• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

The new faces of Linux – Feeling the Power

She told him that she refused to go back to a buggy, insecure system that enslaved her to maintenance and worry. She had been a GNU/Linux user for a week and refused to “downgrade to Windows”. They would indeed GIVE her a laptop with the required wireless and closed software she needed to connect for work. She refused to put Windows back on her computer at home. Mint Linux had spoiled her. But it gets better.

It’s Fluxbox.

When she discovered that she could have a pristine desktop and everything she needed with a right click, she fell in love. No more icons to shove around and out of the way, no more confusing menus…just straight computing the way it was meant to be.

Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

I was working for Digital Equipment Corporation when I first met Linus and facilitated the port of Linux onto the Alpha processor.

During the port, a member of the community contacted me and asked if Digital would contribute their math library to the Linux project, since Digital’s math library was a great deal faster than the one currently in use on the Alpha Linux port. I easily got Digital to contribute the Digital Unix math library in binary form, but they refused to make the library “open source” because of the investment that they had put into it.

xPUD, the ultra-fast booting Linux flavour

Weighing in at a mere 48MB, xPUD boots up before you can even decide how to pronounce it. This mini distro is built upon Mozilla’s XUL and Gecko engines, with an interface called ‘Plate’ which includes a web browser, media player, BitTorrent client and other tools. There’s not a great deal of information on the website just yet, but read on for a video of its über-rapid bootup.

Double Your Computing Capacity and Lower Your Carbon Footprint for Earth Day

Were you one of those people who turned the lights out and the power off for Earth Hour last month? Did you experience an excruciating sixty minutes of email/identi.ca/Facebook withdrawal? Userful has some good news (and a reward for your efforts) — from now until Earth Day (April 22nd), it is giving away two-user licenses for its Userful Multiplier software.

Linux Desktop Hardware Myths Explored

For instance I own a Wii guitar for Rock Band that I use to play Frets On Fire during my off time. Works out of the box, all I had to do is setup the button configuration from within the game itself.

I also have two external hard drives using various Linux file systems on multiple partitions. Each partition mounts immediately once the external hard drive is plugged in. And saving the best for last, I tested things out by purchasing a random external DVD Burner (Sony brand) that I picked up at random from Best Buy simply because it was cheap.

Firm shifts From Windows to Linux, reduces support issues by 45%

I noticed in one of the local trade-press outlets today, how a publicly-listed engineering and manufacturing firm shifted many of its workstations from Windows to Linux, effecting a 45% reduction in its support issues, evident even in the first month after the migration.

Addressing the State of the Linux Union

Linux is often thought to be all about collaboration and contribution to a project. Yet the community doesn’t always get along, even as Linux’s supporters are enjoying new levels of success against entrenched proprietary vendors like Microsoft.

To assess where Linux is today, to help hammer out some of the divisive issues in the community, and to sort through Linux’s own complex relationship with vendors like Microsoft, the Linux Foundation is hosting the invitation-only Linux Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. At the event, which begins today, the state of the Linux union — and the community’s take on collaboration, contribution and competition — will be on the table for discussion.

Kernel Space

• Linux Supports More Filesystems With 2.6.30-rc1

  Two weeks have passed since the release of the Linux 2.6.29 kernel that brought Intel kernel mode-setting, the Btrfs file-system, and many other improvements to the Linux kernel. Now though the first release candidate for the forthcoming Linux 2.6.30 kernel is now out in the wild.

Applications

• Graphics on Linux: Eight great image image resources and tools

  When it comes to the world of graphics, Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator and DTP applications such as Quark Xpress and InDesign, stand head and shoulders above the rest. They are the de-facto standards for graphics professionals. But they’re not open source applications, even if a little Wine hacking gets some of them running on Linux. If you’re committed to doing your graphics the open source way then we have a few suggestions, and a couple of handy tutorials to get you up and running.

KDE

• KOffice 2.0 RC1 Release Notes

  The KOffice team is proud to announce the first KOffice Release Candidate for the upcoming 2.0 release.

• PIM Hackers Boost Akonadi Into The Future

  This weekend the A-Team (Akonadi, not Amarok) gathered in KDAB’s office in the heart of Berlin to push the Akonadi PIM storage database to the next level.

Distributions

• The best looking Linux is nearly here – and it’s not Ubuntu

  One of the many impressive features of Linux is that it is so flexible and has components that can be swapped in and out, and this includes its complete look-and-feel.

• 10 Special Purpose Linux Distributions

  Today we will share with you 10 such distribution (among many) that are fairly popular for specialized task or interest:

  1) Scientific Linux: Based on Redhat, Scientific Linux is the result of a collaboration between two leading scientific research organization: Fermilab and CERN. As the name suggests this distribution can be a starting point for individuals or organizations who are interested in scientific research.

• New Releases

  • Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” Fluxbox CE released!

    The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox Community Edition. Linux Mint Fluxbox Community Edition is based on Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid, Linux 2.6.27, Fluxbox 1.0.0 and Xorg 7.4. Included is an all-new menu system, Mint-FM2, Slim as a display manager, Live CD features that should make it easier to install on low-end machines, a brand new “Software Manager”, FTP support in mintUpload, proxy support and history of updates in mintUpdate, mint4win (a Linux Mint installer for Microsoft Windows), and much more minty goodness. For a complete list of new features read: What’s new in Felicia Fluxbox CE?

  • RIPLinuX 7.9

  • SystemRescueCd 1.1.7

  • xPUD 0.8.9

  • Clonezilla 1.2.1-53

Devices/Embedded

• Networking appliance boasts optional security coprocessor

  Win Enterprises has announced a 1U rackmount networking appliance with a redundant power supply and an optional cryptographic coprocessor. The Linux-compatible PL-80090 can accommodate 11 gigabit Ethernet ports and two 3.5-inch SATA drives, and supports Intel Core 2 processors with a 1333MHz FSB, says the company.

• Tiny COM modules get WiFi, OpenGL options

  Gumstix launched new versions of its “Overo” gumstick-sized, open-source Linux COM modules. Like the original Overo Earth, the Overo Air (WiFi) module incorporates an ARM Cortex-A8-based Texas Instruments OMAP3503 SoC, while the Overo Water (OpenGL graphics) and Overo Fire (OpenGL/WiFi) modules move up to the OMAP3530.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Intel Sets Launch of Moorestown, New Moblin Linux at 2010

    The launch of Moorestown will be accompanied by a new version of Moblin, a Linux-based operating system (OS) that Intel created for small devices.

  • Why Netbooks Are an Enduring Hardware Category

    The sizes of the displays on netbooks have crept up from the original 7-inch mini screens to healthy 10-inch displays, and yet the designs have remained very compact and the prices have remained very low. You can get a Linux-based Asus Eee PC at Target for under $300. With a 10-inch display, I am comfortable writing a blog post like this one, and performing many other tasks that I regularly need to do. I wouldn’t be comfortable writing on a smartphone under any scenario.

NHIN software released to open-source community

The Federal Health Architecture project released into the public domain the code for Connect, a software gateway that will let organizations outside the federal government share health information via the National Health Information Network.

TIBCO Contributes General Interface to the Open Source Community

TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) announced it has completed the Dojo approval process to donate TIBCO General Interface™ source code to the Dojo Foundation. TIBCO and the Dojo Foundation have established the General Interface project to give developers access to the award-winning General Interface™ source code and promote the rapid creation of reliable Ajax applications, components and portlets with the look and feel of desktop graphical user interface applications.

Business

• Forward to the Past with Forrester

  So are we supposed to believe that barely anything has changed in a decade? That open source is *still* problematic because of false fears over “throats to choke” and security? What’s going on?

• Open source software’s second coming in the enterprise

  It may not sound like rocket science, but it is a nice confirmation of what we already know.

• Pentaho and Jaspersoft Make the Case for Open Source BI

  The open source software business intelligence (OSS BI) community was greeted recently with significant releases from two of the highest-profile players — Pentaho Corp. (which markets a full-fledged OSS BI platform) and Jaspersoft Corp. (the proprietor of a commercialized version of the seminal JasperReports OSS reporting project).

• Drupal 6 Content Management System To Soon Run 240,000 Sites

  Dries Buytaert, founder of the Drupal content management system, and co-founder of Acquia (which offers a commercially supported version of Drupal), is out with some remarkable statistics, here, and here. If you’re unfamiliar with Drupal, it is a powerful open source content management system, and OStatic runs on it, as do many other sites, including Fast Company and The Onion. According to the latest data from Dries, based on the growth of the platform, there will be over 240,000 sites running on Drupal 6 by January of 2010, and that’s up from fewer than 5,000 in July of 2008. Here are some more milestones for Drupal.

UK/EU

• Aberdeen hosts first advanced open source training course in Scotland

  Open Source software expert, Gavin Henry, who is managing director of Aberdeen-headquartered Suretec Group has teamed up with telecoms training provider, Telespeak and Asterisk open source software specialists, Digium, to organise Scotland’s first advanced training course for open source telecoms professionals.

• [Brits, sign this petition, please]

  We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ask the Communities Secretary to require that all software produced by councils under the Timely Information to Citizens project be released under an open source licence

• Bringing Free Software into the European parliament

  Free Software advocacy associations April (the main French advocacy association devoted to promote and protect Free/Libre Software) and “Associazione per il software libero” (Italy) have launched a joint campaign aimed at the European Parliament elections in early June 2009. The campaign invites citizens to ask candidates to sign the “Free Software Pact“.

• Firefox 3 angeblich meist genutzter Web-Browser in Europa

  User-Agent 		März 2009     Februar 2009 	März 2008
  Firefox 3.0 		55,4 % 		55,0 % 		—
  Internet Explorer 7 	11,6 % 		11,7 %	 	13,1 %
  
  

Releases

• Open Source AIR Alternative: Appcelerator, an interview with Jeff Kunz

  Appcelerator is taking community development seriously, knowing that outside of the company interesting ideas and concepts take place they launched a community-based contest. You can follow them on twitter to know more about the initiative. Community voitng for the best application will open Monday.

• Comvation AG releases latest Contrexx Open Source CMS version 2.1

• Educators in Second Life releasing new tools for e-learning

  Educators working with students in e-learning classrooms have a new tool that makes teaching easier and more effective in Second Life. The SLOODLE version 0.4 suite of teaching tools is being released today and promises to deliver a more defined and orderly learning experience in a sometimes chaotic virtual world environment.

Sun

• Sun revs VirtualBox to 2.2

  Beleaguered server and system-software maker Sun Microsystems wants to change the Big Blue subject big-time, if only so that someone could talk about the new VirtualBox 2.2 virtualization software the company is announcing on Wednesday.

• New: OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 Release Candidate 1 (build OOO310_m9) available

  OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 Release Candidate 1 is available on the mirror network.

• Toshiba OpenSolaris Laptops

  The partnership between Sun and the Digital Products Division of Toshiba America Information Systems provide an easy option for people who want to use Toshiba’s award winning laptops with the open source platform for the future, OpenSolaris. This agreement means that people can enjoy the great features of OpenSolaris, such as Suspend/Resume, Timeslider, ZFS along with these performant, durable laptops from Toshiba.

• Toshiba notebooks with OpenSolaris

  In addition to OpenSolaris 2008.11, the notebooks will also include the Adobe Flash Player, VirtualBox 2.0.6, OpenOffice 3.0 and a set of developer tools. Pre-installed tools include Glassfish V2, Java SE Development Kit 6 Update 10, NetBeans 6.5, Sun Studio Express 11/08

Open Things

• OpenStreetMap Navigates to Wikipedia

  One of the powerful features of open source is re-use: you don’t have to re-invent the wheel, but can build on the work of others. That’s straightforward enough for software, but it can also be applied to other fields of openness.

• Conventional Scholarship as “Legacy System” and Open Access as “Middleware”

  A “legacy system” in the world of computing provides a useful analogy for understanding the precarious state of contemporary academic publishing. This comparison might also keep us from stepping backward in the very act of stepping forward in promoting Open Access publishing and Institutional Repositories. I will argue that, vital as it is, the Open Access movement should really be seen in its current manifestation as academic “middleware” servicing the “legacy system” of old-school scholarship.

• Biochemist calls for ‘open-source’ R&D revolution

  University of Toronto biochemist Aled Edwards has been one of the leading champions of the open-source research movement in drug development. And he has some interesting numbers to back up his calls for a revolution in research.

Java

• Google pours Java on code cloud

  Google has added the Java runtime to its App Engine, that (semi-)free service that lets you build and host web apps on Google’s very own cloud distributed infrastructure.

  When App Engine was first introduced, almost a year ago to the day, it stuck with Python, a favorite among code-happy Google Oompa Loompas. But after countless request from developers outside the Mountain View Chocolate Factory, the platform has now embraced Java as well.

• Zend targets Java with growing PHP community

  PHP has become one of the hottest programming languages in technology, and the engine behind the little scripting language that could is Zend Technologies. Back in 2000 Zend released its Zend Framework to facilitate PHP development, and it’s now taking this Java-bashing crusade a step further with the release of its new Zend Server, as The Register reports.

Copyrights

• Hollywood’s Favorite Lawmakers Preparing Next Level Of Draconian Copyright Laws

  Because (of course) last year’s ProIP bill that (once again) strengthened copyright laws wasn’t enough, Hollywood’s favorite lawmakers all got together outside of LA and complained about how copyright laws needed to be even more draconian. They once again quoted the same mythical stats about the damage done by infringement, and didn’t hear from a single defender of the public or someone who could explain the basic fact that strengthening copyright law doesn’t solve anything. Instead, they just complained, blamed pretty much every foreign country (other than France) and insisted “something must be done!”

• Copyright laws put movie night on hold

  But the debut of Movie Night, originally set for April 18, is on hold indefinitely after officials learned the city must purchase a license from the motion picture industry before it can screen films for the public.

• Rep “Hollywood” Berman calls for new IP law—using dodgy data

  Rep. Howard Berman took his committee on the road yesterday, hearing (again) from directors and rightsholders about how stronger intellectual property laws are needed to fight piracy. But didn’t they get such a bill just last year? And why are the numbers Berman uses either dodgy or flat-out wrong?

• Talk about long term copyright

• Why “Three Strikes” Will Fail

  Today you can buy a 1 Terabyte external hard disc for less than £100 – that’s big enough to store well over a quarter of a million songs, and thousands of films. Bringing along such a hard disc to a party and swapping files is already taking place, and the “three strikes” laws will simply ensure that sales of high capacity discs will increase dramatically.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

8 Reasons You Should Switch to Linux

# It’s Free – most Linux distributions, like Ubuntu and Fedora, come absolutely free of charge to install, distribute, reinstall, and modify without worrying about breaking any copyright or pirating laws.

# Free Software – there are thousands of programs that can help you do almost anything you need. There are Office alternatives, web browsers, instant messaging programs, media players, email programs, a great Photoshop alternative, and even software where you can run a lot of your favourite Windows programs. Most of these free alternatives are available for Windows (and Mac OS X), too!

# It’s Fast – out of the box, the most popular distributions require less hardware to run than Windows or Mac OS X. There are also versions that can run on very little hardware, like Xubuntu or Damn Small Linux, so you can bring those old computers in the basement back to life.

Logitech G19 Keyboard Review

Logitech’s G19 gaming keyboard—which borders on ludicrous with its embedded Linux mini-computer and full-blown LCD monitor—is the best one they’ve made yet, even if it doesn’t quite reach its full mind-blowing potential.

Kernel Space

• NVIDIA’s Open-Source Driver Gets Updated

  The ill-maintained, feature-limited, and obfuscated driver known as xf86-video-nv driver has a new release out. This is the first open-source NVIDIA X.Org driver update in several months, but its change-log is rather limited. The xf86-video-nv 2.1.13 release was pushed out by Red Hat’s Adam Jackson, and not even NVIDIA.

• Gallium3D-Capable Mesa 7.5 Release This Week!

  It was just three months ago that Mesa 7.3 was released and then work on stabilizing this graphics stack to form Mesa 7.4 began. When the development began on Mesa 7.5, the Gallium3D architecture was merged to master. This work soon will appear in a released version of Mesa.

Applications

• Google ‘Chromium’ pre-alpha available for Ubuntu users

  Google’s Chrome browser has quickly become very popular since its release on September 2, 2008, but one issue many have is that it’s currently Windows only. Well, it appears that this will all change sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future, as Google’s ‘Chromium’ browser is now available as a pre-alpha for Ubuntu users. As you may have noticed, the browser is called Chromium at the moment, as Google’s Chrome is a browser based on the Chromium project. Once this has been officially released, it will be called Google Chrome.

• 10 must-have Linux Web-based tools

  Linux is an outstanding operating system for serving up applications. And there are a ton of possibilities. From content management systems to Web portal creation tools, Linux has just about everything you need. Among those thousands of tools, a select few stand out as the best of the best. Listed below you will find my top 10 must-haves for Linux server/Web/cloud-based tools.

• Radical Breeze releases easy to use personal desktop automation software for Linux.

Desktop Environments

• Kontacts: Calendar (KOrganizer)

  Welcome to the third issue of the Kontact suit series. Today we’ll give a look at the Calendar kpart (KOrganizer)…

Distributions

• Back to the Future

  Yeah. That’s Linux, specifically Linux Mint 5 (Elyssa) based on Ubuntu 8.04. Running from the Mint 5 Live CD. After reading about the troubles another user had with Mint 6 and his move from Mint 6 back to Mint 5, I decided to download the Mint 5 ISO and boot europa with it.

  And it’s amazing. Everything. Just. Bloody. Works. Everything.

• Mandriva

  • Testing Mandriva Spring

    French Linux specialist, Mandriva, has released version RC2 (codenamed Estephe) of their Linux 2009 Spring.

  • Mandriva 2009.1 RC2 Screenshot Tour

    Mandriva announced last night the immediate availability of Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC2. Once again, we thought it would be nice to please our readers and offer them a visual tour of this second release candidate of the upcoming Mandriva 2009 Spring.

    What’s new in Mandriva Linux 2009.1 RC2? Well, the most obvious thing is the new artwork, which consists of new wallpapers for both One and Free editions and a new theme called ia_ora, for KDE. Moreover, Mandriva and the KDE team successfully ported the popular K3b CD/DVD burning application to KDE4.

• Red Hat

  • Bianor Extends Its Partnership with Red Hat, Inc

    Bianor extends its collaboration with Red Hat by starting a partnership with Mobicents – Open Source JSLEE 1.0 and SIP Servlets 1.1 certified VoIP Platform.

  • WCED Launches New Video Series “Raleigh-Wake County Business Showcase”

    Videos Will Feature Local Companies That Continue to Grow During Current Economic Slowdown

    [...]

    The first video profile for WCED will feature the Raleigh-based company Red Hat, Inc. Founded in 1993, Red Hat (www.redhat.com) is the world’s leading provider of open source solutions and is one of the most recognized open source brands. Headquartered in Raleigh and with more than 65 offices across the globe, Red Hat serves global enterprises with open source technology and services. Solutions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and a range of related management tools. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide.

  • Dell, Red Hat Partner Up On JBoss Middleware

    Sources say the Dell-Red Hat luncheon is part of a larger go-to-market strategy that will accelerate Dell’s push beyond Red Hat Enterprise Linux into JBoss middleware.

  • Sun, Red Hat Back OASIS Health Care Privacy Standards

    OASIS demonstrates health care IT privacy standards in a multivendor interoperability demo at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Chicago.

Devices/Embedded

• Wrist-mounted computer runs Linux

  Glacier Computer has announced a wearable computer that runs Linux and includes built-in WiFi along with GPS and Bluetooth options. The wrist-mounted “Ridgeline W200″ has a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, backlit keys, a hot-swappable battery pack, and an electronic compass, the company says.

• Linux-based PLC

  Systec Electronics (distributed in Australia by Embedded Logic Solutions) has released the PLCmodule-C32, an all-rounder for industrial control tasks. A Linux-based Compact PLC, the device is programmable in C/C++ and in IEC 61131-3. The IEC 61131-3 runtime kernel includes a fully functional CANopen manager and function blocks for accessing on-board peripherals.

• Glacier’s rugged wrist PC is no Pip-Boy 3000

  You’ll also get support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS modules. It comes with Windows CE or Linux, sporting features like tilt and silent reckoning for putting the device in standby.

• Phones

  • More Android devices tipped

    T-Mobile is planning to launch several non-handset devices that run the Android stack next year, says a New York Times story. Meanwhile, Samsung will ship two U.S.-targeted Android phone models this year in addition to a previously announced smartphone scheduled for a June release, says Forbes.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Windows Is Not on 96% of Netbooks

    The point: Brandon stated a number that may be true for U.S. retail for one month of sales, February. But how true is it really if some of those Windows XP netbooks also ship with Linux? Again, Brandon didn’t misstate the facts, but there is also much unsaid. He can be excused for accepting NPD’s numbers without looking at the greater context. After all, he works for a U.S. company and his job is to promote Windows and its benefits.

My OpenExpo talk: “The Intersection of Ideas in Open Source and Open Standards”

Here’s a video of the talk I gave last week in Bern, Switzerland, at the OpenExpo conference.

The true cost of migrating to open source

If you work with real free software, not neo-proprietary versions, the worst-case peak cost of migration is no greater than the proprietary-to-proprietary kind.

If you also look beyond the migration window defined by the proprietarists, you will see that the really substantial savings accrue over time. So, project return on investment is better than proprietary-to-proprietary, with long-term sustainable cost reductions across the whole infrastructure.

That simple fact is why, despite propaganda to the contrary, free-software migrations are accelerating in the current economy.

Firefox

• GNU IceCat 3.0.8-g1 released

  GNU IceCat 3.0.8-g1 has been released!

• about:mozilla – Design Challenge, SUMO, Labs, Camino, Metrics, Firebug, Fennec, Gecko, and more…

  In this issue…

  * Design Challenge tutorial videos
  * Mozilla Support announces version 1.0
  * Mozilla Labs March update
  * Camino 1.6.7 released
  * Metrics: Why people don’t install Firefox
  * Firebug tabs-on-top
  * Revisiting the Fennec default theme

• View Many Firefox Tabs at Once With Split Browser

  Is your Firefox browser cramping your style? Split Browser just might be able to help. This free add-on lets you split the content area of your browser into as many windows as you’d like, allowing you to see more information at once.

Programming

• PHP Middleware Debuts With Zend Server

  PHP is one of the most popular languages for Web development and is a critical component of the LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) (define) stack. Now PHP is getting a stack of its own, thanks to the new Zend Server, which packages PHP for Web application deployment and monitoring.

Censorship/Web Abuse

• Bill Lets Obama Turn Off the Internet

  Two bills introduced giving the President the power to deem a private network part of the nation’s critical infrastructure and shut it down for cybersecurity reasons also gives the Commerce Secretary the power to access network data outside of oversight.

• All your email are belong to us

  As of April 6th 2009 the same goes for your email conversations and Internet telephony calls. Courtesy of the introduction of The Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2009 the date, time, duration and recipients will be logged by ISPs and have to be available for 12 months.

• EDF Goes Nuclear on Greenpeace

  An executive with the French government-owned energy company EDF “has been charged on suspicion of spying on the environmental group Greenpeace.” The executive, “who previously worked as a police commander, is being investigated for conspiring to hack into Greenpeace France’s computer system.”

• Canada’s ACTA Briefing, Part One: ACTA Is A Response to WIPO Gridlock

  The Canadian government provided its first major briefing on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement this morning. There were attendees from all sides of the issue as well as an (unlisted) representative from the U.S. Embassy. The meeting started with a bang as Don Stephenson, an Assistant Deputy Minister at DFAIT, noted the two sources of ACTA.

Copyrights

• President Obama Backs RIAA In Online File-Sharing Case

  President Obama’s US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently filed a legal brief in support of damages sought by an affiliate of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), prompting some observers to speculate on the Obama administration’s impartiality in the RIAA’s file-sharing litigation campaign.

• Pop star union demands new kind of copyright extension

  “The UK music sector has lived up to its commitments by reaching an agreement, as demanded by Ministers, that will deliver real benefits to musicians in an extended term. In continuing to hold out for further changes, the government has not heeded the repeated pleas of the very musicians it claims to support, who strongly encouraged it to vote for the proposal today,” it said.

• Court: Congress can’t put public domain back into copyright

  A federal court ruled on Friday that Congress overstepped its authority back in 1994 when it put some public domain foreign works back under copyright protection. Such a move changes the “traditional contours of copyright” in the US, even if done to bring the country in line with its treaty obligations.

• AP Attempts to Shut Bloggers Out

  For a while now, the AP has had been fighting this insane war against bloggers who quote and use snippets of their articles in blog posts. About a year or so ago the AP decided they would try to charge bloggers and other sites $2.50 cents per word and threatened to sue anyone who did not comply with their dumb “copyright” scheme. The latest bright idea down at Dinosaurs ‘R Us is to try to create a copyrighted search engine like system for copyrighted works in order to some how track what is out there.

• Google Insists It’s a Friend to Newspapers

• Google CEO advises newspapers to innovate

  In order to move forward, he said, newspapers will have to get used to the idea that they are not just generators of trusted, professional content, but also aggregators of the new kinds of content the Web has enabled.

• Amazon, Wal-Mart Follow Apple, Raise Prices On Some Top-Selling Tracks

  Well, that didn’t take long. Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) have both quietly followed Apple’s lead and will now charge more for some top-selling tracks in their MP3 stores. Some songs will now sell for $1.29 at Amazon’s MP3 store, up from 99 cents, while Wal-Mart is now charging $1.24 for top tracks, up from 94 cents. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) introduced variable pricing to its iTunes music store Tuesday, by charging 69 cents for older tracks, 99 cents for recent songs and $1.29 for new hits, instead of the previous 99 cents for any track.