlier, stay tuned. No one can know until discovery is done and the experts have presented everything. This insightful comment from Slashdot shows you why you shouldn’t assume but need to trace code and licenses more carefully than some are doing. This isn’t a case like SCO’s where a party was speaking regularly to the press. So we can rely on the filings only, not on those who may or may not have agendas and who may or may not be reliable anyhow.”

Here is one of the better known rebuttals to the lies from Microsoft Florian. It puts it quite nicely when it says:

Florian Mueller, who by the way is neither a lawyer nor a developer although he plays one on TV.

Other mobbyists/lobbyists, who also front for Microsoft, are actually more like actors than they are technical people. Jonathan Zuck comes to mind. Being a pretender is part of the job and Microsoft minions will play along with the script. Guess what? Just as expected, Microsoft booster Matt Rosoff [1, 2, 3, 4] continues his FUD campaign from the new platform; he writes falsehoods like “intellectual property lawyer Florian Mueller,” which is total disinformation. Groklaw wrote about it: “First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He’s neither. How he gets journalists to repeat his oeuvre without doing any fact checking is a skill, no doubt about it. What would the word be for that skill? : D”

“First everyone called him a FOSS activist. Now they call him a lawyer. He’s neither.”
      –Pamela Jones, GroklawWell, that’s the same thing ACT is doing. It pretends to be working for small businesses when it fact it does exactly the opposite. It is paid by Microsoft to do this. Mass-mailing journalists and deceiving them is part of this lobbying campaign, stuffing panels too sometimes.

Groklaw has this very comprehensive rebuttal to the FUD from Microsoft Florian. Usually he is just ignored there, or banned even. Barbara put it nicely in her comment where she called Microsoft Florian F[redacted] M[redacted] because of the obvious consequences:

There are two ways to deal with lying trolls like F[redacted] M[redacted].

1. Ignore them.
2. Expose them.

For this site (groklaw), ignoring Mr. Flagrant Misdirection is the best policy,
since he *wants* his name mentioned on high-profile reputable sites. As one
scammer said, anything that gets him a higher search engine rank is worth it.

It’s why I won’t post his name here, and would encourage others to do the same.
Other pseudo-nyms, if you don’t particularly like using the “redacted”
brackets:

Florid Mullet

Florian Sockpuppet

F****** M******

“The FMTroll” (goes well with “The MoGTroll”)

People in the know will know who you’re referring to, while not giving
Florescent Mulehead any google-juice.

“More people realize that F[redacted] M[redacted] can’t be just filtered out,” gnufreex wrote in IRC a few hours ago, pointing to this LWN comment that says: “The problem with MF is the fact that he pushes his “news” to non-geek press so we can not just ignore him. We can ignore his comments (this is great feature to have and it is implremented on LWN), but we can not ignore MF-pushed articles in mainstream press! I don’t know if he pushes Microsoft agenda for low reason called “money” or for some higher reason, but the fact of the matter: he does it regularly and quite efficiently. Thus we should keep attention on what he’s doing… To filter him out is as dangerous as to filter out Oracle-related or Microsoft-related news in general: few people likes most of these news, but we can not just ignore them.”

LibreOffice’s Charles-H. Schulz wrote to me: “do you think Florian Mueller has gotten a new customer? #ORCL”

Wayne Borean wrote a quick post about it last night:

OK, so Florian is claiming that Google has infringed on Oracle’s copyrights, and he’s written up a huge explanation of what he’s found. But he’s not a programmer. In other words, he most probably doesn’t have the skills to evaluate what he’s looking at.

Curiously his arguments sound just like the arguments that Ken Brown of The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution made in Samizdat, his as yet unpublished proof that Linus Torvalds isn’t responsible for the Linux Kernel. It’s what, only six years overdue?

Here is Slashdot setting the record straight. Jan Wildeboer, who knows Microsoft Florian personally, says that “Microsoft sees Android taking over the mobile market. Florian Mueller produces “evidence” on Android and Oracle. Coincidence?”

A lot of the nonsense germinates/originates from Microsoft Florian’s ‘planting’ of the FUD in Engadget, which embarrassed itself by spreading false information that came from this load of nonsense that’s a ripoff of research which Microsoft Florian pretended to be his. Rather than apologise for its mistake, Engadget added more noise and it just shows what low standards Engadget really has. For those who cannot remember, Engadget also gives room to former Microsoft employees who attack Android in there. It is named and shamed here, with specific reference to the writer Nilay Patel:

I don’t know the credentials of Mr Mueller, but the name of the blog FOSS Patents is ironical as Free Software Foundation has been fighting against ‘software patents in general.

[...]

It appears Mueller’s findings are nowhere close to ‘help’ Oracle extort money from Google over Java. As the database company, which has been sued by the government for overcharging them, Oracle has taken a U-turn from their stand on Java, which resulted in Apache resigning from Java Committee. Free Software Foundation also criticized Oracle’ Java accusations and came out with support for Google.

Popular blogsite Engadget posted a blog rebuffing such claims. Nilay Patel wrote nothing new but repeated what Mueller wrote in his blog. The worst part of Patel’s blog was ‘unrelated’ mention to Prystar vs Apple case. Prystar was selling hardware with MacOS installed on it. If this is the best example Patel came come out with, I can do nothing but sigh.

[...]

In today’s coverage, especially by the pro-Apple blogs, I see it as nothing more than creating FUD to scare developers and users, especially when the battle is far from over.

The name of Engadget has been harmed by this whole routine/stunt of Microsoft Florian. Android’s reputation too has been harmed, no matter how many corrections will be posted. The ROI in lobbying is very high and this whole saga just proves it. █

The “Mono Lobby” Explained by Neil Richards

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Mono, Novell at 2:36 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gorilla bottom

Summary: An alternative, more polite name for the Mono bullies

We have just come across a new term. A news site which is focused on Free software calls the Mono boosters “the Mono lobby”, akin to “Team Mono” or “Monomaniacs” in some other Web sites. Neil Richards explains “How To Erase Mono From Your Ubuntu PC, Forever”:

I am worried that Microsoft will come after Canonical as they went after Novell, Xandros, TurboLinux, TomTom, Amazon and many other GNU/Linux players. Dependency on Mono might pull Ubuntu into a blackhole from which there will be no return.

The Mono lobby is actively pushing the trojan through the gates of two major forts of Free Software — Android and Ubuntu. While Google may not care much about Mono, Canonical must. Canonical doesn’t make 6.x billion dollars in a quarter to fight Microsoft.

If you are a Free Software user and are concerned about this cancerous spread of Mono, you can send a message to Canonical — by uninstalling Mono from your Ubuntu machines and make sure that it won’t recur.

Meanwhile, over at OMG!Ubuntu, Banshee ‘involvee’ David Nielsen [1, 2] carries on advertising Banshee and needless to say, there is no word of caution about Mono (the administrators of OMG!Ubuntu politely told me that they would post an article on this subject). The Mono lobby is not exactly fair and balanced, yet it accuses others of not being fair and balanced. “This is great,” pointed out gnufreex in IRC yesterday, “Notice Banshee and F-Spot got bad names” in this new video:

The person who made this video rants about sexual connotations in Banshee and F-Spot or at least suggests them. A replacement for “Banshee” involves the word “vagina” and F-Spot is seen as too similar to “G-Spot”. Given that the Mono lobby is rather foul-mouthed (telling me “fuck you” and telling my co-host Tim that he is a “cunt”), maybe these application names are suitable after all. Calling these people “Mono lobby” is an understatement. They are Mono bullies. █

T-Mobile Apparently Dumps Microsoft for Linux Following Class Action

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 2:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Car cemetery

Summary: Microsoft suffers another blow in the mobile space where it loses to Android and is forced to compensate customers whose data it lost

OVER a year ago we argued that SideKick was most likely on its deathbed, but since the brand may still have some life left in it, T-Mobile seems to have moved over to Android and it now plans a relaunch.

Aside from the news about Android, there is apparently a SideKick settlement (we cannot find more reports to corroborate). The Microsoft boosters say:

A proposed settlement has been reached in the class-action lawsuit over the high-profile October 2009 outage of the data service behind T-Mobile’s Sidekick, run by Microsoft’s Danger Inc. subsidiary.

In any case, the major news is this new report which says “Sidekick reborn as Android-powered Sidekick 4G”. To quote: “The Sidekick was one of those mobile gadgets that everyone knew about, but not everyone used. It was powered by Danger, which Microsoft picked up and then used for the KIN, but T-Mobile always had the rights to the Sidekick name.

“Well, this morning the Sidekick was re-launched, at a press breakfast but this time it will be powered by Android. So far there’s no word on pricing or official launch date (first half of 2011), but what we do know is that it will run on T-Mobile’s 4G network.”

There are many more articles about it (e.g. [1, 2, 3), but some reports show more certainty than others, so we’ll wait until it’s made more official. █

United States of Steve Ballmer

Posted in Asia, Bill Gates, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer at 1:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: In addition to private meetings with Bill Gates, President Obama plays a role in serving Microsoft’s interests

OVER the past couple of years and even more than that (ahead of the 2008 elections) we have covered incidents where Steve Ballmer went to the White House for private meetings with President Obama. These red carpet trips were not intended to help the American population, they were intended to benefit a monopoly abuser which is currently terrorising rivals such as Google, in more than a single nefarious way.

We have a wiki page about Microsoft’s connections in government and included there are links not just about Bill Gates’ many visits to the White House and lobbying via the Gates Foundation [1, 2, 3, 4] (he goes there uninvited sometimes) but also a reminder that Obama was paid more personally by Microsoft executives and their wives (including the Ballmers).

“Obama cites piracy data from Ballmer in comments on Hu visit,” argues a Microsoft booster in a report about incidents we will probably expand on later this year:

When Steve Ballmer talks, President Obama listens, apparently.

The Microsoft CEO is among the corporate executives in Washington, D.C., today for the visit of President Hu of China. As always, trade between the two nations is one of the big topics on the agenda, and Obama talked at one point about the need for a “level playing field when it comes to our trading partners.”

Yesterday the following video was circulating, mentioning Steve Ballmer in relation to Obama’s diplomacy and policy-making. Remember that at one point some years ago John McCain considered making Ballmer the American ambassador to China (what would the Chinese have to say?). █

Adrian Malacoda on Apathy Towards Mono

Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Ubuntu at 1:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Warning

Summary: Why Ubuntu is not the problem when it comes to Mono (Novell and Microsoft are, but also people’s naïvity)

“It’s definitely not unique to Ubuntu, and I’m not blaming Ubuntu or anyone formally associated with Ubuntu for any of it. It’s not unique to new users, either. It’s an artifact of the proprietary software culture that we (software freedom advocates included) live in. In some ways Microsoft itself is an artifact of this culture, and it’s quite fun watching them and the other “evil empires” struggle in vain against Android and GNU/Linux.

“It’s not even unique to software. For some reason, people generally don’t like to think. When you advocate for anything (including things only tangentially related to computers, such as environmentalism) you make people think. People like it when the thinking is done for them – this is why things like entertainment and advertising are big business, and why sports are emphasized above academics even in schools.

“Now, considering how “digital” our lives have become, much of what we do is done through software. Software freedom is essentially academic freedom – sharing and learning are among the most important things in an academic perspective, and free software emphasizes both (hence why it’s always compared to books, science, math etc). But the “heroes” that people look up to aren’t thinkers, teachers, or professors. They are athletes, entertainers (politicians fall under this too), and movie stars. Thinking is a chore, and smart people are “weirdos” or “dweebs.”

“I assure you, it’s not Ubuntu’s fault in the slightest.”
      –Adrian Malacoda“Code is an expression of thought, therefore, free software is essentially freedom of thought. People make the mistake of assuming free software is about software, and this is where “open source” (the thing that’s kind of like free software, but with the support of the Apples and Microsofts) came from. But I don’t even blame the OSI for any of this, and I don’t have any real issues with “open source” developers. They might not be “GNU freetard zealots” but they’re not actually “enemies.” It’s more like two sides of the same coin – “open source” is about software development, whereas “free software” is about the ethical issues of computer user autonomy and control.

“Sadly enough, the “practical open source methodology” has a much greater chance of becoming “mainstream” than the GNU ideals of software freedom. People just generally don’t like thinking, with a handful of exceptions (the ones who can actually “get” the freedom thing). It doesn’t help that 15+ years of being “blind Windows haters” sort of diluted the original GNU message down from “freedom from monopoly and control of one’s own computing” to “Business is evil! Money is evil! Big bad corporations are evil!” which makes an almost-impossible feat even more almost-impossible.

“I assure you, it’s not Ubuntu’s fault in the slightest. In a sense, it’s not even Microsoft’s fault – they didn’t cause it, they’re just very keen on exploiting it.” [the comment in context] █

Links 23/1/2011: Sabayon 5.4 KDE, Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.8 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 1:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux To Connect 9.2 Million UK Adults To The Internet

      While 200 computer packages have been set aside for the pilot, over the course of the next 12 months around 8000 consumers are expected to take up the Remploy offer. People will be able to get additional support by phone and email from Positive IT solutions, who can help with set up problems and troubleshooting. As well as making IT affordable, the scheme also has a Green IT message – giving a computer a second life is the equivalent of taking two cars off the road for one year.

  • Server

    • Zentyal Counters Windows Small Business Server In the Cloud

      Zentyal estimates that there are roughly 50,000 active Zentyal server installations worldwide.

    • Linux supercomputer beats humans in Jeopardy match

      IBM showed off its Linux-based Watson supercomputer in an exhibition “Human vs. Machine” game of Jeopardy, while discussing potential practical uses of its natural-language AI in the IT industry, especially in health care and tech support. Watson beat two human challengers in this practice round, but the real winner will be proven in a televised competition in February.

    • Large Scale SMP, Yes Really

      My desire for SMP is rather practical and has nothing to do with performance or cache coherency.

  • Google

    • As CEO of Google, Larry Page Won’t Frown on Open Source

      Google does qualify as the biggest open source company of all, and has consistently employed open source experts such as Chris DiBona, who serves as Open Source Program Manager. More than that, Google has released tons of open source code into the wild, sponsors Google Summer of Code, runs its own search engine on Linux, and generally gives open source much more of a fair shake than many companies focused on proprietary technology do.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Elementary Studio GTK Theme – Fusion of Elementary and Ubuntu Studio Themes

        Elementary Studio GTK theme is a nice and impressive fusion of DanRabbit’s Elementary GTK theme and beautiful dark Ubuntu Studio default theme. Elementary theme is supposed to be the default theme for upcoming Elementary OS codenamed “Jupiter”.

      • Unity Window Decorator

        The reason this is a fork (for now) is because it does depend on those changes to libmetacity-private and it makes no sense for the compiz project to ship a decorator which depends on a patched library. The plan is, of course, to get the changes to the metacity theme spec upstreamed once I’ve finished working on them and to merge the changes made to unity-window-decorator back into the upstream gtk-window-decorator.

  • Distributions

    • Gentoo Security Team: Scouting Tips

      When someone volunteers on the security team, the first role they are asked to fill is that of a “Scout.” In this role, they primarily work to learn of newly disclosed vulnerabilities, determine if it applies to Gentoo, verify that a bug does not already exist, and then open bugs as appropriate. I wish I could say that this job is out-of-this-world-fantastic-fun. But that just isn’t always the case. At the same time I think that done right, it doesn’t have to be that bad.

    • Classifying Linux Distributions

      This is somehow my personal classification, of Linux distributions. And maybe at the same time of the Linux users.

      I’m going to classify only those I have used more than just a few hours in a virtual machine.

    • Linux CDs Vs. Linux DVDs…

      My only complaints are that it is 1.1 Gb. and that Pardus repository is not as varied as those of Debian-based distros or Mandriva are. However, I can do without some packages…they are not vital…just minor things I like. In exchange, Pardus does have its unique features.

    • Request to Linux distributions

      Do not waste my hard disk!

      I recently acquired an 2 TB hard disk drive, which I immediately formatted with ext4. Given that mkfs.ext4 defaults to 5% reserved blocks for too, that amounts to 100 GB of lost* space.

      Wow. 100 GB. On a desktop machine. For root.

    • Reviews

    • New Releases

      • Clonezilla Live 1.2.6-59 Stable Has Been Released

        Steven Shiau announced earlier today, January 18th, the immediate availability of a new stable release of his system-cloning Linux distribution, Clonezilla Live 1.2.6-59.

        Clonezilla Live 1.2.6-59 is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.32-30, and it introduces a couple of important bugfixes, as well as many enhancements and changes.

        “This release of Clonezilla live includes major enhancements, changes and bug fixes.” – said Steven Shiau in the official release announcement.

      • Pardus Linux 2011 Has LibreOffice, Firefox 4 and KDE SC 4.5.5

        Gökcen Eraslan announced earlier today, January 21st, the immediate availability for download and upgrade of the popular Pardus 2011 Linux-based Turkish operating system.

        The final and stable version of Pardus 2011 is powered by Linux kernel 2.6.37 and it’s available as Live and Installation images for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. It includes an enhanced YALI installer, a fist boot configuration tool, and the brand-new KDE Software Compilation 4.5.5.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva Provides an Educational Solution for Schools and OEMs

        Mandriva Linux is the ultimate operating system from Mandriva. It is the fruit of the convergence of three technologies: Mandriva, Conectiva and Lycoris and is available in three editions: One, Powerpack and Free, for both i586 and x86-64 architectures.

      • PCLinuxOS, LXDE, and User Management

        PCLinuxOS is an excellent distribution for everyone, especially for people who have never used Linux. The LXDE Desktop is similar to Windows reducing a casual users learning curve. Combine the two into PCLinuxOS – LXDE and it is an instant hit. Everything the Community Center’s need is included on one CD. The included programs are well thought out, and Open Office Org install is available at the click of a button, completing the setup.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Boxee Box Review

      For many, the Internet has become a preferred source of entertainment. With offerings like Netflix, VUDU, Hulu and digital downloads, even once loyal cable television subscribers are abandoning their service for online content.

    • Phones

      • Smartphone watch

        Once a mobile powerhouse, Motorola has been struggling to remain relevant in the fast-moving cellphone market over the past couple of years. Now the company looks as if it is ready to make a serious comeback. The Motorola Atrix 4G was awarded the title of best smartphone at the recent Consumer Electronics Show and will be the company’s flagship device for the early part of this year. The handset runs Android 2.2 operating system and is powered with a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor coupled with 1GB of memory – the device is a serious contender.

      • Android 3.0 to kick-start tablet wars

        The Android Honeycomb release will feature many tablet PC-specific features

        Google’s Android mobile phone operating system was one of the winners of 2010, booming in popularity to become the second most popular smartphone OS by the end of the year. Now in 2011 it looks that Google is setting its sights firmly on the tablet market.

      • Android

    • Tablets

      • Android tablet boom

        Most of the devices here will run Honeycomb, Android’s 3.0 release, which has already been earmarked as being specifically designed for tablet PCs.

      • Motorola Atrix vs the Always Innovating Smart Book

        It is not an overstatement that the Motorola Atrix smartphone was one of the bright stars of CES 2011. An often-mentioned, breakthrough feature of the Atrix is its modularity, namely that it can be placed into a netbook dock which gives it work-time (and battery recharge) and a desktop-like work environment (Linux based).

      • Acer to ship Android tablets based on Sandy Bridge CPUs, says report

        Acer is expected to release two to three Android-based tablets running Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” Core processors, and will start to back out of the netbook business, says an industry report. At CES, Acer announced ARM Cortex-A9 based Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet for Verizon’s 4G LTE network.

      • Is HP’s WebOS heading for netbooks?

        HP is prepping a netbook using its Linux-based WebOS operating system, says an industry report. On Feb. 9, HP is expected to announce several WebOS devices, including nine-inch “Topaz” and seven-inch “Opal” tablets, says Engadget.

      • Turn Your Linux Desktop,Tablet or Touch Device into Digital Sketchpad

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Search Solutions Ready For The Enterprise: Ovum

    Open source enterprise search software is viable and reliable and can stand up against leading commercial players from the industry, according to Ovum.

    In a new report* the independent technology analyst states that open source software is ready for the enterprise and is able to deliver on the needs of most organisations.

    Mike Davis, Ovum analyst and author of the report, said: “Free-to-use open source enterprise search and retrieval (ESR) solutions are now ready for the enterprise. We believe enterprises should start with open source options when looking for a search solution and only go to the big players if open source is unable to deliver what they need.”

  • Events

    • 2011 Call for Presentations

      The Arizona Business and Liberty Experience Conference (ABLEconf) is soliciting presentations for its third annual conference. ABLEconf 2011 will take place on Saturday April 02, 2011, at the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) in Tempe, Arizona.

    • Texas Linux Fest 2011 Call For Papers is open!

      We are proud to officially open the call for papers for Texas Linux Fest 2011, scheduled for April 2 at the Hilton Austin hotel in downtown Austin, Texas.

      Texas Linux Fest 2011 is the second annual Linux and open source software event for Texas and the surrounding region. We are assembling a one day program for the business and home Linux user, and for the experienced developer and newcomer alike.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Chrome 10 advances with new V8 3 JavaScript engine

        Google is updating its dev-channel version of the Chrome browser this week with an updated JavaScript engine and a long list of bug fixes.

        Chrome 10.0.642.2 is an update for Windows, Linux and Mac and includes the new V8 version 3.0.7.0 JavaScript engine.

    • Mozilla

      • Skype Toolbar Blocked by Mozilla – FINALLY!

        According to Mozilla, the Skype toolbar was one of the top crashers of Firefox 3.6.13 last week, accounting for some 40,000 crashes! In addition to that, Mozilla says that having the Skype toolbar installed can make some parts of Firefox as much as 300 times slower, making it appear that Firefox is slow loading pages.

  • SaaS

    • Open Source: OpenERP Launches SaaS Version for Partners

      OpenERP, as you may guess from the name, sells a suite of business applications built on open source code, ensuring low-cost apps for the customer and flexible deployment for the administrator. But OpenERP has always been limited by its status as an on-premises product. Not anymore.

  • Oracle

    • Univa forks Oracle’s Sun Grid Engine

      Another fork has appeared in the Sun Microsystems software road. Univa is forking the Sun Grid Engine project, now controlled by Oracle.

      In the wake of Oracle’s $5.6bn acquisition of Sun a year ago, co-founder and chief executive officer Larry Ellison made no secret of the fact that Oracle was not going to waste time on products and projects that do not make the company money. And rightly so, by the way.

    • Whamcloud Building New Lustre Distro

      The open source Lustre technology is a parallel file system that is often found in high performance computing (HPC) environments. Users of the file system will soon get community Lustre distribution, thanks to the leadership of startup Whamcloud.

      Whamcloud is a venture backed startup that includes veterans from Oracle and Sun, where the Lustre project originated. The reason why Whamcloud is building a Lustre distribution isn’t about creating a fork from Oracle, but is about helping to support and expand the Lustre community.

    • New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 10 (build OOO330m20) available

      OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 10 is now available on the download website.

  • CMS

    • My first look at DIASPORA*

      Consequently, when I finally got around to getting to getting an account for the DIASPORA* alpha, what I mainly noticed was the difference in the privacy policy and interface

  • Business

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Canada’s Digital Library a Grassroots Effort

        Last week, the European Commission released “The New Renaissance”, an expert report on efforts to digitize Europe’s cultural heritage. Europe has been particularly aggressive about its digitization efforts, developing Europeana, an online portal currently featuring more than 15 million works of art, books, music and film, as well as the European Library, which provides access to 24 million pages of full-text scanned by 14 national libraries.

    • Open Hardware

      • Nvidia Tegra3 launch imminent. Intel, you did this to yourself.

        Reading about the likely launch of Tegra3 at Mobile World Congress 2011 and seeing this video, one cannot help wondering how big a mistake Intel made when denied Atom hardware interfaces from Nvidia some time ago. Doing that, it practically forced Nvidia to abandon mobile-x86 solutions and pour all of its resources into Tegra/ARM development.

  • Programming

    • JQuery Mobile, Part 3: Attack of the Forms

      In our prior articles we have introduced JQuery Mobile and begun to look at application structure. In this article we continue our look at JQuery Mobile by touching upon forms handling.

      While many mobile applications are dominated by the presentation of information, we cannot escape the fact that mobile devices are ideally suited for data gathering, or data-collection.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 to become a living standard called “HTML”

      HTML5, which has been developed by the WHATWG group, is to lose its version number and be referred to only as “HTML”. Ian Hickson, the author and editor of the W3C’s current HTML5 draft, announced this decision in a blog posting. Hickson said that, when the group announced that the HTML5 specification was progressing to “Last Call” in 2009, the plan at the time was to publish a “snapshot” of HTML5 in 2012. However, due to the high demand for new features, the group has now decided to switch to a different development model.

Leftovers

  • Takeover War Turns Into a Trial Over ‘Poison Pill’

    For almost 30 years, companies have used the pill as the critical legal tool to ward off hostile takeovers.

    Now the pill itself has come under attack and, in the next few weeks, a Delaware judge is expected to rule on its use as part of his review of a year-long takeover battle for industrial-gas company Airgas Inc.

  • Investors to stay lawsuit as HP investigates Hurd departure

    A committee of Hewlett Packard directors will investigate former CEO Mark Hurd’s departure from the company amid sexual harassment allegations last year, according to a recent court filing.

    The inquiry comes in the course of shareholder litigation involving the company. The investigation will be conducted by independent directors who joined HP’s board after Hurd’s departure and will be assisted by outside lawyers, according to a joint case management statement filed on Jan. 14.

  • H.P. Replaces 4 on Its Board in Wake of Chief’s Dismissal

    The changes are intended to diversify H.P.’s board and add new experience and perspectives, according to Raymond J. Lane, H.P.’s chairman. It comes just months after the hiring of Léo Apotheker as chief executive.

  • Deaf Attorney Takes On Key FCC Legal Post

    When Gregory Hlibok was 9 years old, he wanted to be a lawyer — until adults told him to consider another field, since it was “not possible” for him to litigate in a courtroom as a deaf person.

    Profoundly deaf since birth, Hlibok at first dutifully studied engineering, but never gave up on his dream. Now one of an estimated 170 deaf lawyers in the United States (out of a population of 36 million people with impaired hearing), Hlibok, 43, is the new head of the Federal Communications Commission’s Disability Rights Office.

  • A Supreme Conflict of Interest

    Americans are about to find out just how much baseball and our judicial system really are alike.
    Common Cause, which I’m privileged to lead, has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the landmark Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case last year because they may have attended secret retreats where lobbying and political strategies were developed by some of the biggest players in the 2010 elections.

  • The Problem With Vendor Sponsored Testing

    Sponsored tests are meaningless, from any vendor. I simply don’t believe that sponsored tests provide value to the technical community. But that’s ok – they’re not targeted at the technical community. They’re marketing tools, used by sales and marketing teams to sway the opinions of management decision makers with lots of “independent” results.

  • Security

    • Cyberattacks on social networks doubled in 2010
    • It Management Fail: Always Blame the Worker Bees

      Security fail: When trusted IT people go bad has a great title. Then it’s all downhill. I suppose it’s appropriate for an audience of managers who want cheerleading for bad management more than good information.

      It starts off with a tale of ultimate horror: not only is your trusted systems administrator selling you pirated software and incurring the wrath of the BSA (Business Software Alliance), he is running a giant porn server from the company network and stealing customer credit card numbers.

      Then it takes the obligatory gratuitous swipe at “rogue” San Francisco admin Terry Childs.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Finance

    • Booya! Latest Wall Street Innovation: Twitter Trading

      Major news providers Dow Jones and Reuters offer news products that archive and structure news to provide machine-readable feeds for use in trading algorithms. This enables large-scale trading with little human screening. The market for unstructured data is also big. The New York Times reports that about 35 percent of quantitative trading firms are exploring whether to use unstructured data feeds of news, blogs and tweets. Two years ago, only about two percent of those firms used them.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Lorillard’s Unreal “Youth Smoking Prevention” Campaign

      Family Circle and Parents magazines regularly run youth smoking prevention (YSP) ads called “Real Parents, Real Answers” that are paid for by the Lorillard Tobacco Company. The ads drive readers to a website operated by Lorillard that contains no information about the health hazards of cigarette smoking, the nature of nicotine or cigarette companies’ role in promoting youth smoking through advertising and marketing techniques.

    • Dog-Whistling Past Disaster

      Recently the use of the political phrase “dog whistle” came to my attention while listening to the Sunday morning political talk shows. According to Wikipedia, “Dog-whistle politics” refers to political speechmaking or campaigning that uses coded language to signify one thing to the general public, while also signifying a different and more specific meaning to a targeted subgroup of the audience. The analogy is a reference to dog whistles, which emit an extremely high-frequency pitch that only dogs can hear, and humans can’t. Political “dog-whistling” as a tactic of public persuasion can take a variety of forms.

    • RootsAction.org Taps Into the Discontented Left

      A new, independent, progressive public interest group called RootsAction has formed to fight “a far-right Republican Party that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a Democratic Party whose leadership is enmeshed with corporate power.” RootsAction is an online campaign to address issues like the squandering of billions of taxpayer dollars on foreign wars that are generating hatred of the U.S. overseas, Wall Street schemes that are costing Americans their homes and the continuation of Bush administration policies under President Obama.

    • David Martosko’s Glass House Takes a Hit

      In his role as research director for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) — the notorious front group that works for the alcoholic beverage industry — David Martosko has routinely attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving, claiming the group persecutes social drinkers by “expanding the parameters of the ‘drinking and driving problem’ ” to include social drinkers, rather than just focusing on hard-core alcoholics. Now a new website has sprung up called AboutDavidMartosko.com, that contains official law enforcement documents showing that Martosko was arrested in September 2008 for driving while intoxicated.

  • Civil Rights

    • UK ID Cards Are No More!

      The Identity card system was a perfect example of Big Brother. They were photo cards that, like a passport, enabled you to travel to other countries (but only a few countries, unlike a passport) and could be used to prove your identity, just like a modern photo driving licence. What then was the point?

  • DRM

    • Sony’s solution for root key hack? – Is a more open system really that bad?

      I would hope Sony keeps in mind that DRM/copy protection systems are very unpopular with end-users, we just have to look towards the PC to see the problems it can cause, one of the many advantages of the consoles is that any DRM type systems are mostly invisible to the user who merely wants to run and use the software. If introduce a more PC approach, making that “plug-in and play” gaming more of a chore and I think you are asking for trouble.

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