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05.25.11

Links 25/5/2011: KDE 4.7 Beta, China Gets Debian Mirror

Posted in News Roundup at 7:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

    • Platform Gets Graphic with HPC Cluster Manager

      Not everybody who needs to build a cluster wants to be a Linux expert. And that is why Platform Computing has slapped an all-encompassing Web-based graphical user interface onto the 3 release of its Platform HPC cluster management tool.

  • Applications

    • Syncany: A Great Dropbox Alternative Which Supports Multiple Storage Types

      Syncany is a brand new open-source file sync software (similar to Dropbox, or Sparkleshare). “Oh no, not another Dropbox alternative” you might say. Well Syncany is different and has the chance to become better than other such applications. Read on!

    • 13 Reasons to choose GIMP over Photoshop!

      Photoshop is one of the most popular image editing proprietary software, with extensive capabilities and a rather un-affordable price! It will be interesting for you to note that most of the Photoshop copies running on thousands of computers are illegal, that seems to be obvious as even professionals cannot afford to buy such an expensive piece of software. On the other hand, GIMP, photo manipulation software is a free counterpart that is fairly popular in the Linux circle. GIMP is preinstalled on some Linux

      distributions or it can be installed with great ease. In this post we will draw a comparison between the two softwares! The debate is old yet it interests many. In this post we will compare the two softwares, according to current standards.

    • Proprietary

      • 10 Commercial Apps for Linux That I Never Knew Existed

        One thing that keeps Linux in the back foot is the lack of good quality applications that can compete with the best out there. The advent of paid softwares section in Ubuntu Software Center is a start, things like that can kick start application development for Linux in a big way. But things were not as bad I thought it would be. On further browsing, I found out that there are indeed a good number of paid applications for Linux, some of them were a total surprise for me. Here are some of those paid applications for Linux which I found interesting.

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

      • The State of Gaming on Linux

        We recently covered the best paid games that are out there for Linux. We know that the list was too small and disappointing for any Linux fan. The size of the list can only be attributed to the lack of any major progress in this area for years. To be honest, most of the games that are available for Linux are graphically poor with loose plots and terrible AI levels. However, before you start bashing Linux developers for that, let’s take a look at why gaming sucks so badly on Linux.

  • Desktop Environments

    • A bit about Fluxbox

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE Ships First 4.7 Beta

        KDE has released a first beta of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team’s focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • China Has Its Own Debian GNU/Linux Mirror

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu: Design for all, keep custom options open

            So, here’s the thing. I have two monitors set up in my office, one plugged into my primary Ubuntu machine and one plugged into a Windows PC that I keep around for my business accounting. (Yeah, yeah, I don’t like GNUCash, okay?)

            To move my mouse and keyboard control between them, I use a neat little tool called QuickSynergy that enables control signals to move across the LAN so I can just use both operating systems as if it were one big screen. Normally, the Windows monitor is off the left and the Linux monitor is centered in front of me because it’s the giganto monitor and I use it 90 percent of the time.

          • Ubuntu Showcase, Computex: May 31st

            Next week, Canonical will present an executive briefing on developments in Ubuntu Desktop, Cloud and Server. Christopher Kenyon, Canonical EVP, will be sharing developments in Ubuntu, including:
            * Introducing Ubuntu 11.04 with critically acclaimed interfaces and developer APIs

          • Clipboard manger Diodon debuts Unity Lens
          • Linux User’s Ubuntu Column #100 with Mark Shuttleworth

            To help us celebrate the 100th issue of Linux User & Developer, Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, agreed to take the reins from our regular Ubuntu columnist (Dave Walker) and take us through why he believes it was the right decision for Ubuntu to embrace the future with Unity…

          • Ubuntu Light review

            Ubuntu Light is an alternative OS designed to sit on a separate partition to a PC’s Windows operating system. With a look and feel that’ll be familiar to users of Ubuntu Netbook Remix – whose Unity interface has now been rolled out across all versions of Ubuntu – it’s neither full featured nor powerful. But it is fast.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Apache Libcloud is now a top level project

    The Apache Libcloud project has left the Apache Incubator where projects mature and has become a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation. Libcloud is a Python implementation of a common vendor-independent API for cloud services which supports multiple backends to work with cloud provider specific APIs. The project hopes to allow developers to write cloud applications for a single API without the need to write vendor-specific code. The current Python implementation has back-end driver support for over twenty cloud platforms including Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus, OpenStack, Rackspace, GoGrid, IBM Cloud and Linode.

  • Apache Libcloud Graduates

  • Web Browsers

    • Deconstructing browser trends

      All right, the big moment has come. In the past dozen weeks and a similar number of Internet-related articles, I have alluded, hinted and clear-stabbed at various trends and hypes that seem to be gripping the modern browsers. In my Taming Firefox 4 article, we had a brief if heated piece on Tabs on Top thingie. Firefox came into spotlight again with Aurora, a dev-build, and so did Internet Explorer, with its version 10 preview.

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 5 for Android adds CSS animation, support for Do Not Track browsing

        The Firefox team is moving as quick as a…well, you get the idea. Nearly two months after releasing its latest browser to the masses, the folks at Mozilla have unleashed Firefox 5 for Android as a beta for willing souls who happen upon it in the Market. The latest rendition will hook you up with support for CSS animations,

  • Public Services/Government

    • Romania to recommend open source “wherever appropriate”

      Romania’s minister for Communication and Information Society, Valerian Vreme, said at a conference in Bucharest that the country’s public authorities should “use free and open source systems, such as Linux, when a mature evaluation shows it is the proper solution”. According to a report at OSOR.EU, Vreme said he would not support a law which required institutions to use open source, as the job of the ministry was to present the pros and cons of a product and its alternatives.

    • Eve Online source code posted online, DMCA takedown quickly follows

      GitHub, for those that don’t know, is an online repository for source code and software projects. It supports both open and closed source projects, and gives developers a central location to both share and store their projects.

      For the most part the projects listed on GitHub are legitimate, and in the case of the open source repositories, viewing and downloading is encouraged. But sometimes code that shouldn’t be available is posted there, and the owner wants it taken down quickly.

      [...]

      They describe it as the “decompiled source code” of the game and that it represents “infringing material”.

    • European states ‘illegally specifying’ brands in IT tenders

      One in eight government IT tenders in the European Union illegally specifies a brand, according to a new report from Openforum Europe (OFE).

      OFE’s annual assessment of procurement in E.U. member states has found that 13 percent of a sample of tenders for IT products published in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union made reference to specific trademarks or brand names. This is usually illegal under E.U. procurement rules as it is anti-competitive.

  • Licensing

  • Programming

    • GNU-based IDE

      Mentor Graphics has developed Embedded Sourcery CodeBench, a next-generation integrated development environment (IDE) based on the open source GNU toolchain. The technology provides embedded developers with a powerful and easy-to-use tool suite for developing and optimising systems based on a broad range of devices from the most advanced microprocessors to microcontrollers.
      Sourcery CodeBench incorporates technologies which Mentor acquired from Code Sourcery in November last year. The tool introduces new support for the NetLogic Microsystems XLP multicore processor, Freescale Kinetis and Xilinx Zynq. The Sourcery CodeBench product is integrated with the Mentor Embedded Sourcery Probes and third-party probes.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Finance

    • Goldman CEO Blankfein’s Fate in Hands of DOJ

      Wall Street executives and senior people inside Goldman Sachs (GS) say Lloyd Blankfein may want to hang on as CEO of the big Wall Street firm, but the final decision will not be his to make. Rather, his fate rests in the hands of the U.S. Justice Department, which is probing statements he made before a Senate committee investigating Goldman’s role in the 2008 financial crisis, FOX Business has learned.

      If a probe by the DOJ into Goldman’s conduct ahead of the financial crisis is expedited and the focus turns to Blankfein’s actions, the thinking goes, Goldman’s board of directors will likely offer Blankfein up as a sacrifice in exchange for leniency.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Move Over Machiavelli: Wisconsin GOP Kills Public Financing to Pay for Voter Suppression

      You are a new Governor pursuing a radical, budget-slashing agenda. In your spare time, you work to pass the most restrictive Voter ID law in the nation, which turns out to be quite costly. What to do? Here is an idea. To pay for your voter suppression efforts, why not rob public financing for elections, a system designed to encourage a diversity of candidates and a flourishing of democracy?

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Access Copyright Stops Pay-Per-Use Digital Licensing

        Earlier this year, Access Copyright won a Copyright Board decision that granted a new interim tariff for post-secondary education institutions. This is the first of three posts that examine the aftermath of that decision, the current economics behind Access Copyright, and the challenges the copyright collective faces over the long haul. The interim licence, which effectively sought to maintain the status quo as the copyright collective and educational institutions sort through the Access Copyright demand for a massive increase in its current tariff structure, provided the collective with a potential continued revenue stream and delayed what appeared to be a near-universal decision among Canadian universities to drop the Access Copyright licence altogether.

      • Pirate Party Germany server raid – Personal statement by Loz Kaye

        I would like to add my condemnation to that of Sebastian Nerz and Rick Falkvinge, amongst others on yesterday’s police raid of German Pirate Party IT Assets.

        A French investigation into an attack on the IT infrastructure of the energy group EDF resulted in German authorities disconnecting and then confiscating the German Pirate Party’s servers. This had the effect of partially crippling the party two days ahead of state elections in Bremen.

      • Pirate Party Germany Server Raid – Open Letter

        As you will be well aware, German police officers seized a number of servers belonging to the Piratenpartei (The German Pirate Party), provided by AixIT in Offenbach. Some of these servers constituted the information technology and communications infrastructure of the party, a legal and officially recognised political party in Germany apparently at the behest of French investigators.

Clip of the Day

Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli – Minor Swing


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 25/5/2011: MeeGo TV Platform, Trisquel 4.5.1, Wary Puppy 5.1.2

Posted in News Roundup at 12:40 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open is a Loose Term in the Mobile Market

    I guess in the end “open” is a loose term when it comes to the mobile market. Yes, Android is more open than a good deal of other mobile operating system alternatives – but it is far from the freedom we see in desktop computing. Our mobiles won’t be truly “open” until hardware manufactures stop riddling FOS operating systems with closed source hardware and software components.

  • 55 Open Source Replacements for Information/Project Management Tools

    Experts say that interest in IT project management has grown substantially in recent years. A December 2010 report from Dice.com put project managers fourth on its list of the most in-demand IT jobs for 2011. And a Forrester report found that for 2011, CIO priorities are shifting from cost reduction to improving execution. As a result, they’re looking to the disciplines of project management and project portfolio management to help them “allocate resources effectively while killing off bad ideas quickly.”

    Project managers have a huge list of software tools that can help them do their jobs, ranging from simple spreadsheets to groupware with collaboration features to full project management solutions. These tools can be very expensive, but a growing number of open source projects offer similar functionality without the high price tag.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Why TDF should be the place for one united Community

      We all have similar goals: a free office suite, available to everyone. So let’s not discuss about the past, about what has happened and about the reasons that led to this, but rather focus on the future.

  • Business

    • If you tolerate this… the commercial open source window of opportunity

      One of the ‘things I wrote down during OSBC’ was this statement from Benchmark EIR, Rob Bearden:

      “Misalignment between a business model and the community’s tolerance point will never be accepted. This will manifest itself in multiple distributions.”

      At first glance the statement may seem obvious to anyone who has studied open source-related business strategies or communities, but I believe provides the context for further understanding the complexities of balancing the needs of a business for control and the needs of a community for openness.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • SE: Framework agreement increases use of open source

      Sweden’s public administrations, municipalities and health care are increasingly turning to free and open source software solutions, following legal clarifications made to a public procurement framework contract. From April 2011, a new framework agreement makes providers of services based on this type of software legally responsible for issues pertaining to copyright, licences and distribution. This has made public administrations less hesitant about using open source, says Daniel Melin, one of the software procurement specialists at Kammarkollegiet, a government agency.

    • How can the state simultaneously cut budgets, provide better services, and promote growth? “By adopting an Open Government mindset”.

      All truth passes through three stages, said the philosopher Schopenhauer. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Just over a week ago the Financial Times paraphrased the formula I have been promoting for a decade in business, and in Politics for the last five years:

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Digital Foosball Offers Open Source Awesomeness

        Foosball tables, that ever-present staple of dot-com startups, YMCA rec rooms and your parents’ basement, have long been in need of a digital upgrade. Now, a German interactive firm has devised a way for you to spruce up the play behind those miniature plastic soccer players.

        [...]

        Unfortunately, the actual detailed instructions on how to complete all the steps haven’t yet been posted, but SinnerSchrader claims they have a proof-of-concept prototype that works, and that the blueprint and software will be available for download soon.

Leftovers

  • Science

  • Security

    • DenyHosts: Keep on Knocking but You Can’t Come In
    • PSC Accelerates Machine-Learning Algorithm with CUDA
    • LinkedIn slashes cookie lifespan after research exposes security flaws
    • A whole new era for cookies begins this week
    • PlayStation Network breach will cost Sony $171m

      The cost of a criminal intrusion that exposed sensitive data for more than 100 million Sony customers and resulted in a 23-day closure of the PlayStation Network will cost the company at least $171 million, executives said.

      The estimated cost doesn’t included expenses related to any lawsuits that may be filed in response to the security breach, which was discovered on April 19. The estimate includes expenses of an identity theft prevention program and promotional packages to win back customers, among other things.

    • Microsoft Support Scam (again)

      We have mentioned the “Microsoft Support” scams a few times over the last 6 months or so (http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=10135), but a recent change in their operations grabbed my interest. A colleague of mine mentioned that other day that he had been the recipient of the mystical “Microsoft Support” call to inform him that they had received an alert from his computer. It was the usual scenario, with a twist.

      In previous iterations of this scam the person on the phone would get you to click through to the event viewer to “find something red”. Strangely enough there is usually something red in most people’s event log log. However, do not despair if you don’t have anything red, yellow is just as bad. Once the problem (well any problem) was identified your support would have expired and they redirect you to a web site where you can part with your money and download some version of malware.

      The new iteration of the scam goes one step further. Rather than get the victim to look, they get you to install teamviewer (although no doubt other similar tools are likely used). They take control of your machine and start moving the files across. Manually infecting, sorry fixing, your machine. In this particular instance they noticed they were in a VM and promptly started removing the files they had moved, before the link was dropped and the phone call terminated.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • UK and US “special relationship” taken to a new level amid anti-war protests

      All eyes remain on London for the second day of the US president’s state visit, which will see talks on violence in the Arab world. These talks come amid calls for Obama and British PM, David Cameron, to overcome their addiction to war games.

      Obama’s visit comes as NATO escalates its involvement in the war in Libya. France has said it will deploy helicopters, bringing combat operations closer to the ground. The global war machine rumbles on, with the alliance of London and Washington in the engine room – and this new agreement to pool information and resources may only add fuel to the fire.

      Warm greetings and a royal banquet on the opulent premises of Buckingham palace – Britain has well and truly rolled out the red carpet for Barack Obama, designed to affirm the so-called “special relationship” between the two nations.

    • NATO ups strikes in Tripoli, sees no Iraq parallel

      NATO warplanes pounded Tripoli for a second day, raising military pressure on Muammar Gaddafi while diplomatic efforts mounted to force his departure.

      Six loud explosions rocked Tripoli late on Tuesday within 10 minutes, following powerful strikes 24 hours earlier, including one on Gaddafi’s compound, that Libyan officials said killed 19 people and state television blamed on “colonialist crusaders.”

    • CMD Opposes Effort to Gut Whistleblower Protections

      The Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause, the AFL-CIO, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Public Citizen and other organizations have signed onto a letter to members of Congress opposing a draft bill by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) that would weaken whistleblower protection and award programs at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC). Grimm’s bill seeks to strip newly-enacted protections for whistleblowers who face retaliation for contacting enforcement agencies. It would also remove incentives for corporate insiders to inform regulators about wrongdoing, hamstring enforcement at the SEC and CTFC and give lawbreaking financial firms a way to escape accountability for their actions.

  • Cablegate

    • Iraq War Logs wins Amnesty Award

      The Bureau of Investigative Journalism picked up the Digital Media prize for it’s dedicated website www.iraqwarlogs.com at the 2011 Amnesty Media Awards on Tuesday.

    • Anti-Americanism rife in Pakistan army institution – Wikileaks

      Officers received training biased against the United States at a prestigious Pakistan army institution, according to Wikileaks, underscoring concern that anti-Americanism in the country’s powerful military is growing amid strains with Washington.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Get Green, with Brown!

      The folks at Recompute have taken the notion of “Going Green” to a whole new level. They’ve made computer cases out of recyclable cardboard. We had the pleasure of speaking with Recompute’s Brenden Macaluso and took one of their computers for a test drive.

  • Finance

    • How an Inquiry of Goldman Sachs Might Play Out

      Goldman Sachs has already received subpoenas from unnamed regulators investigating its mortgage securities operations. Now, federal prosecutors appear to be interested in those operations as well, and subpoenas could follow.

      If so, this would signal a new and potentially more threatening inquiry into its conduct during the financial crisis.

      Goldman paid $550 million last year to settle civil charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission over its structuring of a collateralized debt obligation known as Abacus that regulators said was designed to fail. But the size of that settlement may pale in comparison if federal prosecutors find sufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges.

    • Growing Pressure Facing Blankfein at Goldman

      CUNY Professor Fred Kaufman and FBN’s Charlie Gasparino debate the growing pressure for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein to step down.

    • A Once-Tight Flock at Goldman, Now Scattered

      When Goldman Sachs went public 12 years ago this month, an elite group of 221 executives controlled the strategy and shares of the investment bank.

      While the clubby culture remains, the tight-knit group has lost its viselike grip on the company, as the wishes of the insular partnership have given way to the demands of the outside shareholders. The roughly 480 partners currently own less than 10 percent of the company, down from approximately 60 percent at the initial public offering in 1999.

      Their power base may soon erode further. Senior Goldman executives are considering whether to cull partner-heavy divisions like investment banking, according to people with knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to speak on the record.

    • Commodities Gone Wild

      Over the last few weeks prices on oil, food and gold have all hit all-time highs, and then suffered pricipitous drops. And there seems to be little agreement as to why.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Insurers Blame Americans; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee Ducks Questions

      The reaction of health insurers to the Obama administration’s requirement that they start justifying rate increases of 10 percent or more was quick and predictable: “Not fair!”

      The PR and lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) absolved the industry of any responsibility for constantly rising premiums and pointed the finger of blame at just about everyone else. The real culprits, AHIP president Karen Ignagni insisted, are greedy doctors and hospitals, state legislators who make insurers provide coverage for an overly broad range of illnesses, and, of course, irresponsible American citizens, especially healthy young people who decide not to buy insurance.

  • Privacy

    • Wikipedia founder opens new front in privacy battle

      Lawyers and celebrities seeking to prevent the world knowing their indiscretions have another hurdle in their path – Wikipedia – after its founder, Jimmy Wales, pledged to resist pressure to censor entries.

      Referring to the case of the “family footballer” who has injuncted the media from revealing that he had an affair with the Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas – whose Wikipedia page now records this fact – Mr Wales said: “This only became a story because the footballer is pursuing legal action against Twitter. It started to become a big political and social issue. Once that happens it is a valid issue for Wikipedia. As an encyclopaedia, we try to document facts taken from reputable sources. We should not be stopped from recording facts.

    • Do-not-track off to a slow start, Mozilla adds support for Android

      Whenever an average consumer is confronted with the idea of “opting in,” typically they don’t bother. They are not aware they have a choice, it’s too complicated to follow through or they simply don’t understand the importance.

      A great example of this is Facebook’s introduction of HTTPS via opt-in back in January. In a post on the Facebook developer blog, Naitik Shah points out that 9.6 million Facebook users are now using HTTPS on the service.

    • BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs

      BT reserves, and makes use of, the right to remotely detect all devices connected to LANs owned by its broadband customers – for their own good, of course.

      BT Broadband customers can expect to have their network checked any time the operator feels it needs to take a peek to help it provide the service, or when the safety of the customer is in doubt – the latter being the motivation behind the only instance where we know the capability has been used.

      That happened last week, when some BT Broadband customers received letters about the kit they had plugged into their networks.

      The kit in question were powerline networking (PLT) boxes originally supplied by BT. Some of the units supplied suffered a manufacturing flaw that could, potentially, expose live wires. So BT shipped out replacements back in October last year. But customers who eschewed the operator’s advice (having examined the devices and satisfied themselves that they were safe) have now received letters telling them that BT’s “remote diagnostic test” shows the devices are still connected and warning the customers of the ongoing danger.

      PLT devices don’t have IP addresses; they operate like switches, so they shouldn’t be detectable from the internet. We assume that BT is getting round this issue by running a scan of MAC addresses from the supplied router, but the company hasn’t confirmed that.

    • BT spies on the networks of their customers
    • CCTV camera looks straight into our homes, say residents

      FURIOUS residents have taken action against a CCTV camera they say is spying on their homes.

      They have branded the device on Elm Drive, Mold, as Big Brother having ‘gone mad’ after discovering it was pointing at a row of houses instead of a trouble hotspot opposite.

    • Privacy, the Press and Twitter: some uncomfortable truths

      I wrote last Friday’s blog before the weekend’s Twittering events and it is quite clear that the injunction protecting the footballer’s privacy is unsustainable. Clearly barring all of the press from mentioning a name simply is a non-starter (especially as the footballer’s name was chanted by fans at yesterday’s Premier League games).

      However, several facts are being missed in the current reporting furore. First is that the Court granted the footballer an injunction because the newspaper concerned was the beneficiary of an unsuccessful blackmail attempt. Then the newspaper concerned arranged photographers to be present at meetings between the woman and footballer as pretence so that it could claim that it stumbled on their relationship by accident.

    • Your guide to the EU Privacy Directive

      As of May 25, new European privacy laws come into play, which will determine how web users can be tracked online.

      The changes will require technology companies, retailers and other suppliers that track information online (usually via cookies) to seek consent from web users in order to do so.

  • Civil Rights

    • Identity scheme echoes ID cards, say campaigners

      The identity assurance scheme, announced by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude last week, will create services that will verify a person’s identity when they access public services online. The scheme will, according to Maude, allow people to access various government services online without having to remember multiple log-in details.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The Netherlands To Enact Law That Ensures Net Neutrality

      The Netherlands might be a tiny country, but when it comes to broadband, it is one that likes to make big moves. It had been quick to embrace fiber broadband. It was early to the idea of gigabit per second connectivity. And now it is enacting a law that guarantees “net neutrality” for its citizens.

      The country’s telecom law was amended yesterday, to ensure free access, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. In addition to the wired Internet, the new amendment will ensure network neutrality is extended to the mobile network and services such as Skype are allowed to work without interference.

    • France attempts to “civilize” the Internet; Internet fights back

      For some time, French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy has talked about his dream of a “civilized” Internet, but this dream has long been a nightmare for those who worry that “civilization” is really a code for “regulations favorable to big business and the national security state.” To make his vision a reality, Sarkozy helped to create this week’s e-G8 meeting currently underway in the Tuileries Gardens next door to the Louvre—and the critics are fuming.

      “I was invited to the e-G8 and declined,” said author and activist Cory Doctorow recently. “I believe it’s a whitewash, an attempt to get people who care about the Internet to lend credibility to regimes that are in all-out war with the free, open ‘Net. On the other hand, I now have a dandy handwriting sample from Sarkozy should I ever need to establish a graphological baseline for narcissistic sociopathy.”

    • Big day for better EU telecom services approaching

      Do you know what happens on Wednesday this week? In late 2009, the European Parliament and all 27 EU Member States agreed that the new telecom rules must be implemented into national laws by 25th May 2011. I know Member States are working hard to meet the deadline – and there are only two days left. But let me be clear, if these rights are not made available in practice, I will take the necessary measures to fix the situation.

      Both citizens and businesses across Europe will benefit from the new EU telecom rules. From higher levels of consumer protection and more choice, to improved online privacy and safety and more consistent regulation across the EU, I hope customers will take full advantage of the opportunities these new rules will give them.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyfight: EFF co-founder enters e-G8 “lion’s den,” rips into lions

      “I may be one of very few people in this room who actually makes his living personally by creating what these gentlemen are pleased to call ‘intellectual property.’ I don’t regard my expression as a form of property. Property is something that can be taken from me. If I don’t have it, somebody else does.

    • Copyrights

      • Major Vulnerability Found in Leaked Anti-Piracy Software

        As detailed in our earlier reports, anti-piracy company Trident Media Guard (TMG) recently failed to secure some of their systems. Blogger and security researcher Olivier Laurelli, aka Bluetouff, originally reported the breach which included a wide open virtual ‘test’ machine containing various tools. These, of course, spilled into the wild.

Clip of the Day

Jeremy Zimmermann


Credit: TinyOgg

05.24.11

Links 24/5/2011: Fedora 15 Reviews, CLAs Discussed

Posted in News Roundup at 8:16 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Desktop Linux: Hardware that aims to break the final frontier

      I happened to chance upon a post which spoke about Desktop Linux being the final frontier for Linux as it has already conquered the server market. To break the barrier vendors need to bundle Linux or its derivatives with their hardware. It seems Ubuntu has now made them think along those lines and Ubuntu preloaded PC’s have started to trickle in. Lets have a look at some of them.

  • Kernel Space

    • The DRM Pull For The Gardenshed (Linux 3.0) Kernel

      While it’s not known yet what the next Linux kernel will be called, right now it’s looking like the next release could be the Linux 3.0 kernel. With that said, David Airlie has a pull request to go in before the merge window closes for the Linux 2.6.40/3.0 kernel. He’s sent in the DRM pull request for this next kernel as the Gardenshed-rc1 kernel.

      This pull request brings initial support for Intel Ivy Bridge (the next-generation 22nm successor to Sandy Bridge that’s launching before year’s end) and “hopeful” RC6 support. This Intel code is also working better for me with Sandy Bridge support overall after the last-minute SNB fallout in the Linux 2.6.39 kernel pertaining to semaphores.

    • Linux 3.0 Kernel May Remove Some Old Cruft

      The discussion surrounding Linus Torvalds’ proposal to end the Linux 2.6 kernel series and continue on as the Linux 3.0 kernel has continued on since it began less than 24 hours ago. The reaction has largely been positive and supportive of this proposed change. Of the few objections, some see no reason to mess around with the versioning, but now there may be a reason for this change: to drop the old cruft that’s been living in the kernel.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Ubuntu Unity, GNOME 3: The Video Driver March of Folly

        In all the articles this past month about GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s Unity, video drivers have received only passing mention. Yet video drivers (or their lack) could not only determine each desktop’s success, but also be the area where each has the most influence on Linux and free and open source software (FOSS).

        Specifically, I’m referring to the fact that drivers with 3-D hardware acceleration are required by both GNOME 3 and Unity. Whether each development team decided on this requirement separately, or whether one decided that it must match the other in sophistication, will probably never be known. But the fact remains that two of the leading desktops now require what, for FOSS, is advanced — at times, even bleeding edge — technology.

      • How GNOME 3 is besting Ubuntu Unity

        Jack Wallen was jonsing for GNOME 3 and discovered the best route to this new desktop was Fedora 15 beta. Can you image how surprised Jack was to find out that GNOME 3 blows away Ubuntu Unity? Read on to find out more.

        In lieu of the release of Ubuntu 11.04 and the default Unity desktop, it seems GNOME 3 (aka GNOME Shell) has fallen out of the spotlight. Most GNOME-based distributions have been sticking with classic GNOME and, well, there’s Ubuntu. And since GNOME 3 doesn’t play well at all with Ubuntu 11.04, it’s in a bit of a situation. Unless you’re willing to give Fedora 15 beta a go.

        I decided I needed to do just that, since I am ever so quickly becoming disillusioned by Unity. Believe me, I wanted to like Unity — and I did, at first. It seemed very slick, efficient, and just what the stale desktop needed. But then, after a few weeks of use, I realized there were many annoyances. It was time for something completely different, and that something was GNOME 3.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • 23 May 2011: GParted 0.8.1

        This release of GParted further improves motherboard BIOS RAID support and includes bug fixes, and language translation updates.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • No party for you. Tradition cancelled.

          As heart-breaking as it is to cancel a years old tradition (we started the tradition of gathering the community for a face-to face meeting in the very release day with Fedora 8 and continued it release after release, no matter what), this time there will be no Fedora 15 release party in Bucharest.

        • Fedora 15

          Here’s the announcement from Fedora Project Leader, Jared Smith.
          Several new features are available, many which I am excited about.

        • Announcing the release of Fedora 15 (Lovelock)

          Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release about every six months. We bring to you the latest and greatest release of Fedora ever, Fedora 15! Join us and share the joy of Free software and the community with friends and family. We have several major new features with special focus on desktops, developers, virtualization, security and system administration.

        • Announcing the release of Fedora 15 (Lovelock)
        • Fedora 15 Lovelock Linux Debuts GNOME 3

          Fedora Linux 15 is now available, providing users on the desktop with a full GNOME 3 experience including the GNOME Shell user interface.

          Fedora 15, codenamed ‘Lovelock’ also introduces new security, spin, networking and virtualization features to the community Linux project, sponsored by Red Hat.

          “GNOME Shell is a big change and I’d be doing people a disservice if I didn’t say that GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell is a fairly radical departure from the GNOME 2 experience,” Jared Smith, Fedora Project Leader told InternetNews.com. “That being said, a lot of people find the change refreshing.”

          [...]

          “Personally, I have found GNOME 3 to be quite usable,” Smith said.

        • Fedora 15 Released, Has GNOME 3, New Search Tool

          The Fedora Project proudly announced a few minutes ago (May 24th) the immediate availability for download of the final and stable version of the highly anticipated Fedora 15 operating system.

        • Fedora 15 Screenshots

    • Debian Family

      • The Evolution of the Personal Package Archive system

        When the Personal Package Archive (PPA) system was brought out of beta in November 2007, it was heralded as a game changer for Free Software developers within the Ubuntu community and beyond.

        The PPA system was designed to make it easier for developers to get their software packaged and available to users for testing, thereby speeding up project development and delivering higher quality software.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Is the Linux Uber-Geek “Administrator” Alive and Kicking?

            Indeed, Linux is marching forward as the core platform driving solutions such as Chrome OS and Android that impose none of the historical administrative hurdles on users that some Linux distros used to impose. Graphical environments for interacting with Linux, ranging from GNOME to Unity, are reaching millions of users. For many “Linux users,” Linux–in the old “administration required” sense– doesn’t enter the equation anymore.

          • Has Canonical Convinced Linux Users to Pay for Applications?

            The Linux crowd has a reputation as a group that doesn’t like paying for things. That stereotype may or may not be fair, but either way, it hasn’t stopped Canonical from introducing more than a dozen for-purchase software packages to Ubuntu Desktop users over the last 10 months. Here’s a look at what the company has done, and what it says about end users in the open source channel.

            It might be hard to believe, now that the Software Center has assumed such a central role in Ubuntu for adding, removing and maintaining software applications, that back in the day — until 2009, to be exact — the Software Center didn’t exist at all.

          • Google Movies Blocked on Modified Versions of Android

            Google has decided to block the access to Google Movies for all devices running on any unofficial versions of the Android operating system, modified through the process known as Android root.

            This type of intervention provides users with administrative rights on the operating system installed on the phone, thus removing all the restrictions which protected the Android platform against any unauthorized interferences on system’s components.

          • Come for the Price, stay for the Freedom?

            It’s time for impossible to prove conjecture Tuesday! Today I’ll be looking at freedom and price. Those two great pillars of our movement from barbaric propriety and gouging monopolies into a bright future of open sharing and low-low prices.

            I read about the Future of Open Source Survey and according to it’s findings most respondents value ‘open source’ and will be deploying it. But more intriguingly this time around instead of valuing ‘open source’ for costs reasons, the value is more firmly placed in Freedom.

            [...]

            Once you’re using an open source platform, of course it’s much easier to calculate the benefits of investing in the improvement of the code (hiring/contracting developers) against simply buying a replacement off the shelf product. This is what makes advocating FOSS so interesting, you never know if the person you’re convincing to use Ubuntu will turn around and spend money on helping it grow later.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Kubuntu 11.04 Review

              Here is a look at everything that is offered with the stunning new release of Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. With the Stability of Ubuntu and the powerful KDE software selection, this distribution is ideal for desktops and laptops. Try downloading the Plasma netbook or Plasma desktop editions for a workspace that will suit your every need. The latest version of the KDE desktop offers many features and improvements that make everyday tasks faster and easier to complete. Kubuntu has been among my favorite distributions for quite some time now, and this release definitely ranks near the top.

              [...]

              the awesome KDE software selection ensure that Kubuntu is always a worthy download.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • New mobile Web Google Maps highlights sorry state of native iOS app

        Google released an update to the mobile Web version of Google Maps on Friday, adding many features previously included in the native app—well, the Android app, anyway. The added features bring Web Maps up to par with the native app Android users have had for some time, though the Web app is less slick on Android in comparison to the native app. The mobile Web version also makes many features available to iOS users that never made it to the native app, such as bicycling route overlays and directions.

      • Android

        • Where the real Android GPL violations are

          Recent comments about Android’s alleged violations of the GPL have been proven to be little more than smoke and mirrors, according to Free Software advocate Bradley M. Kuhn, but there are instances of Android GPL violations out there, Kuhn writes.

          This all started on May 11, when I posted an article that dove into the meaning of the Android operating system’s Apache Software License (ASL). That’s operating system, not the Android kernel. This was promoted by a May 9 statement from Google that the source code for the current version of Android, Honeycomb, will not be released until the next version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, is released.

          In my article I walked through how the ASL not only doesn’t specify when source code must be released but also how the ASL, which is a permissive, non-copyleft license, doesn’t even require source code to be released at all.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Zanby Collaboration Software Goes Open Source

    Zanby, a Minneapolis-based maker of online community software, recently announced at the Open Gov West conference in Portland, Ore. that it is going open-source. The company released the code for its enterprise groupware under a GPL3 license and launched a community to encourage software developers to build new projects and help improve the Zanby codebase.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 5 beta arrives for desktop and Android

        Mozilla has announced the availability of the first Firefox 5 beta release for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Android. The new desktop version includes a built-in release channel switcher and support for CSS animations. The new mobile version introduces support for the Do Not Track header and a number of other improvements.

        Mozilla is transitioning to a faster-paced development model with shorter cycles between major releases. The organization is aiming to deliver three more major updates this year, bringing the Firefox version number to 7 by the end of 2011. To accommodate the more iterative release management strategy, Mozilla has established a system of release “channels” through which new improvements will flow before arriving in a stable release. It’s similar to the approach already used successfully by Google for its Chrome Web browser.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

  • CLA

    • OpenOffice.org and contributor agreements

      As part of an interview in LWN, Mark Shuttleworth is quoted as wanting the community to view the use of contribution licensing agreements (CLAs) as a necessary prerequisite for open source growth and the refusal by others to donate their work under them as a barrier to commercial success. He implies that the use of a CLA by Sun for OpenOffice.org was a good thing. Mark is also quoted accusing The Document Foundation (TDF) of somehow destroying OpenOffice.org (OO.o) because of its decision to fork rather than contribute changes upstream under the CLA. But I’d suggest a different view of both matters.

    • Mark Shuttleworth on companies and free software

      I had the opportunity to sit down with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, for an wide-ranging, hour-long conversation while at Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Budapest. In his opening talk, Shuttleworth said that he wanted to “make the case” for contributor agreements, which is something he had not been successful in doing previously. In order to do that, he outlined a rather different vision than he has described before of how to increase Linux and free software adoption, particularly on the desktop, in order to reach his goal of 200 million Ubuntu users in the next four years. While some readers may not agree with various parts of that vision, it is definitely worth understanding Shuttleworth’s thinking here.

    • A CLA By Any Other Name

      Some projects, like the GNU projects run by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), in some instances require an assignment of code submissions if they are to be included in the project. [See, Contributing to GCC as an example. There the FSF asks that contributors either assign their copyright or disclaim it (put the code in the public domain). In neither case does the contributor retain any rights under copyright in their contribution. Such an approach likely works for the FSF because they have been a trusted partner in assuring code stays free.

  • Business

  • Funding

  • Public Services/Government

    • U.S. Department of Defense Details Open Source Lessons Learned

      U.S. Department of Defense has published a report with lessons learned on the use of open technologies: “The 68-page report has the goal of helping the U.S. government to implement what they refer to as open technology development (OTD) for government software projects.

Leftovers

  • Canadian Broadcasters and BDUs: Can They Compete With “Free”?

    Earlier this month, Bell and Quebecor, two giants in the Canadian broadcasting and telecom landscape, became embroiled in a dispute over Sun News Network, the recently launched all-news network. At first glance, the dispute appeared to be little more than a typical commercial fight over how much Bell should pay to Quebecor to carry the Sun News Network on its satellite television package. When the parties were unable to reach agreement, Bell removed Sun News Network, leaving a placeholder message indicating “the channel has been taken down at the request of the owners of Sun News Network.”

    While the dispute is now before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission – Quebecor claims Bell is violating the legal requirement against “undue preferences”- more interesting is Bell’s claim about the value of Sun News Network signal.

    According to Mirko Bibic, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Bell Canada, the market value of Sun News Network is zero because Quebecor makes the signal available free over-the-air in Toronto and is currently streaming it free on the Internet. Given the free access, Bell maintains that the signal no longer has a market value.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • GPs will be paid extra to tell patients they are fat

      From next year, GPs will receive a payment for every obese patient they advise to lose weight – on top of money for keeping lists of those who weigh too much.

      The plans form part of a desperate bid to tackle soaring rates of obesity in Britain, with two out of three adults now classed as overweight or obese.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • 3.2 million records on police database

      Police in Wales hold more personal records than there are people in the country, our figures show.

      Three of the nation’s four police forces hold 3.2 million individual records between them – with hundreds of thousands relating to innocent victims.

      Civil liberties groups called the “vast” scale of the databases “horrifying”. But the figures also show just how many people are touched by crime, from perpetrators to victims to those who call in an offence.

  • Cablegate

    • “WikiSecrets” Julian Assange Full Interview Footage

      The Frontline documentary will include footage of a number of individuals who have a collective, and very dirty personal vendetta, against the organization. These include David Leigh, Adrian Lamo, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Eric Schmitt and Kim Zetter. While the program filmed other sources, such as Vaughan Smith who provided a counter-narrative, these more credible voices have been excluded from the program presented to the US public.

  • Finance

    • Here We Go Again: How to Tell a Bubble When you See One

      Until last Thursday, there was some cause for hope. True, the day before the New York Times had written a piece reporting on the growing prevalence of “acqhire” transactions. That’s where a company (like Facebook) buys a company for millions of dollars, only to promptly shut it down. Why? Because it wants the employees — $500,000 to $1 million per engineer is the current going rate. That’s not quite as high as it was during the Internet Bubble years, but the same companies are doing lots of big-ticket acquisitions as well. Whether or not these transactions pay off in new revenues, the dilution to existing stockholders will be the same.

      And then there are the valuations. Groupon, which sold its first half price pizza coupon only two and a half years ago, turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google only a few months ago. By April, it was said to be valuing itself in the $15 — $20 billion range. But that was a whole month ago, so the number $25 billion is now in the air. And then there’s Facebook. Goldman Sachs, everyone’s pick for most savvy investment bank on the Street, announced an investment round in Facebook in January of this year at an eye-popping $50 billion valuation. Facebook had revenues last year south of $2 billion.

  • Censorship

    • UK government censors YouTube videos

      At the moment it is unclear what types of video are being selected by the government for blocking, however Google provides a website detailing how many requests each country’s government have made for the removal of data.

  • Privacy

    • Newly Proposed U.S. Bill Calls for Warrant to Access Cloud Data

      In a move that could open up a whole new debate on privacy issues surrounding cloud computing, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has introduced a bill in the Senate that would require authorities to get a court-ordered search warrant before gaining access to messages and other data stored on cloud platforms. Currently, access to such data is subject to restrictions set by the 25-year old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The newly proposed bill, dubbed the ECPA Amendments Act, not only requires a search warrant for access to cloud data, but also requires officials to have probably cause to obtain one. This proposed legislation promises to have a big impact on cloud players, including the many open source cloud players.

    • Where is your data?

      I think it’s fair to say that we’re all comfortable with public content being served from public services that anyone can access. I think it’s also fair to say that given the choice, we would all choose low cost public services to store un-sensitive, non-critical or unbound by law and compliance data.

    • School toilet camera plan ‘under review’

      controversial CCTV policy in schools is under review after a meeting held last Friday.

    • Websites risk breaking ‘cookie’ law

      Under the European Commission’s Privacy and Electronic Directive, due to come into force on Wednesday, British firms and organisations with websites based in Britain will have to ask for permission to store and retrieve information on users’ computers – a process done by installing computer code known as a cookie.

      Businesses could face a maximum fine of £500,000 if they fall foul of the regulations. But there is concern that many may not be aware of the changes or what steps they need to take to ensure they do not breach the new regulations.

    • New government ID scheme?
    • Police hand over details of 30,000 people a month for costly ‘customer satisfaction’ surveys

      This story slipped in under the radar recently, but it is important that it gets more exposure. Freedom of Information requests recently revealed that police departments in Britain are routinely paying marketing companies huge fees to carry out ‘customer satisfaction’ surveys. The cost of these surveys is around £1,000,000 per year.

  • Civil Rights

    • Being Concerned With Free Speech Implications Of PROTECT IP Does Not Mean You Think You’re Above The Law

      Wow. In the legacy entertainment industry’s latest “you’re either with us or against us” mentality, it appears that expressing concern about the free speech implications of bills like PROTECT IP means you’re a horrible, horrible person. Both the MPAA and RIAA are quite upset about Eric Schmidt coming out against PROTECT IP and saying that the impact on free speech would be disastrous. Both responses are so sickeningly disingenuous, it really makes you wonder how out of touch they are.

    • Research team moves towards on-site DNA fingerprinting

      Crime-scene investigators could soon have the ability to perform DNA fingerprinting on site without the need for lengthy post-analysis in a lab.

      Currently, forensic swab samples obtained at a crime scene are sent off for analysis where a specific part of the sequence, containing blocks of repeating elements that vary between individuals, are amplified and then read out.

    • ICO launch Information Rights Strategy

      A merged strategy for data protection and freedom of information has been launched by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

      The information regulator said it was committed to integrating their data protection and freedom of information responsibilities and that the new Information Rights Strategy was designed to “make this commitment a reality”.

    • Coalition plans to enlist private firms to speed ID authentication

      Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, revealed last week that the coalition government plans to develop a national ID database to allow for easy access to online public services.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • New “ShaperProbe” tool detects ISP traffic shaping

      Two researchers at Georgia Tech can tell you exactly how American ISPs shape Internet traffic, and which ones do so. Bottom line: of the five largest Internet providers in the country, the three cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox) employ shaping while the telephone companies (AT&T, Verizon) do not—though that fact is less significant for the user experience than it might first sound.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Digital Libaries May Include More Book, Music Copyrights Under EU Overhaul

        Digital libraries may be able to include more copyrighted works under European Union rules proposed today.

        The European Commission is seeking to bolster the EU-funded Internet library Europeana, a rival to the Internet book service operated by Google Inc. (GOOG), owner of the most popular Internet- search engine.

        Some so-called orphan works, including newspapers and video footage for which no one can be identified to authorize digital use, may be included in digital libraries after a “diligent search” can’t trace the author, the commission said.

      • Entrepreneur, the Magazine That Sues Entrepreneurs

        Entrepreneur Media Inc. sells the idea of the self-made little guy getting ahead. Based in Irvine, Calif., EMI, as the company is known, publishes Entrepreneur, a monthly magazine with a circulation of 607,000 and a colorful history. According to newspaper reports, the periodical’s founder and former owner, Chase Revel, once tried robbing banks for a living. Today, EMI conducts seminars revealing “business success secrets” of a more mainstream nature. It markets instructional CDs and sells advertising to package deliverers, health insurers, and franchisers such as Wahoo’s Fish Taco restaurants. In other words, EMI caters to all things entrepreneurial. Strangely, it also smashes the dreams of the self- starters it aims to serve.

        [...]

        An attorney with the corporate law firm Latham & Watkins informed Castro that EMI owns the U.S. trademark for the word “entrepreneur.” With 2,000 lawyers in 31 offices around the world, Latham polices EMI’s intellectual property aggressively. The firm even instructed Castro to surrender his domain name to EMI. “If you fail to abide by these demands,” the letter said, “Entrepreneur Media will have no choice but to take appropriate action to prevent continued use of an infringing mark and domain name.”

Clip of the Day

Tetris Cube Tutorial


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 24/5/2011: More Linux Tablets (MeeGo and Android), LibreOffice Engineering Steering Committee

Posted in News Roundup at 1:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Linux Week in Review (May 23 – 30, 2011)

    Fedora 15: Lovelock Continues the Fedora Heritage of Innovation

  • Desktop

    • Xi3 Spins Desktop As Google-Based ChromiumPC

      At Google I/O earlier this month, Google introduced (briefly) a Samsung-labeled Chrome desktop box. But while it looked a lot like the Mac Mini, there still aren’t any true details to show people what it may be capable of. Google also stated that they’d continue to push Chromium for those who want a taste of Chrome on a non-sanctioned machine, and it looks like Xi3 is jumping on that notion to make a timely announcement.

    • Mini-PC offers Chrome OS, modular design

  • Server

    • FAUMachine: First Impressions

      For those of you who don’t already know about FAUmachine (FAU), it’s a virtual machine that allows you to install full operating systems and run them as if they were independent computers. FAUmachine is similar to VirtualBox, QEMU, and other full virtualization technologies. It is a project sponsored by the Friedrich Alexander University Computer Science Department in Germany (Erlangen-Nuremberg*). FAU is a computer simulator that is an independent virtual machine project. The CPU is based on the virtual CPU in QEMU.

    • Software AG acquires open source caching experts Terracotta

      Terracotta, home of open source projects such as the Ehcache Java cache and Quartz scheduler, has been acquired by Software AG. The acquisition will, says the German company, act as a foundation for its in-memory and cloud offerings, allowing it to run business processes which use in-memory cached data access at “up to a thousand times faster than database access”; it expects to offer the first combined products in the fourth quarter of 2011.

    • Software AG To Acquire Terracotta

      Software AG has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Terracotta. Terracotta provides in-memory technology for high performance applications and cloud services. The company also owns the de facto caching standard for enterprise Java used by over 1 million developers worldwide.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • MeeGo Tablet UX Can Already Run On Wayland?

        The MeeGo conference is running from tomorrow through Wednesday in San Francisco. This is the first conference for the Moblin-Maemo-mix since Nokia parted ways to team up with Microsoft and ship Windows Phone 7 on their future devices, but there’s interesting work still going on in the MeeGo world. In particular, of interest to many Phoronix readers will be the fact that it sounds like the adoption of the Wayland Display Server is going quite well within the MeeGo world. It appears that there’s already an experimental version of MeeGo Tablet UX working atop Wayland.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KOffice evolves: first Calligra Suite snapshot released

        The Calligra project, part of the KDE community, has announced the release of the first snapshot for version 2.4 of the Calligra Suite, a set of productivity applications. According to the developers, since splitting with KOffice five months ago, they have improved their core libraries as well as the applications themselves, adding that their goal is to “provide the best application suite on all platforms based on open standards.”

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Advaicium: Adwaita Theme Ported To GTK2

        If you use GNOME 3 and Adwaita theme, GTK2 applications look different (as in ugly) than GTK3 apps. That’s why maximo1010 @ Ubuntuforums has ported Adwaita GTK3 theme to GTK2.

      • Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme + Orange Themed Clarity Icons = Looks Nice in Unity

        Even more Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal customization tips. We have seen some of the most beautiful themes for Ubuntu 11.04 Unity desktop already and one of the highlights of that list was Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme. We think we have just found out an icons theme that gels pretty well with Nautilus Elementary Ambiance Theme and it’s called Clarity.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Is Android Really the ‘Open’ Platform?

          Rooting and jailbreaking are not illegal, but they usually will void your phone’s warranty. Typically, though, you can restore the original OS before taking a phone in for service, and the company would never know.

        • No Movie Rentals On Rooted Android: Does It Matter?

          According to reports Google is blocking the installation of its Android Movie Market on rooted Android devices. Google’s decision seemed to be driven by content providers who don’t want rooted phones to be able to copy or download their movies.

        • Miro 4.0 Runs On Android

          The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) has announced the launch of Miro 4, the open-source desktop media player (read more about Miro here).

          Miro 4.0 allows users to manage music including iTunes libraries, videos, playlists and apps in one place and to sync these digital libraries with Android devices.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 great for media consumption, says review

        Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a remarkable media-chomping tablet with Android 3.0, a crisp, 10.1-inch touchscreen, 10-hour battery life, and a slim, lightweight design, says this eWEEK review. Despite the modest three-megapixel camera and lack of ports — or even an SD slot — the tablet is said to best the Motorola Xoom for straightforward media consumption purposes.

      • Asustek sets prices lower for US-bound Eee Pad Transformer tablet PCs

        Additionally, prices for Android 3.1-based tablet PCs to be launched by other vendors in the second half of the year may also be affected, with ASPs of Android 3.1 models likely to be dragged down by US$100, the sources commented.

      • Red Flag Announces MeeGo 1.2 Based Tablet OS

        Red Flag Software, the Linux major of China, is planning to release one of the first tablet operating systems based on the MeeGo open source software platform.

        The Red Flag Midinux Tablet Edition operating system will incorporate the MeeGo v1.2 common code base and a user experience built by Red Flag Software that uses the MeeGo user interface building blocks and demonstrates the flexibility MeeGo offers companies to differentiate their products. The tablet will be demonstrated at Computex in Taipei May 31 to June 4, 2011.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Creative Barcode Responds to the Hargreaves Report

    Digital Opportunity – a review of Intellectual Property and Growth, the 132 page report published on May 18, 2011, is the result of an intensive 6 month independent review lead by Ian Hargreaves, commissioned by PM David Cameron in November 2010.

    The basis for the review was a ministerial concern that in a digital age the intellectual property framework was not keeping pace with new innovation an

  • The Open Source Road Ahead: Individuals matter

    Jim Jagielski, Simon Phipps and Mark Radcliffe at OSBC unveiled OSI plan during the ”A New OSI for a New Decade: Rebooting the Open Source Initiative OSI” session (presentation). Some reports stressed the importance of organizations, but volunteers are welcome too!

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 5: Track Me, Just Don’t Track Me

        The Mozilla Foundation launched a beta version of its fifth edition of the Firefox Web browser Monday — just eight weeks after it rolled out Firefox 4.

        This includes a mobile version for Android as well as versions for Windows, Mac and Linux desktops.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • The body coordinates development activities and defines the technology evolution of LibreOffice

      The Document Foundation presents the members of the Engineering Steering Committee, the second body to be announced – after the Membership Committee – of those envisioned by the foundation bylaws. The ESC has come into being in early 2011, and is now officially in place to coordinate all development activities and set future technology directions.

    • LibreOffice Creators Announce The Engineering Steering Committee Members

      The Document Foundation, the organisation behind LibreOffice, has announced the members of the Engineering Steering Committee. This is the second body announced by TDF after the Membership Committee.

      The ESC has come into being in early 2011, and is now officially in place to coordinate all development activities and set future technology directions.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • May 2011 GNU Toolchain Update
    • GNU Parallel 20110522 (‘Pakistan’) released

      GNU Parallel 20115022 (‘Pakistan’) has been released. It is available for download at: http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parallel/

      This is a major release. So far GNU Parallel has been focused on replacing a single for-loop. The Pakistan release introduces ways to replace nested loops.

      If you are using the {1} {2} syntax for multiple input sources, then you need to read about –xapply as the function has changed.

  • Public Services/Government

    • U.S. Department of Defense Details Open Source Lessons Learned

      The 68-page report has the goal of helping the U.S. government to implement what they refer to as open technology development (OTD) for government software projects. As part of OTD, the report includes a number of specific recommendations for open source software usage. Some of those recommendations are somewhat of a surprise, considering that the U.S. military is often seen as an organization that is not likely to be very open about their software development practices.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Cloudy with a Chance of Clarity: NIST Seeks Public Comment on Draft Guide to Cloud Computing

      Next time you feel like your head’s in the clouds, don’t fret: that’s where the action is. Advancements in information technology have made it possible to store virtually endless amounts of information in a system of “clouds.” Opening numerous possibilities, cloud computing is on par with the Internet in terms of its potential to change the face of computing and the way we live and do business.

Leftovers

  • IPv6 transition still a low priority for most organizations

    As the World IPv6 Day approaches, recent research reports show that a majority of organizations are still postponing migration to the IPv6 networking protocol. Despite the growing scarcity of IPv4 addresses, due in large part to the growth of mobile and embedded devices, a British Telecom Diamond IP survey says that only 35 percent of respondents considered IPv6 a “huge concern.”

  • How can you trust a cloud? Verify.

    Group developing audit specs that could build faith in cloud applications

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Matt Taibbi: Wall St. Has No Incentive Not To Commit Crimes (VIDEO)

      In a video interview with RT America, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, the author of Griftopia, says that as of now, and until the government more aggressively prosecutes financial fraud, Wall Street has a continued incentive to bend the rules in their favor. (Hat tip to Naked Capitalism.)

      Since the financial crisis, Taibbi has been one of Wall Street’s most outspoken critics. Earlier this month, Taibbi wrote “The People. vs. Goldman Sachs,” a sweeping investigation into the Senate report on Goldman Sachs that accused the investment bank of profiting by misleading investors.

    • The “Road To Recovery” Is A Dead End

      The high profile financial analyst and investment manager Marshall Auerback explains in this exclusive interview his views on: the IMF; the ongoing financial crisis; the commodities rally; the implications of the current oil price; the conflict in Libya/Middle East; the rigging of the precious metal markets; and last but not least this, ironically spoken, “bunch of cranks“ – the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, GATA.

    • Janet Yellen’s QE2 Promise Now Dying on the Vine, in California

      California reported its April jobs data on Friday. The LA Times repeated the figure, laid out in the report from EDD, that on a year-over-year basis the state had created 144,000 jobs. What The LA Times did not clarify is that these were non-farm payrolls. For the fuller picture of the Golden State’s job market, I track the total employment figure. In the same time period called out in media headlines, therefore, the number of employed persons actually fell by 22,000, from 15.960 million to 15.938 million. | see: California Employment in Millions (seasonally adjusted) 2000-2011.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Look Out, Pearson; Murdoch Is Serious About Online Education

      It was an unusual topic for the News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) CEO. In November, News Corp hired New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein as an advisor, and bought 90 percent of ed-tech provider Wireless Generation for $360 million. In January, Klein got his own education division in News Corp and a $2 million salary.

      Judging from his keynote to the eG8, which was assembled by France’s president Sarkozy to hear tech business’ views to be fed to the French-hosted G8 summit, Murdoch is both passionate and excited about what he sees as both a duty and a business opportunity.

      This could encompass both e-books and learning materials and group learning platforms, and could be a gauntlet thrown down to one of the digital learning sector’s big beasts – Pearson.

  • Civil Rights

    • France’s G8 Focuses on Control and Restrictions to Online Freedoms

      A detailed analysis of exchanges between the French President and his former Minister of Foreign Affairs on G8 related matters appears in tomorrow’s edition of the French magazine Marianne. La Quadrature du Net has had access to sources that confirm the existence of a control-oriented policy, explicitly hostile to the support to the freedom of expression on the Internet, in blatant contrast with the farcical “eG8 forum” smokescreen. Governments must be made accountable for the positions they take on these issues when they speak behind close doors.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Please Help Us Figure Out How Much The Public Has ‘Lost’ Due To Overprotective Anti-Copy Laws

        We recently posted about an ITC report that, among other things, estimated that US companies “lost” $48 billion due to “piracy” in China. This $48 billion number generated plenty of headlines, and since the report was requested by the Senate, you can bet that it will be used politically. The problem, however, was that the methodology was ridiculous. Rather than using any sort of objective measure, the ITC went out and asked 5,000 businesses who were in “IP-intensive fields” what they thought their “losses” were, and then extrapolated out.

      • ACTA

        • FFII calls upon European Parliament to resolve uncertainties regarding ACTA

          We are writing to express our concerns with ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Whether the Parliament will ratify or reject ACTA, it will be a landmark decision. Yet, ACTA is still surrounded by uncertainties. We call upon you to decisively resolve these uncertainties. We urge the Parliament to seek an opinion of the European Court of Justice on the compatibility of ACTA with the EU Treaties, and to commission independent assessments of the effects ACTA will have on access to medicine, diffusion of green technologies needed to fight climate change, fundamental rights within and outside the Union, innovation, small and medium sized companies and a fair balance of interests.

          Prior to ratifying the 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), the Commission asked the European Court of Justice whether TRIPS complied with the Treaties. The Court decided that the Community was not competent to ratify the criminal measures.

Clip of the Day

The Passion of the MeeGo Community


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 24/5/2011: Linux 2.8/3.0 May be Coming, OpenIndiana Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 5:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Linux World Domination

    A whole lot of things, actually, among them the fact that Linux has become the engine that runs somewhat over 90% of the world’s supercomputers, Linux servers now handle a large fraction of all traffic on the Internet, Linux powers major stock markets all over the globe, and the Android surge is currently swamping iDevices of all sorts. But then there’s the desktop…

  • PEBKAC and ID 10 T errors are coming to Linux.

    Perhaps these errors are already here, perhaps they have been here all along. These ubiquitous (like my choice of big word? :) errors which are so common in the mainstream desktop world now appear to be showing their faces more and more frequently in the hallowed Linux halls.

    Granted I have created my fair share of PEBKAC and ID 10 T errors in my computing lifetime and no doubt I will create many more. As someone who is having trouble remembering yesterday’s breakfast I would bet on it being a dead cert. I would say that when comparing the different user bases between operating systems. The frequency of PEBKAC and ID 10 T errors is much lower for Linux than for the others.

  • Desktop

    • Ed Tech Battle Royale: Tablets and netbooks and hybrids, oh my!

      The 2120 I have, for example, sports a high resolution touch screen. It’s a resistive touch screen, so it’s no iPad with a keyboard, but many kids with development disabilities can handle a touch interface while their instructors and aids can make use of the keyboard. The touch screen works out of the box with Ubuntu Linux 11.04 as well as the included Windows Vista (yes, really, and no, I don’t know why they’re still shipping Vista) and the optional Windows 7.

  • Kernel Space

    • What Not To Expect From The Linux 2.6.40 Kernel

      Since the release of the Linux 2.6.39 kernel on Thursday, Linus Torvalds opened the merge window for the Linux 2.6.40 kernel and it will stay open until month’s end. While the 2.6.40 kernel will bring several open-source graphics driver improvements (performance improvements, Intel Ivy Bridge support NVIDIA Optimus, etc), new hardware enablement, and other enhancements, there’s a few features that you will not find in this next major Linux kernel release.

      [...]

      - Along the same lines as Poulsbo, there still is no open-source upstream kernel driver for other PowerVR SGX hardware from Imagination Technologies. The Free Software Foundation deemed creating a reverse-engineered PowerVR driver for Linux to be a high priority, but there’s no active ongoing work towards reaching this goal. Fortunately, something good will soon be happening, but not to be found in the Linux 2.6.40 cycle.

    • Linus Talks Of Linux 2.8 Or Linux 3.0; Ending Linux 2.6

      In a message to the Linux Kernel Mailing List today regarding the shortened merge window for the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, Linus Torvalds brings up that there’s already been many Linux 2.6 kernel releases and that he could end up tagging this as the Linux 2.8.0 kernel.

      Linus issued an e-mail address today entitled (Short?) merge window reminder As mentioned last week when tagging the Linux 2.6.39 kernel, the Linux kernel creator expected the 2.6.40 merge window to be shorter than usual due to his travels concerning LinuxCon Japan at month’s end. The merge window is likely just to be shorter by a few days than normal, which is usually about two weeks following the major release of each kernel.

      [...]

      The Linux 2.6 kernel series is now on its way to its 40th release in the past seven years of development.

    • The End Of The Road For Linux 2.6 Looks Likely

      It was just a few hours ago that we were the first news site to point out the message by Linus Torvalds on the kernel mailing list about his desire to end the Linux 2.6 kernel series and move future releases to the Linux 2.8 or even Linux 3.0 series. While efforts to change the Linux kernel versioning have been voiced in the past and ultimately failed, it looks like the effort this time around is building momentum and the change could very well happen.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Calligra Announces First Snapshot Release

        The Calligra project has announced the first snapshot release of the Calligra suite, five months after Calligra and KOffice split ways. During that time, the Calligra team has improved the core libraries and all the applications.

        This is a technical preview, not recommended for production work. Inge Wallin, the marketing coordinator for Calligra, says, “We have worked very hard to improve the underlying engine, making it more versatile and improving stability. The time has come to improve the user interfaces. This is why we are releasing the snapshot now. We want feedback on the user experience as it improves in future snapshots.”

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Open Source, Free Software, and GNOME

        So where did this all start? Well you know the tinkering thing I was talking about? That is pretty much the ethos of the “hacker” subculture. Popular culture tells us this: hackers are the bad guys[1]. The actual definition is way more complicated. For the most part, if you ask someone in Linux/GNOME culture about the word hacker, they are going to distinguish between the computer criminals (which are referred to as black hats, crackers, or script kiddies) and the people who abide by the law but like to see how things work, fix them and/or repurpose them. This is where the need for Open Source comes in.

      • How to request GNOME 3 PromoDVD for an event or a user group

        As mentioned several times, we are lucky to have GNOME 3 PromoDVDs to give away, either at events, or in user groups. They really make a great material to distribute in order to promote GNOME 3, and to help people play with it once they get home. We dispatched 2,000 DVDs to five locations: China, Europe (Berlin), Europe (Paris), India and USA.

      • Gnome Shell Weather Extension

        Gnome Shell Weather extension displays the weather next to the clock in Gnome Shell. Unfortunately there’s no GUI to configure the extension so you must manually enter the YAHOO weather ID for your city in the extension.js file.

      • GNOME 3 Live image release 1.3.0 – VirtualBox, here we come

        good news for Virtual Machine addicts : VirtualBox team has fixed issues which were preventing VirtualBox to work properly with GNOME Shell. You need VirtualBox release 4.0.8 (minimum) and GNOME 3 live image release 1.3.0 (it contains updated VirtualBox guest additions, required for openGL).

  • Distributions

    • Should Your Business Remaster Its Own Linux Distro?

      As things stand now, there are more Linux distributions available than most of us know what to do with. However, there are still instances where going along with the crowd and using a ready-made distribution might not be the right fit for your company.

      Whether it’s from a branding perspective or marketing opportunities, the reasons to seek out an alternative to the “big name” distros could easily run on all day. In the end, though, the goal is find a way to integrate the advantages of the Linux desktop into your workplace without feeling like you’re being “re-branded” with the name of the chosen distribution itself.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 1 RC1, as seen by a two-year Mandriva user

        Even though Mandriva picked up my wi-fi without any problem, it did not work in Mageia because the b43 files were missing. I read in the forums that they are planning to correct that problem and I ignore if they did it in the RC1. Anyway, one can get the same situation in Mandriva if one updates the kernel. I described how to solve this unexpected complication in Mageia here.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat-IBM pact, OVA launch will drive more KVM use in enterprise

        Like its parent operating system, Linux, and its open source rival, Xen, the kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) hypervisor is said to be ready for prime time enterprise use.

        That’s the message that Red Hat tried to broadcast at its recent annual summit in Boston. The Linux leader – the biggest corporate backer of KVM – announced at its recent summit a major partnership with IBM designed to advance KVM in the enterprise.

      • Big technology vendors form open virtualization alliance

        Seven vendors recently launched the Open Virtualization Alliance, an organization aimed at promoting the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for enterprise applications. Initially formed by Red Hat and IBM, the Alliance also includes Intel, HP, BMC Software, Eucalyptus and SUSE Linux and is aiming to attract others involved with enterprise virtualization. The members clearly hope that KVM can provide an alternative to VMware, though they appear to have slightly different aims: the hardware vendors want to commoditize the hypervisor, the software vendors to leverage it as a way to sell service and support.

      • Oh no, not another open source alliance

        Well, this “consortium” of consorts is made up of BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE. It’s rasion d’etre is to foster the adoption of open virtualisation technologies including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

      • Fedora

        • The Fedora 15 Robotics Suite

          In a nutshell, the Fedora Robotics SIG has been working hard over the past few releases to create a fast and easy way to dive into robotics development, for newbies and seasoned developers alike. The first visible result of this effort is the Fedora Robotics Suite, a package group that brings together many different robotics related libraries to make it as easy as possible for developers to use Fedora in their robotics projects.

        • Fedora 15 Spins Custom Linux Distros

          For some use cases, a one size fits all operating system doesn’t fit the bill. That’s where customized operating systems can come into play, with Linux being a key enabler.

          As part of the upcoming Fedora 15 Linux release, there will be multiple ‘spins’ or customized variants of the general-purpose Linux operating system release, to meet specific needs and use-cases.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Confity & Gunity- 2 Simple tools to configure Unity the easy way
          • Ubuntu Power Users

            I bought a coffee machine just before the UDS. It’s a very user-friendly machine: you put in a capsule, pull a trigger, and voilá… latte macchiato (or capuccino, or espresso, or chococino, or whatever you like) is ready. You don’t need to know too much about coffee. You don’t even have to know how to froth milk… and you won’t burn your hand with the steam for sure. This machine provides me the perfect user experience: I can focus on my job which is turning caffeine into text.

          • An Ubuntu Adventure: Latitude 2120 Certification and UDS

            It has been over 3 weeks since I wrote about my adventure with the Latitude 2120. Time for an update!

            After confirming that the DELL image I downloaded from the manufacturer’s site seemed to work fine, I ran the certification tests on the 10.10 build. They all passed! no glitch.

          • ‘Bleedingedge’ script lets you quickly add beta software to Ubuntu

            Sometimes it seems like there just aren’t enough ways to endanger your stable Ubuntu set-up.

          • Has Canonical Convinced Linux Users to Pay for Applications?

            The Linux crowd has a reputation as a group that doesn’t like paying for things. That stereotype may or may not be fair, but either way, it hasn’t stopped Canonical from introducing more than a dozen for-purchase software packages to Ubuntu Desktop users over the last 10 months. Here’s a look at what the company has done, and what it says about end users in the open source channel.

            It might be hard to believe, now that the Software Center has assumed such a central role in Ubuntu for adding, removing and maintaining software applications, that back in the day — until 2009, to be exact — the Software Center didn’t exist at all.

          • Community Team Plans For Oneiric

            In the interests of transparency, at the beginning of each cycle I tend to summarize my team at Canonical’s plans for the forthcoming six month period of work. This is the result of an extensive process of assessing requirements, gathering needs, discussing topics at UDS, fleshing out actions, documenting blueprints, and determining resource availability. Part of the goal of this process is to ensure the team (Daniel Holbach, Jorge Castro, David Planella, and Ahmed Kamal) knows exactly what to do, but to also clearly communicate to other entities (such as senior management and the community) what the team is seeking to accomplish.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Lubuntu set to go mainstream.

              It’s been a while since the buzz of the Open Source community has been wandering around Ubuntu and its various distro variants. Lubuntu, claimed to be a lighter version of Ubuntu, has now been officially recognised as a derivative of Ubuntu and will be released as Lubuntu 11.10 in October 2011. This is expected to be a milestone in the evolution of Light weight desktop environments and hopes to make its presence among smaller devices like net books and smart phones. Lubuntu is finally going mainstream and let us see what it brings to the table.

              [...]

              Lubuntu is growing into an amazing project with phenomenal contribution from the OpenSource community.

            • Pinguy OS – Jack of all trades, master of none

              Pinguy is a decent if confusing Ubuntu fork. It has a solid set of programs, although a third could be pruned away without blinking. Multimedia and desktop effects work really well. There were not many configuration errors or bugs, which is a nice thing considering the complexity of the interacting elements bundled with the distro.

            • Mint 11: The “Un-Unity” Ubuntu desktop Linux

              Instead of Unity, Mint 11, which is now at the release candidate stage, uses the old Linux Mint desktop layout, mintMenu system, and the same desktop elements featured in previous releases. It also doesn’t use GNOME 3.0. That’s fine by me since I don’t care for GNOME 3 at all, but my reasons for that are a story for another day. Today, I want to tell you why I think Mint 11 is a great desktop Linux for experienced Linux users.

              To put Mint 11, Katya, which is based on Ubuntu 11.04, through its paces, I first installed it on one of my main Linux workstations. This is a Dell Inspiron 530S powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. This box has 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux Foundation boss makes the case for MeeGo

      The executive director of the Linux Foundation has outlined the financial and development virtues of the MeeGo mobile platform.

      Jim Zemlin told developers at the MeeGo Conference in San Francisco that the mobile version of Linux could enjoy the same type of success claimed by its 20 year-old enterprise server counterpart.

    • Linux Foundation chief dubs MeeGo ‘unstoppable force’

      That was the message delivered at the MeeGo Conference in San Francisco on Monday by the executive director of The Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin and his supporting keynote cast.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • One Laptop per Child takes off in Suhum Kraboa Coaltar District

        In its quest to impart the knowledge of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to school children at a tender age, the previous government initiated what was termed ‘One Laptop Per Child Policy (OLPC).’

        The initiative is to stimulate local grassroots initiatives designed to enhance and sustain over time the effectiveness of laptops as learning tools for children living in lesser-developed countries.

        Since its introduction, the desire and anxiety of school children in the Eastern Region, particularly, those in the rural areas, to have a feel of computers have been in the balance.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source software users voluntarily pay more

    If you search the Web for flame wars between open source and proprietary software advocates, you will surely find more examples than you can use. Even just searching TechRepublic for such fights is likely to provide a glut of examples. Among such flame wars, it is dismayingly common to find a case of someone on the pro-Microsoft side of the divide blaming draconian licensing on people “stealing” software (never mind that theft and copyright infringement are not just distinct areas of law, but distinct concepts), and blaming the piracy on open source software advocates. This unfairly characterizes anyone who uses Linux — the most visible target amongst open source software advocates — as someone who just wants something for nothing, regardless of the consequences.

    [...]

    In fact, if the people offering the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle had access to such information, I would bet you $50 right now that the lowest-paying Linux users were — on average — the people who had most recently made the switch from MS Windows to open source operating systems. Given time to get acclimated to their new software choices, their generosity would grow.

  • Opening up the Open Source Initiative

    One of the ironies of open source over the years has been that the organisation formed to “educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source”, the Open Source Initiative, was itself *perceived to be* something of a closed shop [see the comments for clarification on this point].

    That is set to change as the OSI has publicly launched its plan to encourage greater participation by shifting to a membership model and elected board members. The plan was announced during a session at the Open Source Business Conference (slides) and is part of an effort to focus on the second half of the organisation’s mission statement: “to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community”.

  • When FOSS Became Mainstream

    With so much turbulence going on in the FOSS world these days — let’s not even mention the “U” word this week, shall we? — it’s always nice when a straightforward and unambiguous piece of good news comes along.

    That, fortunately, was just what happened last week during the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, where North Bridge Venture Partners announced the results of its annual “Future of Open Source Survey.”

  • 55 Open Source Replacements for Information/Project Management Tools

    Experts say that interest in IT project management has grown substantially in recent years. A December 2010 report from Dice.com put project managers fourth on its list of the most in-demand IT jobs for 2011. And a Forrester report found that for 2011, CIO priorities are shifting from cost reduction to improving execution. As a result, they’re looking to the disciplines of project management and project portfolio management to help them “allocate resources effectively while killing off bad ideas quickly.”

    Project managers have a huge list of software tools that can help them do their jobs, ranging from simple spreadsheets to groupware with collaboration features to full project management solutions. These tools can be very expensive, but a growing number of open source projects offer similar functionality without the high price tag.

  • CMS

    • Drupal 7 simplifies Web site management

      Drupal. the open source Content Management System (CMS) used to power everything from personal sites to the White House’s Web site, is legendary for its flexibility and power. But Drupal has also been known for its labyrinthian administrative interface.

    • IKEA using Drupal

      IKEA is everywhere. With over 300 megastores in dozens of countries, it’s one of the world’s most recognizable brands. Chances are you have some IKEA furniture in your home — I certainly do.

  • Public Services/Government

    • No forking, says DoD open source report

      A new Defense Department-sponsored document urges the department to adopt more open source technology development.

      The May 16 report, sponsored by officials from the assistant secretary of defense (networks & information integration) and the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, touts open source development as a way to increase innovation, agility and application security even in an environment of constrained resources.

    • EU/UK: FSFE appeals for information on OSS deployments

      On 18 May 2011, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) launched an appeal for users to supply information on recommended open source software applications for use in the UK public sector. The FSFE’s intention is to write a paper which shows how widely deployed the applications are, thereby making them as attractive as possible to UK public sector procurers and suppliers.

Leftovers

Clip of the Day

Nvidia Island HD Water Effects Demo


Credit: TinyOgg

05.23.11

Links 23/5/2011: Fedora 15 Release Hours Away

Posted in News Roundup at 7:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Professional Writers and Microsoft Windows

    In my opinion no ‘professional’ writer uses Windows.

    [...]

    That sort of thing doesn’t happen to computers which run Linux or OS X. By cutting Windows out of the loop, you cut your system problems down drastically. You can still have hardware issues (ask me about the time I poured chicken soup on the keyboard of my laptop), but with a good backup regime (you are backing up your data aren’t you) you limit your problems.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Introduction to Linux Desktop Environment

      When I install a Linux distribution to a new user sometimes I ask: “Which desktop environment would you like to use ?” and after looking at their puzzled face I realize that for Windows user this is an unfamiliar term. Usually they answer, I would like icons, or put that photo as wallpaper…or nothing at all.

      [...]

      So, this is a small overview of some of the most famous Desktop Environment of Linux…

    • Trimming the fat with Fluxbox

      One of the oft touted reasons to use openSUSE is the stellar support and packaging for a wide-variety of desktop environments, normally leading people to think of the four mainstays of the Linux desktop: GNOME, KDE, LXDE, XFCE. While the amount attention focused on the “big four” is certainly the lion’s share, there is still a lot of attention paid towards less popular window managers and desktop environments like Enlightenment, Openbox, Window Maker or Fluxbox.

    • Why Is The Monterey Bay Aquarium Greenwashing Sewage Sludge?

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Nepomuk

        I vividly remember how everybody, including me, hated this new KDE-4 stuff a few years ago. On top of the list: semantic desktop features like nepomuk. After the KDE-4.6 upgrade I gave it a new try and I must say I’m quite impressed. I have a folder with downloaded pdfs that I read or plan to read (or just downloaded).

      • Zeitgeist’s journey in the land of KDE
      • Active widget explorer

        Just a quickie, after the new Activity configuration dialog, in order to have more continuity of the style, the widget explorer, to add Plasma widgets has been refreshed, in its graphical style as in its behaviour:

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Elementary music player ‘Beatbox’ adds PPA

        If you’ve been dying to get your hands on a development version of the elementary projects’ new music player ‘BeatBox‘ then you’re in luck! Beatbox now has its own development PPA for intrepid testers to try it out from.

      • Take Control Of Gnome 3 With GNOME Shell Extensions

        Have you used the Gnome Shell 3, yet? If not, you can try Gnome Shell 3 with Fedora 15 Beta or openSuse with Gnome Shell 3. And if you are use the Gnome Shell 3, you might want to get better control over this space age desktop environment.

        Giovanni Campagna has announced the release of Gnome shell Extension 3.0.2. GNOME Shell Extensions is a collection of extensions providing additional and optional functionality to GNOME Shell.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian on Thinkpad Edge 11″

        This has been several months since I didn’t use much my laptop, an Asus S5N: it was crippled by a short battery life and was hit by several bugs, most of them targeting the i855GME graphic chipset thanks to the use of GEM and KMS in the latest Xorg. I did not want to invest too much in a laptop and I have found a rebate from Lenovo for Thinkpad Edge series. Voilà, I have a Thinkpad Edge 11”.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Patches – gifts, or pooled resource?

            During UDS recently, Mark Shuttleworth talked about contributor agreements during his keynote. Mark compared contributing a patch to a project while refusing to sign a CLA, to giving someone a plant for their garden, while attaching the condition that they couldn’t sell the house without your permission.

            This got me thinking. Is a patch really like a gift?

            If you’re contributing a one line patch to a big corpus of code, there’s a good argument that this is insufficient to grant you any kind of authority in the project.

          • Science Behind The Controversial Design Decisions Of Ubuntu Unity

            Getting into the minds of the developers and designers help us understand the reasons why certain things end up the way they are and why certain decisions were made. Let’s try to reverse engineer the thought process that eventually led to these decisions.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open-Source Software Going Mainstream in Enterprises: Survey

    Businesses are becoming more confident about deploying open-source technology within the enterprise, instead of relegating it to the fringes or for experimental projects, according to a recent survey.

    A significant majority of surveyed respondents, or 95 percent, said their organizations are using open-source technology to avoid vendor lock-in, according to the Future of Open Source Survey released May 16. In previous years, the chief reason driving open-source adoption was lowered software costs.

    “Multiple factors are driving the increased adoption of open-source software, including freedom from vendor lock-in, greater flexibility and lower cost,” said Matt Aslett, senior analyst of enterprise software at The 451 Group.

  • Web Browsers

  • BSD

    • FreeSBIE: Is Devil Live or Dead?

      This blog is about Linux. I try different Operating systems based on Linux and share my opinion, whether it is good or not.
      But is the Linux the only operating system in the world? Surely not! Shall I tell you few words about other systems? Why not?
      I see your mouse pointer now rolling towards “close” icon on your window. You most likely think that this my post is about Windows or Mac. Stop, wait a moment. Of course not!
      This my post is about BSD. BSD stands for “Berkeley Software Distribution”. This is open source operating system developed by University of California in Berkeley. It is UNIX-based, which makes it relative to Linux. By the way, BSD is also “parent” for Mac OS X.

      [...]

      I had previous experience with another “dead” project: BerliOS. That system did not start at all.

  • Public Services/Government

    • International alarm rings over UK ICT policy

      International standards bodies have raised an alarm over the UK’s game-changing techno-economic policy, breaking with protocol to fire warning shots at the Cabinet Office and calling for a reversal of the open source commitments it made the backbone of its ICT Strategy.

      The policy has pitted competition honchos, invigorated by the reforming tide of networked ICT, against trade policy wonks, who preside over a system of international standardisation that encompasses intellectual property law, an immense bureaucracy of engineers, and age-old trade flows.

      Back home it already threatens a rift between Cabinet Office and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills which usually sets standards policy. The British Standards Organisation, operating under BIS mandate, has taken the unprecedented step of warning government to scrap the offending policy or risk breaching its international obligations.

Leftovers

  • Snow Leopard Font Update Requires Reboot

    When you find out that it wants to reboot when you intended to get some work done, that’s a damned annoyance. Being me, I then check to find out exactly why. Because that’s what I do after all, and my Linux boxes NEVER reboot.

  • Microsoft to give students an Xbox if they purchase an expensive laptop. This indicates they are having problems selling both Windows 7 and Xbox.
  • An explosion at the Foxconn plant that makes spyPad 2 killed two people and injured 16 others. Youtube movie of fire.

  • Science

    • The Manhattan Project Considered as a Fluke

      The Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb during World War II is the exemplar of modern Big Science. Numerous mostly unsuccessful modern scientific megaprojects have been promoted and justified by invoking the successful example of the Manhattan Project. Even sixty-six years after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project continues to have a powerful influence on public policy, the practice of science and engineering, and public consciousness. This article argues that the Manhattan Project was atypical of technological breakthroughs, major inventions and discoveries, and atypical of the successful use of mathematics in breakthroughs. To achieve successful breakthroughs — life extension, cures for cancer, cheaper energy sources — and reduce the costs of these attempts, other models should be followed.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • New Report Warns of Harmful Effects of Cell Phone Useage

      The Communicators take a look at a new study that found brain chemistry becomes altered after 50 minutes of cell phone usage. The discussion features several perspectives from the medical field, academics and advocates on the implications of the study.

      Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, describes the research process conducted by National Institutes of Health scientists and the Energy Department’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. However, the study did not make conclusions about long-term effects of the altered brain activity.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Finance

    • Deutsche Bank Goes After Whistleblower’s Son

      In July 2008, Florida lawyer Lynn Szymoniak received foreclosure papers on her home. Szymoniak had encountered financial difficulties after spending several years caring for her ailing mother while simultaneously fighting her own health problems, and failed to re-negotiate her adjustable-rate mortgage with her lender.

      [...]

      But big banks didn’t appreciate having their dirty laundry aired in front of a national audience. Deutsche Bank, which had a case pending against Szymoniak since June 2008, has now come after her graduate student son, suing him for foreclosure at his mother’s Palm Beach Gardens residence even though he hasn’t lived there in seven years.

    • US banks are presenting ridiculous arguments to remain available as tax evasion opportunities.

      the United States is a major tax haven for affluent Latin Americans even as the IRS fights to stop American taxpayers from hiding money in Swiss banks and other offshore destinations. … [bankers claim that reporting interest will cause] Kidnappings in Latin America. Bank failures in Florida. Millions of jobs lost across the United States.

    • Pension funds investing in food commodities are driving up the price of food, world-wide.
    • Brad Hintz Says Goldman Sachs `Failed’ Public Relations

      Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., talks about Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s public relations and strategy. He speaks with Mark Crumpton on Bloomberg Television’s “Bottom Line.”

    • Uh-oh. Will Goldman kill the dollar too?

      If you aren’t that cynical, call it a simple case of coincidence. Investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted in mid-April that oil and other commodities could soon plunge.

    • Goldman May Get U.S. Subpoenas: Report

      expects to receive subpoenas soon from U.S. prosecutors seeking more information about the firm’s mortgage-related business, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

    • Ocwen in lead to buy Goldman’s Litton-sources

      Ocwen Financial Corp (OCN.N: Quote) is in the lead in an auction to buy Goldman Sachs Group’s (GS.N: Quote) mortgage servicing unit, Litton Loan Servicing, sources familiar with the situation said this week.

    • Prosecutors Can Get Goldman

      Goldman Sachs (GS) may seem invincible, but a few attorneys believe federal prosecutors have a good shot of winning a case against the securities giant.

    • Goldman Credit Swaps Rise to Highest Level Since December on Senate Probe

      Credit-default swaps on New York-based Goldman Sachs increased 6.7 basis points to 141.9 basis points, according to data provider CMA. The contracts have risen 30.6 basis points since a U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’s report last month said the firm misled clients about its bets on mortgage-related investments. The panel’s findings were referred to the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    • Goldman Sachs Expects Federal Subpoenas On Mortgage Business

      Goldman Sachs executives expect federal prosecutors to demand to see internal documents, as the government ramps up its investigation into the way the firm handled mortgage products, the Wall Street Journal reports.

      The subpoenas would come in response to the lengthy report on the financial crisis released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last month, the WSJ notes, citing sources. The report, which was referred to the Justice Department, alleges that Goldman executives deceived clients in order to profit at their expense, and then misled Congress when asked to explain their behavior.

    • Prosecutors Faulted for Credit-Crunch Inaction

      In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be “relentless” in pursuing corporate criminals.

      In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been criminally charged, and some lawmakers are questioning whether the U.S. Justice Department has been aggressive enough after declining to bring cases against officials at American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Countrywide Financial Corp.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Domain seizures: it’s good to talk

      Nominet have produced some useful figures about requests. The numbers involved are 2650 locks or suspensions so far. The requests are largely about counterfeit goods sites (83%), phishing (9.6%), drugs (6.3%) and fraud (0.8%). Complaints are put back to law enforcement who reexamine their request. Only 9 reinstatements have been made.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Against Monopoly

      A paper Peter J. Huckfeldt and Christopher R. Knittel examining generic entry. Not a great advertisement for patents:

      We study the effects of generic entry on prices and utilization using both event study models that exploit the differential timing of generic entry across drug molecules and cast studies. Our analysis examines drugs treating hypertension, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and depression using price and utilization data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We find that utilization of drug molecules starts decreasing in the two years prior to generic entry and continues to decrease in the years following generic entry, despite decreases in prices offered by generic versions of a drug. This decrease coincides with the market entry and increased utilization of branded reformulations of a drug going off patent. [...]

    • Kimberly-Clark Must Face Monopoly Claim

      “Huggies” manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Worldwide must answer an allegation that it knowingly used invalid patents to monopolize the market for disposable baby diapers.

      In March 2009, the company sued First Quality Baby Products, a “private label” diaper-seller producing Wal-Mart- and Walgreen’s-branded diapers, claiming First Quality’s products infringed on Kimberly-Clark’s patents.

    • Trademarks

      • Apple Defends App Store Trademark, Argues “Windows” Trademark is Illegal

        When Apple trademarked the term “App Store” nobody thought much of it. Smartphone applications at the time were a niche market either highly targeted at small groups of professionals, or were tools used by handset makers/carriers to sell their devices. In months Apple transformed the mobile applications industry into a huge market that lured personal computer developers into the world of ultra-mobile computing. All of a sudden, the term “App Store” was a household name.

      • What the app store future means for developers and users

        App-store-like centralized software repositories have existed for nearly a decade. In 2002, Linspire’s Michael Robertson created the Click-n-Run software repository GUI, and since then Linux has sported such utilities such as Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) and Advanced Package Tool (APT), mainstays for network-based OS and application installation. Later, stores such as Handango sprung up to sell downloadable apps for the once rapidly growing pocket PC market.

      • Update: eco-labs.org has the money to fight to use their domain

        ORG is very encouraged that EcoLabs will now be able to get the advice they need, and defend themselves. The rights of small groups depend on their ability to fight, which requires both money and knowledge. Most importantly, other groups need to see these claims contested so they understand that they too can stand up to spurious claims

    • Copyrights

      • Judge has “serious questions” about Righthaven, halts all Colorado cases

        Righthaven, the Las Vegas company that brings infringement lawsuits on behalf of newspapers like the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, has sued 57 people (including an Ars Technica writer) in Colorado over a Post photo of an airport security patdown. Its tactics have been hugely controversial, since it sends no warning before filing suit, demands that it be given control over the infringing site’s domain name, and threatens people with massive statutory damages unless they settle for a few thousand dollars. And Righthaven might not even control the copyrights over which it is suing.

      • EU Commission Sticks to Flawed Copyright Repression

        Tomorrow, the EU Commission will release its “intellectual property rights strategy”. Unsurprisingly, leaks show that the Commission will call for preventing copyright infringements on the Internet “at the source”, by forcing Internet companies such as hosters and access providers to obey the entertainment industries. In practice, turning these actors into a copyright police comes down to establishing a censorship regime, paving the way for dangerous breaches of fundamental rights.

      • The Proposed Georgia State Model replaces DMCA fair use for schools with a surveillance state where all copy machines and computers are laced with spyware to enforce fees and block copy for all but an absurdly small fraction of any work.
      • US Bill criminalizes copyright infringement for videos – those convicted get five years in jail and thousands of dollars in fines.

Clip of the Day

she takes a photo every day: 4.5 years


Credit: TinyOgg

05.22.11

Links 22/5/2011: Zenwalk 7.0, Mozilla Firefox 5 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 8:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The flexibility of Linux

    I’ll admit, I’m somewhat interested in Google’s Chromebook concept. The Chromebook is Google’s spin on the “netbook”. Announced in May last year, Chromebook goes on sale in mid-June.

    The Chromebook runs Google’s Chrome OS, which is based on Gentoo Linux. While Linux has appeared on netbooks in the past (and were the only option on the very first netbooks) this is another example of the flexibility of Linux. You can use Linux as a base for almost any computing platform – it’s small, fast, and supports a variety of hardware.

  • I shall build it and I shall call it gregBook

    Both my desktop and my laptop started working more slowly a few weeks ago. This indicated that something about the operating system (some version of Ubuntu Linux) changed in a bad way. Or, perhaps, since the slowness was mostly noticed in the web browser, the newer version of Firefox was somehow borked. It turns out that the latter is true to some extent because the developers of Firefox left Linux out in the cold with hardware acceleration (and despite the excuses for that I’m still annoyed … had the same issues applied to, say Windows, they would not have left Windows out in the cold). But that is a digression. It turns out that the cause was related to something I had installed that was related to the system. This little problem has been solved, but it brings up another issue, which has also been addressed on the blog Linux in Exile. This is what I wanted to talk about.

  • Linux vs Other Operating Systems : 7 common myths busted

    Myth 1: Linux is just for geeks

    Linux is for everyone. While Linux based distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora are developed with the non-technical user in mind, Slackware and others appeal to the more geeky ones. Believe it or not, installing Ubuntu is actually easier than a Windows installation , and using it requires no special skills.

    Myth 2 : Linux can’t handle Excel, Word, Powerpoint

    Linux can handle all the major file formats when it comes to documents as it comes with a powerful opensource Office suite called Openoffice.org (soon to be replaced by Libreoffice). So, apart from doing all the spreadsheets, presentations, and word processing out of the box, Linux can do tasks like publishing, image editing using only free and open source applications.

  • Google’s Chromium OS on the Desktop

    That didn’t take long. A manufacturer plans to release a small desktop PC with Chromium OS in July. It’s Xi3 and their modular PC. One of the modules will be a Chromium OS…

  • Kernel Space

    • Help me come up with good questions for Linus at LinuxCon Japan 2011

      My previous plea for help worked out very well. The resulting video of the talk can be seen here, with one of the highlights being the phrase, “It is cheaper to work upstream in the kernel” from Dirk Hohndel who works at Intel. There’s a summary of the talk on lwn.net over here if you don’t want to sit through the whole video.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • The Ubuntu GNOME Remix — an ISO is imminent

        I hoped Ubuntu would do the right thing and start an official derivative featuring the GNOME 3 environment. That has not happened.

        But there is a new project, the Ubuntu GNOME Remix, offering a PPA today and an ISO install image at some point in the near future.

        The project aims for a Canonical endorsement, as seen on its “about” page:

  • Distributions

    • Review: Zenwalk 7.0

      So what’s the verdict? It certainly is relatively user-friendly, and much more so than Slackware. It’s stable, and it definitely minimizes package redundancy. That said, it isn’t as fast as advertised, and the French and Japanese issues were annoying, considering that I thought I was downloading an English live medium (and I thought there would be different live media for different languages). Those are minor issues, though, and while I wouldn’t recommend it for a newbie, I would recommend it for anyone who wants the stability of Slackware without the hassle. Zenwalk isn’t the only kid in town, though; other Slackware-based user-friendly distributions with Xfce include Wolvix, Salix OS, and Vector Linux, so please do check those out too. You can the download Zenwalk install CD from here or the live CD from here.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Modders Make Android Work the Way You Want

          CyanogenMod is one of the biggest hacks to ever hit the Android mobile platform.

          It’s got an estimated 500,000 users. Many Android programmers use it as a starting point for their own coding projects. And according to the project’s founder, a number of Google employees have it installed on their Android devices.

          Essentially, CyanogenMod is a tricked-out version of the software you’re already running on your Android phone.

          Every Android-powered device comes running a version of the operating system, from 1.5 (Cupcake) all the way up to 3.1 (Honeycomb).

        • The Android Tablet Ecosystem Is In Need of Major Changes

          Huang made very clear that he thinks Android tablets have to come in at lower price points, emphasizing Wi-Fi over 3G for connections. Meanwhile, there are also strong concerns being voiced over the marketing of Android tablets, or rather, the lack of any unified marketing for them.

          That hasn’t stopped powerful new players from entering the Android tablet space, though. Dell has announced plans for an Android tablet, among several other hardware makers.

        • Google Deodorizes Sniffable Android Security Flaw
        • The Android Empire Rules the Smartphone World

          The Android platform tops the list in sales of smartphone operating systems for the first quarter of 2011, according to a report by market researcher Gartner (NYSE: IT).

          Total smartphone sales accounted for 23.6 percent of global handset units overall, and various phones sporting Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android OS took 36 percent of that market. They sold more than 36.3 million units in the quarter. Next in line was Symbian, taking 27.4 percent of the market share. Following were Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS platform with 16.8 percent and Research In Motion’s (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry platform at 12.9 percent.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

Clip of the Day

GNU Parallel 20110522 (‘Pakistan’)


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 22/5/2011: Mageia RC1 is Out, Canonical Expects Well Over 10 Million PCs with Ubuntu to Ship This Year

Posted in News Roundup at 9:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • New Linux Laptop from ERACC – Self-Review

      The user ordered a serial Express Card for use to control some hardware that needs a serial connection. He said the serial control is not something that is a critical need, just desirable. This needs to work from within the Windows 7 Professional VirtualBox virtual machine. The serial express card is working just fine from Linux. I connected a MultiTech 56k MultiModem to the serial port and used minicom to send AT commands to the modem. I was able to control the modem from minicom. Unfortunately I could not get Windows 7 in the VirtualBox virtual machine to use the serial port. I tried every permutation of serial configuration over a period of about two days and never got Windows 7 to “see” the serial port. The client is going to keep the Express Card so we can keep trying to get it working with remote support. This is in the “iffy” section because it may work in the future even if it is not working now.

      The good. Everything else I was able to test works. The sound is working. The wireless NIC connected to our wireless router and pulled an IP address from the wireless router after I entered the WPA2 security information. The wired NIC, when connected to our LAN switch, pulled an IP address from our Linux internet gateway. The DVDRW drive is working to read and write DVDRW discs. USB ports are working. The external headphone and microphone jacks work. I do not have any eSATA hardware, so could not test the eSATA port. As already reported above, the Express Card port works. Even the 1.3 Megapixel Web Camera works. I started Kopete and ran the video configuration to test this.

    • Linux Desktop vs. The Rise of Tablet Computers and Smartphones

      There of course, is no problem with competition. However, with the rise in the consumption of smartphones and tablet computers, the importance of desktop is slowly waning. Linux on the other hand, is just starting out on its quest for world domination. Will Linux be able to match these new and ‘viral’ trends in technology? Or, will it go down as an operating system that was never meant for normal users? If you ask me, I think Linux has a fair chance of beating the hell out of these tablets and smartphones. Here’s my side of the argument:

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Using Kernel Linux 2.6.39

      As soon as the new stable kernel has been released by Linus Torvalds, i downloaded them and install it on my workstation few days ago. It was a nice release, and one thing i would like to test is the new EXT 4 SMP scalability and also further performance improvements after they removed the BKL (Big Kernel Lock) and many other patches from the kernel developers. At that time, i didn’t install it on my desktop first, since i’m not really sure whether the current NVidia driver already supported this new kernel or not.

    • Graphics Stack

      • A Tiny Wayland Compositor Emulates Four Displays

        One of the Clutter tool-kit developers has announced a tiny Wayland compositor that was written and it provides support for multiple display emulation. This Wayland compositor is capable of emulating four displays and for now basically serves as a technical example.

      • Bumbleebee brings NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching to Linux

        NVIDIA’s Optimus technology allows laptops with the latest Intel chips and NVIDIA graphics cards to automatically switch between Intel’s integrated graphics and NVIDIA’s higher performance graphics depending on what programs you’re running. This allows you to get better battery life when you don’t need bleeding edge graphics, while giving you the ability to play high performance video games without rebooting your computer to manually switch graphics cards.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Revisiting the tabbed desktop

      One of the things I had time to try, but didn’t have time to write about, was a revisit to someone else’s idea. I do that quite often, now that I think about it.

      This time it was urukrama’s tabbed desktop from a couple of years ago. Things like that tend to roll around in my mind, and then bubble up after a while.

    • Where ends the Workspace and where begins the Application?

      When we look at the thread, we can distinguish three groups of people participating:

      1. Users – they either like or dislike the behavior
      2. Application developers – they consider the behavior as a bug which breaks their application. They want the behavior either weakened or disabled by default
      3. Workspace developers – they consider the behavior as a feature provided by the workspace. It is not a bug that the window can be dragged. No application gets broken by it; in the worst case it’s an annoying, but very consistent behavior.

    • Desktop Summit Team Unveils Exciting Program of Talks

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Open Governance Roles and Responsibilities

        Last week, in my blog on the Maturity Level List and in the previous week’s Maturity Levels, I left some indications of what would be expected of a maintainer of a portion of the Qt codebase. In this blog I’d like to explain a bit more what’s expected of people working via the Qt Open Governance, what roles will exist and what responsibilities will each have.

      • Activity config UI for Contour and Active

        this short video shows the new ui for the configuration of an activity: right now you can configure the activity name and wallpaper, probably more options to come (even tough it will remain as simple as possible). It is accessed by a button on the activity switcher weel or from the activity itself (if the used Plasma containment provides a config button)

      • Meet the Gang!

        In between demoing his comic art and joining in the discussions during the meeting, an artist’s hands are never idle! So Animtim prepared this little collection of Krita hackers and artists… Only he himself is missing! So meet the gang, rendered by the Sketch brush!

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora Greeters

          I’ve been watching the Ubuntu “power users” group set up with enormous interest. Although Ubuntu has aimed squarely at being easy to use, I’ve never seen it as being particularly unfriendly toward power users, and the idea of needing a specific area in which people can talk about power user issues seems somewhat odd. However – judging from the activity, it seems to have hit a real nerve. Whether or not it is a good idea in the long term remains to be seen: I’m firmly of the opinion that splitting communities into factions is a bad idea, so how they will overcome that in time will be a challenge, but clearly it’s meeting a real need.

          [...] the need for Fedora to be open and welcoming is more important now than ever.

    • Debian Family

      • Stepping Outside the Repository

        Package management and the repositories of software in distributions like Debian GNU/Linux are one of the great features of GNU/Linux. For most individuals and organizations, installing and updating packages from the repositories will be the best way to manage IT. Most of the work is done by the package managers and the end-user can do periodic or instant updates according to his needs.

      • Love of Money is the Root of all Evil

        The state of MA, whose IT is run by that other OS even fell prey to this thing and, for weeks, account information and access to accounts was given to a band of thieves. The malware hid itself and used multiple APIs of that other OS to infect PCs on the LAN and every USB drive inserted. Isn’t it time for this nonsense to end? Use Debian GNU/Linux and take control of your PC.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Psensor 0.6.2.8 Released, The Best Way to Display System Temperatures in Unity

            Psensor 0.6.2.8 has been released and is now available in its unstable repository. Psensor is a graphical temperature monitoring tool for Linux. Psensor has already been added to Ubuntu 11.10 archives so it will be available to download from software center in Oneiric.

          • Evolution 3.0 in Ubuntu 11.04

            With the great GNOME 3 PPA for Ubuntu, you get most of the GNOME3 desktop.

          • Meet Unico, The New GTK3 Theme Engine in Ubuntu 11.10

            Gnome 3 stack is steadily landing into Oneiric. Work is also being done to port default themes Ambiance and Radiance to GTK3.

            Light themes in Oneiric will most likely use Unico theme engine and not Murrine as some style guidelines for GTK3 themes have changed. Unico was actively developed in past but the work stopped as the new overlay scrollbars in Natty took precedence. Unico engine is already present in Official Ubuntu 11.04 repositories but that should be only meant for testing purposes as it is far from being finished. However, the development has resumed now.

          • Data From Canonical…

            “We will pre-load well over 10 million PCs with Ubuntu this year and we are more than doubling users every year in India and China.”

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Will Mint be the new Ubuntu?

              I’ve been sick. Or, as our British-speaking readers might say, I’ve been ill. Just about as ill as you can be and still manage to drag yourself in to work. Congestion, fever, sore throat, ugly disgusting gunk ejected in huge heaving coughing fits. Lost my voice, too, more or less. Not completely, but enough that I sound like a bullfrog. Ill.

              This is to explain the stasis.

              But to break the stasis, I bring you soaring praise of Linux Mint 10.

              As regular readers may remember, I switched my laptop to Mint 10 two weeks ago. The more I use it, the happier I am with it. It has been absolutely rock stable, no interface glitches whatsoever. It boots fast, it looks great (although part of that is my doing, from tweaking the fonts and themes and adding Docky and such). I’ve grown fond of the Mint menu and am starting to prefer it over the default Gnome menu. Applications look great and come up fast. KDE apps work and look fine too. It never crashes, never locks up. Nothing breaks it. Even the shutdown splash – traditionally a crapshoot in Ubuntu-based distros since they adopted Plymouth – works consistently.

              It just works.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • T-Mobile plans huge summer Android splash, according to leaked roadmap

          T-Mobile has an aggressive lineup of predominantly Android-based smartphones planned for this summer, starting with the 4.3-inch HTC Sensation 4G on Jun 8, followed later by a slider version of the MyTouch 4G, according to a leaked roadmap. Meanwhile, Android continued to make gains in the latest Millennial Media and Gartner studies, with Gartner pegging Android’s global 1Q smartphone share at a dominating 36 percent.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Dell’s 10.1-inch Streak Pro tablet breaks cover

        Dell is set to roll out its long-rumored, 10.1-inch Streak Pro tablet in June with Android 3.0, according to an industry report. The business-focused tablet is said to run on an Nvidia Tegra 2, and offers dual cameras and up to a 64GB solid state drive (SSD).

Free Software/Open Source

  • Read-only nation: can Open Source change the British way?

    We asked if open-source software had a part to play in increasing technological innovation in the UK. It seems that for a nation with such a great engineering heritage, we have too easily passed the tech leadership flag over to the US and to the emerging economies.

    Steve George from Canonical speculated that open-source software could inspire more people to engage with technology, and that the UK’s firmly closed-source infrastructure could be stifling innovation, making us less competitive on the global stage.

    And then you, the beloved readers of El Reg, joined the fray.

    Most people seem to agree that the UK could be doing better. Oliver Jones offers the following: “In computing terms, I have long thought of the UK as being a ‘read-only’ nation. They love shiny Apple products and Sony PlayStations, but have zero interest in learning how to make something better.

  • Open-source platforms benefit developer and user

    As a software developer for federal agencies, our company might have reason to be afraid of a new trend — giving away software products for free. Sounds like a losing business model, doesn’t it?

    But, in fact, we think it’s a great idea for government and our company.

    How government benefits…

  • Events

    • 2011 FOSDEM & Embedded Linux Conference videos published

      The team at embedded Linux site Free Electrons have published videos from this year’s Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) and Embedded Linux Conference (ELC). The eleventh annual FOSDEM event took place on 5 and 6 February in Brussels, Belgium, and the Embedded Linux Conference was held on 13 and 14 April at the Hotel Kabuki, San Francisco.

    • Solutions Linux & LinuxTag 2011

      I was traveling last week to attend two events: Solutions Linux in Paris and LinuxTag in Berlin. It was a bit unfortunate that they happened during the same week, as they conflicted for two days — which means I missed some days for both events. And on top of that, the Ubuntu Developer Summit was also last week, which resulted in some people missing the events…

      Compared to last year, both events had a quite visible difference in terms of number of visitors. I’m not exactly sure why this is so; it could be because there were conflicts with other events, or also because they moved to first half of May, which is different from previous years.

      What was most amazing, however, was to be present at booths just one month after the GNOME 3.0 release. For both events, we had tons of GNOME 3 PromoDVDs (kindly offered on behalf of the openSUSE project) to give away, and that was a big success: I think we gave around 600 of them at Solutions Linux and probably a similar amount, if not more, at LinuxTag (Tobias would know better than me here).

    • Gentoo LinuxTag 2011 and static gallery generators 2011-05-21

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 5 Beta Is Here, What’s New?

        So what’s new in Firefox 5? The release notes mention support for CSS animations as the only new technology included in the release.

      • The Next-Generation Browser: No URL Bar

        Being able to type the address of a website is one of the most essential features we expect from web browsers today. Yet it is the URL bar and its purpose that is now being reconsidered by both Google as well as Mozilla for Chrome and Firefox. The next major revision of web browsers will include options to hide the URL bar. Further down the road, it is inevitable that the URL bar will become what it is supposed to be: A tool – not more and not less.

      • What’s Inside Mozilla’s Firefox 5 Beta?

        Mozilla has released the first Firefox beta under its new rapid-release model: a program designed to ensure more frequent updates to the browser at the expense of huge, sweeping changes between new Firefox versions.

        Case in point—the company just sent Firefox 5 from the newly designed Aurora development channel to the public-facing Beta channel. That means that it’s available for public consumption and feedback. However, the list of new features might seem a bit scant at first, especially if one takes into account the historical jumps that have previously occurred between Firefox version numbers.

        “The shift to a rapid release development cycle delivers cutting edge Firefox features, performance enhancements, security updates and stability improvements to users faster,” reads the blog post announcing the Firefox 5 beta release.

  • CMS

    • Chris Rock using Drupal

      A lot of the recent “scores” I’ve listed on this site have been from serious institutions: ING, Investor.gov, The U.S. Small Business Administration, and The World Economic Forum.

      But don’t think for a moment that Drupal’s losing any ground in other areas. I was in NYC recently, the mecca of the media and entertainment industry, and Drupal is about to get really big there — that’s food for another blog post that I’m planning to write.

Clip of the Day

SSS(11 of 14) Homeopathy, Magnets, and Quackery


Credit: TinyOgg

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