Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Living the Linux Lifestyle

  Why do some people choose to run Linux as their PC platform of choice while others opt instead for other ways of running their computing experiences?

  Is it market share, perceived ease of use, slick marketing overtures, users wanting to use what they already know? This list might explain why people might choose OS X or Windows.

  But what approach to computing (and life) prompts a person to use a Linux box on a daily basis? I’ll share my insights based on personal experiences and other observations accumulated over years of living the Linux lifestyle full time.

• Server

  • Why You Should Never Steal From a Linux Admin

    You get to spend countless hours dealing with “me myself and I” users who always seem to have issues that can escalate to bringing the world as we know it to an end if not promptly attended to. The pay is bad and the work hours are long. Simply put system administration is a job for those who love and have a passion for administering computers and their users.

• Graphics Stack

  • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.35 (Part 4) – Architecture and infrastructure

    Measures to optimise the power management code and fully support the Turbo Core function of recent AMD six-core processors increase the data throughput and processing speed of Linux 2.6.35. Further kernel additions include tracing interfaces for KVM, another kernel configuration program, and functions for de-fragmenting the working memory.

• Applications

  • CDargs Brings Bookmarks to the Linux Command Line

    You can find CDargs on most Debian-based distros, so if you’re using Debian, Linux Mint, or Ubuntu you should be able to just grab it with sudo apt-get install cdargs. It’s also available on Fedora, and you should be able to find it through the openSUSE Build Service as well.

  • Proprietary

    • Desktop Linux: When and how to add proprietary software to your desktop Linux

      Some people hate the idea of adding proprietary software to their desktop Linux. For these people, there are Linux distributions such as gNewSense that use only free software. For the rest of us, who use distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu, there are times we either want to, or feel forced to, add proprietary programs such as Adobe Flash or Skype or the ability to play proprietary audio and video formats such as MP3 or commercial DVDs to your Linux desktop. Here’s how to do it.

  • Instructionals

    • A few Ubuntu 10.04 fixes

    • Adding Custom Certificates To CIITIX-WiFi

    • Installing Lighttpd With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 10.04

    • Autokey – Desktop automation utility for Linux and X11

• Desktop Environments

  • Smitten with Xfce 4

    If you’ve read me long enough, you know I am a desktop junkie. Much to Jaqui’s chagrin, I do love my desktops. So much so I could have a different desktop every day and still not be completely happy. During my trials and tribulations with the Linux desktop I have, surprisingly, missed the whole Xfce train. Why? I have no idea. I’ve known of it, I’ve used it briefly, and never really thought much more about it. That is, until recently.

• Distributions

  • Reviews

    • Sabayon 5.3 review

      The main purpose of the reviews published on this site is to give readers a good idea of what they would experience if they actually downloaded and installed the distribution on their computer. It is, therefore, necessary to highlight good features, or features I think will lead to a positive user experience. It is also necessary to highlight badly implemented features, or features that could give a negative user experience. For this review, let’s begin by looking at the features I think you’ll like on Sabayon (5.3).

  • Debian Family

    • Debian Project News – July 26th, 2010

      The organisers of the DebConf10, the upcoming annual Debian Developer conference, announced that there will again be a Debian Day for everybody interested in free software. It will be on the 1st of August at the Columbia University in New York City. During this event, there will be a full day of talks on several subjects such as free software in government, design and free software, free software advocacy as well as string of talks about the Debian project and operating system. Debian Day is free of charge, but a registration via e-mail is required to ease the organisation of that event. More information is available on http://debianday.org/.

    • [Howto] Debian preseed with Netboot

      Imagine the following situation: you find yourself with ten to twenty brand new Notebooks and the opportunity to install them with Debian and customise to your own taste. In any case it would be great fun to manually perform the Debian installation and configuration on each Notebook. This is where Debian Preseed comes into play.

    • Canonical/Ubuntu

      • The 2 lightweight full fledged Linux distros worth having

• Devices/Embedded

  • Android

    • Carrier Billing For Android Market Is Coming To More Networks

      Hidden away in a bland update about terms & conditions, Google’s Android Developer Blog has revealed the next phase in Google’s plans to make Android a little more pleasing to the mass market—direct carrier billing for app purchases made via the Android Market.

    • Survey: Android Tablets “Sad state of Open Source”

      Although Android itself is under an Apache licence, within Android are GPL licensed components such as the Linux kernel. This means that although vendors can freely use Google created layers such as the Dalvik VM, user interface layer and other services, the operating system’s kernel needs to be made available as source code to anyone who receives the code under the GPL licence.

Free Software/Open Source

• Mozilla

  • Tab Candy – New Firefox 4.0 Innovation That Has Every Potential To Become an Industry Standard

    Though still in its initial stages of development, Tab Candy is an interesting new Firefox 4.0 feature, which has every potential to get adopted by every single browser out there. Like for example, the tabs itself were invented by Opera, and now it’s a default and a must have feature in web browsers.

• Oracle

  • OpenOffice.org 3.3 Definitely On Its Way

    OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 was released on June 4 and a new master workspace was branched off for the upcoming 3.3 on June 5. The code in this branch will be stabilized and later become the product release that will find its way onto your desktops.

    With the feature and UI freeze of June 24, only fixes will go into this new OOO330 release code branch. New features will be merged into the DEV300 development code line as 3.3 is readied for release.

  • Five Reasons You Don’t Need Microsoft Office 2010

    Have you looked at the new Microsoft Office 2010 yet? How many of its few, new features does your company really need? And are these features worth the investment? Here are five reasons your company doesn’t need to purchase Office 2010.

  • Java’s team of rivals: Conflicts and alliances in the Oracle era

    On the surface, it would seem Oracle, as the new proprietor of all things Sun, is now the master of Java’s fate. Besides inventing Java, Sun had steered important Java technologies such as the GlassFish application server, which has served as the open source reference implementation of enterprise Java. Sun also held power in the Java Community Process (JCP), the official scheme for amending Java.

• Simon Phipps/Semi-Open Source

  • Former Sun Open Source Evangelist Forges Forward

    Simon Phipps is one of those technology purists that makes you wish you were even half as enthusiastic as he is about your favourite subject. As Sun Microsystems’ chief open source officer/evangelist he was a welcome addition to JavaOne events, where he would typically install himself in the press room alongside the technical journalists and file Flip-video reports on his own company’s event with tremendous gusto.

  • Open Source Does Not Need “Monetising”

    Phrases like “we can’t give everything away” garnish the thought, and it’s easy to be drawn into sympathising with them. But they are wrong. Open source itself is not about making money – that’s the job of its participants.

    Open source is what happens when several different people choose to work together on the same code base rather than working separately. They use an OSI-approved licence and gather as an open source community around the resulting free-software commons. Each of them is there for their own reasons; each covers their own costs and contributes the code they choose to. There is no pooling of funds to pay for work to be done because everyone is solely responsible for their own costs.

• Programming

  • Whatever happened to Perl?

    Once one of the pillars of the Internet, is Perl now fading away — or will Perl 6 will spark a renaissance for the programming language?

Leftovers

• Environment

  • GE invests in SynapSense to cut data center energy

    SynapSense is one of a handful of companies designing data center energy management systems, which use sensors to collect environmental data from inside data centers.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) won three critical exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions today, carving out new legal protections for consumers who modify their cell phones and artists who remix videos — people who, until now, could have been sued for their non-infringing or fair use activities.

    [...]

    The first of EFF’s three successful requests clarifies the legality of cell phone “jailbreaking” — software modifications that liberate iPhones and other handsets to run applications from sources other than those approved by the phone maker. More than a million iPhone owners are said to have “jailbroken” their handsets in order to change wireless providers or use applications obtained from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes “App Store,” and many more have expressed a desire to do so. But the threat of DMCA liability had previously endangered these customers and alternate applications stores.

  • Judge rules that circumventing DRM is not illegal

  • The DMCA just got a little weaker

Contents

• GNU/Linux
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Librarian of Congress Still Clueless About Linux

  So. They tell us to buy another operating system. Thou shalt use proprietary software. Is that the government’s role? If we want to use Netflix, we have to have two operating systems, one just for that? I wonder if a different legal argument were made if it might be successful, namely that the government should not be in the position of forcing citizens to spend money to have two operating systems just to be legal. Nor should a government aid certain vendors to make money by such compelling of citizens to buy their products. Nor should the government endorse products or enable certain companies to make competing products less desirable in the market.

  I mean, to think about how silly this is, turn it around. Let’s say the US Copyright Office said you could only view movies and DVDs on Linux. Imagine if they told protesters using Microsoft and Apple that Linux is free, so they can just download it and dual boot, so there’s no problem? Can you imagine the uproar? From Microsoft, for starters. They fight like pit bulls when any government suggests using Linux too, and when they say they will only use Linux, what does Microsoft do? Well, legally they argue it’s prejudicial. Why isn’t this similarly prejudicial?

  Of course, Netflix and Hollywood could do the right thing and solve this in the marketplace by making their works available to Linux users. Hollywood seriously needs to think about its use of Linux while making it impossible for Linux users to enjoy the resulting works. They use Linux because it’s the best tool they can find. So do we.

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • Henri Bergius on Akademy, MidGard, Open Collaboration Services and GeoClue

    At Akademy, we ran in to many interesting people, including “random motorcycle adventurer” Henri Bergius, who is also a board member for Akademy co-organizers COSS among his many other free software related activities. Read on for the full conversation.

Leftovers

• This isn’t the first time Seed has sacrificed editorial independence

  Journalist Gaia Vince recalls how Seed magazine, owner of ScienceBlogs, spiked one of her articles because it was critical of a potential advertiser

  While the science community reacted with indignation and shock this week over ScienceBlogs’ decision to publish a blog on nutrition written by food giant PepsiCo, I was unsurprised. I’ve been here before with Seed magazine, owners of the ScienceBlogs network.

• Judge Says Constitution Protects Right to Lie About Purple Heart

  A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a little-known law making it a crime to falsely claim to have been awarded a military medal.

• Internet will soon be running on IPv4 address fumes

• Science

  • Sikorsky Will Fly Electric Helicopter This Year

    Sikorsky Aircraft says it will build a full-size, piloted electric helicopter this year to explore the benefits of an electrically powered helicopter. The company announced Project Firefly at the Farnborough Airshow outside London and says the electric helicopter will be unveiled at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh next week.

  • Boeing shows off commercial spacecraft

• Environment

  • 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Gulf of Mexico ignored by government, industry

    More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

  • Photographer detained by police, BP employee near refinery

    A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security, according to ProPublica, a non-profit news organization in the U.S.

  • Africa’s national parks failing to conserve large mammals, study shows

  • BP whistleblower: oil clean-up effort is in disarray

    Former BP contractor Adam Dillon went public last Friday, telling a local news station in New Orleans that he was fed up with BP’s handling of the spill response, not least of all its information clampdown. In an interview with Mother Jones this week, Dillon, who claims he was fired for raising concerns about the cleanup with his bosses, elaborated on his experiences in the Gulf and vented his frustrations with BP.

  • Gulf Oil Spill Mapping

    We’re helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming years.

  • 10 ways vegetarianism can help save the planet

    The average British carnivore eats more than 11,000 animals in their lifetime, each requiring vast amounts of land, fuel and water to reach the plate. It’s time to think of waste as well as taste

• Finance

  • Deficits of Mass Destruction

    If you’ve been paying attention this past decade, it won’t surprise you to learn that the country’s policy elites are in the midst of a destructive, well-nigh unhinged discussion about the future of the nation. But even by the degraded standards of the Washington establishment, the growing panic over government debt is shocking.

  • IMF warns against budget cuts

    International Monetary Fund says only western countries in the most severe difficulty should try to reduce their deficits, appearing to back former Labour government’s policy

    [...]

    By contrast, the IMF reckoned the world economy was recovering faster than expected, although it warned that Europe’s debt troubles posed a big risk.

  • Keiser Declares Goldman Sachs “An Undeclared National Enemy”

    I have often maintained that any action by any company, individual or group of individuals, that has a mass negative affect on the people should be considered an enemy of the state. In fact, some actions taken by these individuals may even be considered treasonous. I believe that some high ranking government officials have commited treason but their actions, by virtue of who they are, are not dealt with as they would if it were you or I doing the same things.

  • Helping homeowners – or the banks?

    Through May, the treasury department reported that 340,000 of the 1.5 million homeowners who been offered trial modifications had received permanent modifications. Almost as many, 300,000 homeowners, never even started on the trial after it was offered. Roughly the same number of homeowners had their trial modifications cancelled before being offered a permanent modification.

    [...]

    Unfortunately, almost no one in Washington talks about this route either. They are concerned about interfering with the Fed’s independence. After all, Greenspan and Bernanke have done such great things for the economy how can anyone suggest changes?

    For now at least, we can only talk about helping homeowners if most of the money goes to the banks. Since we aren’t actually helping homeowners with current policy, maybe we should just end the discussion and make the banks work for their money instead of relying on taxpayer handouts.

• Health

  • Cancer panel warns of synthetic chemicals

    A recent, dramatic warning about synthetic chemicals causing cancer came from an unlikely source — the normally staid President’s Cancer Panel. In the past, the federal panel’s annual reports have explored maximizing the nation’s investment in cancer research or promoting healthful living, or they simply assessed the nation’s progress in fighting cancer.

  • Greenpeace finds evidence of GM rice contamination in China’s emergency grain stores

    China’s ban on GM rice questioned as environmental activists discover unapproved transgenic products at two grain sources

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Dozens of blogs shut in China

    Dozens of blogs by some of China’s most outspoken users have been abruptly shut down in an apparent crackdown.

  • Iceland’s legal protection scheme for journalists is audacious

    Country will need to regulate and supervise foreign media who take advantage of its legal protection

  • NSA to Spy on Critical Infrastructure, Says WSJ

  • Singapore arrests British author of death penalty book

    A veteran British journalist and author promoting his book on the death penalty in Singapore was arrested in the country today for alleged criminal defamation and other offences.

  • Congressman introduces resolution to protect citizens who videotape cops

    A U.S. Congressman has introduced a resolution that would protect citizens who videotape cops in public from getting arrested on state wiretapping charges.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Net neutrality will die in the US

    INTERNET DEMOCRACY is set to be crushed and hopes for an Internet that is fair and open to all look doomed as Republican senators push legislation that will force antitrust like laws on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Facebook & WNY man square off in Buffalo court

    Facebook will try to get a New York man’s claim for majority ownership of the website thrown out of court, attorneys for the social networking site said Tuesday.

    A complaint by Paul Ceglia of Wellsville claims that a 7-year-old contract he signed with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for software development entitles him to 84 percent of the company.

  • Copyrights

    • Chaplin song silences U.K. charity girl

      Silence isn’t always golden after all — at least not for Bethany Hare.

      The 10-year-old budding actress’ effort to raise money for a U.K. children’s hospice through a homemade video has been dealt a setback by a copyright dispute with a New York-based publishing company that owns the rights to a song from a Charlie Chaplin movie.

    • While We’re Ranting, It’s Time For the “Bamboo Fly Rod Builder vs Corporate Legal Department” Show

      While we’re on the subject of rants (a real rarity here at the Underground), we’d like to point out it’s not exactly been a great decade for the PR departments of most corporations (the financial industry recently brought the world economy to its knees, and if you haven’t looked to the Southeast USA lately, you’ve missed the specter of BP work crews burning oil-covered sea turtles alive).

    • Canadian Court Lets Perfect 10 Case Against Google Move Forward

      Over the years, we’ve written many, many, many times about Perfect 10, the former publisher of a porn magazine who has spent the last decade making ridiculously laughable arguments about how every search engine on the planet is infringing on its copyrights for pointing people to images that people had scanned from Perfect 10′s magazines and put online. For the most part, these lawsuits have gone nowhere, but Perfect 10 is incredibly persistent. Last month, we wrote about a countersuit by Rapidshare, which detailed how Perfect 10 is now a “copyright troll,” that (according to Rapidshare’s claims) purposely tries to spread its works online in order to have more companies to sue. Obviously, a key target of Perfect 10 has been Google, though Perfect 10 keeps losing (and then continues to come up with ridiculous reasons to keep the lawsuit alive).

    • More Porn Companies Filing Mass Lawsuits Against File Sharers

      The complaint reads like most of the other, similar complaints we’ve seen, explaining the basics of BitTorrent to establish the claim that these “Does” infringed on the copyright. Once again, it seems like an open question as to whether or not it’s actually legal to include all of these defendants in a single lawsuit. It’s also not clear if the goal here is to send similar pre-settlement letters, but that sure seems likely.

    • IP czar targets overseas pirate sites

      U.S. President Barack Obama isn’t the only government official who wants to smack down copyright infringement and counterfeiting.

    • Court reverses Rapidshare filesharing verdict

      WEB HOST Rapidshare has won an appeal against film distributor Capelight Pictures that absolves it of blame for the dissemination of a film through its network.

      Capelight Pictures, known for peddling such motion picture marvels as Cherrybomb, Dood Eind and Fanboy, had accused Rapidshare of not undertaking “all reasonable measures” to stop the spread of a title through its network. Capelight had initially won an injunction against Rapidshare, however the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf has reversed that decision.

    • Copycats: A Tale of Two Jackets

    • Pissing Off A Movie Critic By Claiming Copyright Over A Video Review… Probably Not Smart

      On that first one. Just saying it’s a “review” doesn’t automatically give you fair use rights. And there’s no fair use for “satire,” only parody — and it’s not clear that the review is actually a parody (or, for that matter, satire). Going through the four factors for fair use… you could make an argument either way as to whether or not it currently is fair use. It would really depend on the judge, and I’d actually guess that the sheer amount of the movie that is used would probably tilt the scales against fair use.

    • What is a £1m record deal?

      News of an act being given a £1m record contract by a major label conjures up images of a big cheque and instant riches. But what does a £1m record contract actually mean?

    • Digital Economy (UK)

      • UK regulator turns over Internet policing standards to movie and record industries

        When the last UK Parliament rushed the Digital Economy Act into law without debate, hours before it dissolved for the election, it appointed Ofcom, the telcoms regulator, to work out the details. Specifically, it charged Ofcom with sorting out some high standards for what evidence a rightsholder would have to produce in order to finger an online infringer (the DEA gives these rightsholders the power to eventually disconnect entire families from the internet on the strength of these accusations).

        Now Ofcom has abrogated its duty to the public and announced that the record and film industry can “self-regulate” their evidence-gathering procedures; in other words, anything that the MPA or BPI say counts as proof that you’ve violated copyright goes. Since these are the same companies that have mistakenly accused dead people, inanimate objects (laser printers), and people who don’t own computers of file-sharing, this doesn’t bode well.