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09.16.11

Links 16/9/2011: Boeing Goes With Android, Oracle Splits MySQL

Posted in News Roundup at 4:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • A Bushel of Tools for Business and Personal Financial Management

    While they don’t get written about as frequently as other types of open source applications, there actually are many good FOSS applications for business and personal financial management. Historically, some of the best ones have been targeted at computer users, but with the rise of mobile applications, you can get your hands on many good financial apps that you can keep in your pocket. Here is a grab bag of good resources on this front, and you should find some applications here that can help you manage your money.

  • Tools to Help You Nurture Your Open Source Project

    If you’ve given some thought to launching an open source project, or you’re in the process of delivering one, some up-front footwork and howework can help things go smoothly, and even keep you out of trouble. Issues pertaining to licensing, distribution, support options and even branding require thinking ahead if you want your project to flourish, and to stay safe. Fortunately, there are many free, helpful resources that can help you ramp your project up. In this post, you’ll find our updated collection of good, free resources to pay attention to.

  • Open source tool enables security tests for chip cards

    At this year’s Black Hat Conference, crypto expert Karsten Nohl of SRLabs demonstrated the degate tool that can be used to take a closer look at applications stored on smartcards, such as credit cards and SIM cards.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla co-founder quits Firefox veep role

      A longtime Mozilla Corporation VP has quit the open source outfit he co-founded in 1998.

      Mike Shaver, who oversaw technical strategy for the past six years at the Firefox maker, confirmed he was hanging up his hot foxy boots in a blog post. Shaver was among those who founded the Mozilla Organization following the release of Netscape’s web browser source code.

  • SaaS

    • Memset takes open source to cloud storage market

      Memset has drawn specific attention to its added security features – knowing full well it is still the issue holding many customers back from putting their data into the public cloud – as well as touting its simplicity.

  • Databases

    • Oracle adds commercial extensions to MySQL

      Oracle has announced the availability of commercial extensions for the MySQL database. These new extensions are only being added to the Enterprise Edition and will further differentiate the commercial edition from the community edition. Previously, the Enterprise Edition only included external tools, MySQL Enterprise Monitor and MySQL Enterprise Backup, as part of its package, but the new extensions are much more deeply integral to MySQL.

  • CMS

  • Business

    • Free Software versus Open Source: Tryton vs OpenERP

      When I talk about Free Software, I talk about not only about freedom, but also community and good will from the software author. The latter probably is the most important one.

      You write Free Software because you want to contribute to the community. It’s an act of social activism. It’s about sharing and helping out.

  • BSD

    • PC-BSD 9.0 on its Way

      PC-BSD is the Ubuntu of the free BSD world. It features an easy install (similar to Anaconda), with a nice default system, and usually gives no reason to fiddle under the bonnet. Version 9.0 is currently in development and Beta 2 was recently released.

  • Project Releases

    • Omaha 3: Updating Google style

      Google’s latest update to its Omaha update system, also known as Google Update, brings a range of enhancements to the open source background update engine. Google introduced its update mechanism for Windows applications, code-named Omaha, in 2007 and, in 2009, the technology became freely available as open source code under the Apache licence. The company has been modernising the update engine and has now made version 3 of Omaha available at Google Code.

  • Licensing

    • Spring Roo to be up to 10 times faster and without GPL

      A completely different change concerns the licensing for Spring Roo. Up until now, a large part of the code has been under GPLv3, which is controversial among some members of the community; annotations and associated code are under a mixture of GPLv3 and Apache Software Licence version 2 (ASLv2). In the future, Spring Roo will completely be under ASLv2 in order to make the development environment more interesting for commercial projects as well.

    • How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 2

      To those who whine “I don’t want Google/Microsoft/Apple/whoever to use my code!” — why not? Really, if you think they’re evil because they close off code, how are you any better by doing the same to them? (plus, whining is for kids). “But it conflicts with our anti-copyright anti-business agenda.” Put down the bong, grab a bar of soap, and stop acting like a freetard. You’re giving the rest of us a bad name.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open-source policy formulation for Sri Lanka’s capital
    • Qualcomm goes open source with AllJoyn

      Qualcomm’s desire to drive the Internet of Things starts with a little-known open-source project called AllJoyn, and it could easily prove one of the most important things the company has ever done. We got talking to Rob Chandhok, Qualcomm’s senior vice president of software strategy and the president of the Qualcomm Innovation Centre, to find out what’s going on.

    • Open Hardware

      • A brief introduction to Arduino

        If you’ve heard the term “Arduino” but never quite known what people were talking about, then this is your lucky day. An excellent primer has been posted, which might sound like nothing new for the popular open-source microcontroller, but know this: this primer is in comic book form.

  • Programming

    • IT-centric GCSE on way to boost kids’ coding skills

      The new IT GCSE, which does not yet have an official name, will be additional to the current ICT GCSE, which IT industry experts have long attacked for putting kids off careers in IT and failing to excite them about technology.

Leftovers

  • Putting the C-I-O Back into “Commission”

    How can we get better at promoting the benefits of ICT? By asking the people who do it every day.

    Yesterday I had a fascinating meeting with people from CIONet – a network for Chief Information Officers and IT managers, with over 3000 members from 7 EU Member States.

    Among other things they organise CIOCity – at which I had the pleasure to speak back in March, and where I presented awards to some top-performing CIOs.

    Yesterday was a fascinating insight from a mixture of academics and those in the industry – including some of the award-winners themselves.

    They explained the changes in the role of CIOs. Once they were seen predominantly as an administrative function given the sole job making sure everyone’s email worked, and maybe saving some cash while they were at it. Now they are increasingly seen as major strategic players in company development. Because these days, ICT isn’t just something that adds value to a product – it’s essential to getting a product to market.

  • Joyent upgrades cloud service to compete with Amazon

    Joyent is upgrading its public cloud service with better analytics and the ability to run Linux and Windows, as it hopes to persuade CIOs to move more applications to the company’s cloud, it said on Thursday.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Call: using ICT to save lives

      Every year in Europe, about 35,000 people are killed in road accidents, and about 1.5 million people are injured. That’s a death toll close to 100 per day.

  • Security

  • Cablegate

    • 2011-09-10 The Vatican cables revisited. Just a matter of procedure?

      There is no obvious reason to redact these passages. No informants are named. Cardinal Keeler is a public figure, and it is not conceivable why his position in this very important matter should be kept secret. The cable does not name the Jewish members of the committee that allegedly insulted Gumpel. Overall, the only effect of these redactions is that they downplay the conflicts within the commission.

  • Finance

    • What Wall Street doesn’t want us to know about oil prices

      The top six financial institutions in this country own assets equal to more than 60 percent of our gross domestic product and possess enormous economic and political power. One of the great questions of our time is whether the American people, through Congress, will control the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, or whether Wall Street will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and the lives of working families.

    • What Wall Street doesn’t want us to know about oil prices

      The top six financial institutions in this country own assets equal to more than 60 percent of our gross domestic product and possess enormous economic and political power. One of the great questions of our time is whether the American people, through Congress, will control the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, or whether Wall Street will continue to wreak havoc on our economy and the lives of working families.

    • I Failed… and I’m So Very Sorry

      Today, another victim of the foreclosure crisis took her own life. She was a disabled American veteran and her family was counting on me to help. And I let them down.

    • Goldman Sachs should consider its own breakup

      Goldman Sachs has often helped chief executives boost their companies’ shares by breaking them into pieces. The U.S. bank run by Lloyd Blankfein is currently advising Kraft Foods on its split and counseling McGraw-Hill on whether it should do the same. So it’s logical that some inside Goldman have run the numbers on their employer. The results are compelling. Should the firm’s stock linger below its book value, or assets less liabilities, of about $130 a share for much longer, a breakup could be hard for the firm’s board to resist.

    • The Limits of Meritocracy

      The 2010 Educational Attainment data from the US Census Bureau shows that close to 90 percent of the population now finishes high school, and of those, about 57 percent go on to post-secondary study. Roughly 27 percent get community college and vocational degrees or attend college but do not graduate and 30 percent finish college. The college graduation rate was only 13 percent in 1970 and 25 percent in 1995, and is projected to grow to 34 percent by 2020.

  • Privacy

    • Green leader slams Harper’s proposed internet spying laws

      Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s proposed electronic surveillance laws will act as “an infringement on civil liberties,” Green Party leader Elizabeth May said in a press release today.

      The “Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act,” which Prime Minister Harper has vowed to pass as part of a larger omnibus crime bill within 100 sitting days of convening parliament, would expand the federal government’s internet surveillance powers.

    • Congress Debating If Putting A Fake Name On Facebook Should Be A Felony

      On Wednesday, George Washington Law professor and former federal prosecutor Orin Kerr authored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, posing the question “Should faking a name on Facebook be a felony?” He was, of course, talking about the infamous Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which Congress is preparing to update. The CFAA, as has been noted here many times, is a federal law passed in the ’80s and initially designed to combat malicious computer hacking, but which has become bloated, stretched and over-applied in the years since.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Anti-Piracy Group Will Sue Pay Processors If They Don’t Name Site Admins

        Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN says it will pursue a similar strategy to its counterparts in the United States and UK by pressuring payment processors like PayPal to stop doing business with file-sharing sites. But BREIN says the processors must go further. Either they can voluntarily hand over the names of the admins behind the site accounts, or they will go to court and sue them into submission.

      • Lib Dems get a chance to vote on copyright reform

        This weekend’s Lib Dem conference will feature a debate and vote on a new IT policy paper.
        Getting IT policy right is hard, because technology is a moving target; but getting IT policy right is vital, because today there’s virtually nothing we do that doesn’t touch on IT, and tomorrow there’ll be practically nothing that doesn’t require it.

Links 16/9/2011: Unity Contributor Report, Archos G9 Linux Tablets

Posted in News Roundup at 6:05 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Kolab Groupware Solution wins CH Open Source “Community Award” 2011

    Kolab Groupware Solution wins the 2011 CH Open Source Awards in the category “Community Award” for contribution towards Free Software / Open Source which is awarded upon criteria of activity, participation, ease of contribution and participation in the community, usage of Open Standards and quality of the solution. The award was presented 13 September 2011 during a ceremony at the Hub Zürich.

  • ‘Fenix’-like rise into open source profits

    Four years ago, Fenix pivoted its business model when Ms. MacKinnon decided to make a risky change and become an open source developer. Clients were becoming more concerned, she thought, with being locked into proprietary systems. What if your vendor tanks? Who will support your applications then?

    [...]

    It also helps that Fenix has become known as an Ottawa-based open source shop. That’s its differentiated value. Ms. MacKinnon even gets calls asking Fenix to audit work done by other developers in this space.

  • Events

    • Taking LCA to places never explored

      “The idea of linux.conf.au Ballarat was first jokingly thrown around when a group of us were out one night during the conference in Dunedin,” Stewart told iTWire. “I’d been attending linux.conf.au since 2005 and loved it every year, but at the time our group was really nothing more than a few guys barely out of uni, laughing about how crazy you’d have to be to try and run the event in Ballarat. There was no Linux User Group and the size of the conference would make it one of the largest ever held in the city.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla: A study in organizational openness

        My theme this week is organizational openness and transparency and today I’d like to highlight a fantastic example of an organization that has built a culture with openness at its core: Mozilla.

        Most of you probably know Mozilla as the organization famous for its open source Firefox web browser. But what you may not know is that open source is more than just a technology decision for Mozilla; the open source way is deeply ingrained in every aspect of its culture.

      • Mike Shaver Leaves Mozilla, again

  • Oracle/Lawsuits

    • Google Wins a Part of Its Motion for Summary Judgment

      At least he does rule that Google is not guilty of violating copyright on the names of the APIs. Why does that concept not penetrate when it comes to names of the variables and structures without which the API is useless? Good luck using those APIs without the names. Sigh… Let’s hope jurors are awake.

    • Oracle v. Google – Google Denied Summary Judgment on Copyright
    • Oracle v. Google – Google Still Trying to Suppress the Lindholm Email

      Google is still working hard to suppress the Lindholm email. They believe the magistrate got it wrong, so they filed a motion for relief from the magistrate’s order [408, PDF]. But Judge Alsup had the motion stricken because Google did not follow proper procedure under Rule 72 and request the court’s permission to file the motion. [412, PDF]. Fortunately, the Judge also ruled that they would be considered to have made the précis request in a timely manner if they did so immediately.

    • A Needle in a Haystack: A Case of Criminal Charges for Copyright Infringement

      Last Thursday, a case of criminal copyright infringement popped up like a weasel. A subsidiary of the software company SAP was charged for having downloaded Oracle Corp’s programs and having converted those programs to serve clients of SAP. The defendant later announced that it would plead guilty for the twelve counts related to the theft of software. The investigation revealed that SAP employees would log on to Oracle’s computers using customers’ passwords. They downloaded thousands of copies of Oracle’s software-related materials. The feud between SAP and Oracle has reached a new high. Recently, a jury had awarded $1.3 billion to Oracle in a civil lawsuit between the two companies, only for a judge to reject the decision as “excessive” and to ask Oracle to settle at $272 million or go for a new trial.

  • CMS

  • Education

    • Explaining Open Source to students in 2015

      I get the biggest laugh when I tell them that grown people actually payed for restricted-use software that was available for free as Open Source and worked just as well.

    • It’s time to bring FPGA design to the masses

      Unlike what happens with Free Software, or even with Arduino, making custom integrated circuits at home is still a relatively unknown concept, even if the technology is now affordable. Many people, including hobbyists, don’t really know or ever think about this. Certain activities are still considered as very esoteric, highly difficult and specialized jobs for very gifted, full time professionals. There is no doubt that this is still the case when you need to push technology to the limit, but the barrier to use FPGAs for something useful for normal folks is much lower today.

  • Business

    • What is OpenERP? Open Source ERP Software Explained
    • Open source: Driving change in the software industry

      Open source has been one of the most significant cultural developments in IT and beyond over the last two decades, and has shown that individuals, working together over the Internet, can create products that rival and sometimes beat those of giant corporations. It has also shown how companies can become more innovative, more nimble and more cost-effective by building on the efforts of community work. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. Open source is continuing to grow in importance as the framework for intelligent computing from enterprise environments to smartphones to yes – the car in your driveway.

  • Licensing

    • Big data meets Bruce Perens: an open-source “covenant”

      Balancing an open-source community with commercial interests can be difficult, which is why HPCC Systems sought the help of Bruce Perens before open-sourcing the code for its eponymous big-data-processing software. I covered the open-source news last week. Afterward, open-source pioneer Perens directed me to an essay he wrote on the HPCC Systems site explaining the new licensing model he helped create for the software that aims to disrupt Hadoop’s big data dominance.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Open Access/Content

    • ICFOSS launches open access journal

      Heralding a new era in publishing, the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) launched its open access journal ‘Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge’ at a function here on Monday.

    • ‘Open Courses, Open Teaching, This Is Dangerous’

      Though it is a muggy late-spring day in Edmonton, it is comfortable inside the conference room of the Mayfield Inn. Along with a group of other education geeks, I am seated around a table strewn with the usual continental breakfast detritus — empty coffee cups on saucers along with small plates with balled-up muffin wrappers, strawberry stems and melon rinds. What is unusual, however, is the half-dozen or so smartphones resting on the table. No one is texting, reading Twitter feeds, or checking on their stock prices. Instead, we are hanging on every word from the man at the podium, Stephen Downes of the National Research Council Canada.

      [...]

      What I really like about this arrangement, and this is where the “open” part comes in, is that I can go into the back of each course and modify the course content, and all of its settings, so that I can have my own version that works the way that I want it to.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Google opens Google+ up for developers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Cablegate

    • AP Review Finds No WikiLeaks Sources Threatened

      An Associated Press review of those sources raises doubts about the scope of the danger posed by WikiLeaks’ disclosures and the Obama administration’s angry claims, going back more than a year, that the revelations are life-threatening. U.S. examples have been strictly theoretical.

  • Finance

    • The Limping Middle Class

      THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

      When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt – which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

    • Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

      Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats’ health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats’ rank capitulation to corporate interests – no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

    • On Lehman Day, Elizabeth Warren Runs Against “Wall Street’s Favorite”

      Warren spoke directly to Bay Staters when she said: “I have stood up to some pretty powerful interests. Those interests are going to line up against this campaign and that is why I need you.”

      This may be the understatement of the year.

      Warren has been described as “Wall Street’s worst nightmare” by reporters. How did this soft-spoken mom, who appears to wear JC Penny off the rack, earn such an appellation?

    • GOP Backs Insurance Industry-Friendly, Anti-Consumer Bills

      House Republicans, unable to repeal President Obama’s health care reform law outright, have decided to go after it piece by piece. If they are successful, what’s likely to remain is the kind of reform the insurance industry dreamed of, but never really thought could be the law of the land.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CMD and The Nation Magazine Win the Sidney Award for Investigative Journalism

      The Sidney Hillman Foundation selected the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine for its prestigious “Sidney Award” this month. The award recognizes our investigative journalism exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which the Foundation called “an obscure but powerful conservative group that brings state legislators and corporations together to write laws.”

  • Copyrights

    • A year after shutdown, LimeWire still hugely popular

      LimeWire has been shut down for almost a year, but the former file sharing service is still hugely popular with people looking to download free music and other forms of media. An injunction by a U.S. District Court ordered LimeWire to suspend its operations in October 2010, and the company’s website has been replaced with a single splash page informing users about the injunction ever since. However, that page saw more than 1.1 million unique visitors in August alone, according to Google Analytics statistics obtained by GigaOM, which makes one wonder: Was the decision to shut down LimeWire, rather than allowing the company to launch a licensed music service, a mistake?

    • The copyright revolution at US art museums

      Every once and a while an art museum (or two or three) does something so jaw-droppingly clever that in hindsight it seems like an obvious thing to do. So it is with the decision by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum and various entities at Yale University to make high-resolution images of art from their collections available for anyone to use, for any purpose, copyright-free. (At Yale special credit goes to the Yale Center for British Art, which got out ahead of the rest of the school’s similar efforts.)

      As a result, if you want to make a t-shirt, a tote bag or a beach towel out of a YCBA Rubens, just download-and-go. If you’re a PhD student who wants to publish her dissertation about Constable as an e-book, here are scores of Constables you can download and e-publish free of charge.

    • Newzbin2 claims it can beat BT’s block

      USENET INDEXING WEB SITE Newzbin2 claims it has developed software that will defeat a block about to be imposed by BT.

      Legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in July resulted in BT being ordered to block access to Newzbin2.

09.15.11

Links 15/9/2011: Linux 3.1 RC6, X Server Newsfest

Posted in News Roundup at 8:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • ‘Bossie’ Awards Crown FOSS’ Best of Breed

  • Events

    • Q/A: Contributing To Open-Source Projects
    • Software Freedom Day, Team Christchurch

      This Saturday is Software Freedom Day – a global celebration of free and open-source software and the international community that supports it.

      The Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome internet browsers, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, and GNU/Linux operating systems are all examples of free/open software that many people use efficiently every day. This combination of personal and business computer tools runs virus-free, saving time and raising both user productivity and technical experience. They thus form first-rate educational tools, and without licensing costs.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle v. Google – Oracle’s MSJ Opposition on Copyright – Some Interesting Nuggets

      When we did our earlier article on Oracle’s opposition to Google’s motion for summary judgment on the copyright issue, we didn’t provide the Roman Swopes declaration [343, PDF] in text or its associated exhibits because most of those exhibits had been heavily redacted. Now the exhibits have been made available unredacted, and they contain some very interesting nuggets of information taken from the depositions and documents of various individuals at Google.

      What is interesting about these nuggets is that they actually support Google’s theory and evidence the continuing lack of understanding of the relationship of copyright to software on the part of Oracle (or at least on the part of legal counsel representing Oracle) and the continued distortion of actions by Google.

  • CMS

    • Site builders: Drupal vs. Joomla vs. WordPress

      Building a website has never been easier. Gone — mostly — are the days of having to hand-code HTML and PHP scripts in order to get a slick, fully functional website, thanks to the capabilities of content management systems that do most or all of the heavy lifting for site creators.

      There are boatloads of content management systems (CMSs) for serious site creators, but the most common for websites today are three open-source tools: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Actually, to call them “tools” is an understatement — these are full-fledged platforms, with tens of thousands of add-on tools created by very active developer communities.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • French Prime Minister encourages greater use of open formats

      The government announcement makes the point that there are also economic gains to be made from a more transparent approach to government data, noting that the opening of public data helps to develop the digital economy and to support innovation, growth and employment. It adds that web entrepreneurs and researchers will be encouraged to develop new uses for public data.

  • Licensing

    • How NOT to Push a New Open Source License, Part 1

      Bruce Perens wrote several times that he had to check with the lawyers to see what the various terms of his open source covenant really mean. If this license is so complicated that he doesn’t understand it, shouldn’t it be fixed? And why would he be publicly advocating others use a license he doesn’t fully understand? This doesn’t inspire confidence.

    • Why make a new open source software license? MPL 2.0 (part 3)

      In my previous posts, I discussed the new features of the MPL and the new compatibility between MPL and other licenses. In this final post, I’ll summarize a few other small details about the new MPL that may be of interest to opensource.com readers.

  • Programming

    • Mesa Compiler Stacks, A Hard Dependency On LLVM

      Tom Stellard, the former Google Summer of Code student who worked on R300 GLSL improvements and a new register allocator, is now working for AMD and his work is focused on bringing up open-source OpenCL / GPGPU support in the Radeon Linux driver.

    • Gedit as a Django IDE for Linux
    • Covenant for contributors has real promise

      Open source developers continue to struggle with how they can work with commercial entities and still keep some measure of control over their code, and vice versa. But a recent plan crafted by an open source software pioneer may offer another option to solve this conundrum.

      The issue of contributing to open source projects maintained by commercial companies is not some sort of incongruity between open source software licenses and for-profit business interests, as many FUD-sters would have you believe. It’s not the licenses that are the problem, but rather the copyright: who owns the code?

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Blackberry would close UK service in unrest if ordered

      BlackBerry said on Thursday it would close down its hugely popular messenger service in Britain if ordered to at times of civil unrest, after police singled out the system as a key tool used in last month’s riots.

    • Google’s IBM Patents Feast: Good or Bad?

      Nicholas George planned to brush up on his Arabic vocabulary during a flight in August from Philadelphia to California, where he was to start his senior year at Pomona College. So he carried some Arabic-English flashcards in his pocket to study on the plane.

    • Cameron, Sarkozy meet with Libyan rebels

      British Prime Minister David Cameron has sent a strong message to Moammar Gadhafi and his followers still waging war in Libya to “give up” the fight, warning that NATO’s mission will continue “as long as it is necessary” to protect Libyans.

      Cameron spoke at a press conference alongside French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday — the first world leaders to travel to Libya since revolutionary forces seized the capital and ousted Gadhafi. Both countries led international support for the rebellion.

  • Cablegate

    • Moyo loses sleep over Wikileaks

      Zanu PF politiburo member Jonathan Moyo has presented the party with a “golden opportunity” to discuss the emotive succession issue and those quoted in the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables should stick to their guns and tell President Robert Mugabe to go, analysts said yesterday.

    • Nigeria: The Rage and the Fever of Wikileaks

      The fever that is raging in Nigeria today is “wikileaks”. Yet as entertaining as these secret communications are, the truth is that if you believe everything that you read in Julian Assange’s “leaks” then you will believe anything. I say this based on my own personal experiences. So far I have been fingered twice by them and in both cases I can assure you that the stories were fabrications. They simply never happened.

    • WikiLeaks fever grips Harare

      The story exploded last week with many political and economic heavyweights were alleged to have leaked sensitive information to US Ambassador Charles Ray.

  • Finance

    • UBS Blames $2 Billion Loss on Rogue Trader
    • Rogue trader suspected in $2 billion loss at UBS

      One man armed with only a computer terminal humbled a venerable banking institution yet again. This time it was Swiss powerhouse UBS, which said Thursday that it had lost roughly $2 billion because of a renegade trader.

      The arrest of 31-year-old equities trader Kweku Adoboli in London is one more headache for troubled international banks, and fresh proof that they remain vulnerable to untracked trading that can produce mind-boggling losses.

    • John Mack Stepping Down as Chairman of Morgan Stanley
    • Questions and answers about the crisis in Greece

      Its economy is smaller than that of many U.S. states. It’s better known for olive oil and souvlaki than high finance. It last strode global affairs 2,400 years ago, when men wore togas.

      Yet everyone is suddenly worried about Greece.

    • Deficit panel senses ‘historic’ moment

      Ignoring calls for their talks to be out in the open, members of the new deficit-cutting supercommittee went behind closed doors Thursday to begin their first bargaining that could reshape federal spending and programs for years to come.

    • The Lehman Brother Anniversary Bailout!

      Although this could be looked at as awful news — more economies and banks in such dire straights as to need yet another central bank bailout, moral hazard notwithstanding — the kneejerk response was relief. Dax is up 4%, US futures flipped positive, Dow now up 100.

      The key question is the another QE2, or a failed European TARP?

    • Lagarde calls for unified action to fight Europe crisis and backs Obama job-growth plan

      The head of the International Monetary Fund called Thursday for bold and collective action to combat a slowing global economy and a worsening European debt crisis.

      IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde also said she welcomed President Barack Obama’s U.S. job-creation plan in light of the unemployment crisis in the United States.

    • Study: Privatizing government doesn’t actually save money

      The theory that the federal government should outsource its operations to private firms usually rests on a simple premise: It saves money. But why should we believe it saves money? Often the argument is made by pointing to salaries for public- and private-sector employees in comparable jobs and noting that the private-sector employees make less. So outsourcing the task to the private worker should be cheaper, right? That’s the theory, at least. But a new study from the Project on Government Oversight suggests that this theory is quite wrong. In many cases, privatizing government turns out to be far more costly.

    • Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010

      The U.S. poverty rate hit its highest level since 1993 last year with a record 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, according to a government report on Tuesday that depicted the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

  • Privacy

    • Exclusive: Ziff Davis Offering Money To Sites To Secretly Track Users

      Technology publisher Ziff Davis is offering money to tech sites to secretly track their users, Medacity has learned exclusively.

    • U.S. border deal could compromise Canadian privacy: report

      The anticipated trade and security agreement with the United States carries no guarantee of a reduction of red tape at the border for Canadian business and is more likely to violate national privacy laws, a new report suggests.

    • The Government Might Know You’re Reading This

      “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

      Many Americans have said this, or heard it, when discussing the expanded surveillance capabilities the government has claimed since 9/11. But it turns out you should be concerned. Just ask peace activists in Pittsburgh, anti-death penalty activists in Maryland, Ron Paul supporters in Missouri, an anarchist in Texas, groups on both sides of the abortion debate in Wisconsin, Muslim-Americans and many others who pose no threat to their communities. Some of them were labeled as terrorists in state and federal databases or placed on terror watch-lists, impeding their travel, misleading investigators and putting these innocent Americans at risk.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canadian Police Issue File-Sharing Scam Letters Fraud Warning

        Canadian authorities are warning Internet users to be vigilant following the emergence of a file-sharing settlement scam operation. West Vancouver police, who have now issued an official fraud warning, say that seniors have been receiving letters claiming they have been caught downloading a range of porn titles. Unsurprisingly, the letters come with an offer to settle for thousands of dollars.

Links 15/9/2011: GNOME 3.2 Preview, Rudolf Elmer Interview

Posted in News Roundup at 6:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Revolutionizing desktops without causing user revolts

      The last few years of development on the free desktop have been instructive. First, KDE stumbled and recovered with the KDE 4 series. Then, this year, GNOME and Ubuntu introduced radically new desktops. In each case, user complaints immediately poured in. Although both GNOME and Ubuntu seem determined to ignore these complaints and continue on their course, I keep wondering: could the disastrous receptions have been avoided?

    • Debian 6.0: LXDE Menus

      When I installed LXDE from the Debian repository, it started right up, and its Start Menu had the usual default categories (Accessories, Games, Internet, Office, and so on). And most of my applications were in the correct categories. But a few were missing, such as Claws (my email client), and I wanted to create some new categories. No problem; I expect to do this with any new system.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome 3.2

        Gnome 3.2 is going to get:

        * A matching GDM welcome screen.
        * Integrated chat- no need to launch Empathy.
        * More natural workspace switcher behaviour.
        * Device hot plugging work nicely with the shell.
        * More obvious waiting messages.

  • Distributions

    • Distro review : Dragora GNU/Linux

    • New Releases

      • Dyne:bolic GNU/Linux hits version 3!

        Dyne:bolic is one of the ever increasing list of GNU/Linux distributions we recommend because of their strong commitment to user freedom. After five years of development, a new release is available.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • A monospace that looks like a proportional
          • A First Look at Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1

            Canonical recently released the first beta of Ubuntu 11.10, Code named Oneiric Ocelot. Ubuntu has ditched Gnome Shell completely and stepped up its committment to the Unity Desktop. As the final release approaches, just one month from today, we spin up this beta and take a first look at the distro that Mark Shuttleworh called, “part daydream, part discipline.”

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Home Encryption Performance

            With more and more of one’s personal and professional lives being on the computer, encrypting and properly securing those computers — particularly mobile devices — is incredibly important. Sadly, it’s not often thought about until it’s too late. It has become relatively easy to protect your personal data on Ubuntu Linux with home directory encryption support being just a checkbox-away within the installer or even full-disk LVM encryption when using Ubuntu’s alternate installer. Previous tests of Ubuntu disk encryption performance have shown there is some penalty in disk-centric workloads, but the benefits are certainly worth it. In this article is a look at the Ubuntu home encryption performance under Ubuntu 11.10 with both old and new laptops.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Beta and Unity: Mixed Verdict

            “Our goal with Unity is unprecedented ease of use, visual style and performance on the Linux desktop,” Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth wrote in his blog last month.

            That statement can also stand as a summary of the goals for Ubuntu 11.10 (better known as Oneiric Ocelot). Judging from the beta released last week, Ocelot promises to be a release that, so far as users are concerned, is less about innovation than about perfecting interfaces — mainly the Unity desktop, but also one or two other applications.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Metro & WinRT & Linux

      Imagine that you are in a store. You have two new netbook/tablet convertibles in front of you. One of them is $250.00 and runs Ubuntu Linux. The other is $350.00. They are both dual core ARM systems with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and 64GB SSDs. On top of that, they can both run Metro applications, and have cloud synchronization features that are free of charge for starter storage amounts and pay to expand. Besides price, the Ubuntu machine has two other things that it can offer. It has a different interface, and it has an extra application store with thousands of free and libre applications. This is a very real possibility in the future.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Interview: Izzat Sabbagh, leader of the Capaware 3D virtual world framework project

  • Events

    • Events I’d like to see

      Expanding Linux Venues In the South (or ELVIS): A FOSS event fit for The King, this one would be held in Memphis, as close to Graceland as possible. Everyone would be required to wear blue suede shoes. We could have Elvis impersonators demonstrating various Linux distros and FOSS programs. Shoot, we could have Linus impersonators doing the same thing. And Stallman impersonators doing the same thing. And Jon ‘maddog’ Hall impersonators . . . you get the idea. This is definitely something worth planning, and I’m so far from Memphis. Is someone closer that could take the reins?

  • CMS

    • Why You Should Join Diaspora Now, Like Your Freedom Depends On It

      I never really “trusted” Facebook or Google+. That is to say, I never expected them to respect my privacy or keep my secrets. I’m not too secretive online anyway, and what I do have to hide, I just don’t post. But it is very clear that there is a great deal of corruption inherent in a business model which is based on concentrating the personal data from millions of users and selling that data to advertisers. At the very least, there must be a free alternative. But for that alternative to be viable, we need to use it. Identica has been around for some time now (and I use it — I’m “digitante”), and Diaspora is (after a long hard start) finally getting some wind under its wings. I’ve used it, and it’s Good Enough. In fact, you’ll find it’s pretty similar to what Facebook or Google+ offers, although there are still some rough spots.

Leftovers

  • OpenIndiana 151a Released; One Year Anniversary

    To mark the one year anniversary of the creation of OpenIndiana, there’s a new OpenIndiana release. OpenIndiana 151a is this new release that is timed one year after this OpenSolaris fork arrived following the fallout from Oracle killing off OpenSolaris and Solaris development in the open.

  • Finance

    • Rudolf Elmer interview with India Today

      In his first interview since being released from jail, Rudolf Elmer stated to India Today that:
      - the investigation against him is still ongoing, and that he could not make any detailed statements because he would be arrested again.
      - the CDs he handed over to Julian Assange in the Frontline Club were empty. He also said that it was only a symbolic handover, because it was a public place, and because the police could have intervened. He also said that Assange would not have come, had there not been information.
      - that he would not have been released from prison had any data been published.

    • Ford’s fake fiscal crisis

      Let’s start with the stated budget hole of $775 million. Even that figure is iffy. The fact is, we know that a multi-hundred-million-dollar structural year-end surplus is built into the budget left over from David Miller’s cost containment, the well-performing property market and prudent financial management by unelected city managers.
      This money, about $300 million, is not included in the $775 million and obviously dramatically shrinks the budget hole.

      It’s true that Toronto has some fiscal challenges, but they’re not due to excessive spending, which has increased by 3 to 4 per cent over the last decade, less than that of the provincial and federal budgets over the same period. It’s also in line with population growth of 2 to 3 per cent, which drives the need for more services.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Perens tries to bridge gap on copyright

        Copyright assignment is a topic that has received a fair bit of publicity ever since the head of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, started pushing the idea of developers surrendering their rights to his company when they contributed code.

        Shuttleworth argues that without the freedom to do what he likes with the code – and that includes the possibility of locking it up and making it proprietary – he will be unable to make progress on Ubuntu, the GNU/Linux distribution that has soared to the top of the distro charts.

      • Big data meets Bruce Perens: An open source ‘covenant’

09.14.11

Links 14/9/2011: PostgreSQL 9.1, Qt In Cars

Posted in News Roundup at 7:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Defensive banking

    This being Computerworld, you’d expect a blog about defensive banking to be about online banking. Not this time.

    Online banking, at this point, is old news. For those that need it, I have long advocated Linux as the best defensive technique. Using a Windows computer is, without question, a mistake. Given Apple’s record on security (illustrated again with the DigiNotar mess), Linux is the safer choice for Mac users too.

    I have an account with a major financial firm and typically do my two transactions a year over the phone (with a wired phone line). The rare times that I do a financial transaction online, I reboot a Windows PC and run Linux Mint off a USB flash drive. That copy of Mint is not used for any other purpose.

  • Trine 2 ‘Vibes’ trailer details new environments

    Another version is being planned for Linux and “other platforms”, due out some time after.

  • Linux Australia airs code of conduct draft

    President of Linux Australia, John Ferlito, has this morning aired the first draft of the council’s new presenter code of conduct, which looks to curb inappropriate material being displayed as part of conference presentations.

  • Windows 8 distribution takes a page from Linux

    The other reason is that Microsoft may be slow, but they’re not stupid. They’ve noticed over the years that Linux developers gets enormous amount of valuable feedback from users with every release. While, Microsoft won’t be open-sourcing Windows anytime this decade; they can certainly see the advantage of having potentially millions of early testers giving them feedback.

  • 10 Hackers Who Made History

    Richard Stallman

    [...]

    Linus Torvalds

  • Applications

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • NetGear Wi-Fi router offers six antennas for greater speed, range

      Netgear announced a dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi router, aimed at home users but featuring a 3×3 antenna array and high-power amplifiers for greater bandwidth and range. The N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router runs Linux on a new Broadcom processor, offers dual USB 2.0 ports, provides four gigabit Ethernet ports, and supports up to 900Mbps combined throughput, claims the company.

    • Nokia Puts Qt In Cars, Announces Nokia Car Mode

      As Nokia goes in bed with Microsoft it will definitely be pushing Microsoft’s proprietary technologies leaving a question mark for its own open source technologies. There might me one or two exceptions. Nokia yesterday announced Nokia Car Mode at the IAA (Internationale Automobil Ausstellung).

      The Nokia Car Mode is a standalone application optimized for the in-car use of Nokia smartphones. Nokia Car Mode features an optimized user interface simplifying the access and use of Nokia Drive (voice-guided car navigation with Nokia Maps), traffic updates, music and voice calls while driving.

    • Phones

Free Software/Open Source

  • Developer License for open source GIS software Geomajas now available
  • Lexis-Nexis finally releases source code to HPCC

    HPCC Systems, part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, has finally made the source code to the HPCC (High Performance Computing Cluster) available, after announcing it would be open-sourced in June. The C++ source code, hosted on Github, is licensed under the AGPLv3 rather than the GPLv3 as originally planned and announced.

  • Databases

    • PostgreSQL 9.1 released

      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group announces the release of PostgreSQL 9.1. This latest version of the leading open source database offers innovative technology, unmatched extensibility, and new features such as synchronous replication, K-Nearest Neighbor indexing, and foreign data wrappers.

    • PostgreSQL 9.1 Advances Open Source Database Innovation

      The PostgreSQL 9.1 open source database is now generally available, offering users a long list of new features. The new PostgreSQL release follows a six month beta process, following the initial beta release in May.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • Funding

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK transport ministry extends its use of open source

      The UK government’s Department for Transport (DfT) has signed a new contract with Kainos to support the department’s new open-source-based web systems and move them to a hybrid cloud environment. The Department for Transport has informed The H that the technologies involved are the WordPress open source content management system which will be running on RackSpace’s public cloud and the department’s own private clouds. The DfT have been assisted by Kainos’s Causeway division in a migration from their previous proprietary Morello CMS to WordPress.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • LexisNexis Releases Code for Big Data Analytics into Open Source

      HPCC Systems from LexisNexis Risk Solutions is pleased to announce today that it has released the source code for its HPCC Systems platform to the open source community. Developers can now leverage and further enhance the platform. Available immediately for download, the source code can be found here: http://hpccsystems.com. The HPCC Systems platform helps customers solve Big Data analytics problems.

    • Open Access/Content

      • ICFOSS launches first Open Access Journal

        The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) launched its Open Access Journal, “Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge” (JFSFK), at a function here on Monday. JFSFK is the first journal in FOSS and related domains internationally.

    • Open Hardware

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Karl Rove’s Crossroads Groups Double 2012 War Plan to $240 Million

      Lost in the build-up to President Obama’s big jobs speech Thursday night was a bomb of an announcement, first reported by Peter Stone of iWatch News, from American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the conservative independent expenditure groups that are two of the heaviest hitters in the political money game. Founded in 2010 with help from Bush guru Karl Rove, the Crossroads groups are now trumpeting a new fundraising target to double their planned haul of $120 million for the 2012 elections. Yes, you read that right: the Crossroads groups say they will raise a whopping $240 million to vanquish President Obama, help GOPers win the Senate majority, and strengthen their House majority.

    • Late Night: Stephen Colbert: Honor 9/11 with ‘useless crap’

      On his show Monday, Stephen Colbert devoted a segment to the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. “Have we as a nation recovered?” he wondered. The answer, according to Colbert, is a definitive “yes.” The proof is in the product.

      “I wasn’t sure until I saw all this great 9/11 commemorative stuff you can buy,” he said, rattling off a list of inexpensive trinkets designed to memorialize and/or cash in on the country’s collective grief: 9/11 sneakers, a 9/11 cribbage board, 9/11 dog collars.

    • Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

      Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.

      But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.

      My flight from Denver landed in Detroit on time. I sent a text message to my husband to let him know we had landed and I would be home by dinner. The plane stopped on the tarmac, seemingly waiting to have the gate cleared. We waited. I played on my phone, checking Facebook, scrolling through my Twitter feed. After a while of sitting there, I decided to call my husband to tell him the plane was being delayed and I would call him when I got off the plane.

  • Cablegate

    • Instead of attacking WikiLeaks, fix what it exposed

      Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was right when he suggested that the WikiLeaks revelations were “embarrassing” and “awkward.” But his assessment — and that of so many other government officials — stems from the magnitude of what he left unsaid.

  • Finance

    • Liberal group files ethics complaint against Darrell Issa

      Issa pressured the Securities and Exchange Commission “into inaction” after the commission sued Goldman Sachs

    • Message to the Unemployed: Uncle Sam Does(n’t) Want You

      Not long ago, the city council of Ventura, California, passed an ordinance making it legal for the unemployed and homeless to sleep in their cars. At the height of the Great Recession of 2008, one third of the capital equipment of the American economy lay idle. Of the women and men idled along with that equipment, only 37% got a government unemployment check and that check, on average, represented only 35% of their weekly wages.

      Meanwhile, there are now two million ”99ers” — those who have maxed out their supplemental unemployment benefits because they have been out of work for more than 99 weeks. Think of them as a full division in “the reserve army of labor.” That “army,” in turn, accounts for 17% of the American labor force, if one includes part-time workers who need and want full-time work and the millions of unemployed Americans who have grown so discouraged that they’ve given up looking for jobs and so aren’t counted in the official unemployment figures. As is its historic duty, that force of idle workers is once again driving down wages, lengthening working hours, eroding on-the-job conditions, and adding an element of raw fear to the lives of anyone still lucky enough to have a job.

    • Limits to Keynesianism

      But the greatest flaw with Keynesianism now is that, like the economy itself, it has run squarely into the energy limit. As the most recently updated data shows, 2011 will be the 6th year that world production of crude oil was unable to increase beyond the ceiling established in 2005. Oil remains the primary energy input to OECD economies. OECD economies are of course where the Keynesian experiment has flourished longest, first in Japan, then the United States and now Europe. It is hardly, hardly the case that the current financial crisis in the OECD is “simply a matter of accounting.” Instead, the crisis is one of systemic, structural growth now permanently limited by energy costs as OECD economies try to service debt loads that have escaped their ability to manage. Change all the digits, and the energy limit remains.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Wisconsin Legislators Support Corporate Right to Secret Spending

      Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to prohibit the state elections board from passing any rules regulating corporations, as part of an effort to thwart rules that would show how corporate interests are laundering election spending through front groups. Lawmakers only meet one day this month (Tuesday, September 13) and plan to take up the bill during that brief window.*

    • ALEC Corporations Spend Big in Washington

      On Monday, September 12, Brad Hooker of the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets blog posted an exposé of the money that the corporate members of ALEC’s “Private Enterprise” Board (including AT&T, Exxon Mobil, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Koch Industries) spent to lobby Washington and fill the campaign chests of ALEC alumni in Congress (as well as other Congressmembers). ALEC alumnus John Boehner received the most from ALEC Board corporations, a total of “$368,200 from the people and political action committees associated with the companies on ALEC’s private enterprise board during the 2010 election cycle.” Second place goes to another ALEC alumnus, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who has been introducing ALEC’s agenda to the House. He collected “$328,100 from people and PACs associated with 17 companies on the ALEC private enterprise board.”

    • Shale Gas Industry Insider: We Are Losing the Messaging War on Fracking

      he shale gas industry has had its collective ass kicked, and kicked hard, by Gasland and others opposed to hydraulic fracturing and needs to redefine its core messages to defuse a burgeoning negative public perception of the controversial drilling technique, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association (COGA) said today.

    • CNN Throws a Tea Party

      Network aligns with controversial far-right activists

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Newzbin2 Release Encrypted Client To Defeat Website Blocking

      The operators of Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 have introduced measures to circumvent court-ordered web-blocking measures designed to render the site inoperable in the UK. Site staff aren’t revealing how the stand-alone software client works but some basic network packet analysis shows that it defeats ISP BT’s Cleanfeed censorship system by using a handful of techniques including encryption.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canada’s Tories set to reintroduce DRM-friendly copyright bill without consultation

        Canada’s majority Tory government is poised to reintroduce its disastrous DRM-friendly copyright law, formerly Bill C-32, without any further public consultation. This law repeats the major error made in the US 1998 DMCA, namely granting special status to “software locks” (AKA DRM), making it illegal to remove a lock, even if you’re doing so for a lawful purpose.

Links 14/9/2011: CentOS 5.7, Fedora 17 Name

Posted in News Roundup at 2:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 5 Reasons why Microsoft Windows users should definitely avoid Linux

    Last Saturday I got myself an Acer Aspire One netbook (bought it on impulse, really) from a friend who had it gifted to him but said he had no use for it. It came preloaded as usual with Windows 7 and as a nay sayer to that OS, I opted to install the beta release of Ubuntu 11.10 on it.

  • Desktop

    • The “Gleaners” of Paris

      Here I digress. With my found computer I added a bunch more memory, uninstalled Windows, and installed a free Linux system, Ubuntu. The computer is old but works fine and is faster than Windows. It uses fewer resources.

      Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) is project started by a South African millionaire to make computing systems more available to everyone and one they can understand. You can download it for free or order CD’s for a symbolic price. Regular updates of programs and the system itself are always free. Once installed, I thought, «OK, now I’m going to have to configure it to connect to internet and make stuff work in general.» But no, it connected to the net automatically and everything in the package worked without changing a thing. The first thing to do is to use its update system because things are always changing.

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: x32 ABI gets around 64-bit drawbacks

      “x32 ABI” promises to take advantage of the benefits of 64-bit x86 processors without suffering from the overhead in 64-bit operation. At present, maintenance at Kernel.org has slowed down kernel development. Some kernel hackers are demonstrating their sense of humour with a Linux logo reminiscent of Windows 3.1 and a rickrolling kernel module.

    • Let’s not be too hasty.

      In a recent post tech writer Sean Michael Kerner advocated moving the kernel to Github. Here’s why I think the evidence isn’t so clear cut. Note this is my personal opinion, since I’m not a member of the kernel developer community and thus have no real say in the matter.

    • The Evolution of Stupidity: File Systems

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • Taking a look a Salix

      There seems to be a mad dash lately of bloggers tripping over themselves to write reviews of Bodhi Linux. Jeff Hoogland and his merry band of developers have come out recently with version 1.2.0 and I’ve put it through some paces. Overall, I like it, but rather than yet another Bodhi review getting lost in the shuffle, I thought I’d put that one off for another time.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • A bug’s life

        In an ideal world, software bugs get fixed shortly after they are discovered. (Actually, in a really ideal world, there would be no bugs to begin with, but let’s be a bit realistic). You might be led to believe that once a bug has been reported the Mageia packagers will fix the bug, issue a new package, and everyone will live happily ever after.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Introducing Lubuntu Software Center

          The upcoming Lubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system, due for release on October 13th, will introduce a new software center application.

        • Elementary OS Luna To Be Based On Ubuntu 12.04

          Good things come to those who wait – particularly elementary fans willing to wait until April 2012…

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • The Purrrfect Ubuntu 11.10 Login Sound?

            Opinion is split over whether or not the default Ubuntu login sound needs a refresh. Just what could it be replaced with?

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 232
          • 5 years with Canonical

            This month, I will have been with Canonical for 5 years. It’s been fantastic, but I’ve decided to move on. Next week, I’m going to start working for Google,

          • Ubuntu Certification – What do we test?

            We frequently get asked what do we test on the certification program. While we do have a simple page covering this topic, some times we are asked for further details. We have now updated the certification program guide with a more comprehensive description of the test cases. We review and update if necessary the list of test cases for each release:

          • Ubuntu Team to Cast a Wider Net for Indie Developers

            For some time now, there have been calls for Canonical and the Ubuntu team to find ways to reach out to more useful applications that Ubuntu users can take advantage of. For example, many users lament the fact that applications such as Photoshop are easy for Windows and Mac users to use, while Ubuntu users are boxed out. At the core of this debate is how the Ubuntu team approaches developers, and there are some strong signs that a larger and more diverse community of developers will start to contribute to Ubuntu.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Raspberry Pi warms up

      The volunteers of the Raspberry Pi project have, with the arrival and demonstration of the first alpha “Model B” boards, moved another step closer to their vision of creating an ARM-based, low-cost computer for education. The Raspberry Pi computer now has two models, and the “Model B” board being shown has changed somewhat from its previous appearance, losing the “USB stick” styling in favour of a more traditional rectangular board – the size of a credit card but with lots of space for mounting I/O ports. The board is based around the Broadcom BCM2835, a 700 Mhz “application processor”, and over the last month the developers have been putting it through its paces. First they showed a demo of Quake 3 running on the Pi:

    • Why Be a Pirate? Use Open Source Software Instead

      It’s no secret that I think software patents are a scourge that needs to be gotten rid of, and I’m by no means alone in that opinion. In this era of lawsuits and revenue models based heavily on patent licensing fees (I’m looking at you, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle), the harm they’re doing to innovation is right before our very eyes all the time.

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Best Buy: Android tablet sales ‘better than we expected’

        Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said that tablet demand was one of the company’s few bright spots in its second quarter and Android devices delivered sales ‘better than we expected.”

      • Acer Honeycomb tablet to ship with 4G, modest price

        AT&T will begin selling the 4G version of its 10.1-inch Iconia Tab Android 3.0 (“Honeycomb”) tablet Sept. 18 for $480 outright, or $330 on contract. The Acer Iconia Tab A501 4G closely follows the typical Honeycomb script, from the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor to the five- and two-megapixel cameras, but it’s significantly cheaper than most of its rivals.

Free Software/Open Source

  • File Servers – The Business Case for High Availability
  • 60 Open Source Replacements for Audio/Video Tools

    Most computer users are spending much more time these days viewing and creating multimedia content. According to comScore, 85.6 percent of online Americans (178 million people) watched video online in June 2011, and they spent an average of 16.8 hours each watching those videos during the month. In addition, Nielsen reports that the number of people watching video on their smartphones and tablets has increased 41 percent since last year.

  • Another reason why I choose free and Open Source software

    A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine bought a new laptop for his work. He called me and asked me to come over, mainly so he could show that device off. And partly (as it turned out) to once again try to convince me of the wonders and superiority of Windows.

    Shortly after arriving at my friend’s place, he unveiled his new Acer laptop. It’s a nice piece of hardware. They keyboard even has a numeric key pad — something I haven’t seen or used in a while.

    Of course, my friend started his new machine for me. It booted up into Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (whatever the heck that means). I’ve used Windows 7 before and wasn’t really impressed.

  • Events

    • Early bird registrations now open for linux.conf.au 2012
    • Ohio Linux Fest 2011 report.

      Following a truncated workday on Thursday, I quickly packed, threw my stuff in the car, and raced up the road as quickly as torrential rain would safely allow to Reagan National Airport. I took a short flight to Columbus, Ohio, where this weekend the Ohio Linux Fest 2011 was set to go. I got into the hotel around diner time and fortunately I was able to hook up with a variety of folks including Ruth Suehle from opensource.com, Jared Smith, Red Hat mega-architect and superstar Thomas Cameron, and Fedora Docs hackers John McDonough and Zach Oglesby for dinner at Bucca di Beppo. Yum!

    • Software Freedom Day 2011

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox for Tablets on Nightly

        We, Firefox Mobile front-enders, have been working hard for the last few weeks to get the new Firefox UI for tablets in place for general testing. It has now reached a functional state that is good enough for getting some early feedback. So, how can you help us?

      • Mozilla Takes its Fennec Technology Toward Firefox for Tablets

        All the way back in 2008, we were covering Mozilla’s effort to deliver an innovative mobile browser, dubbed Fennec (Fennec is a small Fox…smaller than a Firefox). The Fennec project has not taken the world by storm since then, but the underlying technology powers a new version of Firefox for tablet devices that could make some waves. This week, a blog post announced that Firefox for Tablets has arrived in Nightly Builds.

      • Community spotlight: Paul Booker, Mozilla contributor

        On opensource.com, community is very important. We want to continue to recognize our community members who contribute in ways other than writing articles–things like rating and commenting, voting in polls, and sharing our collective work on social media. This is the second of our community spotlight posts.

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • The State Of GCC 4.7.0: Still Months Away

      From Jakub’s message, the trunk code for GCC 4.7 should be done with state one by the end of October, if the same 4.6 schedule roughly follows. He’s called out on various branch maintainers to see if their respective feature work will be ready in time for merging to GCC 4.7 trunk within the next month and a half.

  • Public Services/Government

  • Programming

    • Gedit as a Django IDE for Linux
    • OpenTeacher – learn a new language with Linux
    • Lets face it, windows programmers are smart.

      So what has this to do with windows programmers being smart? Well they have to be and also patient. The current visual studio (yes, small letters again Gary) seems to be a real monstrosity. Not only does it take for ever and a day to start up, it also wants to connect to the internet. Then to open up a “solution” (more like a problem to me :P) it wants to connect to the internet again and takes several more minutes to open. Long enough to make a cup of coffee. The disk space it consumes is massive. In the gigabytes compared to hundreds of megabytes for what I use. But lets put all that aside. The program is started up, the code is loaded and I am about ready to peruse the mind of a fellow programmer.

    • Parallel Programming Crash Course
    • Modularizing Core Features

      Perl 5 project leader Jesse Vincent has made a textual version of his Perl 5.16 and Beyond speech available in prose form: Perl 5.16 and Beyond thread on p5p.

    • Vincent: Perl 5.16 and Beyond

Leftovers

09.13.11

Links 13/9/2011: Android Gains Tablets Market Share, Goldman Sachs Under Fire

Posted in News Roundup at 7:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Russian President Medvedev asked to fund Windows clone

    A free, open-source Windows “clone” – ReactOS – that has been in development for over a decade has caught the eye of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

    A student at a Russian high school the president visited recently gave Mr Medvedev a brief overview of the project – and asked him for 1m euros.

    The system’s developers say it runs all Windows programs, but is much faster than its Microsoft equivalent.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Reporter Claims TSA Agent Would Speed People Through Security For $10

      Phil Mushnick at the NYPost has an article telling about his own recent experience flying out of Newark, in which a TSA agent appeared to let people cut to the front of the security line for a “tip” of around $10. The actual amount wasn’t entirely clear, other than that she got quite upset — publicly — when only given $5. Basically, she walked around offering people a wheelchair, which she would use to bring them to the front of the line, the whole time letting them know that she expected something in return.

  • Cablegate

    • No retribution for WikiLeaks outing Chinese sources

      Being outed as a “source” for American diplomats is not such a big deal after all, perhaps, even in China.

      Two weeks after WikiLeaks posted unredacted versions of a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, revealing the names of American embassies’ local contacts around the world, there are no signs of repercussions for Chinese sources, according to people who have themselves been “outed.”

  • Finance

  • Copyrights

    • Hotfile Sues Warner Bros. For Copyright Fraud and Abuse

      The Florida-based file-hosting service Hotfile has sued Warner Bros. for fraud and abuse. Hotfile accuses the movie studio of systematically abusing its anti-piracy tool by taking down hundreds of titles they don’t hold the copyrights to, including open source software. Among other things, Hotfile is looking for damages to compensate the company for the losses t

Links 13/9/2011: 2011 Gentoo Screenshot Contest, All XOs Run GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 6:18 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • TLWIR 16: Hydrogen, Recording Music and Red Hat’s Day
  • How to Hire the Linux Talent You Need

    More than 30 Linux-specific IT and developer jobs were posted to the Linux Foundation’s Jobs Board in a single week recently, while more than 11,000 Linux-related jobs can now be found on tech jobs site Dice.com. Demand for Linux experience, moreover, is growing at a rate of 31 percent year over year on Dice, compared with just 20 percent year on year for job postings overall.

  • Desktop

    • Linux, a second class system?

      I have seen a influx lately of people who use Ubuntu or have talked about their plans to use it. Whenever I hear this I will ask them why they want to use Ubuntu so I can know what people’s motives actually are for using Ubuntu. Often the response i hear is not a response I particularity like. It is usually to the effect of “well my windows system is getting a little old so I think I’ll breathe new life into my old laptop with Linux. Linux to them is the thing that makes their old windows laptop last a few more years. though this is true what I find happening is people will after these couple years are up, buy a new laptop and do the same cycle all over again; use Windows until their system gets a little sluggish or breaks then install Linux on to it. My friends, I do not see this as always good for Linux and the community behind it. The user who install Linux on their system to breathe new life into it is going to get new life but not realize that Linux is great for more then just that.

    • Linux Is Dead…and My Students See Dead Linux!

      Right…Linux is dead. So dead that nowadays I seem to encounter more people who know about it. True, they are not counted by millions, but this shows that the hegemony of Windows is not as solid as it used to be.

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Second beta of GNOME 3.2

        The GNOME project has published version 3.1.91, the second beta version of GNOME 3.2. In just under two weeks, GNOME release candidate 3.1.92 is to follow. According to the roadmap, GNOME 3.2 is to be published on 28 September, but the developers are currently a few days behind.

  • Distributions

    • Russian Linux: Simply Works!

      What is Simply Linux? This is distribution which is based on the core of Alt Linux. I wrote about Alt Linux couple of times, so you may wish to have a look at those posts. Alt Linux is commercial product which is marketed in Russia for use in schools and government organisation.

    • Tails: One more distro for the privacy-conscious

      A couple of weeks ago I posted some information about the Department of Defense releasing its Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) Linux distribution aimed at giving remote workers a more secure way to access government networks– but also available to the public for anyone’s use who wants a little extra security.

    • New Releases

      • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 164

        Summary:
        · Announced Distro: ArchBang 2011.09
        · Announced Distro: VortexBox 1.10
        · Announced Distro: Bodhi Linux 1.2.0
        · In Other News: Linux kernel sources moved to GitHub and KDE Software Compilation 4.7.1
        · Review of the Week: Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6
        · Video Clip of the Week: KDE SC 4.7
        · Distributions Updated Last Week: Zorin OS 3.1, AriOS 3.0.1, BrowserLinux 501, and more…
        · Development Releases: Unity Linux 2011 Alpha 2, Elastix 2.2.0 RC2 and ZeroShell 1.0 Beta 15

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Does Linux Community Need Corruption?

        So, ex-Minister invested his money into Mandriva. At the same time he started new Russian company ROSA Laboratories. And same fund NGI also acquired another Russian company PingWin.
        If you look at sites of ROSA Labs (English version using Google Translate) and PingWin (English), it is easy to notice, they are located at the same address in Moscow: number 14 at Presnensky Val. Do you need any more proofs of their affiliation?
        Now let’s come back to Mandriva. Recent release of this Operating System, called Mandriva 2011 Hydrogen, was very revolutionary, if not say more. Mandriva dumped all the Desktop Environments, except for KDE. Distribution itself grew in size more than twice. And even KDE itself was reworked significantly with help of… surprise-surprise: ROSA Labs. As a result, we got monster operating system with oversized distribution, slow performance and very arguable interface. Reading all the reviews of Mandriva 2011, I have found no one where reviewer would be absolutely happy with new release.

    • Gentoo Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • CentOS 6 is finally deployed in my production setup!

        Believe it or not, I have finally included CentOS in my home production setup. After many years of unbroken hegemony of openSUSE and Ubuntu, the balance has been shattered. It is not so much a testimony of failure of either of the two, more sort of a great success that CentOS has reaped.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 gets thumbs up from SAP, Amazon

        Red Hat has reached two significant milestones in its effort to establish its latest enterprise Linux as the ideal platform for cloud computing and running mission critical applications.

        On Tuesday, the leading Linux provider will announce that its 10-month-old Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has been certified by SAP.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Lightweight Bodhi 1.2 distro offers Enlightenment for the Linux masses

          Ubuntu derivative Bodhi Linux was released in a version 1.2 that moves up to Linux 3.0. Bodhi Linux 1.2 advances to a fresh new version of the lightweight Enlightenment 17 window manager and version 0.4 of the lightweight Midori web browser, and features improved documentation and a variety of new desktop themes, says the project.

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Is the opposition still unified against Ubuntu Unity?

            On May 10, 2010, Mark Shuttleworth stood in front of developers, programmers and fans of Ubuntu Linux at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in La Hulpe, Belgium and announced that Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu 11.04, was going to ship with the Unity Interface rather than Gnome. It was a surprise, and a startling one at that. The Gnome Shell was a staple of Ubuntu; if you wanted something other than Gnome, well, there was KuBuntu (with KDE), Lubuntu (using LXDE), or other distributions. Gnome came with Ubuntu; it was how things were. To veer off that path sounded like a betrayal to some, and the beginning of the end for others.

          • Is Ubuntu Driving Users Away?
          • Ubuntu Security Engineer Kees Cook To Join Google

            Kees Cook, an Ubuntu Security Engineer, has resigned from Canonical after a 5 years long stint. Kees will join Google’s ChomeOS team.

          • Canonical Seeks Independent Developers for Ubuntu Linux

            Are you an app developer with an “itch to scratch,” or an independent programmer eager for more exposure to the open source channel? If so, the Canonical team is building a site just for you, to help you integrate your work into Ubuntu. Here’s a look at what the company has done so far.

            The developer portal of the Ubuntu website, developer.ubuntu.com, has been around for a while now, but Canonical employees David Planella and John Oxton made its expansion and design the focus of a recent session during Ubuntu App Developer Week. The proceedings of their discussion reveal some important insights into Canonical’s plan for engaging new developers and expanding Ubuntu’s application profile.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Inside Linux Mint

              Linux Mint’s meteoric rise to the top of the distro charts can be attributed to its perfect mix of usability and functionality. But if you think it’s just another Ubuntu-skinned distro, you’re very wrong.

              Unlike most popular Linux distros, Mint is the brainchild of just one man – Clement Lefebvre – yet it has managed to invigorate the community. It’s no surprise, then, that it looks to its legions of users for advice.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Teaching technology in the future – Raspberry Pi

      So how can we take advantage of that trend towards discovery and learning, and combine it with small cheap electronics, to really make a difference? Well, you may have heard of the Raspberry Pi Foundation – it has had a fair amount of coverage in the UK anyway, with the promise of a new low-cost computing platform which could theoretically replicate the success of the BBC-sponsored, Acorn-built, BBC Microcomputers from the 1980s (and backed by one of the most successful computer games authors of that era). Those BBC Micro systems were rolled out across schools all over the UK, and pretty much anyone in the 30-40 age bracket will have learned to write some kind of BBC BASIC or LOGO code at some point in their education, and have looked at fractals and played a variety of classic 8-bit games. My first home computer was an Acorn Electron, an affordable beige “keyboard box” that could be plugged straight into a home TV in 1984, with games and programs loaded off a (then) common cassette player.

    • SkyNET Copter Wrecks Wi-Fi Networks In Its Free Time

      As of now, it’s just a prototype. It’s built on the company’s AR Drone quadrocopter core, and it’s modified with a Linux computer, 3G card, GPS module and two Wi-Fi cards.

    • This Cheap Air Drone Can Break Into Your Computer and Own It

      The SkyNET drone is a modified $300 Parrot quadcopter with a Linux computer, 3G card, a GPS unit and two Wi-Fi cards. This is how it works:

    • Phones

      • HTC mulling purchase of operating system: report

        After the global PC heavyweight Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced on Aug. 18 a plan to spin off its PC business and stop sales of its TouchPad tablet that uses the WebOS operating system, a slew of manufacturers like HTC and Samsung reportedly have been trying to acquire the WebOS platform to expand their mobile market reach.

      • Android

        • Fast processor, 4G push Droid Bionic to the top, says review

          The Android 2.3.4-powered Droid Bionic by Motorola is the company’s fastest smartphone yet, and it runs on Verizon’s LTE network, the fastest 4G service in the U.S. Although one pays dearly for the Bionic’s blazing speed, both in price and in poor battery life, the Bionic will more than compensate for those seeking top performance, says this review.

        • Intel to offer Android 2.x on Atom E6xx in January
        • Echostar Set Top Box runs on Android 2.3

          The Echostar IP Set Top Box HDX-200 seen at the IBC 2011 Amsterdam is an Android 2.3 operated device & runs Linux kernel 2.6.34.

        • 7 beautiful CyanogenMod 7 themes

          If you own a rooted Android phone most probably you will have heard about CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is a free, community built distribution of Android 2.3.x which greatly extends the capabilities of your phone. In other words it’s a custom ROM for your mobile phone. Among its many features is its ability to use custom themes on your phone simply by installing APKs and using the T-Mobile theme engine. Here I will show you 7 beautiful themes for CM7.

        • Top Free Android Finance Apps

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • 0% of XOs run Windows

        A stray comment today about Windows not working on ARM machines, by someone who thought all OLPC laptops had moved away from Linux, reminded me to reaffirm something:
        Every XO we have ever made shipped from the factory with Linux. The 2M+ XOs running Linux is one of the largest deployments of Linux in the classroom anywhere in the world, and the largest in primary schools.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Why we still love open source

    It’s easy to make the argument that open source ain’t what it used to be. In the essay accompanying this year’s Bossie (Best of Open Source Software) Awards, InfoWorld contributing editor Peter Wayner nails it: Aggressive patent and copyright enforcement are inflicting damage on real openness and community-driven software development. And in desperate pursuit of revenue, both independent ISVs and big software players can make it hard to distinguish between demo versions and open source distributions.

  • The Covenant – A New Approach to Open Source Cooperation

    How can a company profit from their product while being fair to their Open Source development partners? After decades of corporate participation in Open Source, this question is still debated. HPCC Systems is taking a new approach.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Drupal: is an open-source star on the edge?

      For some, Drupal is a powerful content management system; for others, it’s a development framework.

      With more than 2m downloads and high-profile users like MTV UK, Estee Lauder, Fox News, and The Economist, however, there’s no disputing the fact that Drupal is a great example of a successful open source project.

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK Government: Open Standards Must be RF, not FRAND

      So there we have it: the UK government officially recognises that open standards must be RF, as specified in the Procurement Policy Note, not FRAND, because the latter “ may present some difficulties for the open source software development model in terms of patents and royalties,” which is absolutely spot on.

  • Open Access/Content

    • A barrier-free world with open-access publishing

      The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), based on the Technopark campus here, is poised to take its first step into open-access publishing. The centre is set to release the Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge on Monday, representing the next stage in the free software movement.

      Talking to The Hindu, Satish Babu, director, ICFOSS, said open-access publication provided an answer to the problems posed by copyright restrictions in the conventional method of publishing.

  • Programming

    • Introducing CoffeeScript

      It’s great that JavaScript has improved in many ways. At the same time, the language contains many legacy issues—not in terms of capabilities, but in terms of the syntax and grammar. You can do great things with JavaScript, but it’s easy to write code that has unexpected side effects, whose variables don’t have the scope you expect, or whose functions operate just differently enough from your intention to cause problems.

Leftovers

  • M$: Hotmail is Trash

    I have been saying that for about a decade. Now M$ agrees and will revamp Hotmail.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Through the Toxic Mirror: Vietnamese and Americans Continue to Suffer Effects of Agent Orange

      Fred Wilcox is a writing professor at Ithaca College and a long-time peace activist. In 1983, his book Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange broke the story of the suffering of American veterans of the Vietnam War due to poisoning by Agent Orange used as a defoliant. On September 13, Seven Stories Press will release his latest book, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, which chronicles the effects of chemical warfare on the Vietnamese people. On the same day, Seven Stories will also release a new edition of Waiting for an Army to Die.

    • A Decade After the 9/11 Attacks, Americans Live in an Era of Endless War

      To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployments.

  • Cablegate

    • 2011-09-11 Bulgarian Ambassador in Washington – Trusted Informant of USA

      A secret diplomatic cable [08SOFIA185], released by Wikileaks and dated March 27, 2008, reveals that Bulgarian Ambassador in Washington, DC, now serving a second term there, Elena Poptodorova and then Deputy Defense Minister, Sonya Yankulova, have informed American Ambassador in Sofia John Beyrle about plans to increase the Bulgarian contingent in Kandahar by fifty rangers, months before the official decision of the Bulgarian cabinet.

      The cable is also shading light on the steady pressure exerted by US officials on the Government of Bulgaria to expand its Afghan contribution with new contingent.

    • Narco elite vs oligarchy: Guatemala votes

      As candidates square-off in Guatemala’s presidential election, a broader political battle is transpiring away from the campaign signs and populist rhetoric: the old oligarchy is fighting to maintain its privileged position against an increasingly powerful “narco elite”.

      The old elite, or oligarchs, usually come from a feudal-style landowning class linked to coffee exports, cattle ranching and some heavy industry, such as cement production. The new narcos deal in cocaine, marijuana and assassinations.

    • More Lies from M$

      Sad that they relied on taxpayers money to sell products. Sad that one of the richest corporations in the world did not have the confidence to compete on price/performance.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • CNN Sustains Tea Party Myth

      CNN Online has published a story titled an “angry electorate helps sustain tea party,” ignoring the clear evidence the “movement” is only sustained by thinly-veiled religious zeal and wealthy funders like the Koch brothers.

  • Privacy

    • Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw’s Pamela Jones

      In the meantime, though PJ, who’s a very private person, was subjected to death threats, invasion of her privacy by junkyard journalists, and even claims that she wasn’t a real person at all. There really is a PJ. I’ve met her, and as it happens her “real name” is Pamela Jones.

      Just because she has a real name though and she’s a well-known online legal expert and journalist, doesn’t mean that she wants Google, or anyone else, drawing a direct line from “PJ” the paralegal and analyst/reporter and the Pamela Jones who lives at X address in Y City. So what does she think of Google’s instance of making those connections from online to real-world identities?

      In our conversation, Jones said, “I was going to join up with Google+ until I read about the ‘real name’ policy. I use my real name, actually, but if I have to send a license or some other proof to establish it, it’s no different, to me, than a government ID card.”

  • Civil Rights

    • How problematic is the Public Data Corporation?

      Jonathan Raper from open data company Placr argued that the PDC is a massive step backwards for the direction we thought data policy was moving under this government (US style marginal cost + tax funding model). This is going to stop on its tracks opening up other key core data areas, such as Companies House. It is not just the impact of the datasets involved in the current deal for the PDC but the general policy u-turn.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright term extension is a cultural disaster

        This morning we heard that term extension in sound recordings has gone through the EU Council. Term extension is a cultural disaster. It means that it will be harder to publish older works, and many will remain out of print. Research showed that around 90% of the cash windfall from copyright levies will fall into the hands of record labels.

        Despite the rhetoric, small artists will gain very little from this, while our cultural heritage takes a massive blow by denying us full access to these recordings for another generation.

      • The Orphan Wars

        Just when I thought that the Google Books case might be tailing off towards an anticlimactic, unresolved ending — bam! The Authors Guild today filed suit against the HathiTrust, the library partnership holding many of the scans received from Google. You have to say this for authors: they sure know how to time a plot twist for maximum dramatic impact. I’ll give a quick summary of the important facts about the lawsuit, and then a few thoughts about what it means.

      • Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Reprinting Images Produced In 630 A.D.

        Over the years, we’ve heard tons of stories of professional printers refusing to print certain images because they’re concerned about being accused of copyright infringement. This tends to create a huge nuisance for people who have a legitimate right to have things printed, but it gets absolutely, positively ridiculous when it involves material that is quite obviously in the public domain.

Canonical/Ubuntu

  • Is the opposition still unified against Ubuntu Unity?

    On May 10, 2010, Mark Shuttleworth stood in front of developers, programmers and fans of Ubuntu Linux at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in La Hulpe, Belgium and announced that Natty Narwhal, Ubuntu 11.04, was going to ship with the Unity Interface rather than Gnome. It was a surprise, and a startling one at that. The Gnome Shell was a staple of Ubuntu; if you wanted something other than Gnome, well, there was KuBuntu (with KDE), Lubuntu (using LXDE), or other distributions. Gnome came with Ubuntu; it was how things were. To veer off that path sounded like a betrayal to some, and the beginning of the end for others.

  • Is Ubuntu Driving Users Away?
  • Ubuntu Security Engineer Kees Cook To Join Google

    Kees Cook, an Ubuntu Security Engineer, has resigned from Canonical after a 5 years long stint. Kees will join Google’s ChomeOS team.

  • Canonical Seeks Independent Developers for Ubuntu Linux

    Are you an app developer with an “itch to scratch,” or an independent programmer eager for more exposure to the open source channel? If so, the Canonical team is building a site just for you, to help you integrate your work into Ubuntu. Here’s a look at what the company has done so far.

    The developer portal of the Ubuntu website, developer.ubuntu.com, has been around for a while now, but Canonical employees David Planella and John Oxton made its expansion and design the focus of a recent session during Ubuntu App Developer Week. The proceedings of their discussion reveal some important insights into Canonical’s plan for engaging new developers and expanding Ubuntu’s application profile.

  • Flavours and Variants

    • Inside Linux Mint

      Linux Mint’s meteoric rise to the top of the distro charts can be attributed to its perfect mix of usability and functionality. But if you think it’s just another Ubuntu-skinned distro, you’re very wrong.

      Unlike most popular Linux distros, Mint is the brainchild of just one man – Clement Lefebvre – yet it has managed to invigorate the community. It’s no surprise, then, that it looks to its legions of users for advice.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Teaching technology in the future – Raspberry Pi

      So how can we take advantage of that trend towards discovery and learning, and combine it with small cheap electronics, to really make a difference? Well, you may have heard of the Raspberry Pi Foundation – it has had a fair amount of coverage in the UK anyway, with the promise of a new low-cost computing platform which could theoretically replicate the success of the BBC-sponsored, Acorn-built, BBC Microcomputers from the 1980s (and backed by one of the most successful computer games authors of that era). Those BBC Micro systems were rolled out across schools all over the UK, and pretty much anyone in the 30-40 age bracket will have learned to write some kind of BBC BASIC or LOGO code at some point in their education, and have looked at fractals and played a variety of classic 8-bit games. My first home computer was an Acorn Electron, an affordable beige “keyboard box” that could be plugged straight into a home TV in 1984, with games and programs loaded off a (then) common cassette player.

    • SkyNET Copter Wrecks Wi-Fi Networks In Its Free Time

      As of now, it’s just a prototype. It’s built on the company’s AR Drone quadrocopter core, and it’s modified with a Linux computer, 3G card, GPS module and two Wi-Fi cards.

    • This Cheap Air Drone Can Break Into Your Computer and Own It

      The SkyNET drone is a modified $300 Parrot quadcopter with a Linux computer, 3G card, a GPS unit and two Wi-Fi cards. This is how it works:

    • Phones

      • HTC mulling purchase of operating system: report

        After the global PC heavyweight Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) announced on Aug. 18 a plan to spin off its PC business and stop sales of its TouchPad tablet that uses the WebOS operating system, a slew of manufacturers like HTC and Samsung reportedly have been trying to acquire the WebOS platform to expand their mobile market reach.

      • Android

        • Fast processor, 4G push Droid Bionic to the top, says review

          The Android 2.3.4-powered Droid Bionic by Motorola is the company’s fastest smartphone yet, and it runs on Verizon’s LTE network, the fastest 4G service in the U.S. Although one pays dearly for the Bionic’s blazing speed, both in price and in poor battery life, the Bionic will more than compensate for those seeking top performance, says this review.

        • Intel to offer Android 2.x on Atom E6xx in January
        • Echostar Set Top Box runs on Android 2.3

          The Echostar IP Set Top Box HDX-200 seen at the IBC 2011 Amsterdam is an Android 2.3 operated device & runs Linux kernel 2.6.34.

        • 7 beautiful CyanogenMod 7 themes

          If you own a rooted Android phone most probably you will have heard about CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is a free, community built distribution of Android 2.3.x which greatly extends the capabilities of your phone. In other words it’s a custom ROM for your mobile phone. Among its many features is its ability to use custom themes on your phone simply by installing APKs and using the T-Mobile theme engine. Here I will show you 7 beautiful themes for CM7.

        • Top Free Android Finance Apps

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • 0% of XOs run Windows

        A stray comment today about Windows not working on ARM machines, by someone who thought all OLPC laptops had moved away from Linux, reminded me to reaffirm something:
        Every XO we have ever made shipped from the factory with Linux. The 2M+ XOs running Linux is one of the largest deployments of Linux in the classroom anywhere in the world, and the largest in primary schools.

    • Free Software/Open Source

    • Why we still love open source

      It’s easy to make the argument that open source ain’t what it used to be. In the essay accompanying this year’s Bossie (Best of Open Source Software) Awards, InfoWorld contributing editor Peter Wayner nails it: Aggressive patent and copyright enforcement are inflicting damage on real openness and community-driven software development. And in desperate pursuit of revenue, both independent ISVs and big software players can make it hard to distinguish between demo versions and open source distributions.

    • The Covenant – A New Approach to Open Source Cooperation

      How can a company profit from their product while being fair to their Open Source development partners? After decades of corporate participation in Open Source, this question is still debated. HPCC Systems is taking a new approach.

    • Web Browsers

    • Databases

    • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • CMS

      • Drupal: is an open-source star on the edge?

        For some, Drupal is a powerful content management system; for others, it’s a development framework.

        With more than 2m downloads and high-profile users like MTV UK, Estee Lauder, Fox News, and The Economist, however, there’s no disputing the fact that Drupal is a great example of a successful open source project.

    • Public Services/Government

      • UK Government: Open Standards Must be RF, not FRAND

        So there we have it: the UK government officially recognises that open standards must be RF, as specified in the Procurement Policy Note, not FRAND, because the latter “ may present some difficulties for the open source software development model in terms of patents and royalties,” which is absolutely spot on.

    • Open Access/Content

      • A barrier-free world with open-access publishing

        The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), based on the Technopark campus here, is poised to take its first step into open-access publishing. The centre is set to release the Journal of Free Software and Free Knowledge on Monday, representing the next stage in the free software movement.

        Talking to The Hindu, Satish Babu, director, ICFOSS, said open-access publication provided an answer to the problems posed by copyright restrictions in the conventional method of publishing.

    • Programming

      • Introducing CoffeeScript

        It’s great that JavaScript has improved in many ways. At the same time, the language contains many legacy issues—not in terms of capabilities, but in terms of the syntax and grammar. You can do great things with JavaScript, but it’s easy to write code that has unexpected side effects, whose variables don’t have the scope you expect, or whose functions operate just differently enough from your intention to cause problems.

    Leftovers

    • M$: Hotmail is Trash

      I have been saying that for about a decade. Now M$ agrees and will revamp Hotmail.

    • Defence/Police/Aggression

      • Through the Toxic Mirror: Vietnamese and Americans Continue to Suffer Effects of Agent Orange

        Fred Wilcox is a writing professor at Ithaca College and a long-time peace activist. In 1983, his book Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange broke the story of the suffering of American veterans of the Vietnam War due to poisoning by Agent Orange used as a defoliant. On September 13, Seven Stories Press will release his latest book, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam, which chronicles the effects of chemical warfare on the Vietnamese people. On the same day, Seven Stories will also release a new edition of Waiting for an Army to Die.

      • A Decade After the 9/11 Attacks, Americans Live in an Era of Endless War

        To grasp its sweep, it helps to visit Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army will soon open a $31 million complex for wounded troops and those whose bodies are breaking down after a decade of deployments.

    • Cablegate

      • 2011-09-11 Bulgarian Ambassador in Washington – Trusted Informant of USA

        A secret diplomatic cable [08SOFIA185], released by Wikileaks and dated March 27, 2008, reveals that Bulgarian Ambassador in Washington, DC, now serving a second term there, Elena Poptodorova and then Deputy Defense Minister, Sonya Yankulova, have informed American Ambassador in Sofia John Beyrle about plans to increase the Bulgarian contingent in Kandahar by fifty rangers, months before the official decision of the Bulgarian cabinet.

        The cable is also shading light on the steady pressure exerted by US officials on the Government of Bulgaria to expand its Afghan contribution with new contingent.

      • Narco elite vs oligarchy: Guatemala votes

        As candidates square-off in Guatemala’s presidential election, a broader political battle is transpiring away from the campaign signs and populist rhetoric: the old oligarchy is fighting to maintain its privileged position against an increasingly powerful “narco elite”.

        The old elite, or oligarchs, usually come from a feudal-style landowning class linked to coffee exports, cattle ranching and some heavy industry, such as cement production. The new narcos deal in cocaine, marijuana and assassinations.

      • More Lies from M$

        Sad that they relied on taxpayers money to sell products. Sad that one of the richest corporations in the world did not have the confidence to compete on price/performance.

    • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Finance

    • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

      • CNN Sustains Tea Party Myth

        CNN Online has published a story titled an “angry electorate helps sustain tea party,” ignoring the clear evidence the “movement” is only sustained by thinly-veiled religious zeal and wealthy funders like the Koch brothers.

    • Privacy

      • Google+, Real Names, and Groklaw’s Pamela Jones

        In the meantime, though PJ, who’s a very private person, was subjected to death threats, invasion of her privacy by junkyard journalists, and even claims that she wasn’t a real person at all. There really is a PJ. I’ve met her, and as it happens her “real name” is Pamela Jones.

        Just because she has a real name though and she’s a well-known online legal expert and journalist, doesn’t mean that she wants Google, or anyone else, drawing a direct line from “PJ” the paralegal and analyst/reporter and the Pamela Jones who lives at X address in Y City. So what does she think of Google’s instance of making those connections from online to real-world identities?

        In our conversation, Jones said, “I was going to join up with Google+ until I read about the ‘real name’ policy. I use my real name, actually, but if I have to send a license or some other proof to establish it, it’s no different, to me, than a government ID card.”

    • Civil Rights

      • How problematic is the Public Data Corporation?

        Jonathan Raper from open data company Placr argued that the PDC is a massive step backwards for the direction we thought data policy was moving under this government (US style marginal cost + tax funding model). This is going to stop on its tracks opening up other key core data areas, such as Companies House. It is not just the impact of the datasets involved in the current deal for the PDC but the general policy u-turn.

    • Intellectual Monopolies

      • Copyrights

        • Copyright term extension is a cultural disaster

          This morning we heard that term extension in sound recordings has gone through the EU Council. Term extension is a cultural disaster. It means that it will be harder to publish older works, and many will remain out of print. Research showed that around 90% of the cash windfall from copyright levies will fall into the hands of record labels.

          Despite the rhetoric, small artists will gain very little from this, while our cultural heritage takes a massive blow by denying us full access to these recordings for another generation.

        • The Orphan Wars

          Just when I thought that the Google Books case might be tailing off towards an anticlimactic, unresolved ending — bam! The Authors Guild today filed suit against the HathiTrust, the library partnership holding many of the scans received from Google. You have to say this for authors: they sure know how to time a plot twist for maximum dramatic impact. I’ll give a quick summary of the important facts about the lawsuit, and then a few thoughts about what it means.

        • Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Reprinting Images Produced In 630 A.D.

          Over the years, we’ve heard tons of stories of professional printers refusing to print certain images because they’re concerned about being accused of copyright infringement. This tends to create a huge nuisance for people who have a legitimate right to have things printed, but it gets absolutely, positively ridiculous when it involves material that is quite obviously in the public domain.

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