• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Windows or Linux: Which is easier to fix?

Between Linux and Windows, which is easier to fix when broken? It was an interesting question, but one that should be easy to answer (at least in theory). It was time to set up my testing ground. I decided that .NET would be the obvious choice because there is a similar frame work on Linux – Mono. What would happen if I forced the uninstall of each and then re-installed. Would the applications that depended upon those framework applications still work? It should be a simple test. SHOULD.

Desktop

• The Year of the Linux Desktop is not going to happen

  Tablets, slates, and smartphones are growing markets as the traditional desktop market is not growing. Phil believes in a future
  where many of our work day tasks are completed via rapid input with those devices ubiquitously at our sides. HP is very successful in selling Linux-based netbooks – mostly in emerging markets such as China and India. These devices are fun and simple to use for both parents and kids. Can Linux enjoy the glory of the rush to the mobile platform? So far, Linux-based Android and HP’s Palm WebOS platforms have been seen in market share reports by classifying them as separate from the Linux category. Phil exclaims “These are Linux too!” It is time that we celebrate the success of Linux on mobile platforms and fret no-more on winning the Linux desktop.

• The Linux Sweet Spot

  The future is on the web, how one consumes it is of less importance the the ability to access it. More powerful devices can afford multiple applications that customize web services, but the information is the same. Linux is perfectly positioned to be the operating system of choice for very low cost, portable, almost throw-away devices.

  The Chromium project has the right idea, but is being overshadowed by Android. What I’d like to see is an Android release that only had one app, the browser, and boots directly to the browser to get the device online as fast as possible. Low cost, low power chips, low cost memory, low cost flash storage, and the dropping price of touch screens means that the hardware is ready, will Linux be ready for the sub-hundred dollar tablet?

• Limitations of Windows PowerShell vs. Linux SSH/bash

  On the flip side, SSH is extremely versatile and flexible. And here’s why. First, you can use ANY SSH client you want. Personally, I use PuTTY. It’s very lightweight, powerful, and has the features that work for me. Copy and paste is very efficiently done. Simply select the text (which is intelligent enough to select line by line, not by cursor position), and the text is automatically copied to the clipboard. Simply clicking the right mouse button (or center mouse button/wheel in Linux) will paste at the cursor position. I use this all of the time for editing documents in a shell, very very easy and powerful. This behavior is also done at the text terminal of Linux as well, with the “gdm” service on (allows the mouse to be used in the text terminal).

Kernel Space

• Linux 2.6.36-rc4

  So due to travel, it’s been two weeks rather than the usual one, but 2.6.36-rc4 is out there now.

  Nothing in particular stands out, although there’s been more noise in GPU development than I’d like at this point (both Radeon and i915). But that should hopefully all be just stabilization. There’s also been some PCIe/firmware interaction changes, that should fix way more issues than it breaks.

• Linux 2.6.34.7

• Linux 2.6.34.7

  It fixes a single bug that a number of users have reported in that their USB devices no longer work properly. Sometimes it causes lost keystrokes, and other times X refuses to boot as it can not communicate properly with some tablet devices.

Applications

• twitim – Twitter client for GNOME

  Twitim is a Twitter client for GNOME. It is implemented with Gtk2-Perl.

  * Custom watchlists
  * Sounds and pop-up notifications
  * Support XMPP

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Some _FORTIFY_SOURCE far-fetched warnings are… funny!

  • AcetoneISO: Easily mount CD/DVD Images in Linux

  • Using Python to Encode Cassette Recordings for my Superboard II

  • How to create a custom grub splash

  • Virtualbox OSE 3.2.4 available in Debian backports

  • How to create a custom grub splash

• Games

  • Unigine’s RTS Game OilRush Coming to Linux

    The year 2010 is proving to be a real goldmine as far as Linux gaming is concerned. Almost a month back, we reported the release of ‘Amnesia: The Dark Descent’ and ‘And Yet It Moves’ for Linux. Now Unigine OilRush RTS game joins the fray and announces its Linux version.

  • Scary New Horror Adventure Available for Linux

    The folks who brought the three-part Penumbra series to the Linux community now bring us another even more terrifying adventure. Amnesia: The Dark Descent follows Daniel as he confronts a sinister dark shadow in his quest to hunt and kill evil Alexander in order to save his own mind and life. Danger hides in every corner. Risk life and limb at every turn, your very sanity in peril with every step into the dark descent.

    The first-person adventure immerses the user in the spooky setting of an ancient desolate and crumbling Prussian castle. You, as the hero, navigates the terrifying environment using all your wits and knowledge to wriggle out of one tight spot after another. Hang around in any one area too long and you will begin to lose your mind and, if you’re not careful, even your life. The eerie atmosphere makes it difficult to find the hidden clues and the necessary elements needed to progress. With ghostly sounds and poor lighting, it’s little wonder one can hardly determine their next step. The dark shadow is always lurking and often right on your heals.

Desktop Environments

• COMPIZ Showcase: What’s coming up in 0.9.2

  From left to right, they are Ghost, Black Hole, Dissolve, Flicker, Popcorn, Raindrop, Pulse and Fan. Many of them are based on a new framework, which will allow a whole bunch of similar animations (which draw the window a number of times in different positions on every pass).

  I have also included a video so you can see them in action…

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE 3 on “The Social Network” movie

  • Kdenlive 0.7.8: “On-Monitor” Effects

• GNOME Desktop

  • 5 Beautiful Elementary-ish Gnome Themes

Distributions

• Security advisories for Monday

• New Releases

  • Kongoni 1.12.3 (Cicero) released!

    This is the final and stable release of Kongoni 1.12.3 (Cicero). With this release most issues and problems should be solved, also most packages where cleaned-up, updated to the latest version. Kernel upgraded to version 2.6.35.4-libre, improved the stability and speed, re-build with support for more hardware devices, cleaned-up the kernel configuration, set Rekonq browser as the default web browser, Gnash upgraded to verison 0.8.8, KDE upgraded to version 4.5.1, removed Ktorrent and replaced it with qBittorrent, which should be much more faster and lightweight.

  • Linux distro Sidux reborn as aptosid

    The name change is due to conflicts between the developers and the board of the registered non-profit Sidux e.V. association. Disputes between the board and the developers have been going on since mid-August and the developers decided to separate from the association shortly after the first board chairman resigned. As the Sidux domains are registered to the association, the Sidux developers have forked to a new name.

• Red Hat Family

  • Phase 1 Garage: The next generation of entrepreneurship

    Today the ribbon was cut on 2,000 square feet on NC State University’s Centennial Campus where ten students have set up their projects in the new Garage, an incubator for student engineers. Spaces with names like Brainstorm Room, Idea Meeting Space, Hobby Shop, and Designer’s Workshop are home to mechanical, electrical, and woodworking spaces with whiteboards, a small library, and a kitchen space to nourish the next generation of entrepreneurship.

  • Red Hat partners with the NCSU Entrepreneurship Initiative for idea center.

    N.C. State and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) will unveil “The Phase I Garage,” a center designed to help students become entrepreneurs, next week.

    Red Hat, which maintains its global headquarters at NCSU’s Centennial Campus, is partnering with the NCSU Entrepreneurship Initiative on the facilty.

  • Earnings Watch: Red Hat is Scheduled to Report its Quarterly Results in 12 days (RHT)

  • NC State Unveils New Entrepreneurship Facility For Students

• Debian Family

  • Staring through the keyhole at KNOPPIX

    Perhaps the most common request I get from readers is to review utility distributions. Without question the CD which gets used the most in my digital toolbox is KNOPPIX. The KNOPPIX distribution was one of the first projects to offer a Linux live CD, giving people the opportunity to test drive a Linux desktop without installing any software. It’s also well-known for automatically detecting and using a wide range of hardware without user assistance.

    [...]

    KNOPPIX has a slightly different feel to it. The KNOPPIX live CD isn’t a means to an end (i.e. getting you to install it on your hard drive), the live environment KNOPPIX provides is the means and the end. A lot of the tools a system administrator will want are right there on the disc, it’s well put together and its focus allows for a level of polish. This is a distribution which isn’t chasing the latest cutting-edge technology or trying to wow with eye candy (though it does have some nice desktop effects). Instead, KNOPPIX is a stable system which really delivers useful tools and hardware support. I have used this distro steadily for about five years on a wide range of machines and I have found just one computer, to date, where KNOPPIX wouldn’t boot into a graphical desktop environment.

    The KNOPPIX live discs are dependable and, I’ve found, extremely useful under a wide variety of circumstances. It’s a digital tool I think any administrator should carry with them, whether they’re working in a Linux environment or not.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu makeover paying off

      Clearly nothing happens overnight. More than two years ago, Ubuntu chief Mark Shuttleworth went out on a limb and said that his ambition was to make the Ubuntu desktop better than Apple’s famously good-looking desktop.

      Over the next couple of releases small changes were made to the interface of Ubuntu, some popular and some not so popular. And then in Ubuntu 10.04, released in April this year, a new theme was introduced and slowly the changes started to flow.

      Ubuntu may not yet have a better interface than Mac OS X (depending on your perspective) but it looks like the many changes that have been made, and many others still being added in time for the next Ubuntu release, are showing signs that the interface changes are paying off.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • MeeGo in with a “chance” against mobile OS rivals

      Intel has defended MeeGo’s progress, saying its mobile joint venture with Nokia is still wanted by the industry.

      The open source mobile operating system is the result of a tie-up between the two tech giants that brought together Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin. It’s designed for tablets, netbooks and handsets as well as televisions and in-car systems.

      The MeeGo platform is “gaining traction,” Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini claimed in a keynote at IDF. MeeGo 1.01 is currently supported by about two dozen netbooks as well as the Nokia N900. Touchscreen support is expected to arrive next month.

      Otellini said room remained for another operating system in the market, suggesting that there was demand by mobile service providers for systems other than Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and those from handset manufacturers or software vendors such as Microsoft.

  • Android

    • O2 upgrades Dell Streak to Android 2.1

    • Piper Jaffray Forecasts 50% Market Share For Android

      Piper Jaffray, an investment banking firm that earned $7.4 million in net income last quarter, is betting on Android in a big way. Today, Piper Jaffray predicted that Android’s market share will pass the 50 percent mark in the next five years.

    • T-Mobile Unveils Its G2, the Successor to First Android Phone

      The carrier didn’t list a price or exact shipment date, merely saying that customers will be able to pre-order the device later in September and pointing to a site on which they can register to do so . Smartphones in this category have been selling for around $200 to $250 with a two-year contract.

    • Android tablets get own app sites, Android Market access denied

      Both Archos and Toshiba will have app stores for their devices because their versions of the Android OS have not been designed for tablets like theirs. The issue of Android tablets being denied access to that operating system’s primary apps market emerged when Google’s global product management director for mobiles, Hugo Barra told a media briefing at the company’s London offices yesterday that, “If you want Android market on that platform, the apps just wouldn’t run, Froyo is not optimised for tablets.”

    • Google’s Big Tease on Tablets: Android or Chrome OS?

      Hugo Barra, director of products for mobile at Google, reportedly told UK tech news site TechRadar that Android 2.0, code-named Froyo, “is not optimised” (British spelling) to run on tablets. In addition, the Android Market won’t be available on Froyo tablets, a major shortcoming.

    • Android Overtaking iPhone and BlackBerry With Plenty of Room To Grow

    • Why Android Is Stealing Share from iOS

      In other words, Apple’s loss is Android’s gain. Much as iPhone fans might argue the reverse, it’s also no real surprise. In fact, there are three key reasons Android is stealing iOS’s thunder.

    • Africa and the Imminent Domination of Android

      There is a no doubt that Africa is a vast market whose profitability is mostly unrecognized or just glossed over by firms from advanced countries. With a population of over 850m people, there should be no question at all about how this market can help a firm dominate its competitors.

      For quite sometime, I’ve been wondering why Google still had no Android powered phones here. Earlier this month, that prayer was answered with the introduction of the Android powered IDEOS smartphone in Kenya .

    • 50 Fantastic Free Android Apps

      A free Android app is a wonderful thing. The problem is, the Android App Marketplace is a bit freewheeling, and it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Lucky for you, we’ve done the job for you.

      So let the downloading begin. Yes, you heard right – all of these fantastic 50 are completely free Android apps. Think of them as the best free apps the Android Marketplace has to offer.

      1) ASTRO File Manager

      This app is a full-featured file manager that lets you view and manage the files on your Droid without having to plug it into your computer. You can even use it to backup your Android apps to your SD card.

      2) EStrongs File Explorer

      This local and network file manager provides a file explorer for both the local phone and your remote computer. You can view files on your phone and in your computer’s shared folder and transfer files between them. You can even play audio and video, browse images and view text.

• Tablets

  • Student E-Reader Startup Kno Raises $46 Million

    Kno says the device will be be available for purchase “by late fall.” The company hasn’t said what the device will cost, but CEO Osman Rashid tells TechCrunch it will sell for under $1,000. Rashid is also the co-founder and chairman of textbook rental startup Chegg, which has raised its own big round last fall.

  • India’s $35 Android 7-inch Tablet to Hit in January

    We’ve been hearing about India’s plans for a $35 computer for a few months now, and for a while we thought it might be all talk. However, it seems India is pushing ahead with plans for the educational tablet.

Could Plexus Help Deliver a Knockout Punch to Facebook?

It’s very early days, but if it takes off, Plexus could have a very important side-effect. Imagine using it to manage Facebook, say, and then adding the free software replacement Diaspora (assuming it delivers on its promises) too. As the people you follow start to shift across from Facebook to Diaspora (well, I can dream, right?), you would see…precisely nothing, since Plexus would effectively act as a compatibility layer to different social networks, insulating you from the details.

Here is the New Open Source

The reason it’s not a problem for open source as a whole is that what we are seeing in the world of commercial apps is part of something that has been under way ever since free software existed: the software stack is being progressively commoditised by open source code. A less charitable way of putting this is that open source has succeeded when it improves to the point of being able to replace all the rival proprietary systems – and makes that sector somewhat boring as a result.

This process began at the lowest level, with fundamental operating system code being written to create the basis of an entire free software ecosystem. Once that was on course to overtake commercial systems – and therefore beginning to run out of sufficiently appealing hacking challenges – people started to work on key middleware applications that would run on it, where there were new problems to be solved. That was some time back: remember, Apache has been around for 15 years, as has MySQL, and the LAMP stack combining them with GNU/Linux and programming languages goes back at least to 1998, when the term was coined.

Citizen Linus

I’ll test that myself (but in a bit – I need to go do voter registration and socsec update first, though – I became a US citizen
last week).

Events

• OpenTech 2010

  In short: Ben Goldacre‘s launching a project to keep track of abandoned or never-published medical trials. Keep also an eye out for Rob McKinnon’s Whoslobbying.com as well. The guys at Young Rewired State showed that despite the relatively poor provision of teaching code in schools, there are some great young talented enthusiastic hackers coming up and making things like this. I missed the talk about Frontline SMS but really like the idea – not everyone has a fancy smartphone after all (see also Terence’s excellent talk on designing for all phones). Finally, I will probably be playing a bit with Scraperwiki and the datasets on data.gov.uk, amongst other things…

• OpenOffice.org HackFest 2010

  the OOoCon just ended, and we realize how little time we can spend together face2face each year. To properly fix that problem, we hereby announce the next event around OpenOffice.org – a HackFest in Hamburg, specifically targeted to developers, to give all of us more face time & collectively work on the code.

• Think Tank – Open Source Marketing: “All Change Please”

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 4′s bold, browser-specific move with HTML 5 audio API

    With the HTML 5 crowd increasing in volume – both in terms of numbers and noise – Mozilla is looking to regain sole possession as standard-bearer for Web standards. Last Tuesday, with the release of Beta 5 of its upcoming Firefox 4, the organization opened up public comment on its own experiment with a possible browser-based API for audio, which may later open up doors for a video API as well. If it gains traction, it could enable Web developers to develop on-screen tools for visualizing and accessing the data contained within an audio stream.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Free Software PDF Readers

  What would you think about a sign on the highway stating “You need a Volkswagen to drive on this road. Contact your Volkswagen dealer for a gratis test drive – Your Government”? When it comes to PDF reading software, many governments do this every day.

• Who’s using free software?

  Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides.

Blender

• Blender 2.54 Beta Released

  Note that in the uploaded packages, the OBJ exporter is still broken. Read more below on how to get and install the correct version and more important note from the release logs.

• Blender Foundation’s Sintel Open Movie Will Have Its Official Premiere in Another 14 Days

  Sintel is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Blender Foundation as a means to further improve and validate the free/open source 3D creation suite Blender. Between, if you haven’t heard about it yet, you probably haven’t heard about 3 previous open source movie projects by Blender namely Yo Frankie, Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny. The initial funding for the project was provided by 1000s of donations via the internet community.

• Sintel official premiere

Government

• As California goes, so goes the nation?

  Calif. Secretary of State Debra Bowen on open source voting systems and digital literacy

• Transparency

  I understand your anxiety about the new government’s fixation on what they are pleased to call ‘transparency’, but you are distressing yourself unnecessarily. It afflicts all incoming administrations. It used to be called ‘open government’, and reflects the frustrations they felt when they were in opposition and could not find out what was going on, combined with an eagerness to discover and publicise the deception, distortions and disasters of their predecessors.

• The government doesn’t look good naked.

  Not so, says Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, one of the leading advocates for government transparency. On Tuesday at the Gov 2.0 Summit, she made it clear that transparency wasn’t enough. She also wants accuracy, relevance and quality in the data. Instead, Sunlight found $1.3 trillion in inaccuracies on USAspending.gov. She’s also got some choice words for data.gov and other Open Government initiatives. The keynote was a remarkable turn: the administration was completely eviscerated by one of its closest allies. Today, I read that Fast Company’s Austin Carr is similarly disillusioned by this week’s announcement of Challenge.gov. I think it’s safe to say there will be more pieces like this in the next few months.

• The government doesn’t look good naked.

• Opening Up Government IT: Better for Less

  It’s true that our new lords and masters (and presumably ladies and mistresses) have made some vaguely encouraging noises about adopting open source, and opening things up in general (which, to be fair, is starting to happen) but so far there’s been precious little evidence of free software actually being used in UK government.

  But moaning is one thing: making concrete suggestions how to get us out of this almighty mess, and to move us to a different procurement regime, quite another. That’s what makes a new report “Better for Less: How to make Government IT deliver savings” particular valuable: it goes beyond pointing out the almost painfully-obvious problems to offering steps that can be taken to address them today.

Licensing

• Dell finally releases sources of GPL licensed software on the Streak

  Today I have received news that Dell has released the source code of the GPL licensed software on the Dell Streak at http://opensource.dell.com/releases/streak. This includes, among other things, the source code to the Linux kernel they are using on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

• Google Code now accepting all OSI approved licences

• Google Ends AGPL Embargo

  In a low-key announcement at the end of last week, Google’s open source supremo Chris DiBona announced that their project hosting service, Google Code, is ending its embargo on open source licenses they don’t like, such as the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) controversial AGPLv3 (a license designed to make the give-back compulsion of the Gnu GPL apply to web-hosted services like the ones Google provides) and Sun’s CDDL (the licence used by OpenSolaris and by many of the former Sun’s Java projects).

• Are contributor agreements subversive?

  This is a different issue from that of the license. Many projects licensed under the GPL are still subject to contributor agreements.

  These agreements have their fans, and their purpose. They let business be done centrally, without having every minor decision subject to a veto by developers.

  Having a corporate center to an open source business can be a very good thing, assuring regular updates, a quality Web presence, and software worthy of use by an enterprise.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • Widgets, maps and an API make World Bank data sing

    New tools will help tell stories, but they won’t make every aspect of World Bank data analysis easy. For one, World Bank workers have to integrate data input into their business processes, building a regular reporting framework. For another, there’s the classic challenge of instituting governance and quality for all of that data.

  • Wasting Public Money: Birth, Marriage and Death Digitisation

    Anyway, let me go on record now and say this: FreeBMD will complete this transcription, without cost to the taxpayer, given access to the source records. There’s just one condition: we have to be able to publish the complete transcription, free of charge, on the Internet. Of course, it’ll go a bit faster if we do get some money, so I won’t say we wouldn’t accept if it were offered!

  • OpenStreetMap reaches 300,000 contributors

    The OpenStreetMap (OSM) Project has confirmed that it now has more than 300,000 registered contributors. Founded in August of 2004 by SteveCoast, OpenStreetMap is an open source project that is building free online maps, not based on any copyright or licensed map data.

    In recent years, the OSM project has become increasingly popular; in March of 2009 it surpassed 100,000 registered users and, in January of this year, hit its 200,000 user milestone. In mid-April, OSM’s Richard Weait stated that the project “gets hundreds of new registrations a day”. OSM statistics can be found on the OSM Statistics page and on the Stats wiki.

  • Announcing the LOD2 project

Standards/Consortia

• The line between book and Internet will disappear

  What lurks beneath the EPUB spec

  The secret among those who have poked around EPUB, the open specification for ebooks, is that an .epub file is really just a website, written in XHTML, with a few special characteristics, and wrapped up. It’s wrapped up so that it is self-contained (like a book! between covers!), so that it doesn’t appear to be a website, and so that it’s harder to do the things with an ebook that one expects to be able to do with a website. EPUB is really a way to build a website without letting readers or publishers know it.

  But everything exists within the EPUB spec already to make the next obvious — but frightening — step: let books live properly within the Internet, along with websites, databases, blogs, Twitter, map systems, and applications.

• Adobe adds HTML5 controls to Illustrator

• Microdata: HTML5’s Best-Kept Secret

• Disney to Propose Standards for Web-Connected Toys

• Interop Demo Illustrates Breadth and Power of ODF to Handle Enterprise, Academic and Gov. Needs

  Last week, OASIS held the ODF 1.2 Interoperability Demonstration to showcase support for ODF 1.2 and the interoperability across eight implementations. The Demo showcased both open source and commercial software applications processing ODF documents on the desktop, in the cloud and on mobile devices, including IBM Lotus Symphony, KOffice, OpenOffice.org Novell Edition, Oracle Open Office, the Python programming library IpOD, Nokia Maemo FreOffice, and Open Framework Systems (OFS).

  The ODF 1.2 Interoperability Demonstration was held in conjunction with the OpenOffice.org Conference in Budapest, Hungary, at Central European University. Real-world documents, provided by scenario partner Louvre Labs, many containing images of artwork in various states of restoration, were programmatically extracted and stored as a new ODF presentation file. This new presentation file was reformatted with the lpOD Python programming library, applying templates provided by KOffice and OpenOffice.org for automated styling. The resulting ODF file was read and edited by a number of desktop ODF applications including Oracle Open Office and KOffice. The edited document were then reviewed a colleague using a Nokia N900 smart phone. By accessing the embedded RDF metadata, including the author’s vCard data, the N900 automatically connected to the author where a discussion completed the review and approval process.

• Understanding ODF – Open Document Format

  The Open Document Format is a means of saving and encoding documents so that they can be freely opened and edited by non proprietary software. As an example, Microsoft’s .doc format for their Word documents is proprietary and requires that you use Microsoft software to open, edit and save the document. In contrast, the Novus .ODT format is an “open document format” and can be freely opened, edited and saved by numerous software applications.

• Defining Open standards

  Critics of open standards do not like the equalizing effect of openness on the market. Open standards are best for business. Open standards are best for governments. Those two facts make open standards a panacea. Recalling for a moment that in Greek mythology, Panacea was the goddess of healing, we can simply say that open standards are pure goodness. Those who defend them are heroes. Superheroes, even. Little iron men and women working silently in small meeting rooms for hours, days, months, years.

• HP Holds Navy Network ‘Hostage’ for $3.3 Billion

  Someday, somehow, the U.S. Navy would like to run its networks — maybe even own its computers again. After 10 years and nearly $10 billion, many sailors are tired of leasing their PCs, and relying on a private contractor to operate most of their data systems. Troops are sick of getting stuck with inboxes that hold 150 times less than a Gmail account, and local networks that go down for days while Microsoft Office 2007 gets installed … in 2010. But the Navy just can’t quit its tangled relationship with Hewlett-Packard. The admirals and the firm recently signed another $3.3 billion no-bid contract that begins Oct. 1st. It’s a final, five-year deal, both sides promise, to let the Navy gently wean itself from its reliance on HP. But that’s what they said the last time, and the time before that.

Interview with Pastor Jones’ Daughter

It remains unclear whether Pastor Terry Jones will go ahead with his plan to burn Korans in Florida on Saturday. His daughter Emma has begged him not to go through with it. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, she describes a man who became a victim of his own delusions.

Afghans protest US church’s plans to burn Quran

End of a nation? ‘Get ready for the break-up of Belgium’

A top Belgian politician warned the country’s citizens on Sunday to “get ready for the break-up of Belgium,” as King Albert II seeks to relaunch knife-edge coalition talks.

Leading francophone Socialist Laurette Onkelinx, considered a potential successor to party chief Elio Di Rupo, who gave up on negotiations with separatist Flemish leaders on Friday, gave her prognosis in a newspaper interview.

Cisco pays millions to end DoJ probe

Cisco Systems and distie Westcon Group North America, owned by South African firm Datatec, are to pay $48m to end an investigation by the US Department of Justice into overcharging.

Has HP blundered big time?

Oh dear HP, what have you done, what Pandora’s box have you opened to unleash terror and despair on yourself?

This is all to do with ejected HP CEO Mark Hurd who is joining Oracle as its co-president.

Murdoch’s paywall is down today ‘for maintenance’

While the website’s homepage is present, clicking on any story leads to a blank page that just has the word “OK” in the top left hand corner. But what would seem like a total meltdown of the Media Mogul’s beloved walled garden’s wall is said to be only “maintenance”.

World’s Most Cramped Airline Seat to Launch Next Week

The SkyRider is a saddle-style airplane seat which will allow airlines to squeeze even more passengers into already cramped cabins. The poor passenger will perch atop a sculpted squab that has more in common with a horse-saddle than a comfy chair.

The new seats are due to be launched next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, by manufacturer Aviointeriors. They’re intended to introduce a new cabin-class, below economy. It should probably be called cattle-class.

Norwegian newsreader quits in live radio broadcast

Pia Beathe Pedersen accused her employers at the regional radio station of public broadcaster NRK of putting too much pressure on the staff.

Pedersen said in the live Saturday broadcast that she was “quitting and walking away” because she “wanted to be able to eat properly again and be able to breathe.”

Craigslist lawsuit against SC’s McMaster dismissed

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Craigslist against South Carolina’s attorney general, who is trying to prosecute the Internet company for carrying ads for prostitution.

Police: Thieves Robbed Homes Based On Facebook, Social Media Sites

Science

• Peak MHz

  This chart demonstrates that we hit the era of what I’m calling Peak MHz in about 2004. That’s the point when processor speed effectively peaked as chip manufacturers began competing along other dimensions. Those other dimensions–energy efficiency, size and cost–are driving ubiquitous computing, as their chips become more efficient, smaller and cheaper, thus making them increasingly easier to include into everyday objects.

• Stanford and Berkeley teams create ‘electric skin’

  Interestingly, the Berkeley team mentions their prosthetic skin not only has applications for biomedical devices, but also applies to the interactions of artificial intelligence and humans (Data’s artificial skin in First Contact anyone?). They also mention that while such technology has been explored before, it has yet to be created in a cost-effective and sufficiently sensitive way.

• Spaceflight formation flying test bed takes off

  Getting complicated systems onboard a single spacecraft to operate as one integrated unit can be hard enough but some space agencies are trying to address the challenges of getting multiple spacecraft to fly in formation and operate together as one unit.

Security/Aggression

• 102 Taser-Related Deaths in the United States

  Something is wrong in America when the police electrocute folks on a WEEKLY basis with their taser arsenal … and the public is mute in its response.

• Mexican Crime, American Guns

  A shocking new report obtained by ABC News says that as many as three out of four guns used in crimes in Mexico and recovered and capable of being traced can be traced to gun stores just across the border in the U.S. The numbers bolster complaints by Mexican officials that the country’s unprecedented bloodshed – 28,000 people have died in drug-cartel violence since 2006 – is being fueled both by the U.S. appetite for drugs, and by American weapons.

• Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem

  Report says US has failed to create systems to deal with homegrown terror

• Robert Fisk: The truth about ‘honour’ killings

• Assange under fire from Wikileakers

  Criticism of Wikileaks mouthpiece Julian Assange is growing, with more voices joining the chorus calling for him to step aside while his various Swedish legal problems are sorted out.

• Wikileaks will soon post biggest military leak ever

• The General Gunning for WikiLeaks

  As WikiLeaks prepares a new dump of secret war documents, the feds’ intel SWAT team races to do damage control. Philip Shenon reports on its leader and its inner workings.

  In a nondescript suite of government offices not far from the Pentagon, nearly 120 intelligence analysts, FBI agents, and others are at work—24 hours a day, seven days a week—on the frontlines of the government’s secret war against WikiLeaks.

• McKinnon family welcomes extradition treaty review

  The coalition government’s decision to review extradition law has been welcomed by family and supporters of Gary McKinnon, even though it’s unlikely to have an immediate effect on his case.

  Home Secretary Teresa May announced plans to review the UK’s extradition arrangements on Tuesday in response to long-running complaints that the existing system, introduced in 2004, is unfair. US authorities are not required to present evidence in making extradition requests, a requirement of reciprocal extradition proceedings from the US to the UK.

• One in four gives fake net names

  More than a quarter of people online have lied about their name and more than one in five has done something online they regret, says a new report.

• UK police terror trainers lose USB stick in street

  The curse of the unencrypted memory stick has stuck Manchester Police, which has suffered embarrassment as a drive containing apparently sensitive information was found lying in the street.

  The unsecured data on the drive related to training information on coping with riots, violent suspects, and public disorder. According to the Daily Star, the red top newspaper to which the drive was handed in by a passer-by, some of the information has bearing on terrorism training, including blast control, firearms handling and strategies for dealing with petrol and bomb attacks.

• Wiltshire policeman bailed over cell attack appeal

  A police officer who was jailed for six months after he was caught on CCTV throwing a woman into a cell has been granted bail pending an appeal.

  Sgt Mark Andrews was filmed dragging Pamela Somerville, 59, through Melksham police station in Wiltshire.

  The 37-year-old was jailed last week after being found guilty of causing her actual bodily harm at a trial in July.

• DARPA Wants to Install Transcranial Ultrasonic Mind Control Devices in Soldiers’ Helmets

  DARPA has been trying to crawl inside the minds of soldiers for a while now, but a new ultrasound technology could let them get deeper inside than ever. Working under a DARPA grant, a researcher at Arizona State is developing transcranial pulsed ultrasound technology that could be implanted in troops’ battle helmets, allowing soldiers to manipulate brain functions to boost alertness, relieve stress, or even reduce the effects of traumatic brain injury.

• Chile: the other 9/11 anniversary

  Of the many military coups faced by the republics of Latin America, it is the coup of 11 September 1973 that has engraved itself most permanently on the collective memory. The images of the bombing of the Moneda Palace, of the despair on the face of Salvador Allende shortly before his suicide, of the defiant expression worn by Pinochet behind his dark glasses and of the public burning of books that circulated around the world and became the symbol of military brutality.

• Fidel Castro says remarks about Cuban model ‘not working’ misinterpreted

  Fidel Castro said today that his comment to a US journalist about Cuba’s system not working had been misinterpreted.

• Homeland Security Department Begins Using Iris Scanners to Track Illegal Immigrants

  Last month, we reported on Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI), a biometrics R&D firm that’s bringing iris scanning technology to Leon, Mexico. GRI aims to make Leon “the most secure city in the world” by dotting the city with scanners and creating an iris database to track all residents. Now, it appears the technology will be crossing the border sooner than we expected.

  Today, it surfaced that the Department of Homeland Security is planning to test GRI’s tech at a border patrol station in Texas, where it will be used to monitor illegal immigrants. Rather than continue to rely on oft-unreliable fingerprints, the DHS is experimenting with the scanners to see whether they have a viable future for border security.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Arctic defenders deported from Greenland

  Sadly, all four of our climbers will not be coming back to the Esperanza after all. Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt are flying home to Germany, USA, Finland and Poland respectively. Their personal belongings are still on board and they are going home in spare clothes bought for them by friends in Greenland. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see their families again but we’re really going to miss them on the ship and we haven’t finished our ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour yet.

• Activists are not criminals

  After more than two years of political prosecution, my colleagues Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were this week handed a one-year jail sentence, suspended for three years. Their crime: exposing corruption in the Japanese whaling programme.

  Over the course of their trial, Junichi and Toru produced substantial evidence of embezzlement within the decaying relic that is Japan’s whaling industry. When I came to Japan in February for the start of this trial I was shocked that Junichi and Toru were even in court. What I saw in the Aomori court is deeply concerning.

  [...]

  Greenpeace activists are keenly aware of any risks they may take with life, limb, and liberty, and all are prepared face the consequences of their actions. Activists are not above the law, but neither are the authorities. When activists challenge the authorities they do so in the public interest and not for personal gain. It is unacceptable for authorities to abuse their power to try to silence them.

• A Symbolic Solar Road Trip To Reignite a U.S. Climate Movement

  As I write this piece, we’re in the midst of a (biodiesel) road trip to Washington, D.C., towing behind us an unwieldy piece of history: a solar panel off the roof of the Carter White House. It’s decades old, though it still makes hot water just fine. In a sense, we’re traveling backward—which in another sense is what I think we’re going to have to do for a while in the U.S. climate movement.

• Steady Growth of Wind Industry Moves EU Closer to Green Goals

• New Solar Trees Light Up Angkor Wat, Cambodia

  New solar powered street lights installed in Angkor Wat, Cambodia add much needed public lighting to the area, in a fun, low-energy design that increases night-time safety and facilitates greater earnings for local businesses. Nothing Design Group conceived of the tree-like design, and developed the lights in partnership with Asiana Airlines and Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). The project team wished to create lights that would both increase night-time safety and help elevate Cambodia’s image.

• Mass collaboration to improve climate data — a new frontier in citizen science

  Scientists meeting in the UK this week are crafting a revolutionary new project aimed at transforming their ability to predict meteorological disasters. The goal, as reported by the Guardian, “is to create an international databank that would generate forecasts of unprecedented precision.” To make that happen, the scientists behind the project are contemplating something even more radical: enlisting thousands of ordinary citizens around the world to gather, classify and even help analyze the meteorological data required to build more accurate, real-time models of the Earth’s climate.

• Sensor networks and the future of forecasting

  Weather has caused great disruption to many lives in both Russia and Pakistan in recent months. While these are separate circumstances, they share common physical factors. The following is a look at how events in one part of the world influence weather elsewhere.

• BP ultimatum: Let us drill or funds will dry up

  Oil giant BP is telling lawmakers that if it isn’t allowed to get new offshore drilling permits in the Gulf, it will not be able to afford to pay for the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the New York Times reported in its Friday edition.

  The Times reports the UK-based oil giant is on the warpath against a drilling reform bill passed by the House earlier this summer that would effectively bar BP from getting new drilling permits in the US.

  The CLEAR Act, passed by the House in July, includes an amendment (PDF) that states any oil company that has received more than $10 million in safety fines, or has seen more than 10 workers killed in the past seven years, is barred from being granted new drilling permits. The Times notes that, currently, only BP fits that criteria.

• How Big Oil will stop my children from driving electric cars

  One reason is that the Department for Transport can no longer afford to help me buy one. The government has allocated £43m to subsidise ultra-low-carbon cars, but at £5,000 a car that’s only enough to help the first few thousand of us who switch over. So whether or not I end up with an electric car doesn’t have a great deal to do with consumer subsidies.

Finance

• The problem with economics

  Monetary theory seems to have fallen in disgrace. Very few academics actually focus on macro monetary theory as it is judged irrelevant. Austrians treat money as if it didn’t exist. Keynesians barely scratch the subject. Ironically I had to read marxists to actually make sense of the banking system (critical eye I suppose). Yet the macro cycle, the minsky cycle, receives a huge contribution from monetary levels. As monetary mass increases (say subprime debt) the price of assets run-away in a positive feedback loop (more debt, more money, more expensive assets, better returns, more debt). This is why the initial phase of a monetary minsky cycle is such a political aphrodisiac. Open the money valves and watch your economy grow in nominal and real terms.

• Analysts: Iraq war ‘partly to blame’ for financial crisis

  The financial crisis that rocked the world in 2008 and still reverberates today was “due at least in part” to the Iraq war, which also made it more difficult for the government to react when economic problems happened, argue two prominent policy makers.

  In an article in Sunday’s Washington Post, former Clinton-era economic adviser Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University public policy lecturer Linda J. Bilmes say that the Iraq war forced the US to take on more debt than it had to, and caused in part the rising oil prices that resulted in large amounts of money flowing out of the US economy.

• British economy in ‘great danger’, trades union warns

  The government’s programme of drastic spending cuts is putting the British economy in “great danger”, the Trades Union Congress has warned ahead of its annual conference opening in Manchester on Monday.

• Goolsbee Refuses to Say How Many Jobs Obama’s New Stimulus Will Create

  President Barack Obama spent last week rolling out new plans to help America’s struggling economy — $50 billion in infrastructure spending and about $200 billion in tax cuts for companies’ investments in research and development. But just how many jobs will these pricey proposals create?

• FTSE 100 executive bonuses close to pre-crisis levels

  Executive bonuses are close to their level before the financial crisis, a survey by business advisory firm Deloitte says.

  It found that the average bonuses for directors of FTSE 100 firms amounted to 100% of their basic salary, rising to 140% in the top 30 public companies.

  However, Deloitte said the days of fast increases in executive salaries were over for the present.

  And in mid-sized FTSE 250 firms, one in seven paid no bosses’ bonus last year.

• Bankruptcy Court Is Latest Battleground for Traders

  “Now what happens is you have very sophisticated people whose primary objective is material gain,” says Harvey Miller, a veteran bankruptcy lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. “You’ve changed [bankruptcy] from at least the semblance of a rehabilitative approach to a casino approach of ‘how do I make more money?’”

• Trustee for Rothstein Law Firm Files Clawback Suits Worth $14 Million

  The bankruptcy trustee for Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler is casting a wider net to recover money distributed by the insolvent Fort Lauderdale, Fla., law firm in the final months before it tanked in a spectacular $1.2 billion fraud.

  Berger Singerman attorney David L. Gay, representing court-appointed trustee Herbert Stettin, filed a series of eight clawback actions late Friday seeking $14.2 million that went out the door within 90 days of the bankruptcy at Scott Rothstein’s law firm.

  The investment commitments illustrate the success of Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme as he recruited investors with promises of annual returns as high as 164 percent.

• Trading Eludes Dodd-Frank as Investors See Black Box

  It took a Congressional inquiry this year to force Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to disclose how much it made in the mortgage market — and that was only for 2007.

  Goldman Sachs hasn’t revealed mortgage-trading revenue since then, leaving investors to guess how much it contributes to the fixed-income, currency and commodities division, or FICC, which also trades junk bonds, yen, oil and uranium, sells weather derivatives and operates power plants. The division brought in $23.3 billion last year, or 52 percent of the New York-based firm’s total, and by itself would rank 90th by revenue in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, just ahead of McDonald’s Corp., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

  The Dodd-Frank Act, designed to prevent future financial crises, does little to improve investors’ ability to analyze results at the five biggest U.S. firms that trade securities, which together lost $38.6 billion as markets froze in the fourth quarter of 2008. Since taxpayers may have to bail out banks again, firms should be forced to disclose more, said Tanya Azarchs, former head of North American bank research at Standard & Poor’s.

  “The health of the banking system impinges on all areas of the economy,” said Azarchs, now a consultant in Briarcliff Manor, New York. “So their disclosure has to be top-notch.”

• Banks get years to adjust to new global rules

  Bankers and analysts said new global rules could mean less money available to lend to businesses and consumers, but praised a decision to leave plenty of time – until 2019 – before the financial stability requirements come into full force.

  The so-called Basel III rules, which will gradually require banks to hold greater capital buffers to absorb potential losses, are likely to affect the credit industry by imposing stricter discipline on credit cards, mortgages and other loans.

• How Many Jobs Do We Need?

  Do those unemployed really need jobs? Some economists suggest that many are just free-riding on the rest of us by taking extended unemployment benefits. In last week’s post, I argued that a focus on the decline in wage and salary jobs is useful, because it sidesteps the assertion that the unemployed are just pretending to want work.

• New banking rules lift global markets

  A warm response to new global banking rules and robust Chinese economic data shored up sentiment in the markets Monday, with stocks up strongly, the euro climbing over a cent against the dollar and oil prices spiking to a one-month high.

• Regulators Back New Bank Rules to Avert Crises

  The world’s top bank regulators agreed Sunday on far-reaching new rules intended to make the global banking industry safer and protect international economies from future financial disasters.

  The new requirements will more than triple the amount of capital that banks must hold in reserve, an effort to move banks toward more conservative positions and force them to maintain a larger cushion against potential losses. They come two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a worldwide banking crisis that required billions in government bailouts.

• Wis. Harley workers approve contract to freeze pay

  The proposed deal freezes employees’ pay, slashes hundreds of production jobs and assigns large volumes of work to part-time workers. But it also saves at hundreds of other jobs, at least in the short-term.

• Regulators meeting in Switzerland agree on new global rules to strengthen banks

  Regulators meeting in Basel, Switzerland, on Sunday agreed to take new steps to immunize the financial system from the sort of crisis that pushed the world into recession two years ago.

• Global banking rules aim to balance safety, growth

  Banks will have to significantly increase their capital reserves under rules endorsed Sunday by the world’s major central banks, which are trying to prevent another financial collapse without impeding the fragile economic recovery.

  The new banking rules are designed to strengthen bank finances and rein in excessive risk-taking, but some banks have protested that they may dampen the recovery by forcing them to reduce the lending that fuels economic growth.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• No recession here: Election spending sets records

  Turns out politics, for all its focus on the gloomy economy, is a recession-proof industry.

  This year’s volatile election is bursting with money, setting fundraising and spending records in a high-stakes struggle for control of Congress amid looser but still fuzzy campaign finance rules.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• MPs backed down from calling Rebekah Brooks to Commons

  Brooks was summoned to give evidence for the committee’s report, Press Standards, Privacy and Libel. Most of the hearings were held in early 2009. But a second round of hearings were held in the summer after fresh allegations about phone hacking were published by the Guardian in July 2009.

  The committee was highly critical of News International, which said that the News of the World’s former royal editor Clive Goodman, jailed for his role in phone hacking, was a rogue reporter. The committee accused Rupert Murdoch’s company of “collective amnesia”.

• Polls Show Netizens Oppose Craigslist’s Censorship

• Zimbabwe: Mugabe bans music group over “chicken” song

  Zimbabwe’s government has banned South African group Freshlyground over a music video that portrays President Mugabe as a chicken afraid to relinquish power.

• Swaziland pro-democracy protesters threatened with torture

  Swaziland has threatened pro-democracy activists with torture as tensions in sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy continue to grow.

  The warning that sipakatane – beating people’s feet with spikes – could be used against protesters was condemned by trade unions in the country after a week in which 50 protesters were arrested and several foreigners treated roughly and deported.

• Archbishop Bans Pop Music at Funerals

  Eric Idle of Monty Python discusses the popularity of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” one of the songs a Roman Catholic leader in Australia does not want to hear during funerals.

  On Thursday in Australia, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne announced a ban on the playing of pop music at funerals, which, he said, are not to be described as “a celebration of the life of” the deceased.

• “Magic Words” Trump User Rights: Ninth Circuit Ruling in Vernor v. Autodesk

  In a triumph of legal formalism over reality, the Court held that the copyright’s first sale doctrine – the law that allows you to resell books and that protects libraries and archives from claims of copyright infringement – doesn’t apply to software (and possibly DVDs, CDs and other “licensed” content) as long as the vendor saddles the transfer with enough restrictions to transform what the buyer may think is sale into a mere license.

• School suspends crying son of murdered man because his eyes were red

  A high school in the town of Trophy Club, TX suspended a 16-year-old boy because he came to school with bloodshot eyes. School administrators say that’s enough to make the case he was using marijuana.

• Tightened muzzle on scientists is ‘Orwellian’

  Documents reveal federal researchers, whose work is financed by taxpayers, need approval from Ottawa before speaking with media

• Benioff monitors worker communications

  Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff has been monitoring worker communications to identify key employees.

  Chatter is a Salesforce social networking tool designed to plug into the companies’ customer relationship management software. Chatter lets staff post status updates in a similar manner to Twitter, and review feeds, like Facebook.

• Once Again, Yelp Not Liable For Reviews Someone Doesn’t Like

  It’s really quite stunning how frequently people sue review sites because they’re unhappy about reviews of their business. You would hope that the lawyers these upset business owners use would know better — but all too often the lawyers appear to be totally unfamiliar with Section 230 of the CDA and with the basic concept of properly applying liability to the party who actually did the action. And every time this happens, the case gets thrown out on 230 grounds. It’s happened yet again, with a dentist having a case against Yelp dismissed thanks to Section 230.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Market Extremism in Spectrum Policy

  So to get back to spectrum policy, the ideal regime would be one in which there was no spectrum rules at all and devices self-organized to avoid interfering with one another. Given that that’s not within the realm of technical possibility, the questions we should ask are: which set of regulations maximizes the freedom of individuals to use the spectrum as they choose? And which set of regulations will lead to the most efficient utilization of spectrum? Jerry’s preferred scheme of exclusive licenses for the entire spectrum doesn’t fit the bill because it puts a thumb on the scale in favor of large, capital-intensive firms that can win multi-billion dollar auctions. (Yes, some firm or charity might win an auction and choose to create a WiFi-style band, but such applications would be very much second-class citizens.) Similarly, a “pure” commons regime doesn’t fit the bill because it only leaves room for small-scale, short-range applications like WiFi. What’s needed is a policy that accommodates both uses.

• British Telecomm and Cisco’s Network Neutrality Fix

  British Telecomm and Cisco are quietly putting their own answer to Network Neutrality in place: Set up an entirely separate national wide network, Content Connect This will be used to deliver the BBC’s forthcoming Internet video and Video on Demand (VoD) service Project Canvas to users.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • No P2P for Irish Vodaphone customers? – and then a change of mind?

    Vodaphone, the provider of mobile and broadband services has allegedly prohibited the use of p2p protocols on its networks albeit verbally. Whilst a p2p blow to the phone service would be bad enough, the fact that they have taken the step to hit the desktop services aswel would be for many, a step too far.

    Looking past the customers that would be driven to other providers who have not taken this stance, I would like to address a point raised by The Mad Hatter and where previously my own lack of foresight negated to consider a potential problem when p2p was linked with “piracy”.

  • Sarko hit by ‘asshole’ Googlebomb

    Nikolas Sarkozy has become the latest high profile victim of a Google bomb, after bloggers linked his Facebook page to the phrase “trou du cul”.

  • Bollywood ‘recruits DDoS hired guns to fight movie pirates’

    An Indian firm claims it was hired to carry out denial of service attacks against film download and torrent tracker websites at the behest of Bollywood movie distributors in India.

    Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software, said it was paid to search for sites offering download of newly released films, before issuing copyright takedown notices.

  • Video game piracy: Is it good for business?

    Putting digital diversions in more people’s hands and letting them pay what they want, when they want, has the potential to massively expand gaming’s reach and profitability. By taking the same approach Google has to online advertising, clever game makers could turn rampant copying of games not only into the sincerest form of flattery but into a workable future.

  • Court ruling in Eminem case may raise pay for digital downloads

    In a development that could have fallout in the world of digital music, Eminem stands to gain tens of millions of dollars in a federal court decision handed down Friday.

  • Disruption: how one webcomic welcomes the future that so many fear

    A copy of the famous xkcd comic “Duty Calls” hangs just outside my office door, signed by creator Randall Munroe. I didn’t have to pay for the comic; it was free to view anytime, and I could have printed the (smaller) Web version if I desperately needed it on my wall. But xkcd is funny, Randall comes across as a good guy whose work I’d like to support, the print came signed on thick paper stock and printed at a higher resolution, and it was about $15. The real question isn’t why I paid; it’s why wouldn’t I pay?

    Munroe’s approach to “protecting” his content might be best defined as “lenient.”

  • Copyright and free speech in conflict

    Some very interesting copyright events being reported this weekend. The most concerning is from the New York Times, who report that Microsoft lawyers are co-operating with Russian police to suppress environmental and civil society campaign groups, by taking the groups to court for violations of Microsoft copyright.

    The strategy seems to be to pick government enemies exclusively, and raid their premises to find copyright violations; ie, copied, unlicensed software. Since illicit copying of software is rampant in Russia, the chances of success are high, and the penalties are conveniently very severe.

  • The Super Highway and censorship

    More cars, more highways, stricter copyright, censorship – absolutely primitive ideas!

    In a fragile democracy like the mexican one, with few formal ways of influencing policy, we have to be alert and protest every time copyright is used to censor the voice of citizens or control public space.

    Even though YouTube shows in this broken link that the department of communication of the state of Jalisco as the ones that asking for the removal of the video, the government has issue official statements through Twitter, denying their involvement in the removal of “Via Express en el mundo”.

  • artists and record companies

    Last week the music industry was shaken by court decision on a lawsuit. Universal Music, one of the big four record companies. has been ordered to distribute more of the money collected in royalties to the rap star Eminem.

    [...]

    Universal is unwilling to give creator Eminem 50% of the profits.

    This record company is going to go back to court and fight this.

  • Geist: Significant new costs loom for students

    This is a win-win situation for the educational sector and creators of educational works. The savings happen not by not paying creators, but by getting rid of unnecessary overhead that exists in the educational publishing sector. It also gets rid of the necessity for per-student licensing from organisations like Access Copyright, with the educational sector then calling upon collectives as a “one stop shopping” for the remaining (primarily fiction) materials that students still require that use royalty-based licensing models.

    Will the Canadian educational sector make the right decision, or will they continue to be behind the times in their adoption of Open Access? Lets not take these articles as a justification for feeling sorry for the educational sector’s self-inflicted wounds, but as a reminder that they have some forward-facing choices to make.

  • CC is for Creator’s Choice

    Creative Commons licensing is a marvelous tool that allows creators to get around the detrimental and restrictive aspects of copyright law. Creators can release their work in the way that they want to.

    The reason I love Raffaella Traniello’s film so much is because it does such a good job getting the message across. Every song I’ve heard, every movie I’ve watched, every picture I’ve seen, every bit of art I’ve ever been exposed to, everything that has danced across my senses has been absorbed and makes me who I am. The creativity of others has become part of my life experience, and as it’s distilled through my unconscious and forms the basis of my own creativity. No art comes out of a vacuum; it collaborates with a culture. Art needs to share and be shared, which is why I believe that the current copyright law has already gone too far.

  • Vandals’ Bass Player Not A Fan Of The Public Domain, Thinks PD Recordings Will ‘Destroy’ Classical Music

    We’ve covered how Vandals’ bass player, Joe Escalante, a former entertainment industry lawyer, is currently in the middle of a legal fight with Reed Elsevier over a parody logo the band briefly used — but has since stopped using. His discussions of the lawsuit have been interesting and informative, so I’m a bit shocked to see the following article, submitted by a bunch of folks where Escalante goes a bit off his rocker in attacking the public domain as “communism.” Honestly, I had to read it a few times, and am still sort of wondering if this is pure satire. If it is, bravo. If it’s not, Escalante may have taken cluelessness about the public domain to previously unheard of levels.

  • Online appeal sets classical music free

    The project, Musopen, aims to deal with a problem caused by the way copyright laws work. Although the actual symphonies written by composers in, for example, the 19th century are long out of copyright, there is separate protection for every individual performance by an orchestra. That means that in most cases, the only recordings currently in the public domain are very old performances generally recorded with poor quality equipment and plagued with hiss and crackle.

  • Attribution

    The most basic element included in all of the six standard Creative Commons licenses is “Attribution“.
    In other words, when using the the digital works of others, the license requirement is to give the artist credit for the work we are using. As far as I know, the only CC license that doesn’t require this is the public domain license.

    Even so, I prefer to credit the artist if I know who it is. For pre-digital creative work, a lot of effort can go into trying to find out who the artist was. There’s speculation that Shakespeare didn’t really write the plays he is attributed with having written.

  • ACTA

    • Latest leaked draft of secret copyright treaty: US trying to cram DRM rules down the world’s throats

      Ironically, this DRM push comes just as the US courts and regulators have begun to erode the US’s own extreme rules on the subject. Or perhaps this isn’t so surprising: in the past, the US copyright lobby has torpedoed the courts and Congress by getting USA to commit to international agreements that went far beyond the rules that they could push through on their own at home.

    • ACTA hanging on a camembert ?

      The representatives of Act Up-Paris, April and La Quadrature du Net met on September 10th with one of the French officials in charge of the ACTA negotiations. Strong concerns remain regarding the way this anti-Counterfeiting agreement is bypassing democratic processes. Whether it is access to medicines in poor countries, free communication on the Internet or the protection of Free software, the recent modifications to the text don’t change anything to the dangerous nature of ACTA. Ironically, the hopes to see this illegitimate agreement rejected now depend on the ability of the European Union to defend its camembert, its parmesan and its champagne…

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Thanks, [Microsoft]

  15 years ago you produced a product so bad that it drove me to use GNU/Linux. Thanks.

  In 2000 I was using Lose 3.1 on my personal PC, a 486DX with some RAM. It would crash on me when I tried to print. I gave that up by then. At work I was using five Pentium Pros in class. Lose ’95 would freeze hourly on one of the other just running a browser or word-processor in 72 MB.

• The Life of the PC

  Conclusion? We should see PCs sticking around a lot longer. After all the average PC in business is now about six years old and still doing well. It is a waste to change when not necessary. The result could be PCs lasting until ten years of age. Guess what OS works well on older machines? GNU/Linux. Thin clients often use it for puny 300 MHz processors. A 2 gHz machine is a wondrous thing in comparison.

Applications

• 5 Linux Twitter Clients You Probably Don’t Know About

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to install Ubuntu on a btrfs file system

  • Utilising the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyser remotely from Ubuntu

  • Mass convert WMA to MP3 using ffmpeg and ruby

  • [SOLVED] Torrent stopped downloading although there are enough seeds and connections

  • Move files in bash with tar and progress bar

  • Linux Tip: How to hide Gnome apps in KDE and vice versa?

  • How to setup additional timezones in Gnome

  • Reasonably secure remote GUI access with SSH and NoMachine

  • 15 Fantastic Inkscape Tutorials for Creating Awesome Vector Art

    15 Fantastic Inkscape Tutorials for Creating Awesome Vector Art: Inkscape is without doubt the most well-known and perhaps the best free and open-source vector graphics editor available for Linux. It is loaded with powerful features that will allow anyone with ingenious mind create some amazing digital art.

    You may have seen our collection of excellent vector clip art made using Inkscape and might want to create your own. Hence, I decided to gather several highly informative and easy to understand Inkscape tutorials so that you too could produce your very own awesome vector art.

• Games

  • Spring 0.82.5.1

    Spring, the open source real-time strategy game engine inspired by Total Annihilation, has had a few releases in recent weeks to add various improvements and bugfixes (release discussion can be found on their forums).

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Demystifying OpenGL Desktop Effects

    12. KWin will require OpenGL 3 in 4.6:
    No, please see my blog post where I wrote that I want to have OpenGL 3 support in 4.7.

    13. KWin will require OpenGL 3 in 4.7:
    No, this will also be only an additional feature. KWin supports multiple backends and it does not make any sense to remove a working backend which is required for all mesa users and users of graphic cards which cannot handle OpenGL 3.

  • Watch out KDE! MS now owns Qt by proxy…

    He will be transferring over later in the month. What does this mean for KDE, Qt and Nokia’s part in open source technologies such as MeeGo? It could mean that they slowly pull themselves out of open source due to Microsoft’s influence. They could also decide to stop investing money into it while pretending to contribute.

  • Manage your digital camera in Linux with DigiKam

    For those of you who thought managing external devices like digital cameras in Linux was a challenge, I give you DigiKam. DigiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac. DigiKam allows the user to view, manage, edit, enhance, organize, tag, and share photographs easily in the Linux operating system. It boasts tons of features that rival and/or exceed those of similar applications on other operating systems.

  • David Solbach

    This week the behindkde.org interview is with one of the unknown powers behind the sysadmin team. It’s David Solbach. Click on the image to see where David was during the “Fjällraven Classic”.

    He is the maintainer of reviewboard.kde.org. He not only knows his way around reviewing code, but also knows how to design and develop diagnostic blood analyzers and was hit when the dot com bubble bursted. Enjoy an entertaining and interesting interview with David!

  • Amarok 2.3.2 Beta 1 Review

    The version tested is the 2.3.2 Beta 1 release, put out earlier this year, running on top of Kubuntu 10.10 Beta. Amarok improved a lot since I last took a look at it (I’m still using KDE 3.5 with the old – but stable – Debian Lenny).

  • Burner (Fire Edition) – Bring Some Heat To Your Favorite KDE Media Burner

    I recently had occasion to be perusing KDE-Look.org for some nice new wallpapers the other day when I glanced over to the left at all the site’s category selections and was curious when I saw the category for K3b. With interest getting the best of me I clicked on the K3b category and right up at the top of the results list I found this killer K3b Theme. Although I’m not one to be overly concerned with tweaking all aspects of my Mint KDE setup, one look and I knew I had to install this theme pronto. It just screamed “cool”.

  • Nepomuk+strigi as desktop search

    In the last weeks I – once again – got fed-up with strigi/nepomuk being of no use to me. Since KDE 4.0 I long for a desktop search, i.e. some way of finding files and getting a result list such as google etc. has it, i.e. including some context around the string found in the document and not just a file list. Anything else would just be a faster version of kfind for that task. And since I do not use tags, it is the only desktop search task for me.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • REVIEW: Salix 13.1-rc1 (Live LXDE)

    As I say, Ive deployed Linux quite extensively, from friends and family to friends of friends and our local computer club. Most of these people have no clue what an operating system is or how to install one and merely want an escape from their Windows desktop. When looking at a distro for OpenBytes, I consider two things – would I want this on my main rig? and; How easy will this be to deploy and provide support for to a user who may not have any experience of Linux. In both cases Salix received a favorable answer. Little things like a package that installs the multimedia codecs is very welcome as if I am around a friend’s house installing it on their desktop, I want things handed on a plate, so that I spend as little time as possible.

    The speedy install times, make this a very attractive distro for me to deploy to others too and with the one click installation of all the codecs I could wish for also appeals greatly to me (although is not unique to Salix and Sabayon 5.3 (currently on my main rig, offers the same feature at install time)

    The installation itself was simple and I think shows just how far Linux on the desktop has come. Not so long ago, there were only a handful of distro’s that truly offered a user friendly installation, now it seems a “minimum standard” of any new release.

    Salix (thanks to its LXDE flavour) is very fast. Whilst some will find LXDE too simple looking and would probably migrate towards KDE or Gnome, LXDE affords even the lowest of specs a very fast, functional performance and a great introduction to a Slackware distro. If you are after a Slack distro that spares a thought for the new or inexperienced user, give Salix a go. Either way, seasoned Linux expert or Linux newbie, Salix LXDE is a great release and very worthy of a look.

• PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Mandriva 2010 Spring (Gnome Desktop version)

    Mandriva is a pretty cool Linux Distribution (distro) which I have been using since it’s installation borked my Linux Mint partition. The graphical install was very simple but the installer did not recognise my Mint partition and add it to the Boot Menu. I was disappointed with this because my experience with Debian based distros is that they always recognise other Linux partitions and add them to the boot menu. I had created dual boot and triple booting systems before yet I could not get this to work with Mandriva

• Red Hat Family

  • Ideas get greased at NCSU’s ‘Garage’

    N.C. State graduate student Andrew Misenheimer studies at The Garage, a 2,000-square-foot incubator for student entrepreneurs. It was sponsored by Raleigh-based Linux software company Red Hat.

    [...]

    Miller didn’t have to put on the hard sell to convince Red Hat to sponsor TheGarage.

  • Fedora

    • OLF 2010, day 0.

      I’m writing this from the Red Hat booth at Ohio Linux Fest 2010, which is bustling with visitors, so sorry if this is a little brief. For me Day 0 was yesterday (Friday). Some people, like Mel Chua, Ruth Suehle, and Robyn Bergeron, were here yesterday doing some awesome talks and generally spreading open source gospel here in Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, I drove about 2 hours to Baltimore, Maryland to catch my flight to the event. When I landed I met Brian Pepple at the world famous Cup O Joe stand, Spot landed soon after, and Brian took us to the hotel.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • The road not taken

      I am not an Ubuntu old-timer. I remember as far back as 5.10, but certainly there is a smaller circle of true Ubuntu veterans.

      And I am definitely not a Linux old-timer. I am a mere babe in the woods, comparatively speaking, and I try my best to remind myself of that fact regularly. There is always someone who knows more than you.

      It has been almost five years since I started out with Ubuntu though, and things have changed dramatically since then.

Devices/Embedded

• Triteq designs open source 3D imaging software

  Triteq has completed an open source design for a medical 3D imaging system capable of taking eight 5Mpixel images a second.

  [...]

  For hardware, Triteq chose an i.MX515 microprocessor from Freescale built into a Wi-MX51 module from Digi International, running Linux from Timesys.

• Phones

  • Android

    • Fall to bring Google TV, just in time for Apple TV faceoff

      Google announced Google TV in May of this year during its own developer conference, touting the device as a more open alternative to the closed set-top boxes out there (particularly the Apple TV). Because it will be Android-based and search-driven, third-party developers are expected to hop on board with a plethora of TV offerings—companies like Netflix and Amazon have already created native apps to run on Google TV.

    • Open thread: Will Google TV change your viewing habits?

    • Garmin’s Android Powered Navigation Phone

      The Garmin-Asus A50 is a sleek, full-touch 3G smartphone with a large 3.5-inch screen integrated with Garmin’s robust navigation experience for fast and reliable, on-board navigation. The company claims that A50 has everything users need to stay connected to the people important to them.

    • How to build the perfect Android tablet, part 4: Resolution and aspect ratio

      For this installment I want to return to the display and discuss a different, um, aspect with you. My pick for the 4th most important feature of the perfect tablet is:

      #4: A high resolution display that is wide but not *too* wide

    • STFU about Android and “open” [OPINION]

      Android users and media personnel frequently complain that carriers and manufacturers change the Android experience and that’s not “in the spirit” of open, which is a false statement. The changes those companies make is a direct reflection of open. Google wrote the code, made it available to the OHA, and the OHA members made their tweaks.

      That is why we have to refocus the discussion into the proper terms. If you embrace Android because it is open, then address the negative impacts of that openness appropriately. Don’t rail against companies for changing Android and claim that it violates the spirit of openness. Rail against those companies because those changes don’t meet your tastes or needs. You can’t have it both ways and extol open source as a virtue then complain when companies rightfully change the source to create a product they think consumers want.

      So, everybody, focus on the end results and address them accordingly. Do us all a favor and STFU about open source.

    • Dell Streak Android tablet source code now available

      Dell has released the source code for its Streak and Aero devices. The Streak is a 5 inch Android tablet or smartphone, depending on how you look at it, while the Aero is pretty inarguably a phone.

      Google Android is built on open source software and uses a version of the Linux kernel at its core. While Google keeps some source closed when it’s developing new versions of the operating system, it tends to release them as open source upon launch, allowing smartphone makers and wireless carriers to make core changes to the operating system to meet their needs.

Libre Graphics Magazine 1.1 call for content

Following release of #0 in May this year during LGM the team behind Libre Graphics Magazine is planning to proceed with further issues, in both PDF and printed (for special occasions) form. And thus the team is seeking submissions for its first numbered issue.

One of the Silliest Things

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is a big proponent of open source voting machines, which developers say are more secure and less buggy than the proprietary devices made by various manufacturers and in use nationwide.

Adopting Open-Source Applications

The use of OSS (open-source software) in the enterprise has come a long way since the days when Linux and other OSS applications were associated with long-haired “evangelists” and were far removed from the mainstream. Many OSS solutions have evolved into reliable, stable, and secure alternatives to commercial applications that can also offer significant reductions in licensing costs.

Bastian Feder Says Committed To Open Source

It is unfortunately way too less. I just saw the keynote Jon “maddog” Hall gave at the Free and Open Source Conference (FroSCon) in St Augustin on 21 August. And he rightly pointed out that there was no real advantage in using closed source software even for larger companies. As for me and Liip AG, the company I work for, and papaya Software GmbH, the one that I worked for, open source software (OSS) is a daily business and we are very happy with it.

Events

• India’s Largest FOSS Event: FOSS.IN

  FOSS.IN is India’s one of the largest Free and open source software (FOSS) event, which is held annually. This time it will be a three day event, starting Dec 15 till Dec 17, 2010, and the venue of the event is NIMHANS Convention Centre. The main goal of the event is to foster FOSS development and contribution.

• New Zealand Open Source Awards 2010

  Radio New Zealand won the ‘Open Source in Government’ category at the 2008 New Zealand Open Source Awards. The boost in confidence gained from the Award has helped it to progress its use of free and open source software (FLOSS) to continue its innovation. It now uses FLOSS to run its internet and intranet.

• Deadline nears for NZ Open Source Awards 2010

  The New Zealand Open Source awards aim to recognise the contributions of New Zealanders to free and open source projects and free and open source philosophy exemplary use of free and open source by New Zealand organisations.

• Search Innovation in Government and Public Institutions Featured at Lucene Revolution — The First Conference Dedicated to Open Source Enterprise Search

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 4 preview knocks back Jäger shot

    Mozilla has released preview builds of Firefox 4 that include JägerMonkey, the new JavaScript engine extension designed to outpace rival engines from the likes of Google and Opera.

SaaS

• For some, move to cloud computing means move to open source

  For many enterprise development groups, the move to cloud computing brings organizational as well as technical hurdles. Development managers must sort through a host of open source alternatives as they consider re-architecting for cloud environments that deliver “elastic” (highly scalable) hosted services in-house or over the Internet, according to participants in a recent webinar on “Using open source to re-architect applications for cloud deployment.”

• How GE uses Hadoop to analyze big data

  One of the most talked about open-source projects is having its second annual Hadoop World Conference next month in New York. On the heels of a successful inaugural event , 2010 promises more than 25 presentations from the likes of Bank of America, eBay, HP, Orbitz, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo (full agenda here). Also, for the second year running, here is a code for my readers to get a 20 percent registration discount: CNETHW2010.

Databases

• Univention forms partnership with Ingres

  Bremen, Germany-based Linux specialist Univention GmbH has entered into a strategic partnership with database company Ingres. Univention partners will now be offering Ingres subscriptions for the Univention Corporate Server (UCS).

• Bucap S.p.A. Documents Find Home in Ingres Database

• Redis 2.0 Open Source Database Released

  The Redis open source database has reached what its development team calls a “major milestone”, with an “endless” list of new features in the first stable release of its version 2.0.0 iteration.

• Quest Software Adds Cassandra Support

  The Apache Cassandra project is an open source database designed to create a high-performance approach to managing “Big Data.” As an alternative to traditional SQL databases, Cassandra supports MapReduce as its methodology for accessing manipulating data.

• MariaDB going places: Drupal, Zend Framework

  MariaDB just released MariaDB 5.1.50. Linux, Solaris and Windows (32-bit) are supported. Go give it a twirl.

Mail

• Open Source Email Archiving

  Open source customization and integration services outfit Linux Box has recently launched Enkive, an email management suite designed to archive emails from the moment they’re received or sent, as opposed to waiting until the sender chooses to back up their emails.

  The organization says that its software addresses issues of regulatory compliance and also offers some litigation support. As well as reducing storage costs by eliminating redundant messages, it also has an advanced search option that searches attachments too.

• Latest Open-Xchange Groupware Improves Usability, Extends Social Networking Features

Education

• New Community Founded To Help Schools Exploit Open Source

  The project was announced during a conference that promotes open source in higher education. Initially, it will be organized by Patrick Masson, CTO at UMassOnline, and Ken Udas, UMassOnline CEO. UMassOnline is the online education division of the University of Massachusetts.

Healthcare

• Open-Source ILS Migration Project Announced for PA Public Libraries

  The Health Sciences Libraries Consortium (HSLC)/Access PA, which manages the largest statewide union catalog and interlibrary loan system in Pennsylvania, announced plans to begin migrating a small group of public libraries to the Evergreen open-source integrated library system (ILS) this year.

• Former Sun CEO tries anew with health start-up

  Jonathan Schwartz, the chief executive who sold Sun Microsystems to Oracle, is once again in charge of a company, a start-up called Picture of Health for the time being.

Business

• JumpBox Partners With CyOp To Deliver Customized Open Source Business Applications

• KONNECT Business Phones Certified Interoperable With Xorcom PBX.

• Storage: Open Source Hardware Creates Peta-Byte Capacity on the Cheap

• Semi-Open Source

  • Randr Inc Announces the Latest Releases of Their Free Open Source Software, Web Business Suite – Sales Portal 10.05.02 and Information Portal for Sales Portal 10.05.02

Project Releases

• Lightspark 0.4.4.2 released

  Another week, another bug­fix release for Lightspark! Apart from restor­ing the sup­port for YouTube this release fea­tures the new plu­gin based audio frame­work that makes it pos­si­ble to sup­port other back­ends beside PulseAu­dio. At the moment both an ALSA and Ope­nAL plu­g­ins are being worked on.

Government

• Civic Commons to help local gov share software

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • EU releases open source key to its data vaults

    The EU has released open source software tools to access its mountain of digitally stored data.

    The EU’s CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) research project will sort and make accessible the mounds of data stored in EU archives.

  • EU ICT Research: CASPER – New Open Source Software To Help Protect Digital Data For Future Generations

    Tools developed using EU funds to ensure that digitally stored data can be preserved, accessed and understood for the indefinite future are now available in the form of open source software. The EU’s CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) research programme involved researchers from the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Israel, Italy and the UK. This work complements initiatives such as Europeana, the European digital library.

  • The Rise of ‘DIMBYism’: Open Data Is the Key to Smarter Communities

    Of course, being so contrary to conventional wisdom, a position like this demands clarity of methodology and transparency of source information — neither of which were available.

• Open Hardware

  • Take Home an Open Source Robot from Willow Garage for $400,000

    Menlo Park, CA-based Willow Garage is one of a growing number of companies producing robots meant to navigate everyday human environments rather than factory floors or the surfaces of distant planets. As the New York Times described in an article last week, for example, early testers at the Mozilla Corporation are using the company’s Texai robot, which runs largely on open-source software, as a remote presence device, allowing workers to attend meetings and visit people in the office via an Internet video connection.

  • Willow Garage’s PR2 Robots are Officially On Sale for $400k With Possible Discounts

  • Willow Garage now selling the PR2 for $400k a pop

  • Open-source personal robotics seeks a community to make it affordable

    Until someone develops a common platform for building robots (think of the combination of Windows and Intel that has made PCs so accessible), the technology will remain elusive to the general public. At least that’s the contention of Willow Garage, Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif. company that Wednesday made its PR2 personal robot available to the public.

  • Sock-pairing robot a promising match for software gurus

Killed on a Technicality

In 1994 Eddie Lee Howard was convicted of raping and murdering 84-year-old Georgia Kemp. Kemp was found dead in her Columbus, Mississippi, home by firefighters after a neighbor noticed smoke coming from the house. Investigators determined the fire was set intentionally.

Kemp’s body was taken to controversial Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne, who would later lose his lucrative niche as the state’s go-to guy for autopsies after years of criticism for sloppy work that rarely failed to confirm prosecutors’ suspicions. Hayne concluded that Kemp died of knife wounds and said he found signs of rape, although the rape kit taken from Kemp turned up no biological evidence that the technology available at the time could test for DNA.

Wikileaks: Three Digital Myths

So people spend a fortune on office chairs?

On the one hand I accept that you spend a lot of time sitting in chairs when you’re working upon a computer. On the left I find the idea of spending £750+ on a chair a little insane.

For the past few years I’ve had a kneeling chair over time this has gotten pretty “squished” and “flat”. (Specifically the part where my knees go.)

So I decided to get a new chair. What did I buy? a large rubber ball!

Security/Aggression

• Internet Scammer Gets Nearly 13 Years for $1.3M Fraud

  A Nigerian man gets sentenced to 151 months in prison for a scam that stole $1.3 million from victims.

• DHS Cybersecurity Watchdogs Miss Hundreds of Vulnerabilities on Their Own Network

  The federal agency in charge of protecting other agencies from computer intruders was found riddled with hundreds of high-risk security holes on its own systems, according to the results of an audit released Wednesday.

  The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, monitors the Einstein intrusion-detection sensors on nonmilitary government networks, and helps other civil agencies respond to hack attacks. It also issues alerts on the latest software security holes, so that everyone from the White House to the FAA can react quickly to install workarounds and patches.

• Do Mummies Have a Right to Privacy?

  The traditionally held assumption that ancient corpses are “fair game” for scientists to dissect and investigate is wilting under new pressure from leading academics. And The New Scientist’s Jo Marchant is on the scene to suss out the moral debate on what can or can’t be probed when dealing with ancient human remains.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Tea Party Suicide – Why Closing The United States Environmental Protection Agency Is Part Of The Platform

  One of the agencies most often mentioned for closure is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Unlike the other agencies that are often cited as not needed, the EPA doesn’t have a direct connection with the public. Compare that to the Department of Education which has a direct connection to anyone who has children, or have attended school themselves! So why is the EPA on the Tea Party’s hit list?

  Several investigations of the Tea Party have indicated that while it claims to be a non-partisan, grass roots group, it is heavily funded by corporate backers. The New Yorker recently ran an article titled Covert Operations – The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. Other media outlets who have carried out investigations have confirmed the connection.

  Koch Industries is heavily involved in the oil and coal industries. The brothers who own the firm are rich by anyone’s standard. They pay a lot of taxes, and produce materials which are either regulated by the EPA, or have effects that are regulated by the EPA.. They have a vested interest in reducing the impact of government regulation, and government costs on themselves and their company. Curiously the very things that the Tea Party is concerned with.

  [...]

  Fake grass roots campaigns have a nasty habit of back firing. Take the Tea Party’s support for closing the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has been responsible for cleaning up some truly horrible pollution.

  [...]

  Koch’s funding of the Tea Party is an attempt to evade responsibility, an attempt that the Tea Party members will not stand for when the connections become clear to them. They don’t like being taken advantage of, and this is what Koch is doing.

  Koch will continue to try and hide the funding connections, and the policy connections. But in the long term they will fail. Too many people are curious now. Too many people are looking at what is happening. Too many people know that many of the Tea Party policies disadvantage Tea Party members. When a group is disadvantaged by it’s policies, there is solid evidence that someone hiding behind the scenes is attempting to use them for his or her own advantage.

Finance

• £32,000 a day for council website as 26,000 face job cuts

  Birmingham Wired have uncovered that Birmingham City Council spend on average £32,000 a day maintaining a council website that has cost the tax-payer over £48 million to date, while councils nationwide prepare to say goodbye to 26,000 jobs due to budget deficits.

• Not Enough Labor Day

  Today, many Americans will be enjoying a respite from the incessant demands of their jobs. But many Americans will be wishing desperately they could trade the holiday for the incessant demands of a job. This year, given the state of the economy, Labor Day should be called Not Enough Labor Day.

• Resignation cake sender has invoice cake delivered to People.com

• Reclaiming Rights

  The U.S. is in an economic, fiscal, and public policy crisis with no end in sight. Indeed, it looks almost certain to get far worse. We can and will talk about what rights need to be reasserted, what programs need to be cut, what sectors of this American life need to be left the hell alone. But until we make a dent in the widespread notion that there always has to be some type of government structure or some taxpayer-financed watchdog to police every imaginable peaceable transaction, any contemplated fix to the mess we’re in will be temporary at best.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Tea Party multi-level marketing scheme

  The mellifluously named TeaPartyBizOpp.info (presumably the .com was taken?) is a pyramid scheme that recruits disgruntled wingnuts to “Get Paid To Stop Liberal Tyranny!” by “helping raise funds to defend our freedom.”

• BCE-CTV deal remakes media landscape

  BCE Inc. BCE-T has agreed to acquire full ownership of CTV Inc. in a $1.3-billion deal that dramatically reshapes the landscape of Canadian media and telecommunications, and changes the ownership structure of The Globe and Mail.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• O’Brien: Campaign against Craigslist reaches absurd heights

  In the end, Craigslist did the only sensible thing it could do to end the controversy over its adult services ads by shutting them down, as critics demanded. And even that turned out not to be enough to silence the opportunistic campaign against the online classifieds site.

• US government can demand your cellphone data

  A US federal appeals court said that government agencies do not need a warrant showing probable cause under the Fourth Amendment to demand the mobile phone location records from carriers.

• ACLU sues over warrantless border laptop searches

  Citing the government’s own figures, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers claim about 6,500 persons had their electronic devices searched along the U.S. border since October 2008. In one instance, according to the lawsuit filed in New York, a computer laptop was seized from a New York man at the Canadian border and not returned for 11 days. The lawsuit seeks no monetary damages, but asks the court to order an end to the searches.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Playstation 3 Jailbreaking an Open Source of Controversy

  A little over a month ago a fellow IP Brief blogger reported on a very interesting decision handed down by the Librarian of Congress granting exemptions to the DCMA. The decision was triumphantly lauded by fair use advocates and not so happily received by certain others.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Eminem Wins Appeal Over Universal Music: iTunes Downloads Should Be Accounted Differently Than CD Sales

    Of course, Universal Music is downplaying the ruling, saying that it’s unique to Eminem’s contract, and that the company plans to fight the ruling.

  • Eminem case throws internet royalty universe into disarray

    Bottom line: This ruling takes an extremely complicated situation with a lot of moving parts and throws in some brand new complications.

  • European police in pirate raids

    Police on Wednesday arrested 10 people in a series of raids across Europe designed to crack down on file-sharing.

  • Coppers bring down international piracy ring

    According to the Associated Press, the ten were arrested in raids across Europe against hackers who put illegal copies of movies and television series on the Internet.

  • ACTA

    • Secret copyright treaty: USA caves on border laptop/phone/MP3 player searches for copyright infringement

      Michael Geist writes in with more analysis of the recently leaked draft of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret treaty being negotiated among rich countries whose entertainment lobbyists have decided that the United Nations is too open and balanced to be used for future copyright negotiations.

    • Europarliament wants in on ACTA – or else…

      The European Parliament has stated in clear terms that it wants to be involved in the further negotiations on the anti counterfeiting and piracy agreement ACTA. Otherwise, the Parliament feels forced to send the years long negotiations to the trash with a veto.

    • Talks on anti-counterfeiting agreement must be more transparent, say MEPs

      MEPs have called for more transparency in the ongoing negotiations for a global anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) and have asked the Commission to make all related documents public. Parliament insists that ACTA should not restrict access to legal, affordable and safe medicines.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Biometric Hardware with Linux and GPL violations

So I had the chance to watch one of the biometrics terminal boot. What was my surprise when I see on the small LCD a Penguin and the word LINUX.

Well this product is made by ZK-USA, and consulting their site there is some reference to Linux OS.

I didn’t had access to the documentation in box but I can’t see anything on their website related to GPL. I’m no specialist at GPL, but I will go deep on this tomorrow, related to the papers that came with the hardware to see if they are violating GPL or not.

Desktop

• Don’t Waste Money on a New Computer for College

  Heading off to college? Here’s my suggestion: buy a used laptop from Craigslist and install Ubuntu onto it. Seriously.

• Is Linux-on-the-desktop already mainstream?

  Best estimates, according to Martin, is that Linux has a share roughly equal to that of MacOSX; which is certainly not a slouch on the desktop/laptop market.

  Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, people decried the fact that Linux wasn’t mainstream – it’s clear that today, it certainly is. A minority, yes, but a mainstream minority – Linux is not in the same category as, say, IBM AIX. So if you wanted to know “when Linux would be mainstream on the desktop,” the answer is probably “around 2009.”

Kernel Space

• Some numbers and thoughts on the stable kernels

  Much attention goes toward mainline kernel releases, but relatively few users are actually running those kernels. Instead, they run kernels provided by their distributors, and those kernels, in turn, are based off the stable kernel series. The practice of releasing stable kernels has been going for well over five years now, so perhaps it’s time to look back at how it has been going.

  [...]

  A couple of conclusions immediately jump out of the table above. The first is that the number of fixes going into stable updates has clearly increased over time. From this one might conclude that our kernel releases have steadily been getting buggier. That is hard to measure, but one should bear in mind that there is another important factor at work here: the kernel developers are simply directing more fixes toward the stable tree. Far more developers are looking at patches with stable updates in mind, and suggestions that a patch should be sent in that direction are quite common. So far fewer patches fall through the cracks than they did in the early days.

• The kernel column #91 by Jon Masters

  Linux 2.6.35 was finally released last month after what can only be described as a (comparatively) mundane development cycle. With the high drama of the previous cycle, that was hardly very difficult to achieve. Sure, there were the typical Linus rants of the month (the main one focused on Linus’s dislike of the ‘defconfig’ files that he sees as cluttering up the kernel tree with tens of thousands of lines of reference configuration files that could live elsewhere – like on the websites for the various supported architectures that create them) and there were a few harsh words for one of the C library maintainers. But there was no giant flame war related to graphics, or security modules, nor calls of protest at Linus’s ever ongoing effort to herd the developers into a focus on stability and regression-fighting prior to release. It was, in short, a rather sleepy summer month in which it seemed people were often busy being away on vacation or being at one of the usual round of conference events. I myself managed both of these things to a greater or lesser extent, and I was grateful for a little less mailing list traffic to catch up on.

• Graphics Stack

  • X server 1.10 development cycle

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Shotwell 0.7.2 Released, How to Install Shotwell 0.7.2 in Ubuntu Lucid, Maverick

  • Manage Mail Server Connections

  • G’MIC: More Than 190 Image Filters And Effects For GIMP

  • MirrorBrain – Download Redirector and generates Metalinks, Torrents and crypto-hashes

  • Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Mandriva 2010.1 Spring (LAMP)

  • Exercising Multi-core

  • Porting Perl To Python

  • Book review – Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macros

  • Qmail OpenLdap On Ubuntu

• Games

  • I frag better than you, and I do it in Linux*

    West’s talk described how gamers, specifically Linux gamers, can give back to the Linux community first by appealing to those who don’t know that gaming on Linux is an option.

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Student project opportunity: MeeGo-based Fedora Spin (Marketing and Design help needed)

      Crossposting to the Teaching Open Source planet in order to see if any marketing/branding students might be interested in this as a fascinating capstone/case-study. From an email by Paul Frields to the Fedora Marketing list (italics) with my annotations for students inline.

• Debian Family

  • Debian with a Hint of Mint: Linux Mint Ships Debian-based Distro

    Yes, the rumors are true. Linux Mint has been working on a Debian-based distro (as opposed to Ubuntu-based) and it’s out for your testing pleasure. If Linux Mint’s standard approach has you yearning for more adventure, the Debian edition might be what you’re looking for.

Devices/Embedded

• TI tip multi-platform ARM Cortex A15 “Eagle” mobile devices

  As Carlson points out, that sort of virtualization isn’t particularly new; earlier this week, VirtualLogix demonstrated Android 2.2, Chrome OS and Ubuntu Linux all running simultaneously on a Texas Instruments OMAP Blaze developer device (pictured above).

• Phones

  • Android

    • Spam Trends and Android

    • Dell Streak Gets Android 2.1 Update

      Dell’s just released monster of a phone (it’s also a tablet) Streak was famous for running an ancient version of Android OS (1.6). Dell had promised an update to Froyo soon after the launch.

    • Early Android 2.2 Build for Acer Liquid Leaked

    • Best Buy Offering G2 Pre-Sales NOW

    • Froyo on 28% of Android Devices; 2.x Over 70%

      The Android Platform Versions page has been updated yet again, only this time, Froyo (Android 2.2) is holding a large 28.7% slice of the pie. Granted, Eclair (Android 2.1) still clings to a decent lead with 41.7%, but Froyo is creeping up there. Following Froyo is Donut (1.6), with 17.5%, as Cupcake (1.5) rounds out the pack with a mere 12%. This is a huge change compared to a month ago, when Froyo only had 4.5% and Eclair led the pack with a commanding 59.7%.

    • T-Mobile’s Android 2.2 phone launches on 4G-like HSPA+ network

      T-Mobile USA announced an HTC-manufactured heir to its original G1 Android phone, touted as the first handset to support the company’s new 4G-like HSPA+ network. The T-Mobile G2 runs Android 2.2 on a new 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7230 processor, and offers 4GB internal and 8GB external flash, dual cameras, and a 3.7-inch screen with a hinge-slider QWERTY keyboard.

• Tablets

  • Motorola MZ600 Tablet Appears in Verizon Inventory

    It’s almost a certainty that the Moto tablet will end up with some sort of Droid branding as well. Whether it be DroidPad or DroidTab or something entirely different, we can’t see VZW missing out on the built-in marketing for the Droid line giving a big boost for a new tablet. In fact, even though leaks suggest the Galaxy Tab from Samsung will hit the carrier, I wouldn’t be surprised if that tablet is delayed until after the launch of this Motorola device in the same way the Fascinate was held off until after the release of the Droid X and Droid 2.

An algorithm for automated closure during assembly

Conclusions: The algorithm is useful for small-genome automated finishing projects. Our implementation is available as open-source from http://wgs-assembler.sourceforge.net under the GNU Public License.

Web Browsers

• Chrome’s and Firefox’s Plans to Unseat IE

  Mozilla, on the other hand, has limited itself to reaching “near or even to” Chrome 5 with respect to JavaScript performance for its next version of Firefox. Still in beta, Firefox 4 is within the 20 percent target performance of Chrome 5, which would make it much more than 20 percent slower than Chrome 6.

Oracle

• Is VirtualBox on the same path as other Sun software?

  OK, truth be told, Sun didn’t always commit to a consistent release cycle either. What frustrates me though is that the latest version of 3.2.8 has brought with it numerous bugs for Linux. One of which involves the corruption of saved states and the other involves general usability in the main application window. None of which I had seen when Sun directed the application’s development.

Education

• Free Software in Education

Licensing

• Two Thank-Yous

  Secondly, I need to thank my colleague Chris DiBona. Two years ago, I gave him quite a hard time that Google prohibited hosting of AGPLv3′d projects on its FLOSS Project Hosting site. The interesting part of our debate was that Chris argued that license proliferation was the reason to prohibit AGPLv3. I argued at the time that Google simply opposed AGPLv3 because many parts of Google’s business model rely on the fact that the GPL behaves in practice somewhat like permissive licenses when deployed in a web services environment.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Hardware

  • RepRap repraps RepRap electronics

    Several people are starting to work on having RepRap make electronics. This includes, of course, making its own circuitry. For example, I’m pleased to say that this blog post itself is rather eclipsed by Johnny Russell’s beautifully neat Arduino Mega Shield made in a RepRap here.

  • Robotic Software Platform Behind Projects Like Segway RMP, Lego Mindstorm Going Open Source

    Yet another important project is going open source. This time, it is the popular robotic software platform called Urbi. Widely popular robotic projects like Segway RMP, Lego Mindstorm, Aldebaran Nao etc. runs on Urbi robotic software platform.

Standards/Consortia

• Digitally signed documents an ODF1..2 Feature in Freoffice

  This work was done by Sugnan Prabhu with a helping hand from Jos Vandenoever in a very time frame of 2.5 weeks this work was completely flawlessly !! Great Job Sugnan and Jos !!

Yahoo claims invention of a Google feature?

Most people by now will have experienced the live search feature Google is debuting. That aside (and we can look forward to the new ”innovation” Bing offers as a response), its being reported that Google instant was invented in 2005 by an ex-Yahoo product manager.

GoDaddy.com Goes on the Auction Block

GoDaddy.com, the closely held website that registers Internet domain names, has put itself up for sale in an auction that could fetch more than $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

[...]

In addition to registering domain names, GoDaddy.com sells e-commerce, security and other services to people and businesses looking to manage their online presence. The company posted revenue between $750 million and $800 million in 2009, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

[..]

Sarah Palin’s connection with her audience is complete. People who admire her believe she is just like them, and this conviction seems to satisfy their curiosity about the objective facts of her life. Those whose curiosity has not been satisfied have their work cut out for them. Palin has been a national figure for barely two years—John McCain selected her as his running mate in August 2008. Her on-the-record statements about herself amount to a litany of untruths and half-truths. With few exceptions—mostly Palin antagonists in journalism and politics whose beefs with her have long been out in the open—virtually no one who knows Palin well is willing to talk about her on the record, whether because they are loyal and want to protect her (a small and shrinking number), or because they expect her prominence to grow and intend to keep their options open, or because they fear she will exact revenge, as she has been known to do.

To The Governor and President: Fulfill The Purpose (Part I)

But until we understand that college is not and never has been about job-training (except for certain fields, such as medicine and law), we’ll never be able to help college or their students to cope with the changing society and economy. In particular, we won’t be able to help students and prospective students avoid excessive debt in the pursuit of higher incomes that they will probably never experience.

To The Governor and President: Fulfill The Purpose (Part II)

Now we need to discuss the K-12 education system. It makes sense that fixing the collegiate system cannot be completed until we are ready to tackle the compulsory Kindergarten through twelfth grade system’s problems.

Security/Aggression

• US soldiers ‘killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies’

  Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

• Deported Iraqi asylum seekers say they were beaten and forced off plane

• Paris crèche to monitor children by putting tracking chips in clothing

  With its generous benefits and subsidised facilities, France’s childcare system is one of the most admired in the world. But psychologists and unions were up in arms today over proposals they believe would turn crèches into “Big Brother-style” surveillance zones.

  From next year, a crèche in Paris is planning to introduce a system to monitor children’s movements using tracking chips in their clothing. The centre, understood to be the first in Europe to use the technology, hopes the measure will enhance the safety of its children.

• 5 Worries Parents Should Drop, And 5 They Shouldn’t

  Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

  1. Kidnapping
  2. School snipers
  3. Terrorists
  4. Dangerous strangers
  5. Drugs

  But how do children really get hurt or killed?

  1. Car accidents
  2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
  3. Abuse
  4. Suicide
  5. Drowning

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Gulf oil spill: An industry at war with itself

  It is not often we are given a very public – and highly critical – insight into an industry as private as oil. This is a sector that is used to secrecy, and one before which many governments, never mind members of the public, are forced to bend the knee.

  Big Oil is used to waving away questions about the way it operates with the assuring mantra that “safety always comes first”, but the blowout on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last April blew away some of the mystique.

• Gulf oil spill to blame for oily blobs in vital Gulf sea life?

  Researchers found orange blobs in blue crab larvae in May. The discovery is part of a push to understand what effect the Gulf oil spill is having on the foundations of the Gulf food chain.

• BP internal investigation into Gulf oil spill mostly points finger at others

• EXCLUSIVE: Tests find sickened family has 50.3 ppm of Corexit’s 2-butoxyethanol in swimming pool — JUST ONE HOUR NORTH OF TAMPA (lab report included)

  “Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

• How Has It Come to This?

  Just after leaving the boat launch, we pass a shrimper coming back in.

  “How did you do out there?” Craig asks him. “Nothing. Nothing at all,” the despondent fisherman replies. “How much do you usually catch?” Craig asks. “Hundreds of pounds, sometimes a thousand pounds,” comes the reply.

• Wind power’s growth is blowing Europe toward green goals

  Europe is installing more wind power capacity than any other form of energy, and wind is leading the way to making the continent’s electricity generation 100% renewable by 2050

Finance

• Revenue and Customs boss says he need not apologise

  The UK’s top tax man has refused to apologise after taking the wrong amount of tax from six million people.

  Dave Hartnett, Permanent Secretary at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), claimed media stories of blunders and IT failures were wrong.

• Everyone May Hate Goldman Sachs, But Goldman Still Loves Itself

  In an online survey of employees at 80 financial companies, conducted by consulting site Vault.com, Goldman Sachs came in as the No. 1 best place to work. Blackstone came in second, and rival JPMorgan came in third. “Employees at the firm noted that — the media attacks aside — Goldman is still a great place to work, and that’s reflected in its No. 1 ranking,” Derek Loosvelt, the finance editor for Vault, told the Post.

• Goldman’s still got it, at least on Wall Street

  That had an obvious effect on public perception of the company – with opinion surveys showing that Goldman had a worse reputation even than scandal-plagued BP and Toyota.

• Michael Lewis: World would be better ‘without Goldman Sachs’

• Goldman’s hedge fund factory winding down

  As Goldman Sachs Group winds down its Principal Strategies group, the firm will be shutting a business that’s produced some of the most successful hedge fund managers in the world.

• Goldman Sachs Said to Be Fined by U.K. Financial Regulator

  The U.K. regulator found that Goldman Sachs failed to notify it about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation of the New York-based firm’s Abacus transaction and of employee Fabrice Tourre’s role in it, according to the person, who spoke anonymously because the penalty hasn’t yet been made public.

• Goldman Sachs Hit With U.K. Fine

• Goldman Sachs fined £20m by FSA

• Goldman Sachs Shifts Majority Of Political Contributions To Republicans

  In the latest example of former Obama supporters on Wall Street turning against the administration, Goldman Sachs has pledged more money to Republicans than to Democrats in this year’s election cycle. It’s the first time the firm has leaned Republican in at least 20 years. (Hat tip to The Street)

  Data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that in every election since 1990 (when the group started keeping records), Goldman has given most of its money to Democrats. This year, though, Republicans got 54 percent of its campaign money, up from 26 percent in 2006. With about $1.7 million in total funds (to Republicans and Democrats combined) donated so far, Goldman is, as usual, leading the Wall Street pack. Morgan

• Goldman Leans Republican

  Data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) shows Goldman giving more money to Republicans than Democrats for the first time since it began keeping records back in 1990.

  During that 20-year time period covering 11 election cycles, Goldman has donated nearly $21 million to Democrats, nearly double the $12 million it has handed out to Republicans.

• Politico: Is a Goldman Sachs consultant likely to replace Rahm?

  Now that the rumor of Rahm Emanuel leaving the White House has reached full flower, come the buds of the follow-on rumor — who will replace him as Obama’s chief of staff?

  Politico suggest that Thomas Donilon is the “most likely candidate” and Huff Post agrees sufficiently to write a story with that as the lead.

  Are they sniffing each other’s fumes, or does somebody know something? I guess we’ll find out.

• Glaxo Nabs Goldman’s Half-Trillion-Pound Deal Maker

• Goldman Sachs M&A chief to join GSK as CFO

• Goldman Sachs Economist O’Neill Named Asset Management Chairman

  O’Neill, 53, will remain in London and report to Ed Forst and Tim O’Neill, global co-heads of Goldman Sachs’s investment management division, the New York-based firm said today in an e- mailed statement. The appointment to Goldman Sachs Asset Management, or GSAM, is subject to U.K. regulatory approval, the firm said.

• The privateers of education – How banks collude with the government to inflate college costs. Student loan debt now surpasses total credit card debt.

  One of the more ominous statistics coming from this recession is that student loan debt has now surpassed total credit card debt in the United States. The reason for this is based on the deep impact of the recession. Credit card debt peak at $975 billion back in September of 2008 and is now down to $826 billion.

  [...]

  The student loan market has enriched a few while pushing on the inflated cost of education to the working and middle class of the country. Clearly people can’t afford the cost of education as it stands and thus go into massive debt (just like housing). As usual, this is part of a bigger theme of squeezing out the middle class from an elite and increasingly desperate banking class. The banking class is bent on making money through usury rates and basically skimming money off people via non-productive means. Plus, they are lending taxpayer backed money. There is a specific reason why college costs have gone up (and are still going up) even though the working and middle class are getting poorer.

  [...]

  Banks have dumped trillions of dollars of bad housing debt onto the taxpayers and have been pushing student loan debt onto the taxpayer as well for years. Al Lord and Tim Fitzpatrick, both Sallie Mae big names have pulled in over $400 million over the last decade. Glad that the new mission of education is now paving the way for subsidizing the salaries of big financial lenders.

• Fidel Castro says his economic system is failing

  It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us any more.”

• Since the Start of the Great Recession, More Children Raised by Grandparents

  One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• The US has a way to shut down Wikileaks, the infamous SDN list

  You may not know what the SDN list (Specially Designated Nationals) is but we´ll explain. It’s the US version of Iran and Chinas state censorship machine. Initially created with good intent to inform the world (and US entities, persons) of Terrorists, Rogue regimes and other wrongdoers. It slowly converted into a censorship list to block free speech on the Internet. You see, by adding a website to the list the U.S authorities could then evoke a closure order on the registrar where the domain is registered. Of course, if it’s a .com or .org then the US can evoke the said closure order anywhere in the world via ICANN.

• Judge: Movie Studios Can Subpoena Internet Users’ Names, Data In File-Sharing Cases

  A federal judge on Friday allowed the holder of a movie copyright to subpoena the names of people accused of illegally downloading and distributing a film over the Internet.

  Courts have held that Internet subscribers do not have an expectation of privacy once they convey subscriber information to their Internet service providers, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled.

• Bahrain: Ali Abdulemam, blogger and Global Voices contributor arrested

  Ali Abdulemam, a leading Bahraini blogger and Global Voices Advocacy author, was arrested earlier today by the Bahraini authorities for allegedly spreading “false news” on BahrainOnline.org portal, one of the most popular pro-democracy outlets in Bahrain, amidst the worst sectarian crackdown by the government in years, and accusations of a supposed “terror network” involving several political and human rights activists.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

  The availability of digital channels for media distribution has raised several important questions for marketers, notably whether digital distribution channels will cannibalize physical sales and whether legitimate digital distribution channels will dissuade consumers from using (illegitimate) digital piracy channels. We address these two questions using the removal of NBC content from Apple’s iTunes store in December 2007, and its restoration in September 2008, as natural shocks to the supply of legitimate digital content, and analyzing its impact on demand through BitTorrent piracy channels and the Amazon.com DVD store.

• Evidence Shows You Can, In Fact, ‘Compete’ With ‘Free’

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Fanatical Linux Fanboys == Fake Linux Users?

A comic strip from Mostly Harmful got me thinking, how many are you so-called Linux fanboys actually use GNU/Linux operating system? Do you own a Windows box? or even Apple Mac OS X? How many are you, Linux advocates use GNU/Linux in your daily lives? Claiming that Linux is great and hating every other operating systems, while still (in secret) using them by choice?

Windows vs Ubuntu Release Cycle

Most people fall into one of the following for their operating system upgrades:

* Upgrade to New Release Every 6 monthsish (Fedora isn’t always on time)
* Upgrade to a new LTS every two years
* Upgrade to a new Windows version… Well, whenever the next one comes out!
* Upgrade Windows? Pff, XP is support till 2020!
* Upgrade your operating system? I use a rolling release distro!

Desktop

• Counter-Debunking the 1% Myth

  I can’t argue with that. It’s also a really impressive number; the number for total Linux desktop sales (that includes desktops, laptops, and netbooks) will obviously be higher — I don’t know by how much, but the total number is certainly at least 6%.

Server

• Linux In The Data Center: How Does It Fit?

  We can recommend Ubuntu for SMB, Novell/SuSE for SMB and workgroups in larger enterprises, and Red Hat for larger enterprises.

Audiocasts/Shows

• FLOSS Weekly 134: SugarLabs

  The Sugar Learning Platform is a computer environment designed to help children from 5 to 12 years of age learn together through rich-media expression.

  Guest: Walter Bender for sugarlabs.org

• Episode 145: Pictures at an Exhibition

Kernel Space

• Linux 2.4.37.10 + 2.4 EOL plans

  Some of you have noticed that the last update was released 7 months ago. This is long, but these days, very few of the issues reported on 2.6 also affect 2.4, so basically the number of bug reports on 2.4 fades out quite fast. Also, I generally prefer not to release a kernel just for a single non-critical patch, especially if we consider that 2.4 users generally wait a few weeks to a few months before upgrading. Since quite a bunch of fixes started to pile up, I thought it was time to release a new one.

• Linux backlight control

  Right now, if there’s an ACPI backlight interface then that’s usually the only thing we’ll show you. We can do that because we can identify if there’s an ACPI backlight interface when we parse the ACPI tables at the start of booting, and that information can be registered before we start setting up any other backlights. The problem comes when we have no ACPI backlight interface. We don’t have any idea whether there’s a platform mechanism until a platform driver loads, which could be at any time. As a result, we’ve been reluctant to expose GPU-level backlight control because doing so would often give you two separate backlight controls and no indication as to which should be used. Userspace doesn’t really have a way to make that decision either, so everyone ends up unhappy.

• Behind the open source turnaround at Broadcom

  Times have changed, and you’ll get many of the details at our newest blog product, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ Networking.

  Not only is Broadcom being forthcoming with its downstream suppliers, but it has released Linux drivers for its most popular WiFi chips. It’s a big Biden deal.

• Graphics Stack

  • Did Hell Just Freeze Over? Here’s Evergreen On Gallium3D!

    With this Git commit is initial Evergreen support in the R600g Gallium3D driver. This 5,000+ line patch adds the necessary shader opcodes, assembler support (sans ARL), uses constant buffers, adds interp instructions in the fragment shader, supports all Evergreen hardware states, and has Evergreen PM4 support. With this patch, the R600g driver is now at the glxgears milestone with ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards.

  • X.Org Server 1.10 Release Plans; Drivers May Still Go In

    With X.Org Server 1.10, as talked about before, the X stack may be de-modularized to the point that X drivers would be merged back into the X.Org Server. At least the protocol headers should be merged into a single package and the input drivers are likely to be moved into the X Server too, but moving back in the GPU drivers is a matter that’s still hotly debated and will certainly be talked about at the X Developers’ Summit. At this point Keith is asking, “Anyone want to volunteer to have “their” driver get merged into the server for 1.10?” Keith’s interest in moving the drivers back into the server is so that they can be re-factored so that mode-setting code can be dropped for hardware where there’s already kernel mode-setting support, etc.

Applications

• Best 3D graphics software Linux

• Celestia: Travel Our Universe in 3-D On Your GNU/Linux Desktop

  I got to “warp” away from Earth at the speed of light on my Fedora laptop yesterday thanks to the Celestia 3D universe simulator. This cool program allows you to orbit Earth and visit any object in our solar system, including the Sun. I HAVE TO post a Youtube tutorial demonstrating the power of Celestia soon. I had a great deal of fun producing my first Youtube tutorial, a lesson on Code::Blocks and C++, so I can’t wait to do the next one.

• How the command line made my life a little easier, part 2

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to Run a Projector Remotely with GNU/Linux

  • Rescuing Difficult Panoramas on Linux, Hugin part 2

  • Linux Tip: What is user slaying?

  • [How To]: Limit Download Speed For Apt Command Using Terminal

  • Access Google Docs in Ubuntu desktop via Nautilus File browser

  • Very small Linux tip – Create directory trees in one command

  • Unix How-To: Quotes to Live By

  • REE, Passenger and Rails on Ubuntu

  • Linux commands for OpenOffice applications

  • Learn To Use The Ubuntu Command Line With CLIcompanion

  • Debugging shared library problems: a real-world example

  • Using Exim4 to send Messages through GMail

  • [SOLVED] NO_PUBKEY 61E091672E206FF0

  • Creating Custom Man Pages

  • How to Backup Linux? 15 rsync Command Examples

  • vifm: Fast, lightweight, old school file manager

  • Using ffmeg to batch convert cd audio files to mp3

  • Configure Google Chrome / Chromium “Incognito Mode” as default on Linux

  • Nautilus (Embedded) Terminal Gets Keyboard Shortcuts To Show / Hide The Terminal

  • Are we done with LDFLAGS?

  • How the command line made my life a little easier

  • the art of blurring the shadow

  • Book review – Learn OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Macros

  • 6 Perl File Handle Examples to Open, Read, and Write File

    In this article, let us discuss how to manipulate the file handlers in Perl.

  • Tar tips and uses

  • Grep Gzipped Log Files

  • How to Tell What Type of Memory Your Linux PC Has Installed

  • Awesome Hack: Hide Audio in a Simple Image

    Here is an interesting hack to impress your friends or satiate your inner geek. Or maybe you can send a secret love letter to that girl that you have been intending to approach for 3 month now. If she figures it out, she’s a keeper.

  • Install MS TrueType core fonts on Fedora 13 and 14

  • Nautilus Terminal Embeds A Terminal Into Nautilus (Dolphin Style)

  • G’MIC: More Than 190 Image Filters And Effects For GIMP

• Games

  • 13 tuxtastic Linux Games

    MyGaming thought it was high time to do another Linux compatible gaming round-up. A lot of these games support multiple platforms, and not just Linux, because Linux programmers are cool like that.

    Be sure to check out our previous Linux game round-up for a further list of Linux gaming goodness.

    The list below focuses mainly on free and open-source Linuxgames. Hopefully there is something for everyone, and some new titles readers haven’t explored before. Thanks to the MyGaming readers who pointed out some of these great titles.

  • Ripten Review: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

  • Wot I Think: Amnesia – The Dark Descent

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

  • Review: Amnesia – The Dark Descent

  • Comings and goings in the Linux gaming world

    There we go, my mid-year (plus two odd months) summary of 2010 news (and olds).

    Linux gaming scene is sure heating up. Emotionally speaking, the Humble Indie Bundle was the hallmark of Linux gaming in the first half of 2010. However, the most important thing from the technological and financial perspective is the Steam client for Linux. This is the real turning point that marks the beginning of a new era. You know you’re in the big league once gaming industry starts casting their eye toward you. That’s where the big money is.

    Steam will unleash a torrent of support for Linux. It’s a cycle really. There will be more games made or adapted for Linux. More people will start taking notice and make the free switch to an alternative operating system that offers the same if not higher quality and performance than Windows. Then, even more games will be made for Linux, drawing newer and bigger crowds. If the Client gets released, that is.

    But even if you’re less excited about the corporate takeover, you will like some of the gaming comes to your desktop: 0 A.D., Primal Carnage, all the fancy stuff by Unigine. Linux gaming is just getting started on a serious level, and we’re the lucky ones to be there when it’s happening. And you know what this means; I will keep on molesting you with reviews.

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • using configChanged() in your Plasma widgets

  • KDEPIM 4.4.6 Available

    Tarballs for kdepim-4.4.6 and kdepim-runtime-4.4.6 are now available from a mirror near you.

  • 5 Things I Miss From Linux When Using OSX

    I have been a Linux user for over 10 years. I have used it exclusively on my home systems since that time and although it was a struggle at the beginning, I haven’t had any desire to use any other operating system … until now. Recently I purchased a MacBook Pro. Principally because I like the hardware, and can put Linux on it. However, it has also given me the opportunity to use OSX. In fact I’ve been using OSX quite a lot – given I’ve paid for it, I want to really see how it works. However, in the course of using it, I’ve come across a number of features of Linux and the KDE desktop that I greatly miss.

• GTK/GNOME Desktop

  • GTK+ 2.90.7 Released, Drops DirectFB Support

    While GNOME 3.0 has been delayed to next March, the development releases towards version 3.0 of the GTK+ tool-kit continues in a steadfast manner. After the last GTK+ 3.0 snapshot a few weeks back that ported most of the GTK+ drawing to use Cairo, GTK+ 2.90.7 has been released.

Distributions

• 3 Visually-Pleasing Linux Distributions That Use Enlightenment

  Continuing the recent trend of highlighting lesser-known operating systems, this week we bring you three that should at least look good. As opposed to the usual GNOME or KDE window managers found on most Linux distributions, these have all chosen in favour of Enlightenment.

• Damn Vulnerable Linux

  Damn Vulnerable Linux – The most vulnerable and exploitable operating system ever!

  Damn Vulnerable Linux is the most complete training environment for IT security with over 500.000 downloads. It includes all tools you need ready to go. Additionally tons of training material and exercises are included. Damn Vulnerable Linux works fine under Windows, Linux and Mac OSX using any virtual machine such as VMware, Qemu or KVM. You can let it run installed natively on a standard PC or even boot it from USB.

• Reviews

  • Chakra Linux – Distro Review

    Even though Chakra is a very young distribution, it has quickly become my favorite non-Ubuntu based distro. I think we will see some great things from the Chakra team before a 1.0 release of the distribution. This is definitely one worth trying if you are looking for a new distro the play around with.

• PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

  • Which Mandriva is in trouble ?

    I think there are 2 scenarios there: the community is strong enough to reorganize itself, find new hosting for developing the distro, enough contributors to maintain packages, and continue to develop the real value add of Mandriva, the distro: urpmi, msec, auto-inst, draktools, KDE integration, PLF, … all what makes this distrubtion speial to its users. Is it really possible. Well I think I could give a bit more of my time to maintain some more packages and help at my level ontributing to improve it. It would also place it at a similar level to Debian, a pure open source distro, used and developed by its community. Why not, but again if ex-Mandriva firm employee do not have time to contribute anymore, big losses have to be expexted from their departure, and correct replacement will be long and hard to have. Also what about the innovation on the distro then.

    The other and sader scenario is that the new mandriva doesn’t help the community to reform (they host everything today), thus discouraging the good willness of current contributors, making them move to another distro of choice for their activities. I for one, clearly will look at latest fedora and debian version to see which one is the most appealing to me, and which community I may join (my past experience with these 2 doesn’t make that move a very happy one to me, feedbacks welcome here).

• Red Hat Family

  • Former trade group lobbyist will don Red Hat title

    Bohannon also has served on numerous federal government delegations to bilateral negotiations and multilateral bodies such as The Hague, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and the World Trade Organization.

  • Red Hat partners with the NCSU Entrepreneurship Initiative for idea center.

    N.C. State and Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) will unveil “The Phase I Garage,” a center designed to help students become entrepreneurs, next week.

    Red Hat, which maintains its global headquarters at NCSU’s Centennial Campus, is partnering with the NCSU Entrepreneurship Initiative on the facilty.

  • Fedora

    • Linux Desktops, Servers and the Future

      I think what we can take away with this for Fedora is that we should be focusing on a number of areas:

      1. Try and to the above to increase people using Fedora on the desktop (push fixes of infrastructure, make it easier to make more desktop applications).
      2. Make sure Fedora gets known as a great testbed for the server side. Get more people who use RHEL testing and working on stuff in fedora to improve things down the road on the server side in RHEL.
      3. Even though it’s not ideal in my mind, we should still position Fedora so it’s suited for running web applications (basically a webos/terminal) and a development env for smart phones and web applications.
      4. Try and do the first three things while still allowing all the other various ‘niche’ users to use and enjoy Fedora.

      Anyhow, I thought I would mention this given that the Fedora Board has been discussing Vision and other longer term plans. I think we should try and do what it takes to keep the desktop moving in a direction where it’s likely to expand, while still keeping track of the server and niche users (who we often seem to forget about).

• Debian Family

  • Linux Mint’s Debian Delight!

    The Linux Mint version of Debian also includes multimedia codecs, a backup tool, the excellent Mint menus, flash and a host of other things that aren’t in generic Debian. LMDE is essentially Debian on steroids; it provides a bunch of helpful usability enhancements.

    I tip my hat to the Linux Mint developers for this release; it’s a delightful addition to the world of desktop Linux.

  • Distro Hoppin`: Linux Mint Debian Edition

    I was expecting an Install only ISO, but the Mint team managed to offer us a Live environment, in which my computer happily booted. The experience was a smooth one, with no unpleasant surprises, so off I went to the “Install Linux Mint” icon. Here is where the differences start to show. After pressing next on the default English language, I had to select the timezone from this huge list. Goodbye auto-detection, goodbye pretty map… sigh. I kid, I kid, it’s not that bad, and I’m sure it will improve over time. The HDD-prepare step is also quite different and a bit less user-friendly than Ubuntu’s, but still doable even by a less-experienced user.

    [...]

    LMDE FTW?

    Certainly! Though a beginner might want to have a helping hand from a more experienced user during the installation process of the system itself and the proprietary drivers, once that’s out of the way, it’s pretty much the same smooth experience as it is with the main edition. That is if you’re luckier than I was with the sound server. The developers did warn that there are some rough edges to be expected and indeed they are. But, considering the fact that this is the first version of the Debian edition, the quality of this OS can only go up from this point, so, needless to say, I have high expectations for the future development of this experiment. If you like keeping your favorite applications up to date at all times, or if you simply hold a silly grudge against Ubuntu, go grab LMDE. Enjoy!

  • Linux Mint “Debian” Screenshots

    Linux Mint has made its name by adding visual polish and implementing Mint-specific tools on top of its Ubuntu base. Times and changing though as we now have something new from the Linux Mint team. This latest release from Linux Mint is the first to be based on Debian Linux. Another surprise is that Linux Mint 9 “Debian” is a rolling release. This means users won’t need to re-install to have the latest and greatest applications. Linux Mint 9 “Debian” features all of the tools that make regular Linux Mint great including the Mint Backup tool, Mint Menu and more. Visit the official release announcement for more info on this release or buy Linux Mint Debian on DVD in our shopping cart.

  • Mint 10 Preview: Menu Search Engines

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Fluendo DVD Player For Sale in Ubuntu 10.10

      Now that Fluendo’s DVD Player has become the first for-purchase item in the Software Center, will we see other Fluendo applications following suit? We can’t know for sure, but without getting into specifics, Fluendo representatives have stated that “we can imagine that other products, like the Fluendo codec pack which already is in the Ubuntu Software center, will join the list.”

    • The Ubuntu Tour Project Needs Your Help!

      Right now, they need contributers in the areas of Authors, Designers, Editors, Programmers, and (eventually) Translators, although Alex Lancey let me know that they’re primarily looking for Authors and PyGTK coders at the moment.

    • Magic Trackpad drivers land in Ubuntu Maverick and Upstream!

      If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll note that I’ve been spending some time adding Magic Trackpad functionality to the current Magic Mouse driver in the kernel. I’m pleased to report that the changes have landed both in Ubuntu and upstream in Jiri Kosina’s HID tree as it awaits merging into Linus’ tree. It will be available in Ubuntu 10.10 and hopefully in Linux 2.6.37.

    • Ubuntu Insurance?

      This idea popped up in a completely different conversation and I haven’t explored the full dynamics of the idea and how it would play out legally but:

      What if Ubuntu users paid into an insurance fund. The fund’s aim would be to record the primary software and hardware used by the customer and to employ programmers and QA people to ensure that this software and hardware works in the next release and with critical updates?

    • More Eyecandy On Its Way For Ubuntu 10.10 Installer Slideshow

      Ubuntu 10.10 Installer is going through massive changes. Canonical is leaving no stones unturned and now even the installer slideshow is getting fair amount of attention. Installer slideshow was introduced during the Ubuntu Lucid release and Canonical aims to bring more polish and simplicity to the slideshow feature.

    • DEB Packages Now Open With Ubuntu Software Center by Default in Ubuntu 10.10

      Canonical makes another small yet significant change in Ubuntu 10.10. Downloaded DEB packages will no longer open with GDebi package installer by default, instead it opens with Ubuntu Software Center!

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Kubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Beta Screenshots Gallery

        Kubuntu will release version 10.10, the Maverick Meerkat, in October 2010. With this Beta pre-release, we are introducing some new and interesting things in preparation for the next official version of Kubuntu.

Devices/Embedded

• Sony’s new eBook readers: first-look review

• Qnap puts Intel’s dual core Atom chip into a NAS box

  Qnap made its name with highly configurable NAS setups that allowed users to install their own Linux distribution, essentially creating a small but capable server.

• Tanner EDA Tools Now on Linux

  Linux is a mainstream OS used by IC designers worldwide so Tanner EDA has good timing in offering a full-flow Analog IC Design Suite on Linux. Tanner tools started out on Microsoft Windows and now you can choose to use Linux as well. This reminds me of the same OS transition that Viewlogic went through in the 90’s.

• Hackable, Linux-based flying drone can be controlled by smartphone

• Phones

  • Do Users Care Much About Mobile Operating Systems?

    Google’s Android initiative likewise is part of Google’s awareness that the mobile market is strategic and crucial for its future relevance.

    Nokia remains the global smartphone market share leader but has seen its share slip as its Symbian (News – Alert) platform struggles to deliver an experience on par with Apple and other competitors. It invested in an entirely new Linux-based platform, called Maemo, for its high-end devices, and it has now merged this platform withIntel’s ( News – Alert) Linux-based Moblin platform to produce MeeGo.

    HP’s acquisition of Palm gives it entry into the smartphone business as well, with Palm’s webOS seen as key to creating value around HP mobile devices through applications.

  • Dumb Trojan Trying To Attack Android Phones

    Unlike ‘secure by obscurity’ operating systems like Windows, this trojan needs your ‘permission’ to download and then install. A smartphone can only be infected if the user manually installs the application. Users of smartphones running Android are asked to download the pornplayer.apk application from an infected webpage in order to view adult content videos. The installation file is only 16.4 KB and during installation the Trojan seeks the user’s consent to send SMS messages – a requirement that a media player is very unlikely to need.

  • Android

    • Android Democratizes Apple’s Communist Regimen

      It’s good news that strong competition from Android has forced Apple to soften its communist/dictatorial approach.

    • An Instructive Look Back At Android’s Meteoric Rise

      Originally released at the very end of 2007 and gaining some mention as 2008 began, Android qualified as little more than an experiment from Google in 2008, although there was an early hardware commitment from HTC, which continues to make many Android handsets. As 2009 started to unfold, as late as March of that year, Android still had very little momentum.

    • Android Will Be Number 2 Mobile Operating System Worldwide by Year-End

• Sub-notebooks

  • The HP Mini 110 Netbook: Almost One Year Later

    Why write about a discontinued netbook now? Well, for one HP has a very similar model (the Mini 210) for sale. Second, there is always the used market. Finally, I’ve actually used the thing long enough to write in an informed way. It’s a pity HP no longer offers Linux preloaded. If they did I would recommend their netbooks to anyone.

• Tablets

  • Google Hints at New Directions for Android Tablets

    While most of what we “know” about Android-for-tablets operating systems is shrouded in rumor, we are fairly certain that the fork will begin with Gingerbread, a.k.a. Android 3.0, which may be released as soon as this fall. And Honeycomb is thought to be the next iteration of the same fork.

  • Huge Dual-Screen Kno Tablet Launching This Year

    Kno runs on a special version of Linux, but the touchscreen interface looks very similar to those seen in iPhones and Android devices, just with far more screen real estate. The company wants to have an app store for the device and also focus on providing college textbooks through it. While the Kno tablet is larger than any text book, the added space will be perfect for writing notes and drawing diagrams.

Forking is a Feature

While Linus Torvalds is best known as the creator of Linux, it’s one of his more geeky creations, and the social implications of its design, that may well end up being his greatest legacy. Because Linus has, in just a few short years, changed the social dynamic around forking, turning the idea of multiple versions of a work from a cultural weakness into a cultural strength. Perhaps the technologies that let us easily collaborate together online have finally matured enough to let our work reflect the reality that some problems are better solved with lots of different efforts instead of one committee-built compromise.

[...]

Moving forward, there are a lot more lessons we can learn if we build our social tools with the assumption that no one version of any document, app, or narrative needs to be the definitive one. We might even make our software, and our communities, more inclusive if we embrace the forking ourselves.

Meet the New Kingmakers: Same as the Old Kingmakers

The gist of the session comes in the text on slide 3: “When it comes to Enterprise IT adoption, Open Source Has ‘Crossed the Chasm’.” In support of this conclusion, Hammond employs a dizzying array of quantitative metrics derived from three surveys; two from Forrester (Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q408/09 / Dr. Dobbs Developer Technographics Q309) and one from the Eclipse Foundation (2009/2010 Eclipse Community Survey). Besides the metrics, there are models (the software “iron triangle”) explaining mechanisms of OSS adoption, case studies of current users and best practices for would be users. While I might quibble with bits and pieces of the analysis, on balance it’s both thorough and excellent.

Does the Robotics Arena Need A Standards Body?

The open source robotics arena has been steadily building steam for some time, and, recently, the Affero GPL 3.0 version of Urbi arrived. Urbi powers many robotic and pseudo-robotic devices, including the Segway RMP and Lego Mindstorm. Urbi is hardly the only open source robotics platform out there showing signs of promise, though, and we’ve covered a number of the others being developed all around the globe.

Liferay Portal 6 Enterprise Edition Raises the Bar for Enterprise Portals

If Google Apps isn’t cutting it for your business needs but you don’t want to get in over your head trying to create a collaboration system on your own, let Liferay step in and do the heavy lifting, It’s an open source content management system and collaboration tool built for use in the enterprise environment. The company launched a new version this week of its portal framework this week and it’s definitely worth checking out to see why our own Jon Buys “can’t recommend [it] enough.”

Project Cauã: John “Maddog” Hall on creating a sustainable network of entrepreneurs from system administrators in Brazil

I’ve been hearing John “Maddog” Hall talk about Project Cauã for a while now, and I’ve seen mention of it here and there. But his Ohio LinuxFest keynote, “Project Cauã: Creating Sustainable Computing Jobs in the Developing World,” was the first time I got to hear a full description of the plan. In case you haven’t had a chance to read about it either, here’s the plan he outlined.

Blender 2.5 Smoke Sim: Save some time when going HiRes

Adopting Open-Source Applications

The use of OSS (open-source software) in the enterprise has come a long way since the days when Linux and other OSS applications were associated with long-haired “evangelists” and were far removed from the mainstream. Many OSS solutions have evolved into reliable, stable, and secure alternatives to commercial applications that can also offer significant reductions in licensing costs.

Contribute to the OSS Watch National Survey 2010

Here at OSS Watch we have just started our National Software Survey for 2010 and we are in the data collecting phase. Everybody active in Higher or Further Education in the UK is invited to take part. This survey, commissioned by JISC for the fourth time, will assess the state of software policies and usage in Further and Higher Education.

Open Source Licensing made easy for Italian Public Administrations

Open source licensing compliance will be at the center of the next conference of the “Focus Group Open Source” series, an initiative sponsored by IBM Italy to promote open source among Italian public administrations. (disclosure: IBM Italy is a client).

Events

• Ohio LinuxFest

• Ohio LinuxFest recap: Open marketing, not obscure marketing

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • 4 Beautiful Firefox Ads You Would Love to Watch

    Brand new Firefox 4.0 is on its final descent. Be it the introduction of awesome TabCandy feature or the new super fast “JaegerMonkey” JavaScript engine, Firefox 4.0 is all over the news for all the right reasons. I think this is the best time to introduce some cool Firefox commercials/videos. Take a look.

  • Mozilla Asks, ‘Are We Fast Yet?’

    The green line is Google V8, the red line is Apple Nitro, and the orange and black lines are Mozilla’s two engines, JaegerMonkey and TraceMonkey, respectively. The purple lines reflect Mozilla’s new approach of running the engines concurrently. As you can see, it speeds things up.

Oracle

• New Oracle Solaris Is Here

  Oracle Solaris is now developed, tested and supported as an integrated component of Oracle’s “applications-to-disk” technology stack, which includes continuous major platform testing, in addition to the Oracle Certification Environment, representing over 50,000 test use cases for every Oracle Solaris patch and platform released.

• Oracle and Solaris: What’s the Future?

  As for OpenSolaris and the whole idea of having an open source, cutting-edge version of an enterprise OS — like Red Hat has with Fedora and Novell has with OpenSUSE — well, that might be the way Red Hat and Novell like to develop their enterprise Linux OSes, but it’s not the way Oracle is used to developing its proprietary and highly profitable software offerings. Never has been, and probably never will be.

• Solaris alternative OpenIndiana to launch next week

  On next Tuesday 14th, the Illumos Foundation will reveal the details of OpenIndiana. OpenIndiana is to be a server or desktop operating system based on Illumos, the recently created fork of OpenSolaris. Project Lead, EveryCity’s Alisdair Lumsden said that, “this announcement will deliver the distribution the community has long sought after.”

• OpenIndiana – Another OpenSolaris Fork – Coming Next Week

• Licensing Change for Solaris 10 and Solaris Cluster

  Solaris 10, Oracle Solaris Cluster and the upcoming Oracle Solaris Express got a new license. The downloadable version is now licensed under the “Oracle Technology Network Developer License Terms
  Oracle Solaris, Oracle Solaris Cluster and Oracle Solaris Express” (Legalese: You have to read and interpret the license on your own before accepting it in the download process, my interpretation could be wrong and it’s just my personal interpretation. For an authoritative answer about licensing questions ask your Oracle Sales Rep).

CMS

• EdWeb 2.0 released as open source

  EdWeb 2.0 is now an open source CMS for Education that helps school districts maintain a web presence. When combined with an existing school district web site, EdWeb 2.0 helps to provide a more comprehensive solution compared to a district level web site by itself.

Healthcare

• Q&A: Gunnar Hellekson on open source adoption in government

  Open source software received a high-profile vote of confidence when WhiteHouse.gov chose to use Drupal as it’s web content management system. Agencies also warmed to open source solutions when the Defense Department released a 2009 memo dispelling some common misconceptions around open source software. And just a few months after being urged to embrace open source for its electronic health record system by an industry group, the Veterans Affairs Department says it’s investigating the possibility of using open source software for VistA.

Project Releases

• Phoronix Test Suite 2.8.1 Released

Government

• Open Source Helping To Avoid The Digital Black Hole

  Beyond the personal sphere this could have a huge impact in areas like astronomy, quantum physics or climatology. Specialists in these fields rely on the quantitative analysis of large data sets over a large period of time. For example in measuring human influence on global warming. It would be a disaster for humanity to lose access to this data and the knowledge that can be gained from it.

  Now much of the drama that used to exist around moving data from magnetic tapes to saving it on disks and then in the computing cloud on huge servers is gone.

Licensing

• License Evolution and Hosting Projects on Code.Google.Com

  The longer form of the reason why is that we never really liked turning away projects that were under real, compatible licenses like the zlib or other permissive licenses, nor did we really like turning away projects under licenses that serve a truly new function, like the AGPL. We also think that there were inconsistencies in how we handled multi-licensed projects (for instance: a project that is under an Apache license, but has a zlib component.)

  To rectify this, we decided to add an additional option to the license selector that would accommodate some flexibility around open source licenses. We hope you find it useful and look forward to seeing how you use the site!

Openness/Sharing

• Crowdsourcing peer review

  It is the greatest question in computer science. A negative answer would likely give a fundamentally deeper understanding of the nature of computation. And a positive answer would transform our world: Computers would acquire mind-boggling powers such as near-perfect translation, speech recognition and object identification; the hardest questions in mathematics would melt like butter under computation’s power; and current computer security methods would be as easy to crack as a TSA-approved suitcase lock.

• Matt Cohler Leads Funding for Scientist Social Network

  The promise of ResearchGATE is that it’s a social network that could help real work get done well. Madisch estimates that nearly 80 percent of research is unpublished, so it’s not shared with the broader scientific community. If the scientific process could be more open and shared, researchers could collaborate with each other, reduce redundancy, and improve their work. The site today contains 500,000 scientist profiles, along with 2,600 collaborative groups and an aggregated index of 35 million scientific articles. It’s already making money through a jobs board. Madisch said he doesn’t aim to disrupt the traditional research journal model, but rather to help scientists out in the formulation phase before they publish a study. He added that down the line he’d love for ResearchGATE to publish its own “journal of negative results” (which could actually be pretty awesome).

• What cars have the lowest cost of ownership?

• Open Access/Content

  • Open Your World recap: Stefan Lindegaard on Open Innovation Revolution

• Open Hardware

  • Open source plans for large scale sound system

    This copyleft hardware is called Qi Hardware (http://qi-hardware.com).

Programming

• PHP5 Alternatives for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

• Cloud-based source code host adds Git

  Currently in beta, Codesion Git Service allows for enterprise-friendly access to Git, with role-based controls and IP white-listing capabilities, Marion said.

  Git, he said, is becoming popular because of its association with Linux and its speed, said Marion. Git was authored by Linux founder Linus Torvalds, Marion noted.

• The first english Issue of PET (our Python Magazine) is out!

  Some articles:

  * PyAr, The History
  * from gc import commonsense – Finish Him!
  * Painless Concurrency: The multiprocessing Module
  * Introduction to Unit Testing with Python
  * Taint Mode in Python
  * Applied Dynamism
  * Decorating code (Part 1)
  * Web2Py for Everybody

• When “Enterprise” is a Synonym for Useless

Standards/Consortia

• It’s Time to Get Behind the Semantic Web

  The fact is that the Web has become so enormous that the likelihood of adopting any other NextGen set of standards that can make it so dramatically more useful is, in my opinion, very, very low. If we don’t get behind the W3C’s Semantic Web vision now, it may be a very long time indeed before we get another chance to make the Web of the future better than the one we rely upon for more and more every day.

• Microdata: HTML5’s Best-Kept Secret

  Given that HTML5 is still a draft at this point, why bother?

  Actually, despite its lack of publicity and HTML5’s still-incomplete status, microdata is already being used by Google, which has started adding information gleaned from microdata markup to its search result snippets.

What Was Alan Turing Really Like? (Post for SJ01)

Social Media Blackout

Eric Darr recently had a moment that a lot of modern parents can relate to. He was watching his 16-year-old daughter click around frenetically on Facebook while juggling several conversations on her iPhone.

“I was frankly amazed,” says Darr, the provost at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. “I thought, ‘How do you live like this?’ It struck me to think, ‘What if all this wasn’t there?’ ”

So Darr conceived an experiment designed to parse how one lives with social media — precisely by examining how one lives without it. He decided to pull the plug on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and AOL Instant Messenger for one week. But rather than conduct the experiment within his own home, Darr decided to take advantage of his position as Harrisburg’s provost to tap a much larger sample: his institution’s entire student body, faculty, and staff.

Lawyer Files Defamation Suit Against Opposing Counsel in Teen Runaway Case

A lawyer who represented the Muslim parents of a teenage runaway last year in a high-profile case that captured the attention of Christian fundamentalists is now suing his opposing counsel for defamation.

Attorney Omar Tarazi contends in a federal lawsuit filed Friday in Columbus, Ohio, that attorney John Stemberger, who represented runaway Rifqa Bary in Florida, falsely said he was unqualified and claimed in a television interview last year that that he has terrorist ties, reports the Associated Press.

Intel to launch chipsets with built-in graphics

Fibre optic capacity ‘auto-tuned’ by novel device

Science

• E. coli may not be all bad after all

  E. coli, long associated with illness brought on by food poisoning, may hold the key to the future of renewable energy.

  “If we can engineer biological organisms to produce biodiesel fuels, we’ll have a new way of storing and using energy,” says Desmond Lun, associate professor of computer science at Rutgers University–Camden.

  Lun is researching how to alter the genetic makeup of E. coli to produce biodiesel fuel derived from fatty acids.

Security/Aggression

• Exclusive: WikiLeaks Collaborating With Media Outlets on Release of Iraq Documents

  A London-based journalism nonprofit is working with the WikiLeaks Web site and TV and print media in several countries on programs and stories based on what is described as massive cache of classified U.S. military field reports related to the Iraq War. Iain Overton, editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, tells Declassified that his organization has teamed up with media organizations—including major television networks and one or more American media outlets—in an unspecified number of countries to produce a set of documentaries and stories based on the cache of Iraq War documents in the possession of WikiLeaks. As happened with a similar WikiLeaks collection of tens of thousands of U.S. military field reports on the Afghan war, the unidentified media organizations involved with the London group in the Iraq documents project will all be releasing their stories on the same day, which Overton says would be several weeks from now. He declined to identify any of the media organizations participating in the project.

• Wikileaks and the politics of whistleblowing

  Ever since a U.S. army counterintelligence report identified WikiLeaks as a direct threat to the ‘force protection interests’ of the military – a euphemistic term for the United States’ ability to militarily dominate when, where and against whom they choose – the organization has been in the Pentagon’s crosshairs. For those of you who have been living under a rock, WikiLeaks runs a web portal dedicated to publishing government and corporate secrets online. It is, essentially, the new intermediary for potential whistleblowers and many of the 1.2+ million documents it has made public in its four year history have concerned various branches of the U.S. Government.

• Massive Cache of Iraq War Docs to Be Published by WikiLeaks

  A massive cache of previously unpublished classified U.S. military documents from the Iraq War is being readied for publication by WikiLeaks, a new report has confirmed.

  The documents constitute the “biggest leak of military intelligence” that has ever occurred, according to Iain Overton, editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit British organization that is working with WikiLeaks on the documents.

• X-Ray Pinup Girls Are Just Pixels (NSFW?)

  The X-Rays were in fact part of the EIZO Medical Pin-up Calendar, a clever marketing tool for a niche company whose product most people didn’t even know existed.

Finance

• Does Economy Really Have To Run On Fraud?

  What is the difference between today’s economy and Lehman Brothers just before it collapsed in September 2008? Should Lehman, the economy, Wall Street – or none of the above – be bailed out of bad mortgage debt? How did the Fed and Treasury decide which Wall Street firms to save – and how do they decide whether or not to save U.S. companies, personal mortgage debtors, states and cities from bankruptcy and insolvency today? Why did it start by saving the richest financial institutions, leaving the “real” economy locked in debt deflation?

  Stated another way, why was Lehman the only Wall Street firm permitted to go under? How does the logic that Washington used in its case compare to how it is treating the economy at large? Why bail out Wall Street – whose managers are rich enough not to need to spend their gains – and not the quarter of U.S. homeowners unfortunate enough also to suffer “negative equity” but not qualify for the help that the officials they elect gave to Wall Street’s winners by enabling Bear Stearns, A.I.G., Countrywide Financial and other gamblers to pay their bad debts?

• UK Government set to endorse the creation of EU financial supervisors; Il Sole 24 Ore: “London knows that it can only limit the damage”

  PA reports that UK Chancellor George Osborne is today set to endorse the proposals for the creation of a European Systemic Risk Board and three new EU supervisors to oversee financial markets in the EU at a meeting of EU finance ministers. A Government spokesman is quoted describing the proposals as “a good deal for us” and arguing: “We are happy with this. Once it has been agreed by finance ministers, the technical details will be sorted out by national officials later this week or next week. But day-to-day supervision [of British banks and financial institutions] remains at national level – that is what we have said all along”.

• Revenue won’t apologise for underpaid tax blunder

  The country’s top tax official has refused to apologise to the 1.4 million people facing demands for extra money. Dave Hartnett, the HM Revenue and Customs permanent secretary for tax, insisted it was not an “extraordinary” situation.

  Hartnett denied there had been any errors and said he saw no need to apologise. HMRC was also justified in asking those who owed more than £2,000 to repay the money more quickly as they were likely to be the highest earners, he said.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Big Tobacco hired public relations firm to lobby government

  IF YOUR bulldust detector is twitching over outraged retailers warning that plain packaging for cigarettes ”won’t work, so why do it”, you are right on the money.

  The tobacco industry is not only funding the campaign being run by the Alliance of Australian Retailers to stop plain packaging being introduced, it is employing the public relations firm to run the campaign, approving who will do media interviews and managing the strategy for lobbying government.

  As the tobacco industry prepares to pour another $3.97 million, on top of the $5.4 million already spent, into phase two of its campaign to coincide with the finals season of the NRL and AFL this weekend, the Herald can reveal the full extent of the role of Big Tobacco.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Vodafone Prohibits P2P Use for Broadband Customers

  At a time where content producers are increasingly using peer-to-peer technology to distribute data, there are still Internet providers that wont allow such traffic on their networks. This type of discrimination is not limited to mobile or cellular networks either. In Ireland, Vodafone users are not permitted to use peer-to-peer services on their broadband connection.

Intellectual Monopolies

• John Mellencamp: Takes From Others, But Refuses To Give Back

  Now, obviously, he’s talking in a symbolic way, but the stark contrast shows a rather incredible sense of entitlement. Basically, everything is “his,” and nothing can be anyone else’s. He wants to take possession over anyone else’s work, but refuses to give back, and claims that others doing a similar process are somehow “destroying” his own work.

• Copyrights

  • “Questionable” whether lawyers can sue 14,000 P2P users in 1 court

    Rosemary Collyer, one of the DC federal judges overseeing the US Copyright Group’s tens of thousands of file-sharing lawsuits, is open to one of the main arguments made by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and by ISPs: the DC court doesn’t have jurisdiction over random individuals from all over the country.

    In a ruling today, Collyer pointed to several recent “motions to quash” the US Copyright Group subpoenas targeting ISPs. (The subpoenas ask ISPs to connect a specific IP address to a name and physical location.) The motions came from several different states.

  • Righthaven seeks domain name transfer – relief that is not called for under the Copyright Act

    News broke over the Labor Day weekend that Righthaven, that enterprise set up to file copyright lawsuits over alleged infringements of articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, sued Nevada senate candidate Sharron Angle. The complaint [PDF] contains two claims for copyright infringement over allegations that Angle posted two articles on her website without authorization.

    Let’s set aside for a moment any objections or snickering we might have about Righthaven’s approach, or any disdain we may feel about spamigation in general. There’s one paragraph in the Angle complaint which demonstrates a plaintiff mindset that is over the top on just about any reasonable scale.

  • Balanced Copyright For Canada Website (http://balancedcopyrightforcanada.ca) – Attack Of The Corporate Welfare Bums

  • How Social Mores Can Deal With ‘Unfair’ Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright

    One of the complaints that we hear often from various publishers is the idea that, without copyright, other sites could simply copy all content. In fact, this is the big complaint we keep hearing from newspapers these days — the idea that they do all this expensive “reporting,” and then along comes some “blog” that just copies the work, with a bit of commentary and gets all the traffic. I tend to point out that this is a silly position to take. The thing is I say that even though I’ve experienced being on the “other” side of this discussion, and not with a smaller site, but a larger one. For quite some time a publication (that will remain nameless) that is larger and more well known than us had a habit of “rewriting” stories that were found on Techdirt, as well as a few other moderately popular blogs, without any credit. It became quite obvious that this was happening — especially on stories that I would sit on for a couple weeks for various reasons, only to post them and see a very similar story pop up six hours later on this other site. The timing was uncanny. I finally asked a writer at the site about one such story, and was told that the editor had sent him my story, but said that since he did additional reporting on it, they felt no need to credit me — and even claimed that this was the same stance that “real reporters” took, such as the AP and Reuters. Of course, that’s not quite true, and the AP just changed its credit policies, so that it will clearly credit any publication that publishes a story before they do.

  • ACTA

    • ACTA, “Ex Officio” Enforcement, and Parallel Imports

      In the latest ACTA leaked text, it’s disappointing to see that Canada is endorsing the following proposal on “ex officio” border enforcement, This refers to the giving of power to border officials to detain suspect goods on their own initiative on the basis of suspected IP infringement, without the need of a prior court order.

    • ACTA’s Enforcement Practices Chapter: Countries Reach Deal as U.S. Caves Again

    • Report: ACTA secrecy is all the United States’ fault

      The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) got a bit more transparent this year, as negotiators held a few meetings with civil society types and released one official draft text some months ago. But this wouldn’t be ACTA without secret meetings and unreleased draft texts, would it?

      This isn’t a serious problem for those who want to read the draft texts after each negotiating session; leaks have become routine, which made this week’s leak (PDF) of the most recent draft text so unsurprising. At this late stage in the negotiations, after so much criticism in the US and Europe, one might expect ACTA negotiators to operate as transparently as they have promised to do. Unfortunately, the US stands in the way.

    • The fishy mandate of ACTA

    • ACTA, “Ex Officio” Enforcement, and Parallel Imports

      In the latest ACTA leaked text, it’s disappointing to see that Canada is endorsing the following proposal on “ex officio” border enforcement, This refers to the giving of power to border officials to detain suspect goods on their own initiative on the basis of suspected IP infringement, without the need of a prior court order.

    • Watered-down ACTA Approaching Conclusion

      Controversial multi-country negotiations on an “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” are within striking distance of conclusion, according to a leaked draft text.

      The secrecy surrounding the talks took another hit this week when Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation, posted the draft on its website, along with a note stating that the United States was alone among participating governments in opposing the draft’s release.

    • Scrap the ACTA Internet chapter!

      Yesterday we had a debate in the European Parliament on the ongoing negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ACTA. The negotiating parties are trying to keep the agreement secret, but the latest draft has been leaked on the net. Transcripts and videos from the debate can be found here.

      Most or all of the Members of the European Parliament, from all the political groups, were critical of various aspects of the agreement, and the lack of transparency surrounding the process.

    • European Parliament Asks EU ACTA Negotiators to Protect Citizens’ Fundamental Rights

      WD 12 became the official position of the European Parliament on ACTA when it was signed by 377 Members of the European Parliament prior to today’s deadline — more than the required majority of MEPs (369). While the written declaration is not binding on the European Parliament, its adoption by a clear majority sends an important political signal to EU ACTA negotiators at a critical time — just before the next, and possibly final, round of ACTA negotiations taking place in Japan later this month. The European Parliament must give a “consent vote” for the EU to be bound by ACTA; WD 12 should be seen by EU negotiators as a clear statement about how the MEPs will approach that vote.

    • Europe says ‘No’ again to ACTA secrecy

      This morning from Brussels, the European Parliament issued a formal declaration – its second official legal statement of the season – calling upon participants in negotiations for the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement to share the status of their proceedings with the public at large. At issue is whether governments can decree that Internet Service Providers (most of which are private businesses) keep track of IP addresses that copyright holders believe are involved in infringement and unauthorized distribution, without officially notifying their citizens they’re about to do so.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

What’s It Like To Be A Linux Journal Blogger?

Well, first of all, it’s fun, or I wouldn’t be doing it. I work with some intelligent, talented people, like Carlie Fairchild, publisher at LJ, and Katherine Druckman, our Webmistress. My job description as one of the LJ bloggers is to “write about whatever you want, as long as it is Linux related”. That’s pretty much the ideal job description for somebody like me who has been doing Linux full-time since shortly after Slackware first came out in 1993. I feel lucky to be writing for Linux Journal, which is currently celebrating its 16th year of publication, and is the original magazine of the global Linux community.

Why the Linux Myths Continue

Smart marketing could make a difference too. Just consider the huge impact that one television ad–the one in 1984 from Apple where the female athlete threw the sledgehammer toward a Borg-like figure resembling Big Blue–had for Apple. For Linux, the myths propogate and continue because there is no unified message designed to challenge the myths, no coordinated spending on such messaging. The myths don’t propogate because of shortcomings in Linux itself.

Server

• TurnKey Linux brings speedy, small-scale migration to the cloud

  TurnKey Linux has unveiled a system-level backup and restore system called TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration (TKLBAM) that aims to add a level of flexibility to cloud computing. Powered by the Amazon S3 storage cloud, the system brings speed, smarts, and automation to backups, restores, and migration in the cloud — at least on a limited scale.

Kernel Space

• Broadcom makes its Wi-Fi chipsets more Linux friendly

  According to Henry Ptasinski, a principal scientist in the wireless connectivity group at Broadcom, Broadcom has released the source code for the “initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for it’s latest generation of 11n chipsets. The driver, while still a work in progress, is released as full source and uses the native mac80211 stack. It supports multiple current chips (BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225) as well as providing a framework for supporting additional chips in the future, including mac80211-aware embedded chips.

• New Linux Benchmarks Of SilverStone’s HDDBOOST

  The purpose of the HDDBOOST is to increase the disk performance by enabling SSD speeds on the host hard drive while reducing write times to the SSD. From our Linux tests in that article we had a hard time getting this small device to provide any measurable performance gains, but in fact it caused some performance losses.

• The Linux Foundation Announces Program for 2010 End User Summit

  The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the speaker lineup and details for The Linux Foundation End User Summit. The Summit is a unique opportunity for the most advanced enterprise users to collaborate with leaders from within the Linux community, including the highest-level maintainers and developers.

• Invitation-only Linux summit announces speakers

• Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin Offers Sneak Peek at 2010 End User Summit

• Linux Foundation details 2010 End User Summit programme

  Confirmed keynote speakers include British Telecom’s Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami, who will be giving a talk entitled “Purple Haze to Purple Rain: Why the Cloud Rocks”, and Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin, who will be discussing the next-generation enterprise computing. NASDAQ OMX Vice President Bob Evans will detail what he feels is working today with Linux and what he believes would work in his environment. Other various panels and sessions will cover topics ranging from “What’s next in Linux file systems & Storage”, to virtualisation and tracing.

• APLcomp Joins The Linux Foundation

  APLcomp is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software vendor that primarily serves the financial services industry. An increasing number of its customers are deploying applications in the cloud and are recognizing the advantages of using an open operating system to support this infrastructure.

• The Last Barrier to Wireless in Linux Falls

  This advance could be in Ubuntu as early as 10.10 but most others will see it in 2011 as the FLOSS code for the drivers will be merged with Linux 2.6.37. Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze is now up to 2.6.32. We Debianistas may have to build from source for a while yet.

• Graphics Stack

  • ATI Evergreen 3D Code May Soon Go Into Gallium3D

    AMD finally pushed out open-source 2D/3D acceleration code for Evergreen (a.k.a. the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards) last month, but since then these drivers haven’t received too much attention. AMD’s few open-source developers are beginning to turn their attention to supporting the Radeon HD 6000 series more promptly in the open-source world while the community developers seem to still have their attention on the Gallium3D driver for the ATI Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 (R600/R700) hardware.

Applications

• Proprietary

  • JetBox 8150 Industrial Communication PC w/ built-in Media Processor for Enhanced Multimedia Display!

    To provide even more advanced functionality, the Linux OS of JetBox 8150 also includes openVPN and openSWAN to enable the VPN function working in Linux as well as cross windows system.

  • Echelon rolls Linux-based smart grid products

    Echelon Corp. rolled out Wednesday (Sept. 8) a Linux-based software environment for smart grid applications and new hardware to run the code. Duke Energy signed a $14.5 million deal to use the new products it expects to start field testing before the end of the year.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Manage Linux Downloads with wget

  • How to Install Linux from ISO to Installed

  • Weekend Project: Open Source Alternatives to Adobe Flash on Linux

• Games

  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent Now Available For PC, Mac And Linux

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • PyQt comes to OpenSolaris

    For the past month I’ve been honing my PyQt skills and greatly enjoyed it. I’ve been saying to people at conferences — for years already — that Python (or some other scripting language) is the Right Approach ™ to a great many end-user applications for its speed on development and ease of prototyping. Now I finally spent a month testing the truth of that statement.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Interviews from GUADEC, Part 4

    Stormy Peters is the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and when Jeremy Allison from the Google Open Source Programs Office ran into her at GUADEC, he was eager to talk to her about the direction that GNOME is heading. In the video above, Stormy and Jeremy discuss release schedules, GNOME 3, and hackfests. Enjoy!

Distributions

• Friday’s security updates

• Red Hat Family

  • Cloud Linux and Ksplice Launch First Ever Rebootless Linux Distribution for Hosting Service Providers

  • Red Hat Bulls in Charge

• Debian Family

  • Debian GNU/kFreeBSD Becomes More Interesting

    Since last year we have been talking about Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, one of the official ports for Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” that will bring a 32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD kernel as an option to using the Linux kernel. Debain GNU/kFreeBSD still has the Debian user-land complete with its massive package repository and apt-get support, but the FreeBSD kernel is running underneath instead of Linux. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD has matured a lot over the past year and most recently it has switched to using the FreeBSD 8.1 kernel by default and also now supports ZFS file-systems.

    In January of this year was our first time benchmarking Debian GNU/kFreeBSD when it was using the FreeBSD 7.2 kernel. With that initial testing, in 18 of our 27 benchmarks Debian GNU/Linux was still faster than Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. We delivered a much larger comparison a week later when comparing the Debian variant to Fedora, FreeBSD 7.2/8.0, OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD performed about average.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • This week in design – 10 September 2010

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Linux Mint Releases Debian Edition

      • Edubuntu gets a new installer

        One of our goals for the Maverick development was to enhance our installation process.

        Previously in 10.04 we introduced a way to test LTSP straight from the Live DVD and then install it or the Netbook-Edition interface at the end of the install.

        It worked great but we then received reports from users telling us they didn’t see a way to install either LTSP or the Netbook interface during the install.

Devices/Embedded

• Apparent Networks Simplifies VoIP Testing

  Apparent Networks, a provider of network monitoring services delivered via the cloud, has unveiled a new service that makes used of a Linux-based appliance to determine whether an enterprise network can stand up to the rigors of delivering voice over IP (VoIP) services.

• OK Labs Forging the Mobile Virtualization Movement

• New E-Readers and Tablets: PocketBook 603, 903, IQ at IFA Berlin

  The 6-inch PocketBook Pro 603 and 9.7-inch 903 are similar models, both running Linux and built around 533MHz processors and 256MB of RAM. Both models have screens with a 4-to-3 aspect ratio and resolutions proportional to their size.

• Eurotech and Wind River Announce Collaboration to Speed Embedded Application Development

• Tanner EDA Releases Linux Version of Full-flow Analog IC Design Suite

  Tanner EDA, the driver for innovation in the design, layout and verification of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), has released a Linux version of the company’s HiPer Silicon full-flow design suite, giving designers a complete analog design flow from schematic capture, circuit simulation, and waveform probing to physical layout and verification.

• Parrot AR.Drone iPhone-controlled quadrocopter ships September 9th

  The AR Drone boasts sophisticated software, running on an embedded Linux OS on a 468mhz ARM processor, to process and react to in-flight information coming from the 3-axis accelerometer, multiple gyrometers, ultrasound altimeter and the vertical ground-facing camera. The marketing guys at Parrot claim that all this guidance technology means that even a child can fly the AR Drone.

• Windriver teams with board firms for Linux design platform

  Wind River has teamed up with a group of embedded board suppliers to provide complete development platforms running it VxWorks real-time operating system and/or Wind River Linux.

• Phones

  • Leaked WebOS 2.0 Shots Show a Bevy of New Features

  • WebOS 2.0 Beta 1 Screenshots emerge, show several new features

    WebOS 2.0 Beta is a new version of Palm webOS which will be released later this year. Palm webOS is Palm’s proprietary mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. The features of the WebOS 2.0 Beta are given below.

  • Nokia/MeeGo

    • WeTab tablet with MeeGo spotted in IFA

    • New Screenshots Of MeeGo UI Show A Lot Of Potential

    • New MeeGo User Interface Screens Emerge

    • Official MeeGo screenshots, looking better than ever before

    • WeTab tablet spotted running MeeGo at IFA

    • WeTab running MeeGo

  • Android

    • MIT app turns your Android phone into a supercomputer… of sorts

      Oh, sure — a few people have called Google’s Nexus One a “superphone,” but suddenly, that nickname has taken on a whole new level of meaning. A team of talent from MIT has put its head down in order to concoct a new Android application that can come darn close to solving complex computational problems in just a fraction of the time that it’d take a bona fide supercomputer.

    • Google TV Developer Platform: What to Expect

    • Google TV to launch in autumn in US and 2011 worldwide

      Schmidt also used the keynote to clarify the situation regarding the company’s upcoming Chrome operating system, scotching rumours that a Google-branded tablet was planned that would be running the new Linux-based Internet focused operating system. Schmidt clarified that Chrome was aimed at the netbook category.

    • Android Notifier sends notifications to your desktop

      If you’ve ever used Android for any period of time, you know that the notification system can be both a blessing and a curse — it’s one of the most powerful, useful, and flexible approaches out there, but if you don’t keep up, your menu bar can stack up into a mess of cryptic numbered icons. So we were really hoping Android Notifier could help us with that — it pipes notifications to your OS X desktop over WiFi or Bluetooth.

    • Get an Early Gmail Update on Your Android Phone

    • Android Notifier Sends Notifications from Your Phone to Your Desktop

    • Android Notifier bringing incoming calls and alerts to your desktop

• Tablets

  • Dual-Screen Kno Tablet To Be Available by Year’s End

    Does the lure of playing with “the most powerful tablet anyone has ever made” tempt you? How about those dual 14.1-inch touchscreens? (That’s a combined might of 28.2-inches!) Kno has received $46m investment, with an end-of-year launch already penciled-in.

    After being shown off at the D8 event in June, we were bowled over by the idea of having two capacitive IPS screens, measuring 14.1-inches each. That’s a seriously large tablet, but could be the closest thing we see to Microsoft’s Courier, which has now been binned.

  • Google Says “Froyo is Not Optimized for Use on Tablets”

    Speaking to TechRadar, Google’s director of products for mobile Hugo Barra explained that it all comes down to apps, and the way they work on tablets—or don’t work. “The way Android Market works is it’s not going to be available on tablets that don’t allow devices and applications to run correctly.”

Open-Xchange 6.18 integrates data from social networks

Nuremberg-based collaboration software specialist Open-Xchange has released an update, version 6.18, to its email and groupware solution. The company says that the most important of the 100 improvements in the release concern the integration of data from social networks and the option of managing, within Open-Xchange, email from external providers.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 3.6 gains anti-clickjacking support, Thunderbird & SeaMonkey updated

    Firefox 3.6.9 now supports the X-FRAME-OPTIONS header, which enables web servers to forbid clients from opening downloaded pages in iframes. Clickjacking involves an attacker website inserting a transparent iframe containing, for example, Facebook content under the cursor. Users think they are clicking on the visible web page, but are in fact clicking on elements in the transparent Facebook iframe.

  • Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 Beta 5

Databases

• Version 2.0 of NoSQL database Redis released

  Version 2.0 of the NoSQL database Redis database has been released with new features including virtual memory support, a hash datatype and publish/subscribe messaing. Development of Redis is assisted by VMware who sponsor Salvatore Sanfillippo and Pieter Noordhuis, lead developers of the project. Sanfillipo was hired by VMware in March.

  Redis is a BSD licensed, key/value store which is written in ANSI C and runs on POSIX systems like Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Solaris and others. Libraries to access the store are available for Ruby, Python, PHP, Erlang, Java, Scala, C#, C, Clojure and JavaScript.

Project Releases

• Cairo 1.10.0 available

• Django 1.2.2 released to close XSS enabling hole

  The Django Project developers have released Django 1.2.2 to close a vulnerability in the Python based web framework which allowed attackers to launch cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The exploit is, ironically, in the Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection code which was added in version 1.2.

• IcedTea6 1.9 and VisualVM 1.0

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • USA Today Latest Media Co. to Realize Open is Better

    USA Today is the latest media company to open up its data via an API, the software interface that makes it easy for outside developers to use another company’s data in their applications. The newspaper — which said that it will launch its open API project later this month — joins a small but growing group that includes The Guardian, the New York Times and National Public Radio. The newspaper says it plans to start releasing APIs for specific sections first, including a sports API that provides access to the paper’s database of salaries for players in Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL and other sports franchises.

• Open Access/Content

  • Connexions is going mobile!

    Just think about the possibilities! No longer are you tied to your computer, reading modules online or in PDF format. No longer are you forced to carry around printouts of your materials. Instead you can access Connexions materials at any time, any place.

Programming

• InfoWorld review: Nine fine Python development tools

  Object-oriented and dynamic, Python encourages rapid, iterative, and almost exploratory development. But good Python development starts with a good Python IDE. In this roundup, I examine nine Python development environments, many open source, but some commercial. They are Boa Constructor, Eric, ActiveState’s Komodo, Oracle’s NetBeans, Aptana’s Pydev, PyScripter, SPE, Spyder, and WingWare’s Wing IDE.

ARM reveals Eagle core as Cortex-A15, capable of quad-core computing at up to 2.5GHz

The End of Bloglines is Nigh – Will Close October 1

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • The Revamped CC Case Studies Project

    Last year, we kicked off our global case studies effort, inviting you to share your stories—individuals, projects, and companies who use Creative Commons for different reasons and to solve different problems. Through the CC wiki, we attempted to capture the diversity of CC creators and content by building a resource that inspires new works and informs free culture.

  • Summary of OER-related comments on U.S. Department of Education Notice of Proposed Priorities

• Distributions

KDE 3 appears in ‘The Social Network’ movie?

Below is a still image from the film’s official trailer, in it you can see what appears to be an old version of the KDE Desktop Environment. This particular still image is from a scene in the movie taking place in 2003, so KDE 3 would be an accurate version for the year.

From Vista and 7, to Ubuntu and Jolicloud without a Mac deviation

Oh-My-God! Not just an OMG, this needed spelling out. The OS was free, and installable (and uninstallable) directly from Windows. It gave the previously snail-speed netbook a new spark, and came with a catalogue of software that you could click and download. Google applications, OpenOffice, Gimp, and what I guess was around 100 open-source applications with which most professionals and private persons could do whatever they want.

Server

• Turnkey Linux Intros Amazon S3 Powered Backup

  TurnKey Linux Wednesday released a smart, fully automated open source-based backup and restore facility powered by the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) cloud.

  TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration (TKLBAM) is based on Ubuntu 8.04.3, was designed to add flexibility to cloud computing, and requires no configuration, according to the Tel Aviv-based developer. The solution delivers speed, intelligence, and automation to migration in the cloud, as well as backup and restore functions, said Liraz Siri, company co-founder.

Google

• Google Chrome OS is for Netbooks, Android for Smartphones & Tablets

  We all know that Google is in the operating system business these days. What hasn’t been clear is exactly what Google has planned for its Chrome operating system. We all know that Android is Google’s Android Linux smartphone and tablet answer. But where does Chrome, a Linux and Web browser-based operating system fit in?

  It hasn’t been an easy question to answer. After all, you can use Android as a desktop operating system and you can use Chrome as a tablet operating system. So, what’s what here? Now, we’re beginning to get come clear answers.

  In a TechRadar interview with Google Chrome senior product manager Anders Sandholm, Sandholm said, “What we are focusing on [in Chrome] is netbooks in terms of form-factor and providing a really good experience for that.”

• Google: ‘Android not optimised for tablets’

  Google has stated that it currently isn’t using Android on any tablets, hinting that it will have a tablet-centric OS soon.

  Although Gingerbread and Honeycomb have been strongly tipped to be tablet-friendly versions of Android, this is the first time Google has confirmed Froyo isn’t a platform for iPad rivals.

ARM

• Understanding Smartphone processors

  The next generation of smartphones are set to get dual-core processors with improved graphics. We take a look at just what makes a smartphone processor

• Stronger ARM on the Horizon

  This is an example of the problem ARM has which turns out to be a solution too. The ARM cores are going to be so small it is hard to connect them to the real world. They can connect with other ARM cores properly, however. That makes multiple-core ARM CPUs scale much better than x86. x86 cores are huge. Even Moore’s Law cannot make 16 fit in a tiny cool package. The vast majority of desktop PCs will have everything they need in such a chip and nothing they don’t: fans, PSU, case size and mass. It will be a better way to do IT and it runs GNU/Linux.

• ARM Unveils Cortex-A15 MPCore Processor

  ARM has pulled the wraps off a new mobile processor called the Coretex-A15. This processor can be had with four cores and is aimed at mobile devices and high-end digital home gear.

Kernel Space

• Matthew Garrett files case with US Customs against Fusion Garage

  Kernel hacker Matthew Garrett has been looking into GPL compliance on various consumer devices, and has evidently gotten fed up with responses from the Joojoo tablet maker. In the comments on the blog posting, someone purportedly from Fusion Garage asked Garrett to contact them, so maybe it will all get resolved soon.

• Graphics Stack

  • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.36 (Part 1) – Graphics

    The Kernel Log thus can now already offer a comprehensive overview of the major changes in the new kernel version scheduled for release in late October. To keep the material palatable, Kernel Log will, as ever, divide this information up into a series of articles which will look at different areas of the kernel. The ‘Coming in 2.6.36′ series kicks off below with a description of changes in the area of graphics hardware support. Articles on network support, storage hardware, file systems, architecture code, drivers and other areas will be published over the next few weeks.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • The Official Ubuntu Book (5th ed)

  • Fix VirtualBox’s Guest Additions in Ubuntu 10.10

Distributions

• Lubuntu 10.10 Beta Available for Download

  Julian Lavergne announced a few days ago, the immediate availability for download of the first Beta release of the upcoming Lubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system.

• Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 113

  · Announced Distro: openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 1
  · Announced Distro: Ubuntu 10.10 Beta

  [...]

• New Final Releases

  • UHU-Linux 2.2 (Nerd)

  • MoLinux 6.0 (Netbook)

  • Untangle 7.4.1

  • Super OS 10.04

  • Super OS 10.04 Is Now Available for Download

    Super OS 10.04 has been released. The Ubuntu derivative sticks pretty close to the original, but aims to make it a bit more user friendly, mostly by including more multimedia codecs and more default packages.

  • Salix LXDE edition 13.1.1 is ready!

    Here’s an update to our LXDE edition! The main selection of software has stayed the same as in the previous LXDE release: Midori is used as the default web browser, claws-mail is the default email client, abiword, gnumeric and epdfview are there for your office needs and exaile, brasero and whaaw! media player are included in the multimedia application section, all running in the same lightweight LXDE desktop. Following the changes in the standard XFCE release, several things have been updated though.

  • Parsix GNU/Linux 3.6 Released

    Earlier today, September 7th, Alan Baghumian proudly announced the immediate availability for download of the Parsix GNU/Linux 3.6 operating system. Dubbed “Vinnie,” the new version brings lots of updated applications, new artwork, new features and many bugs fixed.

• Red Hat Family

  • A 52 Week High for Red Hat, will it Hold?

    New York, September 9th (TradersHuddle.com) – Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) booked a new 52 week high today by trading above $37.53, traders are definitely monitoring Red Hat’s price action to see if this move attracts further buying into the stock.

• Debian Family

  • Paradigm Shift

    I had my first day of classes for this school year. The grade nine class made my day. There were a lot of students and I introduced the course with a bit of the history of the PC, nomenclature, care and feeding, and installing an OS. We started installing Debian GNU/Linux over XP at 13:50 and were mostly done by 14:08. It was a network installation and some files were not in the cache so things dragged a bit. The only thing left after class was agreeing to installation of the bootloader.

  • Debian alert DSA-2098-2 (typo3-src)

    The update for TYPO3 in DSA 2098 introduced a regression which could make the backend functionality unusable. This update corrects the problem. For reference the original advisory below.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Booting Ubuntu 10.10 In 8.6 Seconds [Video]

      Ubuntu 10.10 has only entered the Beta. However, it looks like it is doing extremely well in cutting down the boot time.

      James Ward posted a video showing Ubuntu 10.10 in a mere 8.6 seconds. That is the total time it takes from GRUB to get to a usable desktop. According to Ward, he did not do anything special, like disable the drivers etc., to reduce the boot time. But of course, he uses a SSD.

    • Top reasons to install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Linux)

      Ever since its release back in October of 2004, Ubuntu has quickly become one of the most used Linux distributions available. Focusing on user-friendliness and usability, Ubuntu is highly stable and easy to install for those those just want a great operating system without being chained down by Microsoft.

    • The Commodore 64 Lives Again – as a Modern PC Running Ubuntu

      Some of you may remember the now-infamous Carpet Cleaner Computer that’s Personal (CCCP), an old Bissell carpet washer that I converted to a PC because, well, just because. The fun continues with another entertaining waste of time and money, converting a Commodore 64 to a genuine contemporary PC. Yes, it can be done, again with a little custom engineering and an unusual circuit board.

    • Third update to the Ubuntu Light Themes

Yiy, a song with music video done in Blender

Phetogo Tshepo Mahasha writes us he made “this music video “ for a prominent indie musician “Muhsinah” with Blender, GIMP and Photoshop.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • First Look: Firefox 4 JaegerMonkey

    Mozilla has published the first Firefox build that integrates a new JavaScript engine that aims to match the performance in IE9 and reduces the gap to Safari, Opera and Chrome.

Databases

• NoSQL takes a seat on Android with new mobile version of CouchDB

  A new mobile version of the CouchDB database system, called CouchOne Mobile, is available for Google’s Android operating system. The mobile version is still at a relatively early stage of development, but it will allow developers to take advantage of CouchDB’s sophisticated replication functionality to synchronize data between desktop and mobile applications.

  CouchDB is a schema-less document-based database that uses JSON as a storage format and JavaScript as a query language. It is popular in the so-called NoSQL community and is increasingly seeing deployment in high-profile business and scientific computing environments.

Oracle

• Oracle VM VirtualBox

  Virtualization is a big word that means, more or less, running one computer system inside another system. You could, for example, have a complete virtual Linux system running in a window inside your Windows 7 computer, or you might have a complete Windows XP system running in a window inside a Linux or OS X or Windows 7 system.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• RMS to speak in Melbourne

  Free Software Foundation founder Richard M. Stallman will be visiting Melbourne next week and is scheduled to give two talks at educational institutions.

Standards/Consortia

• Open Sesame

  What happens in open standards?
  All technology/software used for e-governance becomes inter-operable. In other words, any technology platform or software should be able to read government documents, maps, images and datasheets.

  Who gains?

  * Government: Will not have to spend crores on a proprietary standard. Various offices would be able to access data without having same technology/software.
  * Consumers: Will not have to buy proprietary software to access government documents

  Who loses?
  Big proprietary software companies and licensed technology platforms

  E-governance market in India

  * Size: $10 billion
  * Proprietary tech/software 95%
  * Open Source 5%

eBay stake in Craigslist restored but no board seat

A judge on Thursday reinstated eBay Inc’s 28.4 percent stake in Craigslist, but allowed the classifieds site to keep eBay off its board.

Welcome to the Nerd Blog

Today we are introducing our Nerd Blog, a place to talk about what programmer-journalists at ProPublica are working on, announce newly-launched news applications, and to hear from technically-minded readers, as well as our fellow nerdy journalists. We’re going to be writing about each of our projects as we release them, and flagging open source tools we’ve found useful.

Google search index splits with MapReduce

Google Caffeine — the remodeled search infrastructure rolled out across Google’s worldwide data center network earlier this year — is not based on MapReduce, the distributed number-crunching platform that famously underpins the company’s previous indexing system. As the likes of Yahoo!, Facebook, and Microsoft work to duplicate MapReduce through the open source Hadoop project, Google is moving on.

According to Eisar Lipkovitz, a senior director of engineering at Google, Caffeine moves Google’s back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto BigTable, the company’s distributed database platform.

Security/Aggression

• TSA Poster Reminds That Photography Is For Creepy Terrorists Only

  Enjoy standing safely outside a fence taking innocuous photos of airplanes in plain sight? According to this new TSA poster, you are a filthy terrorist.

• Cybercriminals Creating 57,000 Fake Web Sites Every Week

  In a recent investigation, it was discovered that cybercriminals are creating 57,000 new “fake” websites each week looking to imitate and exploit approximately 375 high-profile brands. eBay and Western Union were the most targeted brands, making up 44 percent of exploited brands discovered. Visa, Amazon, Bank of America and PayPal also heavily targeted by cybercriminals.

• Creepy Biometric IDs to Be Forced Onto India’s 1.2 Billion Inhabitants

  Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.

• Up to 40,000 front-line police jobs ‘at risk’

  As many as 40,000 front-line police jobs will be at risk across England and Wales if expected 25% budget cuts go ahead, the Police Federation has said.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• PSJailbreak: how the Playstation 3 was hacked

• Business lobbies slam net neutrality

  Leaders of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the US Chamber of Commerce gathered at a press conference yesterday to whinge about the impending horrors of Internet regulation.

  The business groups wanted to hear from FCC chairman Julius Genachowski about how proposed net neutrality regulation won’t choke off innovation. Their concern is that they are uncertain about what net neutrality regulations will bring. The TIA and NAM also argued that it could also impede the roll out of broadband in rural areas, a seemingly not so veiled threat to stall and obstruct that unless they get their way and are able to block or subvert net neutrality through lobbying.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Swiss supreme court orders company to stop snooping on illegal file-sharing suspects

    The Swiss supreme court has ordered a company to stop snooping on suspected illegal file sharers, saying the practice breaches their right to privacy.

    The Lausanne-based Federal Tribunal says Logistep AG collected personal information on users of file-sharing networks and sold it to film and music companies seeking to protect their intellectual property.

  • Are Swedish Police Violating Copyright Law In Creating Shoe Database?

    The police claim that the law lets them ignore copyright in solving crimes, but an intellectual property professor quoted in the article notes that such an exemption only applies in the direct police investigation of a specific crime — not for the sake of building up a general database. The professor suggests that this appears to be a clear violation of Swedish copyright laws.

  • Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra coming to AMERICA!! (kinda)

    Technically, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra ARE coming to America, but it’s not exactly like you think. To celebrate the 21 years or so of Tokyo Ska, TSPO have set up a little fan event thing in Hawaii for the week of October 1st. Fans will get to tour Hawaii with TSPO, meet and speak with the band members, and enjoy a special acoustic session on an evening cruise on the beautiful island of O’ahu, Hawaii! All for 194,000¥ (roughly $2,200).

  • USTR’s February 10, 2009 memo on Transparency Soup

    On September 3, 2010, we received a letter dated August 30, 2010, with a very incomplete response to that FOIA request. The most interesting document included in the preliminary response was an email with 3 pages of attachments sent by Stan McCoy, the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Intellectual Property and Innovation, on February 10, 2010. (McCoy joined USTR under the Bush Administration).

  • Copyright Debates Fire Up Popkomm

    “The truth is digital technology has driven a panzer division through copyright law,” Smith said, with perhaps not the most sensitive choice of metaphor given the location. “If 70% of the population are ignoring a law, it’s no longer a law – we have to figure out a new way of working with copyright.”

  • ACTA

    • The 19 uses of “at least” in the ACTA text

      In looking at the scope issues, it might be helpful to examine the 19 places where the ACTA text uses the term, “at least.”

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

How Linux Land Got Better Since Last Summer

“My favourite change in the world of GNU/Linux this year is that GNU/Linux is being accepted by more people as a better way to do IT on the desktop as well as the server,” said blogger and educator Robert Pogson. “All the advantages of stability, efficiency, security, low cost, etc., that benefit us who use GNU/Linux on the server also apply to those using GNU/Linux on the desktop.”

Fact or Fiction? Top 8 Linux Myths Debunked

In fact, the ranks of businesses and government organizations using Linux grows every day, and for good reason: it’s simply a good business choice. Let’s take a look, then, at some of the top anxiety-causing myths and dispel them once and for all.

Project Canvas Will be *Linux* Based

It’s pretty amazing to read this panegyric to Linux: it shows just how far Linux has come, and how it is taking over the embedded world.

Even though content will be “protected” – from you, the user, that is – which means the platform can’t really be regarded as totally open, the Project Canvas designers and managers still deserve kudos for opting for Linux, and for publicly extolling its virtues in this way.

Kernel Space

• Graphics Stack

  • Broadcom swims upstream, tackles Linux WiFi woes with new open drivers

    Broadcom announced today the initial release of its new open source wireless drivers for Linux. The drivers, which are built using the kernel’s own native SoftMAC framework, are currently in the kernel staging tree and are expected to eventually be merged upstream.

  • Broadcom releasing fully open-source wifi driver

Applications

• Proprietary

  • Opera 10.62 released

    Opera 10.62 has been released as a recommended upgrade offering security and stability enhancements.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • running Ubuntu on an Amazon “micro” instance

  • Bash Bullshit Generator

  • Awesome Hack: Hide Audio in a Simple Image

• Games

  • Iron Steam – Sci-Fi Adventure In Development

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE and the Expansion of the Desktop

    KDE developers do not seem to have articulated their purposes so succinctly, but those are the general tendencies in KDE 4. The goal seems to be to add features without straying too far from the basic metaphor of the desktop and making radical changes.

    Desktop icons are intended to put applications within easy reach of users. However, in most desktops on any operating system, one of two problems arises: either you settle on a general set of icons that works reasonably well when you are doing most tasks, but is not perfectly suited to any specific task, or else you add so many that finding the ones you need becomes difficult. In either case, you lose the convenience of desktop icons.

    You can, of course, rely entirely on the menu — and many do — but that can add substantially to the number of clicks needed to start an application. A Favorites menu can help, but, like a desktop covered with icons, it loses efficiency when more than about nine items are placed in it.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Absolute, Dream

    A couple of years ago, one of my first distro-hopping experiences was to tinker with DreamLinux, which (if I remember right) was one of the earliest distros to include Compiz and accelerated graphics by default.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Daily dose of Scribus trunk

      We’ll be using Scribus for much of the DTP internal to Canonical. Our templates etc will be published in Scribus, so folks who need to knock up a flyer or brochure have the pieces they need ready to hand. However, there’s a problem, in that the stable Scribus package is really quite old.

      The Scribus team is making good progress on the next version of Scribus, but I couldn’t find an easy way to test their trunk. So I thought to make a PPA with a daily build. Whenever I’m testing or evaluating a new app I like to check out trunk, just to get a feel for the pace of activity and quality of the work. A crisp, clean, stable trunk is a sign of good quality work, which will likely mean good quality elsewhere like documentation and project governance. Chaos on trunk means… chaos generally, as a rule.

    • No need to complicate your life…

      For some reason people always think that having seperate / and /home partitions is necessary to having a healthy Ubuntu system.

    • New features and changes in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick!

      Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) BETA has been published a few days ago and quite a few brave souls has already upgraded to it. The Beta release gives general idea of what final release will look like when it is due in October 2010.

    • Dell Vostro 3300 and Ubuntu 10.4

      I decided to purchase a Dell Vostro 3300 recently. I took the decision based on the cost, spec and the fact that it is Ubuntu certified (list of certified hardware for each release). I was interested on checking out 10.4 so I looked at what was available with Dell.

    • First Impressions: Ubuntu 10.10 Beta

      So, that concluded my rapid-fire trial of Ubuntu 10.10 beta. There’s a lot to like, and a lot to keep an eye on for bug fixes apparently. I didn’t see anything earth-shattering enough to convince me to replace my LTS release any time soon. Perhaps over the next month of polish and bug-squashing a star will emerge. If it does, you’ll certainly hear about it.

    • Whither with Ubuntu?

      Over the 6 years of life that Ubuntu has had so far, it has changed drastically. At first, it was just a quick and convenient way for me to install Debian. It started becoming more and more popular, and then was like a tidal wave through the Linux community. Today, it is the world’s third most popular operating system. Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, then everything else. There is, however, an untold story.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • [Reviews]: Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox Review ” Isadora “

        I have been using Linux Mint since Linux Mint 5 Elyssa always was interesting in Linux Mint Fluxbox editions because it does not require high hardware specifications using a really lightweight window manager Fluxbox based on Blacbox. First installation for Linux Mint 5 on my Laptop with hardware specifications 1GHz and 256 MB of RAM, so Linux Mint 9 Fluxbox edition is a good choice if you don’t have a good hardware specifications.

      • Linux Mint 9 Xfce or LXDE?

        Another round in the battle between Xfce and LXDE. This time the distro is Linux Mint 9. So far, the Xfce desktop has lost two rounds in a matches with LXDE on the same distro. It has lost both the free memory battle and the quality of distribution battle. On this last round, who is going to be the winner?

        Both installs were from a Live/Install CD for each desktop. No problem with either install, and both use GRUB2. While GRUB2 may have its problems, I like the fact that it automatically finds and correctly boots other Linux distros. To avoid installing GRUB2 on the MBR, you need to click the “Advanced” button on the Ready to Install screen (Step 8 of 8). This screen allows you to select the boot partition.

      • SuperOS 10.04 Screenshots

        SuperOS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that makes Ubuntu more usable while remaining compatible with it. This is done by implementing several beginner-friendly tools and features. Along with over 200 updates from Ubuntu 10.04, SuperOS 10.04 also includes important enhancements like out-of-the-box support for DVD-playback, QuickTime video, Windows Media Video, Flash Video and many others. Other features include portable applications with RUNZ, programs are easier to run with App Runner, WUBI is in place, access the live USB creator cd2usb from the DVD menu, and many other enhancements.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Android

    • Source code for Dell Streak unveiled

      Thanks to Android’s open-source agreements handsets are having their source codes released left and right. If you’re similar to me, I get quite excited that they released the source code, download the file, and realize… I have no idea what I am doing. Although I am still eager about what our developers will come up with to take advantage of this large screen. Hopefully all the manufactures will follow suit and continue this early release of source codes so that our developers can quickly get up custom ROMS and themes.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Ubuntu 10.10 netbook beta: unusable on my Gateway netbook

  • Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition beta review

    When the number of destinations exceeds the length of the screen mouse gestures up and down the bar can scroll it. The top and bottom buttons can collapse in a very Apple-like fashion too, though at the moment usability is a little slow and unresponsive on the whole, though we’re confident this will be addressed by final release.

• Tablets

  • Sakshat, the Laughed-At $35 Indian Tablet, Reportedly Set for Early 2011 Launch

    Defying skeptics everywhere, the gadget with the funny name and an absurdly low price will reportedly arrive in India this January. Rumors concerning the Sakshat — a minimally priced, government-endorsed Indian Android tablet — have circulated for more than a year. The device, which was designed for students and folks typically unable to afford a computer, reportedly has a manufacturer, a price, a release date and detailed specs.

Open Source Community Types

When I am with business people, I often find I need to distinguish between the different kinds of community that are layered around various Free software commons. It’s common to characterise community members as either “developers” (the “open source” worldview often emphasises this) or “users” (the “Free software” worldview often emphasises this). More than that, using the term “community” to apply to every style of gathering leads to confusion, especially regarding motivations for participating.

As I’ve watched various community engagements by various companies and individuals, and discussed this with various people, it seems to me that there are four different development-related community types, in two bands. These aren’t absolute classifications with hard-and-fast boundaries, and most communities span two of the types, but the distinction is helpful when discussing communities.

Oracle

• FSF Lashes Out at Oracle for its Patent Lawsuit Against Google Android

  FSF finally responds to the whole Google vs Oracle legal tangle and the threat posed by software patents. FSF lashed out at Oracle for suing Google over various Java patents, even calls the actions by Oracle as ‘unjustifiable.’ FSF also adds that, “nobody deserves to be the victim of software patent aggression, and Oracle is wrong to use its patents to attack Android”.

CMS

• For-Profit Automattic Gives WordPress Trademark To Non-Profit Foundation

  “It’s not often you see a for-profit company donate one of their most valuable core assets and give up control,” Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg writes today in a post announcing that the WordPress trademark has been transfered from his company to the WordPress Foundation. “This is a really big deal,” he continues.

• Something is Drupally in the State of Denmark

  It seems that while many technology conferences are suffering a bit with their attendance, there is no stopping the Drupal community. With almost 1200 attendees, the Copenhagen conference was the most well-attended European DrupalCon yet, likely due in no small part to the promise of a custom-brewed beer and our own bar to drink it in. Suffice it to say that Drupalers work and play hard.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • Introducing OpenCharities: Opening up the Charities Register

    A couple of weeks ago I needed a list of all the charities in the UK and their registration numbers so that I could try to match them up to the local council spending data OpenlyLocal is aggregating and trying to make sense of. A fairly simple request, you’d think, especially in this new world of transparency and open data, and for a dataset that’s uncontentious.

Commodore Threatens Blogger For Being Skeptical About Its Amiga Plans

Slashdot recently pointed us to the fact that OSNews received a legal threat from Commodore USA for publishing an article that was highly skeptical of Commodore’s Amiga plans. Slashdot focuses on the fact that the legal nastygram is obviously copied from ChillingEffects.org, including odd formatting and references. While that part is amusing, I don’t think it’s that interesting. While there’s been some discussion about copyright on legal documents, in general, lawyers copy others’ legal language all the time, and it’s (mostly) considered to be okay.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• EU Surveillance Studies Disclosed By Pirate Party

Intellectual Monopolies

• Daily Variety Refuses To Back Down On Vandals Lawsuit

  Where this gets even more interesting (or potentially dangerous, depending on your opinion), is that the band’s bassist, Joe Escalante, is a former entertainment lawyer who is representing the band in the case. Despite not being a litigator, he’s been learning about litigation and even got himself admitted to practice law in Delaware, where the lawsuit was filed (the band is trying to get the case moved to LA). Escalante has been publicizing all of the aspects of the case, and the band is even holding a “fundraising” concert to fund the legal defense.

• Copyrights

  • Free Comics! Slightly Scanned.

    For comic fans, history fans, and comics history fans, the Digital Comics Museum is offering downloads and scans of public domain comic books from the 1940s and ’50s. There are a massive amount of titles and issues available, from Captain Science to Sherlock Holmes to Frisky Fairy Tales to the chaste Sweet Sixteen Magazine, and many, many more. You can also find the very same horror comics that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

  • 2010 Catalyst Grant Recipients Announced!

    It’s with great pleasure that we announce the recipients of the first CC Catalyst Grants Program. Out of a grant pool consisting of more than 130 applications, seven projects have been selected for awards up to $10,000 each, to catalyze projects that contribute to the commons.

    Thanks to your generous support during the Catalyst Grants campaign, we raised almost $50,000, 100% of which will directly fuel the grant awards.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• The Key to a Successful Linux Conversion

  People are resistant to change. This is a fact and it is not going to change any time soon. Because of this they will not want their entire computer to change on them all at once. An important fact that a lot Linux Advocates miss is that the conversion to Linux starts on Windows or OSX.

Server

• HPC meets cloud computing with Dell’s new server

  The company announced the PowerEdge C6105 rack-mount server, which can accommodate up to 48 processor cores in a 2U box. The server can create large clusters to run scientific or math applications, and can also scale performance in densely packed cloud-computing environments, company officials said.

• PCI DSS Standards 2.0 Means Good News For Linux Xen VPS

  Of the 12 new changes to the standards, the best part of the new PCI DSS rules is a change to rule 2.2.1, which specifically allows for virtualization. Such as using a VPS running Linux with Xen. Instead of having just 1 function per server, they now specify you can have multiple virtual servers on one physical server, each performing separate functions. Prior to this the Payment Card Industry, didn’t specifically allow or disallow the use of VPS, and their rule on it, was open to interpretation, and your security team would need to make a judgement call if they thought you will still be in compliance by using Xen, or any other VPS. You will still need at least 2 physical servers, as your database server must be behind a hardware firewall, but you can have web on 1 VPS, email on another, DNS on a third, etc.

  Some people argue that using a VPS is less secure, because you risk having the main server hacked, and then in turn all the VPSs running on it are compromised. However SSH is probably the only port you would have open on the main server, plus that should have an ACL denying all traffic except from one or a couple IPs, it would really be very very rare if were to happen, and it seems like the PCI DSS Council realized that too.

Kernel Space

• Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

  Broadcom would like to announce the initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for it’s latest generation of 11n chipsets.

Applications

• Avant Window Navigator – a MacOS inspired panel replacement

• Proprietary

  • Bricscad™ V10 for Linux released

    Gent Belgium and Merrimack NH USA, September 6, 2010 – Bricsys is the first to release a .dwg based CAD software for Linux users. Bricsys NV, the developer of Bricscad, announced today that Bricscad V10 for Linux is now available

    Bricscad V10 is the first .dwg based CAD platform available for the Linux Operating System. Bricscad V10, the leading alternative CAD platform for the .dwg file format, continues to offer freedom of choice to the CAD and Engineering community.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Five tips for a smooth Linux migration

  • Linux DWG – Official Release – Bricscad v10

  • Why our Internet2.0 is broken

  • Security advisories for Thursday

  • How to fix fglrx error after upgrading to 2.6.35 kernel in Ubuntu lucid

  • Integrating XCache Into PHP5 (Fedora 13/CentOS 5.5 & Apache2)

  • Fix Virtualbox guest addition installation issue in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

  • ISPConfig3 – DNS Templates

  • Zoom Blur Effect in GIMP – GIMP Tutorial

  • My Quest for Free Licensed Japanese Pop Music with Wacca.Fm’s XMLRPC API and Python’s xmlrpclib

  • C++ Help: Installing and Using Code::Blocks

  • Increasing Database Performance by Query Tuning

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • How to Oxidize KDE 3.5

    As far as putting current software on old computers, this is something to look out for, and (if I say so myself) the theming of KDE 3.5 to look like KDE 4 looks pretty convincing to the untrained eye and makes the desktop (in terms of speed, stability, and appearance) look thoroughly modern.

  • KDE 4.5 Desktop Activities Bring New Meaning to Organization

    KDE 4.5 brings to the table plenty of useful, functional, innovative features. One of those very features is the Desktop Activity. Although many scoffed at the idea (even tried to get the feature pulled), those same naysayers are (hopefully) glad their requests were not followed. Why? The KDE Desktop Activities feature is a great new desktop metaphor that takes the Linux desktop to new levels of organization.

    Prior to Desktop Activities a user could have multiple desktops (thanks to the ever-present KDE pager). You could use one desktop for productivity, one for networking, one for graphics, one for fun, or whatever categories you needed. This was a great way to keep yourself organized. The KDE team saw something that no one else seemed to see — that the Pager idea could be greatly improved.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Chakra Jaz (0.2.1)

    Chakra Linux is a new distribution based on Arch Linux. Chakra Linux comes from the people behind the KDEmod(Modularized KDE). Arch Linux is one of my favorite distribution as it offered a fast, stable distribution with the latest packages(rolling release). I used KDEmod with Arch as the customizations and modularization was better than the vanilla KDE provided by Arch.

    [...]

    The developers of Chakra have done a great job with their custom scripts. Chakra Linux is still in early stages of development, and it needs some improvements especially in the following areas.

    * Package Management (GUI, packages and dependencies)
    * Installer(Partitioning)

    If you are looking for an easy way to setup a Arch based distribution, then Chakra would be an ideal way. If you have a fair amount of experience with Arch, then I would highly recommend Chakra. If you are a basic user then you may need to wait for a little longer for a perfect Chakra experience.

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • FUDCon Tempe update — includes lodging info!

    • Systemd and Fedora 14

• Debian Family

  • HeliOS Store opens to fund the HeliOS Project

    We recently received a huge donation from Dell. It wasn’t computers or monitors but boxes and boxes of stuff we probably will never use. But that’s not to say that it isn’t valuable to someone else. With that in mind, The HeliOS Project has established a presence on Amazon and Ebay. Since Ebay and Paypal are joined at the hip, our preferred way of doing business is through Amazon.

  • yes we can

    There is no way to have an official Debian Facebook page and pretend that we are not, de facto, endorsing Facebook. That’s why I believe having official Debian presence on Facebook, or on any other non Free Software platform, will just weaken our cause. It will send out the message that Free Software it’s something which is good for others to use, but not necessarily for Debian as a project.

  • Can Debian achieve world domination without being on Facebook?

    Facebook is not very popular among free software hackers. When I announced my Facebook page on identi.ca (see here) I got a few replies suggesting it was odd for me to use Facebook.

  • Freedom Box Project

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Charactersets

    • UbuntuOne gets better

      Cloud storage services offers Ubuntu users an ever increasing range of features

      Most users have heard of Dropbox, the online storage application which makes it easy to save files in the “cloud”. As far as consumer-facing cloud storage solutions Dropbox is about the best there is.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Linux Mint (Debian)

        Summary: An excellent alternative version of Linux Mint for those who prefer a rolling distro to the usual Ubuntu based versions of Linux Mint.

        Rating: 4/5

      • Linux Mint Debian Edition – 1st Impression

        So without further delay, let’s talk about Mint…

        1 – Boot Time – Nothing new, fast as hell…
        2 – Kernel – 2.6.32 – Same as Ubuntu 10.04
        3 – Speed – same as 1
        4 – Update Manager – ok, not very intrusive with all the updates and the wonderful Mint level for update, very nice for beginners
        5 – My samba share appeared on Nautilus and network
        6 – Software: F-spot, Gimp, Thunderbird, Pidgin!!!!!, VLC!!!!!!, MintNanny (it would come very useful for me soon), Giver (file share), root terminal, Openoffice….. Yes, they are better than Ubuntu at choosing packages
        7 – Well, everything else, just like regular Mint, very very nice……

      • Linux Mint Based On Debian Released – And It’s A Rolling Distribution!

        Rolling release means you won’t have to upgrade / do a clean install each time a new Linux Mint Debian version is released to be able to use the latest software versions. As an example: Ubuntu 10.04 shipped with VLC 1.0.x and you cannot and will not be able to install VLC 1.1.x in Ubuntu 10.04 from the official repositories. The only way to install VLC 1.1.x in Ubuntu 10.04 is to use a PPA or upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10. That will not be the case with Linux Mint Debian – you will get updates for all your applications without having to install the latest Linux Mint Debian version.

      • Review: Kubuntu 10.04 Trinity “Lucid Lynx” (Idea by Candid of Linux Today)

        I think Trinity will be able to find a home on many old computers as a viable alternative to LXDE and Xfce; it’s fast, and it’s customizable enough to be quite a looker (as I don’t particularly care for the default look). I wish the developers the best of luck regarding the project’s progress; more choice is always better. I would certainly recommend this to anyone who wants some way to stick with KDE 3.5 or some way to bring KDE onto an older computer.

Devices/Embedded

• Wind River board partners spin Intel-based embedded kits

  Wind River announced a series of Wind River Linux-ready development kits developed in partnership with eight different embedded board vendors. Embedded Development Kits are now available from Emerson Network Power, Eurotech, and Kontron, with more kits due in the fourth quarter from Advantech, Adlink, Curtiss-Wright, GE Intelligent Platforms, and RadiSys, says Wind River.

• Phones

  • Do Users Care Much About Mobile Operating Systems?

    Google’s Android initiative likewise is part of Google’s awareness that the mobile market is strategic and crucial for its future relevance.

  • Android

    • Android Now at 80,000 Market Apps

      In case you didn’t catch it late last night in T-Mobile’s press release for their G2, Andy Rubin had some words to say for the successor to the first phone to carry his beloved operating system, Android, and had a quick fact to throw out to us: we’re nowsitting at 80,000 apps. It’s an increase of only 10,000 from the last time we caught word of any official number. In May, it was announced that the market was housing 50,000 apps. At this rate, it’s sounding like we’re approaching the roughly 10,000 apps per month AppBrain had predicted a while back (even if their numbers were unofficial and somehow inflated).

    • Android Market Growing Exponentially – Now with more than 80,000 apps

    • This Little App Went to Market, Part 1

      Reality indicates that most developers don’t make back their investment by publishing an application to the App Store or Android Market.

    • Google Faces Tough Fight Against iTunes

    • More Android tablets break cover

      Navigation device manufacturer Rydeen Mobile Electronics announced a seven-inch, Android-based tablet called the “gPad GCOM701″ at last weekend’s IFA show in Berlin. Also at the show, Foryoudigital demonstrated its five-inch, Android-powered MX10, and Enspert announced that it built the “Identity Tab” Android tablet recently released by Korean carrier KT.

    • Learn your history, the Android way

• Sub-notebooks

  • UNR – Ubuntu Netbook Revisited

    I’ve spent the last couple of days distro hopping on my netbook and ended up with a pretty impressive UNR (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) 10.04. It had been happily running Linux Mint 8 XFCE with full Compiz effects before that.

    A couple of weeks ago I installed BackTrack as a live USB distro, but got a bit of an awakening when I found I was lost in KDE3.5. It was hunting around the interface for things, as if I’d never seen Linux before, despite KDE3.5 being the first full time Linux DE I used. It was time to branch out a little if only to brush up my skills and not feel so lost when sitting down at another Linux PC. I have a P3 and P4 desktop, neither of which are capable of running anything beyond XFCE, so the netbook was the obvious target.

Inequality, Choices, and Hitting a Wall

Have you read the Evil HR Lady’s article called Illegal Gender Discrimination in Tech? Hardly.? Suzanne Lucas, a.k.a. Evil HR Lady, says, “Everyone wrings their hands and frets, ‘what can we do about the inequality in X?’ Well, first stop and see if people are making different choices.”

Ok, so far I can follow what Lucas is saying. I’ve reevaluated my own choices over the years and plugged holes where I found them. I’ve learned the art of salary negotiation, am improving my self-promotion prowess, and am known to be aggressively assertive. But then she loses me… and annoys me.

Lucas writes, “I know, I know, there is a presumption of discrimination because women are so down-trodden that that they think they wouldn’t be able to succeed because all those men who control the money wouldn’t let them anyway, so why try?”

Where exactly is this presumption of discrimination? Did she say ‘down trodden’? Really, Lucas does a fabulous job of illustrating what so many of us think keeps women out of tech careers – they don’t feel welcome.

SetiQuest Project Could Bring The Goodness of Open Source to Our Search for Alien Life

SETI or Search for Extra Terrestrial Life is a project that started some 50 years ago. SETI is one of those science projects that had caught the public’s imagination like no other. But with the escalating costs and dwindling manpower, SETI needs a new vision. And if things happened during SETIcon, a weekend conference organized by the SETI Institute to honor SETI’s 50th anniversary, are any indication, the new vision could just be ‘Open Source’.

Events

• OrangeHRM clamors to join million-dollar club

  Open source human resource management software vendor sees quality of service and mobile technology as two key areas to exploit to become a US$1 million company by 2011, reveals CEO.

Web Browsers

• Mozilla

  • Firefox 4 Set to Improve Security

    The race to accelerate browser features continues as Mozilla developers race towards the finish line to get the finished version of the Firefox 4 Web browser out the door.

    The first Firefox 4 beta was released in early July of this year and the final release is due by the end of the year. Along the way to its final generally available release, Mozilla developers have been issuing milestone releases with new features and bug fixes. Firefox 4 development is occurring at a time when rival browser vendor Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is updating it Chrome browser to version 6 and Microsoft is working on Internet Explorer 9.

CMS

• 10 Free WordPress Themes for Small Businesses

Education

• My introduction to open source

  Co-production first became a solid term when used by a team of scholars at Indiana University in the early 1970s. They were looking at the provision of public safety by examining the structure and operations of police departments. Key here was their precursor idea demonstrated well before that study: a distinction between the provision of a public good (or outcome) and the production of a service.

  Government may be responsible for the provision, or be in charge of it, but it doesn’t have to be the sole producer (the one involved in physically bringing the good into existence). In the case of this public safety study, police performance didn’t vary in expected ways when it came to prime suspects like funding levels. The team suggested the local community was responsible for a lot of producer-like qualities, that in the end, had an effect on the provision of public safety.

  It was a new concept, to scholars, at least. They termed it [and this is a later definition] “co-production”—“a process through which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organization.”

Business

• Open Source Microstock Agency: How Stock Photo Agency YayMicro.com was Created Using Only Open Source Technology

• Open Source Microstock Agency

  The enterprise-class linux distribution was chosen because it has proven to be one of the most reliable and stable distributions. It’s one of the most popular server distributions, meaning it is easy to find solutions and support online. YayMicro is currently running CentOS release 5.5 (Final) that was released in May this year.

  CentOS was an easy choice for Yay, since the developers had experience from RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). The community around CentOS provides the support needed, and the functionality is just as good as RHEL. In fact, CentOS can be regarded as the free edition of the same software that makes Red Hat an enterprise solution. It is incredibly stable, efficient, and secure. It provides the same level of security as other enterprise Linux versions. All updates also coincides with a release of RH, ensuring consistent compatibility.

Project Releases

• NetRecon 1.78

  Taking inspiration from the dnet utility netrecon has undergone a lot of redesign. The dnet utility a rather cool test program that can be found with libdnet. Yes a shameless plug on my part. Nevertheless, the way the dnet code plugs in each smaller test program proved to be the best way to change netrecon. All of the programs in netrecon have been merged into a singular front end. As such the syntax has changed drastically. However, the speed is the same and duplication of code, mainly between elements that use libpcap has been commoned up. There is likely still some deduplication of effort to be done. Lastly, for some odd reason, it seems to execute a lot faster too. I can’t really account for that but I am not complaining.

• GRASS GIS 6.4.0 released 3 September 2010

  We are pleased to announce the release of GRASS GIS 6.4.0, the first in the new line of 6.4 stable releases. As a stable release 6.4 will enjoy long-term support. The next release (6.4.1) will introduce a few new features which are still undergoing final testing, but after that all further 6.4 releases will be bugfix-only. Due to our highly conservative stabilization policy this is the first official version of GRASS to introduce new features since October 2006 and supersedes the previous stable line of GRASS 6.2. As such the floodgates are open and there are many new features to explore and many new structural improvements to be found in the software.

• Uniform Server is available for CUBRID 3.0

  Once in our previous video trainings we have already introduced the Uniform Server for CUBRID, which included CUBRID 2.2, Apache 2.2.9, and PHP 5.2.12. Today we have updated the CUBRID Database Server to 3.0. So, now you can download the Uniform Server for CUBRID…

Openness/Sharing

• Free thinking

  Why expensive consultancy firms are giving away more research

• Do Open Educational Resources Increase Efficiency?

  One of the questions people often ask about Open Educational Resources is “do they really increase efficiency?” Creative Commons has worked with many OER innovators, and their stories indicate that it does. We thought it would be useful to gather pointers to some of these examples. Please read on, and leave a comment with other great examples of how CC-enabled OER can increase efficiency for teachers, students and self-learners. Note of course that increasing efficiency is only one benefit of OER.

Programming

• Google Summer of Code 2010 is over

  Google Summer of Code is over now, and we have mixed results. Unfortunately we lost two students at midterm evaluation in July, and another student at final evaluation in August. On the other hand, we have two very successful projects.

  The first project, by Krzysztof Kosiński, was about porting the whole rendering to Cairo, which resulted in a considerable performance boost itself. But Krzysztof also implemented support for multiple cores/processors to use multiple threads for rendering SVG filters. He is also planning to implement SVG filters in OpenCL, so that rendering could be delegated to GPU where available. The second project, by Abhishek Sharma, was about C++ification of SPLayer and privatization of XML nodes which is also going to help parallel processing.

• Trivial Lists

• Subversion vs. Git: Choosing the Right Open Source Version Control System

  As with everything in the open source world, version control systems (VCSs) come in several flavors. The grandfather of open source VCSs is CVS, a tool that was the de facto standard in the industry for several years until the likes of Subversion came along and made it almost obsolete.

Bullying Busybody for Senate

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal may never have served in Vietnam (despite his recollections to the contrary), but he is a hero in the war on prostitution. Armed with nothing but sternly worded letters, indignant press releases, and a seemingly inexhaustible store of self-righteousness, Blumenthal played a key role in pressuring Craigslist to shut down its “adult services” section, which he called a “blatant Internet brothel.”

On Friday night, the online classified ad service replaced the hyperlink to the controversial section with a black rectangle labeled “censored.” If Blumenthal has anything to say about it (and you know he will), no one will ever pay for sex again.

Apple relents on Flash-derived iPhone, iPad apps

Four and a half months after an Apple license change led Adobe Systems to scrap a project to bring Flash-derived applications to the iPhone, Apple has reversed the ban.

Crookes vs p2pnet fund raiser

Should Wayne Crookes, owner of Vancouver company West Coast Title Search, be allowed to inspire a new law which would effectively kill online freedom of speech in Canada, ultimately echoing around the world?

System for appointing judges ‘undermining international courts’

A “toxic” system for appointing the world’s most senior judges is fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of international courts, a new study claims.

Unqualified judges, in some cases with no expertise on international law and in one case no legal qualifications, have been appointed to key positions because of highly politicised voting systems and a lack of transparency, the Guardian has learned.

Critics say that the practices threaten the future of the international criminal court, which deals with cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the international court of justice, the UN court which deals with disputes between nation states’ courts.

Science

• Matt Cohler Leads Funding for Scientist Social Network

  ResearchGATE, a social network for scientists aimed to facilitate their collaboration on research, has raised an unspecified amount of money in its first institutional round of funding. The round is notable in part because it was led by Matt Cohler of Benchmark Capital, the early Facebook and LinkedIn executive who’s only made a few venture capital investments so far. Berlin-based ResearchGATE was founded by a group of German scientists including Dr. Ijad Madisch, a medical doctor who is currently conducting research in radiology at Harvard. The site has amassed 500,000 members in the last two years, with strong contingents from biology and medicine, followed by computer science.

Security/Aggression

• Pregnant Traveler: TSA Screeners Bullied Me Into Full-Body Scan

  Pregnant Consumerist reader Mary was recently going through the security checkpoint at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. When she realized that she would be going through a full-body scanner, she told the screeners she wanted to exercise her right to a pat-down — even if it meant experiencing the TSA’s new, icky “enhanced” pat-down. But instead of the screeners doing as she requested, Mary claims they proceeded to bully her into the scanner.

• £114 fine for getting off train two stops early

  A COUPLE told yesterday how they were fined £114 by a ticket collector – for getting off a train EARLY.

  Emma Clark and her fiance Davyd Winter-Bates had bought discounted single tickets for £6 each on a website.

• New research suggests general public support CCTV

• WALTHAM FOREST: Borough’s CCTV “obsolete”

  MOST CCTV systems in Waltham Forest are defunct due to a lack of investment, it has emerged.

  A cabinet report says the equipment used by police and the authority is “significantly past recommended life expectancy”.

  The method of camera control and image recording is described as obsolete and soon to be beyond repair.

  The report, which will be considered by cabinet next Tuesday (September 14) seeks approval for the “urgent” replacement of CCTV systems at a cost of £312,000.

• School uses thumbprints to register all children as part of hi-tech overhaul

  A SCANNER system that reads thumbprints has been installed at a Plymouth “school of the future” during a multi-million-pound facelift.

  The 1,280 pupils at Estover Community College saw the amazing technology in action as they started a new academic year this week and they said the school has got the “wow factor” with its new buildings, technology and equipment.

• Sri Lanka’s parliament boosts presidential powers

  Sri Lanka’s parliament voted today to allow the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to seek an unlimited number of terms in office and to tighten his hold on power by giving him total control over the judiciary, police and the civil service.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Koch-funded oil rally calls global warming a “hoax,” dismisses oil spill, and attacks Democrats

  What was billed as an organic grassroots jobs rally quickly descended into attacks on three things the Kochs most oppose: global warming science, oil safety regulations, and Democrats. One of the speakers, Sgt. Dennis Bartow, called global warming a “hoax.” He was joined by Karen Wright, CEO of the gas company Ariel Corporation, who ridiculed climate change as “questionable science” and referred to pollutants as “so-called carbon dioxide emissions.” Wright went on to rail against “so-called green jobs” that were “dubious” and “phony.”

• ENVIRONMENT: Astroturfing a regional greenhouse gas program

  A conservative action group is coming after a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program organized by northeastern states.

  The group is Americans for Prosperity, and the program in questions is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI – “reggie,” as it’s often called – sets a power-sector carbon cap for the participating states. (New York is one of them.) Then the allowable emissions are publicly auctioned off. At the next auction, scheduled for Wednesday, Americans for Prosperity will protest. It claims that the auctions are secretive, which they aren’t, and that the program will result in drastically higher energy bills. A state environmental group counters those claims here.

• Koch-Funded “Americans for Prosperity” Astroturfs Regional Greenhouse Gas Program

  AFP also calls the program a “stealth energy tax” and claims that the program will lead to drastically higher energy bills. The cap will actually account for between 0.4 and 1 percent of energy bills. RGGI calims that investments in energy efficiency will eventually lead to reductions in energy bills of 20 to 30 percent, and the program will create new jobs in renewable energy. AFP tries to keep the appearance of being a grassroots organization, but a recent article in the New Yorker magazine revealed the group is bankrolled by billionaire oil company owner David Koch, who has a history of campaigning against climate change legislation and funding climate change deniers. Koch Industries is also one of the nation’s top ten polluters, and fossil fuels are the company’s mainstay.

• Bees stung by ‘climate change-linked’ early pollination

  Climate change could be affecting pollination by disrupting the synchronised timing of flower opening and bee emergence from hibernation, suggests new US-based research.

  Declining numbers of bees and other pollinators have been causing growing concern in recent years, as scientists fear that decreased pollination could have major impacts on world food supplies.

  Previous studies have focused on pollinators and have linked falling populations to the use of pesticides, habitat loss and disease.

  However, a 17-year analysis of the wild lily in Colorado by scientists from the University of Toronto, suggests other factors may be at play. The study revealed a long-term decline in pollination, which was particularly pronounced earlier in the season.

Finance

• Declare a Jobs Emergency on September 15!

  Job cuts have a way of sneaking up on you — a few teachers here, a police officer there and another fire department that is not open when you need them. In some areas it is a slow bleed, but as every Emergency Medical Technician knows, a thousand small cuts can still kill the patient.

  One group is pushing back against the drip, drip, drip of disappearing jobs and relentless cutbacks in public services. Jobs with Justice (JwJ), the broad-based coalition of faith groups, labor unions, students and grassroots organizations located in 47 communities across the nation, says it simply will not accept a jobless recovery.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Target’s Falling Buzz Score

  The Internet-based market research agency YouGov compiles a weekly report called the Brandweek BrandIndex, that measures “buzz,” or consumer perceptions of the most talked-about brands. A big loser in the agency’s September 3, 2010 report is Target, which drew fire after the retailer donated $150,000 to the Republican-leaning political action group, Minnesota Forward.

• Dove World Outreach Center: Where Does the Money Go?

  Terry Jones, the controversial pastor behind the recent call to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, runs a church that spends most of its money on administrative expenses and operates a furniture business out his church in Gainesville, FL.

  According to the 2006 tax return—the most recent tax return available on Guidestar.org—filed by Jones’ church, the Dove World Outreach Center, “program services” accounted for 30.5 percent of the church’s expenses, while “Administrative costs” accounted for 69.5 percent.

• Faux California pol dupes Washington Post journalist

  Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart had a bone to pick with Jack Kimble, a Republican congressman representing California’s 54th district.

• The Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” Decision Threatens the 1964 Civil Rights Act

  Libertarian conservatives are motivated to overturn the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision may give them the tools to do so. The Act must be maintained in the face of the threat posed by the Citizens United precedent.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Judge tosses out privacy claim against Michael Moore over ‘Sicko’ segment

  A federal magistrate judge in Tacoma has thrown out key claims in a lawsuit filed against controversial filmmaker Michael Moore and his Academy Award-nominated documentary “Sicko,” the first use of a state law that bars lawsuits targeting conduct associated with free speech and the First Amendment.

  Judge Karen Strombom last week granted Moore’s motion to dismiss claims of invasion of privacy and “misappropriation of likeness” filed by Hoquiam resident Ken Aronson, ruling that Moore’s use of 71 seconds of video belonging to Aronson was based on Moore’s exploration of an issue of significant public concern — health care — and that its use was protected by the First Amendment.

• ACLU sues DHS over border laptop searches

  Privacy advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union are mounting a legal challenge against the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of searching travelers’ laptops at the border without reasonable suspicion.

  The ACLU announced Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit along with the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) on behalf of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), alleging the policy violates Americans’ First Amendment rights to privacy and free speech.

• Rackspace Pulls The Plug On ‘Burn A Koran Day’ Church’s Web Site

  Surely by now you’ve heard of the Dove World Outreach Center, the Florida church that plans to hold a “Koran burning day” on September 11, the nine year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Pretty much nobody think it’s a good idea, from Palin to Obama, from Gen. Petraeus to the FBI. Now involved: Rackspace. Yes, the popular Web host has pulled the plug on the church’s Web site, citing a violation in its service’s “hate-speech provision of [its] acceptable-use policy.”

• Internet cafe lets police browse your web history

  The latest submission to our Guerrilla Sticker Campaign gallery is taken from outside an internet cafe in East London.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• Prying Loose the Grip of Broadband Giants

  Recent data on Internet use in Canada suggests that most people reading this subscribe to broadband services and that virtually all those subscribers are with a major telecommunications or cable company. Indeed, the 2010 Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission report on communications in Canada found that the incumbent telecommunications and cable companies control 95 per cent of the residential broadband market, a figure that has remained virtually unchanged for the past five years.

  Injecting greater competition into that market lies at the heart of last week’s CRTC decision to require incumbent telecom companies — such as Bell, Bell Aliant, and Telus — to provide independent ISPs with speed-matched open access to their networks (speed matching enables competitors to offer Internet services to their retail customers at speeds that match the speeds provided by the incumbents to their own retail customers).

• Net neutrality: UK taking first shots at the open Internet

  They were opposed by groups like La Quadrature du Net, ORG and BEUC, alongside Internet companies like Yahoo, Skype and Google. After all, both Google and Skype already understand what can result from closed networks: Skype believe they have suffered from network discrimination on fixed ISPs, and have applications blocked on closed mobile networks.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • U2 – Stick to the Music!

    Back in January 2010, we criticised U2 front man Bono for warning all creative types to beware of the evils of the Internet and especially us greedy ISP types when it came to illegal file sharing. We recommended Bono should stick to singing.

  • Righthaven: saving the newspaper industry, one lawsuit at a time

    The Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) of Southern Nevada is a nonprofit that sends trained volunteers to the site of severe accidents, suicides, fires, and violent theft. The volunteers comfort family members, witnesses, and bystanders—traumatized people who can’t be helped by anything found in an ambulance.

    TIP might seem an unlikely target for a federal copyright lawsuit, but it found itself hauled into court last week for posting 14 local newspaper articles about TIP and its volunteers to the group’s website. In most of the articles, TIP volunteers are the main sources for the reporters, providing plenty of quotes and (sometimes jarring) anecdotes about their work.

  • Jimmy Page’s autobiography: £445 is a whole lotta money to pay

    There are only three things necessary to be a Jimmy Page superfan: access to the internet, a sturdy coffee table – and £445 in spare cash. Put the three together and you too could be the proud owner of the leather-bound, silk-wrapped and autographed 512-page collector’s edition of Jimmy Page By Jimmy Page, the long-awaited autobiography by the famously secretive guitarist of Led Zeppelin – one of the most popular and influential bands in the history of rock music.

  • ACTA

    • MEP demand fundamental rights for citizens in ACTA deal

      MEPs yesterday passed a motion strongly criticising the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and urging the European Commission to ensure it respects fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and privacy.

      This is an outstanding success for MEPs and a great victory for European citizens and ORG supporters who joined the lobbying. The ACTA process badly needs strong opposition because of these threats to fundamental rights of citizens.

      Only about a third of British MEPs signed Written Declaration 12/2010 that also called for an immediate publication of all documents related to the negotiating process.

      In a debate in Parliament today MEPs hailed the success of the Declaration and repeatedly criticised the lack of transparency in the ACTA process and demanded to see the final text of the agreement before it is signed.