04.28.10

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Linux.com T-shirt Design Contest Finalists Announced

    The 100+ designs we received proved that the best ideas come from the community. We also know that the community knows best, so we’re asking you to vote for the very best design. We have six finalists, not five as we originally said we would have. Like I said: it was hard to choose!

    The community favorite will win a trip to Boston to attend LinuxCon as well as the fame and fortune garnered by having their design displayed on Linux.com Store merchandise worn around the globe.

  • The case of the overly anonymous anon_vma

    During the stabilization phase of the kernel development cycle, the -rc releases typically happen about once every week. 2.6.34-rc4 is a clear exception to that rule, coming nearly two weeks after the preceding -rc3 release. The holdup in this case was a nasty regression which occupied a number of kernel developers nearly full time for days. The hunt for this bug is a classic story of what can happen when the code gets too complex.

  • Linux audio explained

    We dig into the centre of the Linux kernel to uncover why sound can be so… unsound

  • Graphics Stack

    • X.Org Project Has Five New Summer Projects

      Back in March we talked about the possible X.Org projects this year during Google’s Summer of Code, for which X.Org is a veteran participant (in the past items like the ATI R300 Gallium3D driver and generic GPU video decoding have been tackled), but the list of accepted projects for this summer have now been announced. Gallium3D H.264 video decoding, an OpenGL 3.2 state tracker, and porting of the DRM code to GNU/Hurd were among the talked about possibilities, but none of those will be addressed as part of GSoC 2010.

• Applications

  • Midori 0.2.4: The good & the Bad

    At some point, nearly unnoticed, Midori 0.2.4 slipped through to repositories everywhere. I know what you’re thinking, “Who cares about a 6 week old partial release? Lucid Lynx comes out in less than two days!” Well, I think Midori ought to find a home on your new install.

  • Git 1.7.1 released and available in my repository for Ubuntu Jaunty and Ubuntu Karmic

  • Gnome Commander Whips Files Into Shape

    As a file manager, Gnome Commander has the look and feel of early workhorses like Norton Commander and Midnight Commander. Among its many talents, Gnome Commander is a life-saver when it comes to synchronizing files. Something I wish were available in more apps I use is the ability to do advanced renaming of files, and GC does this with support for various types of meta-data.

  • Instructionals

    • Video Blogging in WordPress

    • Graphical su in Fedora

    • Say Cheese: Building a Photo App for Your Android Device

    • Processing 10000 Pictures Using Many Computers With Oropo (Debian/Ubuntu)

    • Planning Best Virtualization Strategies for Your Enterprise

    • aTunes – Full-featured audio player and manager

    • Linux on 4KB-sector disks: Practical advice

  • Games

    • Osmos For GNU/Linux Has Been Released !

      After a short testing beta Osmos from Hemisphere Games has finally arrived to GNU/Linux !
      Osmos only costs $10 so you cannot afford not to buy it !

• Desktop Environments

  • Openbox Freedom Day

    South Africa celebrated Freedom Day, Tuesday 27th April– a national holiday to commemorate the first democratic election. So I spent the day attempting to squeeze freedom out of my aging 1.8ghz PC with 1Gb Ram.

    The solution to achieving the kind of brute-force computing and speed I need in order to have a faster Web experience was to use a different window manager. Creating an Openbox session which free’s up RAM allows my heaveyweight Firefox browser to access more computer resources and hence greater freedom. Less caching means the browser can live totally in RAM, which is what the programme was designed to do.

• Distributions

  • MacPup Opera 2.0 Review

    Today I want to talk about a distro that is not among the most popular ones, but may be of interest for some with certain specific needs: MacPup Opera, which just released its 2.0 version.

    [...]

    If you have been using Linux for some time and have a clear understanding of how you will benefit from what MacPup Opera has to offer, then you will likely get a kick out of it. If you simply want to find out more about it or the Enlightenment window manager, by all means give it a go, you only have one CD-R to lose.

    I personally believe there are many areas in which MacPup Opera 2.0 can be an extremely handy distro, just understand this is probably not best suited for main desktop use.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat Cloud Access makes RHEL contract transferable to EC2

      Red Hat is strengthening its position in the cloud computing market by augmenting its support for Amazon EC2 users. Red Hat Cloud Access will make it possible for the company’s customers to transfer their Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscriptions between their own self-hosted infrastructure and Amazon’s elastic cloud.

    • Red Hat Extends Linux Subscriptions to Cloud Computing

      Moving enterprise IT software to the cloud isn’t just a technology issue, it’s software support entitlement issue as well.

      Linux vendor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) today is unveiling a new program dubbed Red Hat Cloud Access through which current Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers can leverage their existing support subscriptions for cloud deployments.

  • Debian Family

    • Bugs in Debian GNU/Linux

    • Ubuntu

      • Software makers fall in behind Lucid Lynx

        Thursday is D-Day – meaning Download Day – for the new Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support release from commercial Linux distributor Canonical. And this release is shaping up to be a watershed event for the upstart distro.

        That’s true not only on the desktop and on the server, but among the software development community that wants to code applications and make money.

      • A short cow dialog

      • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS adds business and ease-of-use tools

        Canonical has high hopes for its latest release: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Long Term Support). Also known as Lucid Lynx, this new version is the one that, from many indications, the company hopes will take Ubuntu from being a fan favorite to a commercial success. Based on my first look at the release candidate, Canonical’s hopes may be realized.

      • Shuttleworth Clears Ubuntu 10.04 for Liftoff

        It’s official: Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support arrives April 29, and this particular blogger was privy to the press conference about it. Canonical Chairman Mark Shuttleworth and CEO Jane Silber discussed the plans and progress of new operating system, and then fielded some Q and A. The key news: More than 80 ISVs are supporting Ubuntu. But here’s what it means for the desktop users and Canonical as a whole…

        Ubuntu 10.04 is now certified on over 50 servers and laptops, and OEM support is taking off worldwide. Dell has embraced Ubuntu Enterprise Clouds, and Lenovo has just launched Ubuntu machines into China.

      • Did Ubuntu 10.04 Achieve Its Ten Second Boot Goal?

        Canonical expressed their plans to achieve a ten-second boot time in June of last year for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, with their reference system being a Dell Mini 9 netbook. In February, we last checked on Ubuntu’s boot performance and found it close, but not quite there yet, but did they end up hitting this goal for the final release of the Lucid Lynx? Well, from our tests, not quite. We tested out a near-final version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on three netbooks — including a Dell Mini 9 — and the boot speed is not quite in the single digits.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • HP buys Palm

      HP has just announced that it’s acquiring Palm to the tune of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock.

    • Nokia

      • My Top 5 N900 Applications

        #1 Firefox – Easily my favorite way to surf the web, on the N900 or otherwise. If you want more of my thoughts on this one check out my Firefox Mobile Review.

        #2 fMMS – This application steps up to fill one of the biggest mess-ups Nokia made when they released the N900: lack of MMS support. fMMS currently supports sending pictures and receiving all types of media messages. Since I discovered this wonderful application I no longer have to hear my friends say “your phone does all that, but can’t get a picture message?”

    • Android

      • Google: Numbers favor Android over iPhone

        And according to Google VP Andy Rubin, the more the search giant blankets the industry with competing Android-droid based mobile handsets, the more likely Google is to hit its expected value of market dominance over Apple’s iPhone.

        “It’s a numbers game,” Rubin said. And the numbers look increasingly rosy for Android.

  • Tablets

    • Seven-inch tablet runs Android

      Shenzhen-based Eken announced a seven-inch tablet computer that runs either Android or Windows CE 6.0. The M001 has a 600MHz ARM-based processor, 128MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage, an SD slot, stereo speakers, and 802.11b/g wireless networking, the company says.

    • Linux tablet arrives in the UK

      TABLET UPSTART Fusion Garage has announced the availability of its Joojoo tablet in the UK, beating the cappuccino firm’s delayed Ipad launch outside the US.

      The firm claims that the 12.1-inch tablet is the world’s largest capacitive touchscreen device. Beneath the screen is an Intel 1.6GHz Atom processor and an Nvidia ION chipset, making the Joojoo fairly spritely. Like Apple’s Ipad, there is no keyboard and the battery is not removable, however the similarities end there.

Free Software/Open Source

• Announcing the first free software Blu-ray encoder

  You may notice that the Blu-ray image is only just over 2GB. This is intentional; we have encoded all the content on the disk at appropriate bitrates to be playable from an ordinary 4.7GB DVD. This should make it far easier to burn a copy of the Blu-ray, since Blu-ray burners and writable media are still relatively rare. Most Blu-ray players will treat a DVD containing Blu-ray data as a normal Blu-ray disc. A few, such as the Playstation 3, will not, but you can still play it as a data disc.

• Events

  • Counting down to Pengicon

    It’s only a few more days until Penguicon, North America’s finest science fiction and open source software convention. I’m not only psyched to be attending, but I’m flattered beyond words to be one of this year’s Guests of Honor. Penguicon runs from April 30 to May 2 at the Marriott in Troy, MI.

• Mozilla

  • My ISP is by-passing Firefox’s Location bar search

    I just got back from 10 days abroad and noticed my Firefox at home was acting oddly. My preferred way to go to many websites is simply to type their name into the location bar, and then let Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” feature take me to the actual site. I realize this might not be the most conventional way to do it (sure, I could have bookmarks etc.), but it’s they way I like to do it.. I also use KDE’s Alt-F2 launcher to start programs.

  • Fennec on Android

    Over the last few months, we’ve made some great progress on bringing Firefox to Android. Michael Wu, Brad Lassey, Alex Pakhotin and I have been focusing on getting a build ready that’s usable by a broader set of people, and we’re now ready to get that build out there.

  • The Next Big Fight: Facebook vs. Firefox?

    Facebook wants to be the entry-point to the Web, but it’s important to remember that Facebook itself is on the Web, and accessed through a Web browser. This means that in some sense the browser exists at a lower level than Facebook, and therefore has the opportunity to pre-empt some of its functions – notably, in terms of handling the key issue of identity.

• Oracle

  • Oracle Makes Lustre Users Buy Hardware for Support

    Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) will soon make it tougher to get paid support for its open source Lustre clustered file system.

    According to a recent presentation by Peter Bojanic, director of Oracle’s Lustre Group, Lustre 1.8 and 2.0, which was just released as a beta, will remain open source and licensed under GPL 2.0. But beginning with the full release of Lustre 2.0, paid support will be limited to those purchasing Lustre bundled with Oracle hardware, and the company won’t provide an upgrade path for 1.8 users who desire support. That means that Lustre 2.0 users who want paid support will need to replace their hardware.

• Health

  • #drupalcon Florida Hospital Takes Charge of Their Destiny with Drupal

    In August 2007, Florida hospital hired a “rock star” physician. With this hire, a series of events was triggered that would end up with Drupal (news, site) hosting over 125 department and team intranet sites, over 40 externally-facing marketing sites and a growing number of other applications. Want to know more? Read on.

  • The Complexities to Creating Real Electronic Health Records

    Is any of this insurmountable? Certainly not, and there are a number of areas where the Open Source community can play a valuable roll. But on reviewing the challenges, I also see why there is not more involvement. Many of the issues require specialized knowledge of a number of aspects of what is today a black box to many. There are few defined requirements and even fewer good directions. But then, is that not what is the best about the Open Source community? We see a problem and try to solve it. Perhaps the right problem has not been presented. Or maybe it is such a niche that I have not seen the strides we have made. But as the big guns of the consulting world are looking at solving this, I hope they will leverage the Open Source model, as well as solutions used elsewhere. And perhaps, just perhaps, a year-five year-from now, we will be talking about Open Source eHealth software the same way we talk about network management software or VoIP software.

• Open Access/Content

  • Vancouver City Hall’s Open Data Experiment

    When Arthur Dent, of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, searched for the notice that his house was to be demolished to make way for a new bypass, he eventually found it on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, ‘Beware of the Leopard.’

    Governments, large and small, generate vast amounts of information. Finding the relevant piece of information in a timely fashion is a challenge, and that’s assuming that the government has decided to share it with the public at all.

    Over the past year, Vancouver’s city government has launched a program to make large amounts of information to the public. These data sets, posted online at data.vancouver.ca, include garbage pickup schedules, drinking fountains and motorcycle parking, in a wide variety of formats

Leftovers

• U.S. students suffering from Internet addiction: study

  American college students are hooked on cellphones, social media and the Internet and showing symptoms similar to drug and alcohol addictions, according to a new study.

  Researchers at the University of Maryland who asked 200 students to give up all media for one full day found that after 24 hours many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links.

• Security/Aggression

  • Deadly New Russian Weapon Hides In Shipping Container

    A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system which can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier.

• Finance

  • Rent-A-Front: New Group Wages Stealth Battle Against Wall Street Reform

    In the last few weeks, a new player entered the financial reform fray with a $1.6 million ad buy, a respected economist on board, a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning websites, and a message, cooked right into the group’s name — Stop Too Big To Fail — that liberals could love.

    But as TPMmuckraker has looked into the group, every indication is that Stop Too Big To Fail is an astroturf operation funded by corporate interests to give the appearance of grassroots opposition to reform.

  • Anti-Reform Front Group Wears a Populist Mask

    A corporate front group with the populist-sounding name “Stop Too Big To Fail” (STBTF) is running a $1.6 million TV advertising campaign designed to appeal to liberal/progressives and get them to advocate against financial reform legislation currently under consideration in Congress. The ads target Senate Democrats in three states and ask viewers to tell their senators to “vote against this ‘phony financial reform’ ” and “support real reform, stop ‘too big to fail.’ ” STBTF has also put out a blitz of opinion columns on left-leaning Web sites.

  • The Best Solution to Vampire Squid? Calamari

    The great test for the financial services reform bill, if and when it ever gets debated in the Senate, will be what it does to rein in Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street institution famously described by Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi as “a vampire squid jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

  • Will the Fabulous Fab Push the Bank Reform Bill Over the Top?

    “More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now! Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

    Tourre will be testifying with Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who recently shoved the Fab off a cliff by releasing embarrassing personal emails from his Goldman account. Let’s hope the Fab gets a chance to return the favor at tomorrow’s hearing.

  • Showtime for Bank Reform in the Senate

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Frontline Edits Out Single-Payer

    Silencing supporters of single-payer, or Medicare for All, is a media staple, but PBS’s Frontline found a new way to do that on the April 13 special Obama’s Deal–by selectively editing an interview with a single-payer advocate and footage of single-payer protesters to make them appear to be activists for a public option instead.

  • Assessing the Health Implications of the Supreme Court Decision on Corporate Campaign Contributions

    The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office. In overturning previously established precedents, the Supreme Court’s decision means that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

  • “Cloaked” Web Sites Disguise Hidden Propaganda

    Jessie Daniels, an Associate Professor in the Urban Public Health program at Hunter College, New York, has identified a phenomenon she calls “cloaked Web sites,” or sites published by individuals or groups who deliberately conceal their authorship to disguise a hidden political agenda.

  • Why Facts No Longer Matter

    A recent PRWatch blog discussed how corporations are increasingly turning to cause marketing to get around people’s ability to tune out their daily deluge of advertising. Cause marketing, or “affinity marketing,” is a sophisticated PR strategy in which a corporation allies itself with a cause that evokes strong emotions in targeted consumers, like curing cancer, alleviating poverty, feeding the hungry, helping the environment or saving helpless animals.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Protecting Internet freedom and privacy

    A: One of the biggest threats to online freedom is an overuse of surveillance, both by governments and businesses. Governments are using technology to monitor phone calls, e-mails, Internet activity, text messaging and other communications of their citizens. In the United States, the government has been doing a tremendous amount of this without following the basic safeguards designed to protect us that have been built into our laws, such as getting warrants. If the government skips that step – if there is no judicial oversight – then it is easy for the government to abuse its power.

  • Net neutrality numbers don’t add up

    A new study suggests regulating the Net will cost millions of jobs. A closer look reveals the study’s main ingredient is manure, Cringely concludes

  • Senators to Facebook: Quit sharing users’ info

    Three Democratic senators today asked the Federal Trade Commission to take a look at Facebook’s controversial new information sharing policies, arguing that the massively popular social network overstepped its bounds when it began sharing user data with other websites.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Music industry spokesman loves child porn

    A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you’ve got a child-porn filter, you can censor anything:

    “Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.

  • Parody and Satire Videos, Which Is Fair Use?

  • Dissent in the Council over ACTA transparency

  • Don’t secure your wifi!!!

    Firstly let me stress that there a lot of really good reasons to secure your network, not least of which are privacy of your machines and data, viruses spreading, and even costs (you may pay for usage of your internet!). If you have fire-walling facilities allowing you to run a DMZ (de-militarized zone) for public wifi that is safer.

    However, the Digital Economy Act has just turned things on their head slightly. It actually encourages you to run an open wifi.