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02.24.12

Links 24/2/2012: Intel’s New Linux Graphics Drivers, LPS Security 1.3.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • 10 free Linux e-books

  • Desktop

    • Living and Loving the Acer Aspire One 522

      What an odd situation this is. For the past week or so, the only netbook / notebook I have been carrying with me is the Aspire One 522. Never mind that the display resolution is “only” 1024×600. Never mind that the keyboard is absolutely flat, so the feel is a bit odd and touch-typing takes some getting used to. I just like it. It’s kind of like it was with the HP 2133 Mini-Note, despite a number of apparent drawbacks or problems, I prefer using it. First because it is so small and light, and because the screen is so clear and bright. It is also quite fast – the AMD C-60 cpu and Radeon HD 6290M display controller make it noticeably faster than the other netbooks I have around here. I can connect it to an external display via VGA when I want to do more serious work at home, or to a TV via HDMI When I want to show my photographs, and in both cases the dual-display netbook/external works perfecty, and makes using it much easier and more pleasant. Oh, and it has a memory card slot that takes Memory Stick as well as SD/xD cards, which is a very nice extra.

    • Canonical believes Windows XP stragglers hold the future for Ubuntu

      LINUX VENDOR Canonical believes that Microsoft’s Windows XP, not Windows 8, could drive adoption of its Ubuntu Linux operating system.

      With Microsoft readying Windows 8 for release later this year, companies are expected to evaluate whether it is worth renewing existing Microsoft licenses or splashing out on the latest Microsoft revision of its desktop PC operating system. However, according to Canonical CEO Jane Silber, it isn’t undercutting Windows 8 that holds the key for take-up of Ubuntu Linux but Microsoft’s termination of Windows XP support that will drive Ubuntu growth.

    • Why Adobe Is Wrong to Restrict Flash Updates for Linux Users
    • Linux on Smartphones: Could it Replace the Laptop?

      Dan Gillmor’s got an interesting column looking at an idea I’ve raised before. Could the smartphone end up becoming the replacement for the laptop computer? My own question took it a little further: could the smartphone become our basic computer?

    • Death to Office or to Windows – choose wisely, Microsoft

      Windows is dead, and Microsoft Office has killed it. Or will, once the rumours about Microsoft porting its wildly popular Office product to the iPad become reality.

      For just as porting Office to Mac OS X back in 2001 sowed the seeds of Apple’s relevance as a credible desktop alternative to Windows, so too will Microsoft’s capitulation to the iPad ensure that Windows will die even as Office takes on a new, multi-billion dollar relevance.

      Microsoft, however much it may want to own the customer experience – from database to operating system to applications to free-time leisure gaming – wants to make money even more. Right now, Microsoft’s only real money in mobile comes from browbeating Android licensees to pay it patent hush money. So Microsoft needs a winner in mobile, and Windows isn’t it. At least, not anytime soon.

  • Kernel Space

    • Why Linux Is a Model Citizen of Quality Code

      With 6,849,378 lines of Linux 2.6 code scanned, 4,261 outstanding defects were detected and 1,283 were fixed in 2011. The defect density of Linux 2.6 is .62, compared to .20 for PHP 5.3 and .21 for PostgreSQL 9.1. Keep in mind that the codebase for PHP 5.3 — 537,871 lines of code — is a fraction of that of Linux 2.6, and PostgreSQL 9.1 has 1,105,634 lines of code.

    • Moving Linux Kernel Drivers To User-Space? Nope.

      Brought up on the Linux kernel mailing list this week was a short-lived discussion whether Linux device drivers should be moved from kernel-space to user-space in an attempt to provide “greater security and robustness” of Linux systems.

      Jidong Xiao asked on Wednesday, Can we move device drivers into user-space? It’s been a matter that’s been brought up before in past years and he cited an earlier research paper on “Tolerating Malicious Device Drivers in Linux.” Jidong’s reasoning for bringing up the topic again is that, “Advantage: Since most of kernel bugs are caused by device drivers issues, moving device drivers into user space can reduce the impact of device driver bugs. From security perspective, the system can be more secure and robust if most device drivers are working in user space. Disadvantage: At least, existing techniques as well as the above paper showed a relatively high overhead.”

    • Graphics Stack

      • Intel Releases 2.18 X.Org Linux Graphics Driver

        The primary target of xf86-video-intel 2.18 is to address outstanding bugs. The bugs namely addressed are changes for limiting the maximum object size, incorrect clipping of polygons, limiting the number of VMA cached, and latency in processing user-input during continuous rendering.

      • Intel 2.18 Video Driver for Linux Released
      • The Fallback Mode-Setting Driver Is Improved

        One week after the release of the new X.Org mode-setting driver there’s another release with more changes.

        Last week David Airlie announced the release of xf86-video-modesetting as a generic, un-accelerated DDX driver that in theory should work with any hardware that’s being handled by a Linux KMS (kernel mode-setting) driver. The xf86-video-modesetting driver just relies upon the generic KMS interface with the kernel to allow X.Org to work atop it.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Developers Make More Money From Android Than From iOS

          Android has left Apple behind when we talk about the market share. There is, however, one area where Android is catching up fast — apps. A new study shows an interesting aspect of Android vs iOS market.

          According to a survey by Canalys, Android developers earn more from Android than from iOS. A developer will make around $347.37 from top apps for Android vs only $147.00 from iOS.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Aussie woman scammed Nigerians: court

    A BRISBANE woman fleeced Nigerian scam artists by stealing more than $30,000 from their internet car sales racket, a court has been told.

    Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey, 23, was employed by the Nigerians as an “agent” in March 2010 but was unaware they were scam artists, the Brisbane District Court heard today.

  • Security

    • PacketFence 3.2.0 brings new features, closes XSS hole

      PacketFence logo The PacketFence development team has published version 3.2.0 of its open source network access control (NAC) system. The release adds support for Ruckus Wireless Controllers, integrates the OpenVAS vulnerability assessment system for client-side policy compliance and adds a billing engine that enables the use of a payment gateway for gaining network access.

  • Finance

    • Consumer Rates Climb After Deregulation Goldman Sachs Funded

      Houston (10750MF) consumers were supposed to get lower electricity rates from deregulation. Instead, they pay some of the nation’s highest prices, partly because of bonds Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) recently sold for a local utility.

  • Privacy

  • DRM

    • Who’s adding DRM to HTML5? Microsoft, Google and Netflix

      With tech companies abandoning the proprietary Flash and Silverlight media players for HTML5, it was inevitable somebody would try to inject DRM into the virgin spec.

      Microsoft, Google and Netflix are that “somebody”, having submitted a proposed modification to HTML5 to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for “encrypted media extensions”.

    • Proposal to add DRM to HTML5 meets resistence

      A proposal at the W3C by Microsoft, Google and Netflix to add encrypted media support to HTML5 has already become controversial. The proposal has been called “unethical” by HTML5 editor and Google employee Ian Hickson who added that the proposal does not provide robust content protection. Hickson has yet to elaborate on his response to Microsoft’s Adrian Bateman who raised the issue in response to a change request to add parameters to pass values to audio and video elements. In follow up comments, Intel’s representative said they “strongly support the effort”.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Links 24/2/2012: Linux at McDonalds, Android 5.0

Posted in News Roundup at 5:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Bill G Got One Thing Right

    That was written the year after I adopted GNU/Linux and he was right on all those points. I went from being a newbie to being able to do everything a teacher normally would do with that other OS in just a few days. The download took more time, 10 days of nights and weekends on dial-up… I replaced Lose ’95 on five old PCs in my classroom and never looked back. GNU/Linux was clearly superior to the software we were using on Macs and other PCs in the school.

  • Linux as an Automation Host

    Automation is a perennial technical buzzword among System Administrators (SAs) and in management circles alike. Business owners and managers demand automation with the thought that it will save “man hours” and possibly decrease the need for a full technical staff. System Administrators realize that this is not the case nor is staff reduction the inevitable result of automation. The bad news is that the purpose of automation isn’t to reduce staff numbers. The good news is that there are several reasons for automation that make it a worthwhile pursuit.

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source Radeon HD 7000 Code Coming Soon?

        Where oh where is the open-source support for the “Southern Islands” GPUs, a.k.a. the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series? It’s been over two months since the first hardware launched and there still is no open-source Linux driver support available.

      • Mesa 8.1-devel On Radeon Gallium3D

        Earlier this week I shared a pleasant surprise in Mesa 8.1 Radeon Gallium3D with some significant performance improvements to be found in the current Mesa Git code-base for the “R600g” driver in some OpenGL games. In this article is a more diverse look at the current state of Mesa 8.1 development for R600 Gallium3D and comparative benchmarks from every major release going back to Mesa 7.10.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat’s KVM Overtakes Xen and Service Providers Lead the Way

        This week Ubuntu sponsor company Canonical released the results of its latest Ubuntu Server User Survey. Over 6,000 Ubuntu Server users from around the world responded. Possibly the most interesting result is that although VMware still leads, Red Hat’s KVM has overtaken the Citrix backed Xen as the most common host environment for virtualized Ubuntu Server instances. According to the report, this is the fist time in the three years that Canonical has been conducting this survey that KVM has beat out Xen.

      • Oracle extends Linux support to 10 years

        Oracle has reaffirmed that it’s in the Linux business to stay by extending the support lifecycle of its own-brand build to ten years, and tempting Red Hat users with a trial offer of its Ksplice patching system.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 16 KDE

          Fedora 16 was released a while back, and I’ve finally gotten around to checking it out. For this review though I’ve opted for the KDE version of Fedora. As you may already know, Fedora comes in multiple spins including GNOME, Xfce, KDE and others.

        • Raspberry Pi school computer to run cut-down Fedora

          Early adopters of the Raspberry Pi $25 computer will be offered a cut down and customised Fedora ‘remix’ compiled to run on the system’s ARM microprocessor, it has been confirmed.

          The first Raspberry Pi is just bare circuit board for now but developers at Toronto’s Seneca College have worked hard to fit a Fedora image on to a 2GB SD card to boot the computer into a GUI, complete with a small suite of applications and admin tools.

        • Fedora puts back Btrfs deployment yet again

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu crests new wave of mobile computing solutions

            The popular Linux distributor is helping travellers turn smart phones into laptops, but we’ve barely imagined the potential

          • seems McDonalds is happy to stick with Jaunty…
          • Ubuntu: Community Developer Interview | Boden Matthews

            It’s always nice to follow the development of Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora. But what about the people behind the scenes that use these operating systems. The developers. The community. The Users. Behind all those pixels that make up your display, there’s a whole wide range of interesting geeks with plenty of talent to contribute in many ways to the future of Linux development.

            Geeks of all ages, young and old. I found one such person for which I briefly interviewed for Unixmen. A promising young developer who is still in his teens. Boden Matthews is a community developer who is currently working on a version of Ubuntu designed for the HP TouchPad. And it seems to be an interesting project with potential.

          • Canonical CEO admits Unity was a painful change

            LINUX VENDOR Canonical has acknowledged that Ubuntu’s shift to the Unity user interface was painful for many of its users but insisted it hasn’t led to a decline in the popularity of the Linux distribution.

          • Ubuntu 12.04 Updates: The First 12.04 Beta to Be Released Next Week

            According to a development update posted on Ubuntu Fridge by the Ubuntu developer Daniel Holbach, Ubuntu 12.04 is on its way to release the first beta next week, on February 29, after the user interface freeze which occured today. “Today User Interface Freeze and Beta Freeze will kick in, next week we will do a test rebuild of the whole archive and Beta 1 will get out next week as well.”

            Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin is a LTS (long-term support) release and it will ship with Linux kernel 3.2 by default, GNOME 3.2, Unity 5.4.0, LibreOffice 3.5. According to Ubuntu Kernel Release Manager, Leann Ogasawara, as soon as new stable versions of the 3.2 kernel branch will be released, they will be included in Ubuntu. “With Ubuntu 12.04 being an LTS release, our primary focus has been on stability. As such, we chose to ship with a v3.2 based kernel and will continue to rebase to the latest v3.2.y stable kernels as they become available.”

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Introducing Descent|OS: Ubuntu With GNOME 2

              Softpedia is once again proud to introduce a new Linux distribution based on the popular Ubuntu OS from Canonical, this time with a modernized GNOME 2 desktop environment.

            • Hands On with the Cinnamon Desktop

              As one of the GNOME users who’s still fond of the old-school GNOME desktop, the recent release of Cinnamon 1.3.1 caught my eye. While it’s not exactly GNOME 2.x, it’s close enough that most users with a fondness for the 2.x days will feel right at home.

              The GNOME Shell (and Ubuntu’s Unity) are making lots of rapid progress, and they may (or may not) be the bee’s knees for many users. I’ve been using Linux desktops for a long time now, so I’m probably not the target audience for GNOME Shell or Unity. Either way, I’d rather spend my time writing and learning about how to use server-side software than re-learning how to use my desktop.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Smackdown: Google TV vs Apple TV vs Boxee vs Roku vs…

      Throughout this smackdown, there are links to DeviceGuru’s in-depth reviews of all five devices. The reviews provide lots more detail on each device’s unique capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and also include comprehensive screenshot tours that demonstrate the device’s user interface and operation.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Android 5.0 ‘Jelly Bean’ launching in Q2? Eh, maybe
        • Samsung announces armor-plated Android, the Rugby Smart

          Rugged phones have been around forever, but melding extreme survivability into a true Android smartphone that’s not laughably large or looks like an off-road tire is a challenge. Samsung feels it has created a tough device that has beaten the odds.

          The $99.99 Samsung Rugby Smart certainly has a rough and tumble name. The company claims it’s built to meet both the U.S. military Mil-spec 810f and the IP67 international standards for ruggedness. In a nutshell, that means the phone should be able to withstand submersion in 3 feet of water for 30 minutes, plus prolonged exposure to blowing dust, driving rain, extreme temperatures, and the odd drop onto hard surfaces.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • The Problem with Tablets and the Spark Solution

        It’s real: Tablet PCs have arrived. According to a recent DePaul University study, one in every dozen airline passengers is using a tablet PC or e-book reader at any given moment.

        Like many of you, I got a tablet (a Nook, if you’re interested) as a gift this last December (thanks Jeanette!). It’s pretty nice. I read Wired on it now, check news, post tweets occasionally. But it’s moderately frustrating that I can’t really do anything worthwhile on this machine.

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Monopoly is Not Natural for IT

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Scarcity Is A Shitty Business Model

      The Gotham Gal has been under the weather this weekend. Last night we made soup for dinner and decided to sit on the couch and watch a movie and go to bed early. After dinner, we fired up Boxee and checked out Netflix. Nothing good there. Then we fired up the Mac Mini and checked out Amazon Instant Video. Nothing good there. Then we went to the Cable Set Top Box and checked out movies on demand. Nothing good there. Frustrated and unwilling and uninterested in heading to a “foreign rogue site” to pirate something good, we watched a TV show and went to bed.

    • Trademarks

      • Trademark Lobby Wants To Help European Court of Justice Forget About EU Citizens’ Rights

        It was only yesterday that the European Commissioner Karel de Gucht made the surprise announcement that the European Commission would be referring ACTA to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) “to assess whether ACTA is incompatible — in any way — with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms.” Just a few hours after that, there are already signs of panic among ACTA’s supporters that the treaty may indeed be incompatible — and thus dead in the water as far as the European Union is concerned.

    • Copyrights

      • It’s my word, don’t you dare use it.
      • Australian Commercial Radio Wins Simulcast Suit Against PPCA

        Australia’s commercial radio stations won’t have to pay out extra royalties for online “simulcasting” of recorded music following an important ruling last week from the country’s Federal Court.

        Recording companies’ collecting society PPCA had sought a declaration from the court that Internet streaming of radio programs – or simulcasting — should not be regarded as a “broadcast” under the country’s Copyright Act and should there be subject to a separate music tariff.

02.23.12

Links 23/2/2012: Ubuntu Uses Qt, Many New Android Devices

Posted in News Roundup at 7:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Why the World Is Desperately Seeking Linux Talent

    A recent study from The Linux Foundation has found that Linux talent is a hot commodity among many hiring companies. The conclusions made sense to many on the Linux blogosphere. “Linux and open source are becoming strategic investments in many companies and have been for years,” said Chris Travers of the LedgerSMB project. Others, however, took issue with the study’s methodology.

  • Transparency Launches as Linux of Drug Development

    When Tomasz Sablinski was working in pharmaceutical R&D, he was often frustrated by the demand for secrecy in the clinical trials process—a misdirected effort, he says, to keep competitors in the dark about what drug companies were up to. “The price you pay when you hide what you’re doing is you only get feedback from a precious few people,” he says. “There is very little new blood in the ideation process.”

  • Desktop

  • Kernel Space

    • With Many Eyeballs, All Bugs Are Shallow

      In his seminal work The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond put forward the claim that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” He dubbed this Linus’ Law, in honor of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. It sounds like a fairly self-evident statement, but as the Wikipedia page points out the notion has its detractors. Michael Howard and David LeBlanc claim in their 2003 book Writing Secure Code “most people just don’t know what to look for.”

    • Linux 3.4 Kernel Set To Speed-Up Intel’s GPU Driver

      While the Linux 3.3 kernel is still weeks away from release, there’s more building up to look forward to with its successor: the Linux 3.4 kernel. A few months down the road when Linux 3.4 makes it out, there will be some additional Intel performance improvements.

    • Graphics Stack

      • DRM Base PRIME Support Part Of VGEM Work

        Remember the proof of concept PRIME multi-GPU rendering / GPU offloading work that was being hacked on two years ago? Work on it has been resurrected and could make it into the kernel when the VGEM driver is ready.

      • Intel 12.02 Package Proclaims Stable Ivy Bridge

        The 12.02 graphics driver is basically what was Intel’s quarterly package release under a new numbering scheme. Instead of being the “2012Q1″ Linux driver package, it’s now 12.02 to reflect its release in February of 2012. Back in October I wrote about Intel working on a new release cycle and this is part of their new development process.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Pardus Kurumsal 2 for a Second Time

      A few days ago, I experienced a motherboard failure. This gave me ample opportunity to do a fresh Linux installation. The first disk on hand was Pardus Kurumsal 2 for AMD64. I thought it would be interesting to give the distribution another spin.

      Upon a first boot attempt of the Pardus Kurumsal 2 installation disc, I was met with a black screen and a blinking cursor. Using ALT+Left, I determined that this was merely a failure of Xorg to start. The disc was automatically set to attempt usage of the best drivers possible, but at the time of the Pardus release, the NVIDIA GT520 was no where near the market. Running X -configure and then setting the driver manually to vesa allowed me to run the installer without further complication. Although, this problem did reassert itself after installation and upon the first boot of the newly installed system. This time, I wanted to have higher resolutions and improved performance, which prompted me to fire up Lynx. After navigating to nvidia.com, I downloaded the driver I needed. The next thing is the installation of the Pardus equivalent to Slackware’s D package set as well as the required kernel headers for module building.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • 10 New Features Added to Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin
          • Canonical: No plans for public cloud

            “Canonical doesn’t intend to offer a public cloud as part of our business strategy,” Jane Silber, the company’s chief executive, said on Wednesday. “We have no plans to do that right now.”

            Because of Canonical’s close ties with the OpenStack cloud project, it doesn’t want to go down the Red Hat route, Silber said.

          • Interview with Gema Gomez-Solano
          • Ubuntu One Switches To Qt

            Ubuntu 12.04 development hits the User Interface freeze tonight. This is also evident from all the user interface updates trying to meet the deadline. One such update brought a significant update to the Ubuntu One control panel.

            We all know about Ubuntu One, sync service developed in house by Canonical. In this update, the Ubuntu One developers have released a new interface based on the toolkit QT. This new interface is going to be the standard interface on all platforms like Windows, Ubuntu and MAC OS. A step in trying to bring about some integrity and commonality in the Ubuntu One usage on all platforms. It also helps with the Ubuntu One branding.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Economist Notices That The US Is Getting Buried Under Costly, Useless Over-Regulation

  • Finance

    • Oakland’s Toxic Deal with Wall Street

      Although last week’s $26 billion settlement between the Obama administration, attorneys general from 49 states, and five large banks over unscrupulous lending practices appears to have been deeply flawed, it may provide a modicum of relief for two million homeowners nationwide, including a half-million Californians. The agreement, however, does nothing for cities like Oakland that are trapped in expensive and toxic financial deals with some of Wall Street’s biggest players. Oakland’s bad lending deal is with Goldman Sachs, and it’s already cost the city $26 million. By 2021, the total pricetag for local taxpayers could reach $46 million.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Wisconsin GOP Goes After Equal Pay for Equal Work

      Late in the evening, on February 22, the Wisconsin Legislature turned back the clock gutting key provisions of Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act (Act 20).

      Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison), a long time women’s rights advocate lamented: “It’s like we’re going back to 1912. We are fighting the same fight our mothers fought, just to be treated equally.”

  • Censorship

    • ICE Considered One Of The Worst Places To Work In The Federal Government

      Last month, we noted the odd propaganda film from ICE director John Morton, in which he seemed to be trying to pat himself on the back and pump up the morale of ICE agents for their hard work in illegally censoring the internet. Perhaps it’s because he knew that ICE agents apparently hate working there. An anonymous person pointed us to the news that in a recent ranking of government agencies, ICE ranked very near the bottom — 222 out of 240 agencies. It seems that morale isn’t particularly high there.

  • Privacy

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Time runs out for timezone lawsuit

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation is touting a victory in a copyright lawsuit that had the potential to shut down the database that all Linux and UNIX-based platforms and many time-based applications use to keep track of the ever-changing global timezones.

    • Copyrights

Links 23/2/2012: Mozilla Marketplace, ACTA

Posted in News Roundup at 1:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Flash, Chrome and a Mole Hill

    So for now, lets not make a mountain out of something that very well appears to be nothing more than a molehill.

  • Desktop

    • Eugeni Dodonov: Even while I was at Microsoft, I still had Slackware on my machine

      My name is Eugeni (which is sometimes written as Evgueni or Eugene and with all the possible variations of it) Dodonov. I am 30 years old right now, and I was born in Moscow, Russia, but I live in Brazil since 1996. While in Brazil, I did my bachelor and master degrees at the UFSCar University, working with distributed parallel file systems; and my PhD in the USP University, proposing a prediction approach to allow computing systems behave autonomously, without any human supervision. It was really interesting research, and one of the most curious questions I got about about it was if I had thought about safety measures, because the overall autonomic approach we did looked similar to Skynet to some of the PhD thesis readers :).

    • Terrible Linux

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 2 beta 1 screen shot preview

        The first beta release of Mageia 2 was made available for download yesterday (February 21). The final stable release is not due until May 3, but from test installations of this first beta, in both real hardware and virtual environment, I can tell you that Mageia 2 may very well turn out to be the best desktop distribution of 2012.

        For a beta edition, almost everything I tested worked smoothly, though there are a few packages that are not in the repository. These are Stackfolder and Takeoff Launcher, two applications that make a KDE desktop a lot more fun to use. Aside from those missing packages, there is a minor issue during the boot loader configuration step of the installation process. Bug report on that is on its way.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Management Tips From Red Hat’s Crazy Culture Every Company Should Steal

        As the world’s first and only billion-dollar fully open source company, Red Hat has a unique corporate culture. The employees collectively have more power than any one person, even the CEO.

        No one is more aware of this than Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst. He calls it a “meritocracy” meaning leaders arise based on their brains, not their spot on an org chart.

        Whitehurst took the CEO job in 2007 after being COO of Delta Airlines, a cultural shock if ever there was one.

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 vs. Oracle, CentOS, Scientific Linux Benchmarks

        Does Red Hat Enterprise Linux perform any better (or worse) than the various “Enterprise Linux” distributions that are derived from RHEL? Now that Scientific Linux 6.2 was released, here is a performance comparison of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Scientific Linux across three different systems.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Introducing Ubuntu Cooking Lens for Unity
          • Canonical Continues to Push Ubuntu for the Cloud

            The jury may still be out on what exactly cloud computing even means, but that isn’t stopping most IT movers and shakers from churning out incessant reminders of how important the cloud is. Canonical, which this week released a new publication highlighting the way Ubuntu fits into the cloud, is no exception. Here’s a look at this latest effort to market Ubuntu to a cloud audience, and what it says about Canonical’s strategy over the longer term.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Aruba Delivers BYOD Control with ClearPass

      The ClearPass solution is not part of Aruba’s existing ArubaOS based product line that delivers wired and wireless network connectivity. ClearPass is a server appliance that runs on a CentOS Linux base and it’s also available as a virtual appliance.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Digium’s First IP Phones and Asterisk: A Perfect Combo?

  • Web Browsers

  • Public Services/Government

    • NASA To Open Source Web Operations

      NASA, like any other major enterprise, is a heavy user of open source and Linux. Now the agency is planning to open source its main portal NASA.gov and internal Intranet insidenasa.nasa.gov.

      The space agency recently (Feb 6) posted a draft Statement of Work (SOW) seeking vendors to submit their response to the request for information.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • An Open Innovation Toolbox

      The Obama Administration’s innovation agenda is aimed at finding, testing, and scaling new ideas that change the way government conducts business and delivers services through engagement with the American people. An innovative government incorporates an entrepreneurial mindset into its daily work – taking risks, building lean organizations, and developing innovative products and services faster than the rest of the world.

      On his last day in office, then-U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra released the Open Innovator’s Practitioner’s Toolbox. It contains 20 of the best disruptive innovation practices conceived and built by entrepreneurs across government. They provide a rich set of guiding principles that any Federal, state, and local government can use to support rapid innovation supporting economic growth and job creation.

Leftovers

  • Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on success, failure, and the future of social

    Twitter (as well as Xanga, Odeo, and Blogger) co-founder Biz Stone keynoted this week’s 2012 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference with the history of Twitter alongside advice on the future of the social web and what it means to be successful.

  • Censorship

    • Morocco’s main telecom provider blocks access to Skype and other VoIP services

      According to Moroccan Blog, Moroccan Geeks [French], Skype and all other VoIP services have been blocked in the country, pointing to an article from Moroccan newspaper Al Sabaheya confirming the news [Arabic].

      While services are more often than not blocked as a result of authoritative governments, Skype usually finds itself targeted by mobile operators and telecom providers, as was the case for Skype itself in Egypt. In Morocco, it would appear the move has been made in an attempt to create a monopoly on calling options available in the country.

  • Civil Rights

    • What a Difference a Week Makes: The Fight Against Online Surveillance

      When the government placed the Internet surveillance bill on the notice paper one week ago, few would have predicted that within days of the introduction, the anger with the legislative proposals would have been so strong that the government would steadily backtrack on its plans, with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews yesterday telling the House of Commons the bill will go to committee before second reading to ensure that there is greater openness to amendments (changes are more restricted after second reading). While the battle is only beginning, the overwhelming negative reaction seems to have taken the government by surprise.

  • DRM

    • “Unethical” HTML video copy protection proposal draws criticism from W3C reps

      A new Web standard proposal authored by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix seeks to bring copy protection mechanisms to the Web. The Encrypted Media Extensions draft defines a framework for enabling the playback of protected media content in the Web browser. The proposal is controversial and has raised concern among some parties that are participating in the standards process.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • ACTA: Why We Take to The Streets

          Despite the EU Commission’s attempt to buy time and defuse the heated political debate by referring ACTA to the EU Court of Justice, this Saturday February 25th will be one more opportunity for hundreds of thousands of citizens across dozens of cities all around the European Union to take to the streets and protest against ACTA. For all of us, ACTA has become the symbol of corrupt policy-making, and the evidence that it has never been more urgent to reform copyright so as to protect our fundamental rights online.

        • FFII note on the Legal Service’s Opinion on ACTA

          We welcome the decision to release the European Parliament legal service’s opinion on ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). We have compared the legal service’s opinion with multiple academic opinions on ACTA and some civil society analyses.

        • Will ACTA compromise the European Court of Justice too?

          The European Commission considers asking the Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA. This would be irresponsible, it could seriously compromise the Court. The Commission should withdraw ACTA in stead.

          The 1994 WTO TRIPS agreement spread out the enforcement of intellectual property rights over the world. Countries lost the ability to abolish their copyright and patent systems. For instance, the Netherlands abolished its suffocating patent system in 1869, and reintroduced patents in 1912. Since TRIPS, this is no longer possible.

Links 23/2/2012: No More Adobe Trash on GNU/Linux, New Mageia Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 5:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Ford’s open source OpenXC platform as gateway to future high tech car gizmos

    Ford (and other automakers) envision future cars with high tech infotainment systems galore where car dashboards could have downloadable app’s just like todays smart phones and tablets. With the OpenXC platform Ford is creating a channel for open collaboration with 3rd party application developers, allowing them to use cars like the Ford Focus to prototype their gizmos.

  • US Veterans’ Administrations Looking at Alternative Office Suites

    I have been using OpenOffice.org and lately LibreOffice for years with no ill effects and plenty of benefits like working well with PDF and using proper open standard file-formats. The only problem the VA will have if it switches over is what to do with the bulk of archived documents in M$’s various formats. My recommendation is to convert as many of them as possible to PDFs and leave them as archives. They rarely have to modify old documents. They should be able to do that using their present software and some “print” function. The cost of the migration would largely be the cost of processing those archives. That cost should be chalked up as a mistake of the past because it will not be an on-going cost.

  • Open source model creates new cybercrime frontier [Ed: FUD]

    Inspired by the success of the open source development model, criminals are creating similar community models and, in doing so, opening up a new avenue for malicious software and malware incubation, industry insiders warn.

  • Events

    • COSCUP 2012

      COSCUP is the largest Free software event in Taiwan and based on my experience from attending last year I can certainly say that it is one of the most well organized and vibrant F/OSS events in the world. It’s in the same category level as FISL in Brazil or Linux Conf Australia in my mind.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Eight Business-changing Ways to Use Big Data

      Enterprises are finding business-changing ways to put the power of Hadoop, an open source Apache project for storing and processing large amounts of data, to good use. They are using Hadoop and Big Data to reduce risks, better serve customers and even change the Internet.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Joomla: The Hidden Giant of Web Development

      Joomla is one of the most widely used open source content management systems available today. Though it’s not as popular as the MIGHTY WordPress, we are yet to discover the hidden treasures that lurk beneath. I am going to discuss the Pros and Cons of using Joomla in this article, so the next time you’re planning to invest on your online presence, you should have an idea where to spend and why!

  • Healthcare

    • GNU Health Decision Support on Prescription Writing

      In this entry I will briefly talk about how GNU Health can help the professional in making the best decision, and how to minimize mistakes.

      I will focus in prescription writing and how we’re incorporating DS (Decision Support) to GNU Health.

      GNU Health uses the WHO (World Health Organization) essential list of medicines by default, so you already have a very nice and updated set for your daily practice.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • Help us Open Source NASA.gov
    • NASA calls for vendors to “open source” NASA.gov

      NASA has released an RFI (Request For Information) asking for help reimplementing the nasa.gov web site using open source software and open standards. With 600,000 unique visitors and over 1.29 TB of traffic a day, 140 different web sites and applications and over 700,000 web pages, the task is large. As the first stage of an acquisition process, NASA has therefore published the RFI looking for companies that, according to Nick Skytland, Open Government Program Manager at Johnson Space Center, are “visionary, that get open source, cloud computing, and citizen engagement using the latest online technology”.

    • Is the VA Embracing Open Source?

      Obviously security, supportability, and interoperability are among the factors the VA must take into consideration, so the department is only soliciting white papers right now. “The white papers should merely be focused on the per seat cost for services/tools provided, current state of the technology in terms of Office productivity suite benefits, supportability, security, ease of use, and interoperability with Microsoft based products,” the announcement says.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Ten Things You Need to Know about Open Source Geospatial Software

      How confident are you in your knowledge of open source geospatial software? How about a quick introduction or refresher? Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg offers 10 points that are important to understand about open source software.

    • Open innovation–the passion behind the Civic Commons community

      From the beginning, Civic Commons has been a dynamic community initiative. What began in January 2010 as a simple wiki of open government policies and practices (originally called “OpenMuni”, domains for which were simultaneously and independently obtained by Code for America and OpenPlans), grew into a partnership between the two organizations to support the growing open government technology movement, and is now an open community of civic hackers, government technologists, entrepreneurs and many others.

    • Cash Music Needs Our Help To Build Free Open Source Tools For Musicians

      Regular Hypebot readers know how excited I get about Cash Music. It’s hard to imagine anything closer to what this blog is about than a non-profit group building free tools that help musicians to market and sell music online. That’s exactly what Cash Music is; and for one of the first time’s ever, they’re asking for help via a Kickstarter campaign.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Funny stuff what I encountered
  • Microsoft’s Google Cloud FUD Could Come Back to Bite It

    You have to hand it to Microsoft. Their latest attacks on Google Apps are at least an attempt at comedy, but when you peel back the humor, what you have is just good old-fashioned Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD), YouTube style.

    I won’t discuss the irony of Microsoft going off on Google services using Google’s own YouTube channel. That’s fairly rich in itself, but as we shall see, Google has opened itself up to these attacks with its own behavior.

  • How The Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email

    Late last week, the Washington Post reported that The Smithsonian had acquired “tapes, documentation, copyrights, and over 50,000 lines of code from V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who both the Smithsonian and the Washington Post insisted was the “inventor of e-mail.” There’s just one problem with this: It’s not actually true. Lots of internet old-timers quickly started to speak out against this, especially on Dave Farber’s Interesting People email list, where they highlighted how it’s just not true. As is nicely summarized on Wikipedia’s talk page about Ayyadurai, he was responsible for “merely inventing an email management system that he named EMAIL,” which came long after email itself.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Spinning Suspect Ingredients in Baby Formula

      Isabel Salas reported to the non-profit Cornucopia Institute (Cornucopia) the difficulties she faced when her infant daughter reacted badly to a set of additives present in most baby formulas: DHA and ARA oils. Containers of formula containing these additives say things like, “Our formula is proven in clinical studies to enhance mental development” and “as close as ever to breast milk.”

  • Finance

    • How Greece Could Take Down Wall Street

      CDS are a form of derivative taken out by investors as insurance against default. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, nearly 95 percent of the banking industry’s total exposure to derivatives contracts is held by the nation’s five largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, and Goldman Sachs. The CDS market is unregulated, and there is no requirement that the “insurer” actually have the funds to pay up. CDS are more like bets, and a massive loss at the casino could bring the house down.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Wisconsin GOP Attempts to Ram Through Special Interest Mining Bill

      Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald are pushing for radical changes in Wisconsin’s current mining law to benefit a single out-of-state company.

      Gogebic Taconite, based out of Florida, has proposed a massive twenty-one mile long iron-ore strip mine in some of the most beautiful and pristine land in the northern part of the state. Walker and the GOP are promoting the mining bill as the most important “jobs bill” of the session. Since Governor Walker’s austerity budget kicked in on July 1, Wisconsin has lost jobs for six straight months, the worst record in the country.

  • Censorship

    • Techdirt Deemed Harmful To Minors In Germany

      Hanno alerts us to the news that Techdirt has apparently been deemed harmful to minors in Germany. The German Media Control Authority has apparently been pushing internet “youth filters” to protect kids from dangerous things online. So far, it has officially approved two internet filters. Hanno got his hands on one and discovered that Techdirt was one of many blocked sites (Google translation from the original German) — as the filter declares that Techdirt has pornographic images and depictions of violence. We do?

    • La La La La La: The Internet Routes Around Copyright Censorship To Restore Daria

      One of the things I’ve never liked about copyright is its potential to be the functional equivalent of censorship. Sometimes this censorship comes about because an author didn’t get permission to create his work in the first place (see: Richard Prince, JD California). While this unfortunately turns judges into cultural gatekeepers, it’s been deemed a necessary balance between copyright law and the First Amendment, and harm to the public is arguably lessened by the fact that we don’t know what we’re missing; because the censored work is never able to reach and impact us, we’ve only lost the potential of its cultural contribution.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • How the CRTC Helped Stifle Internet Throttling

      Hockey may be Canada’s national pastime, but criticizing the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) surely ranks as a close second. From the substitution of Canadian commercials during the Super Bowl broadcast to Canada’s middling performance on broadband Internet services, the CRTC is seemingly always viewed as the target for blame.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Megaupload Boss Kim Dotcom Granted Bail After US Fails To Prove He’s Got Cash Stashed Away To Make An Escape
      • Entertainment Industry Embraces New Business Model: Suing Google For Third-Party Android Apps That ‘Promote Piracy’

      • ACTA

        • How the European Internet Rose Up Against ACTA

          Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland sent a letter to his fellow leaders in the EU Friday urging them to reject ACTA, reversing Poland’s course with the controversial intellectual-property treaty, and possibly taking Europe with them.

          “I was wrong,” Tusk explained to a news conference, confessing his government had acted recklessly with a legal regime that wasn’t right for the 21st century. The reversal came after Tusk’s own strong statements in support of ACTA and condemnation of Anonymous attacks on Polish government sites, and weeks of street protest in Poland and across Europe.

        • ECJ Referral: No Legal Debate Will Make ACTA Legitimate

          The European Commission just announced its intent to ask the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an opinion on the conformity of ACTA with fundamental freedoms. Beyond the obvious intent to defuse the heated debate currently taking place, this move aims to make the ACTA discussion a mere legal issue, when the main concerns are political by nature.

        • European Commission Suggests ACTA’s Opponents Don’t Have ‘Democratic Intentions’

          So the European Commission thinks that tens of thousands of people on the streets somehow don’t reflect the wider community — presumably unlike the small band of negotiators and lobbyists behind closed doors that drew up ACTA in secrecy for years, who do represent the European Union’s 500 million people.

          And the Commissioners are just shocked that the opponents of ACTA, who have been denied any meaningful transparency about what was being agreed to in their name during those now-concluded negotiations, are desperately trying to make their voices heard by the only institutions left that can listen: the EU nations that haven’t signed ACTA, and the European Parliament that must still ratify it.

        • ACTA Approval On Hold While EU Commission Asks EU Court Of Justice To Weigh In

          Of course, other parts of De Gucht’s statement are pretty questionable. He talks about how the EU Council “adopted ACTA unanimously” leaving out that they did so by hiding it in an agriculture and fisheries meeting. He talks about how ACTA “will not change anything in the European Union” but is merely about “getting other countries to adopt” stricter laws. However, some EU countries have already noted that they would have to change their laws to comply with ACTA.

02.22.12

Links 22/2/2012: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8, Firefox 10.0.2

Posted in News Roundup at 4:56 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Kiwi open sourcers invade Aus

    New Zealand open source digital media company SilverStripe is ramping up its presence in Australia, selecting Victoria as its Australian headquarters and hiring 50 new staff.

  • Is Open Source Software Falling Short?

    Open source software has managed to find its way into the minds and hearts of users on all three popular desktop platforms. I know of countless Windows users who enjoy free access to applications such as Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, Filezilla, among others. Users of these popular software titles know all to well the benefits of using open source software.

    Yet, there’s still the question of using open source software in place of proprietary software. Specifically: can open source software provide an adequate replacement for legacy software?

    This is the question I’ll answer in this article. I’ll look at the open source applications I use, and how they differ from their proprietary alternatives.

  • Open Source Software Is Made For The Cloud

    Open source software has been maligned and celebrated over the years. Proponents of the open source concept claim that collaboration and openness will lead to better technological results for the consumer at a fraction of the price. Opponents of the concept claim that without a profit motive, technological progression will grind to a halt. Both sides may be right, but with many technology companies finding ways to turn a profit outside of software sales over the past decade, open source software has gotten a significant boost in popularity.

    Cloud computing encompasses many things, but a major part of it is the ability for multiple people in disparate places to collaborate on a single project at the same time. Since the information and processing are done in the cloud, each user only needs a way to log in to the cloud and all users can view updates in real time. This spirit of collaboration makes for an ideal pairing with open source software. Having the source code of a cloud service available to everyone makes it that much easier to spot bugs and improve performance.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • Clustered NoSQL database Riak gets administration console

      The Riak distributed database has been updated to version 1.1, and has a new administration console and diagnostic console. Riak creator Basho believes the changes in 1.1 make Riak the most scalable and stable NoSQL database available.

  • Education

  • Business

  • Funding

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • Vic Toews Apparently Not A Fan Of Others Seeing His Personal Data

    You may recall that Canadian Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews announced Canada’s “lawful access” (read: government monitoring of the internet) bill by saying that if you weren’t in favor of the bill, you supported child porn. Over the weekend, he also seemed to admit that he didn’t even understand the bill he was supporting.

  • Finance

    • “Crooks on the Loose? Did Felons Get a Free Pass in the Financial Crisis?“
    • Looking for Someone to Blame? Congress is a Good Place to Start

      While we here are committed to exposing the actions of Goldman Sachs – many of which helped, if not directly, created our economic problems – we often over look and under report on those who have and had the power to prevent the actions of Goldman Sachs and their band of merry banksters (including The Fed). Charlie Reese says it in plain and simple language. A report that he began in the 1980′s and modified several times. The version below was the one from 1995, long before anyone could have ever imagined the mess we would be in at the beginning of the 21st century.

  • Censorship

    • Twitter Sued For Defamation By Someone Who Thinks It’s Responsible For ‘Publishing’ Tweets

      I would have hoped that, by now, most people could understand basic secondary liability issues, such as the difference between a service provider who provides the tools/service for communications and a content creator and/or publisher who actually creates or chooses the content. Unfortunately, when large sums of money are involved, people often have difficultly distinguishing the two. The latest situation involves a guy in Australia, named Joshua Meggitt, who appeared to have a legitimate defamation claim by Australian writer/TV personality Marieke Hardy. On her blog, she accused Meggitt of writing “ranting, hateful” articles about her. She then posted a link to her blog on Twitter, where it got a lot of attention. Hardy and Meggitt have already “settled” the dispute between each other, with a rumored $15,000 changing hands, but Meggitt has now sued Twitter directly claiming that it “published” the tweet by putting it on its front page.

    • The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

      On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish “international control over the Internet” through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

    • Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics

  • Intellectual Monopolies

02.21.12

Links 21/2/2012: Ubuntu for Android, Apache 2.4

Posted in News Roundup at 5:30 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • HCL Bags Rs 278 Crore Order From ELCOT

      These 200,000 laptops will be running on both Linux and Micrsosoft’s proprietary Windows OS. ELCOT will be working on offering some educational applications with these laptops.

    • The Linux Setup – Amelia Andersdotter, EU Parliament

      Amelia Andersdotter, 24, is the youngest member of the current European Parliament. She’s a member of the Swedish Pirate Party, a political party centered around copyright and patent reform. Given her political interests, it’s probably not a surprise that Amelia is a Linux user.

  • Kernel Space

    • x32 Support For Linux Kernel Called In For Review

      The x32 effort, an undertaking to provide a native 32-bit ABI for x86_64 on Linux, is finally moving closer to fruition. Peter Anvin has published the set of x32 patches for the Linux kernel that are now up for review and comments.

      Peter Anvin and others have long been working towards Linux x32: a native 32-bit ABI for Intel/AMD 64-bit systems so that applications not needing 64-bit pointers can benefit from 64-bit performance while using the memory foot-print of a 32-bit ABI. The Linux x32 ABI support necessitates changes to GNU binutils, the Linux kernel, Glibc, and the compiler (GCC). On Sunday the set of 30 patches touching around 1,000 lines of code was sent off to the kernel mailing list by Anvin.

    • The Btrfs File-System Repair Tool Is Available

      After writing about Btrfs LZ4 compression support and that the Btrfs FSCK tool wasn’t available, it turns out that there is the new Btrfs repair tool, but it’s not widely known and it’s not recommended to ever use it — at least at this stage.

      As pointed out by Phoronix readers, from the btrfs-progs Git tree on Kernel.org is a new branch that was pushed a little more than one week ago. This new branch is called “dangerdonteveruse” (expanded: don’t ever use [it]) and contains the ability to fix Btrfs file-systems.

    • Slow boot? Blame systemd!

    • Graphics Stack

      • DisplayLink KMS Driver Arrives, Supports Hot-Unplug

        There’s a new KMS/DRM driver to introduce to the world: UDL. UDL is a DRM kernel mode-setting driver for the USB-based DisplayLink graphics adapters.

        It was back in 2009 that DisplayLink decided to provide Linux GPU support and be open-source friendly for their interesting USB-based graphics adapters and since then the support has only become more compelling. At first DisplayLink provided a simple Linux library, documentation, and then a frame-buffer and X.Org driver for the hardware.

      • Proposals To Split KMS & GPU Drivers, 2D Kernel API

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • Taming Clonezilla: Free open source disk imaging and backups

      Among the many tools out there for cloning drives and performing full-system backups, one came to my attention for being both free (and open source) and powerful: Clonezilla, a product of the Free Software Labs of the National Center for High-Performance Computing in Taiwan.

      Clonezilla’s power, however, is matched by complexity. You can get a lot out of it, but at the cost of paying close attention to what you’re doing. Here’s a guide to getting just what you need from Clonezilla — without wreaking havoc on your system or being swallowed by the monster.

    • New Releases

      • Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) 1.3.2
      • New package format in Tiny Core Linux 4.3

        The Core Project’s “Team Tiny Core” has released version 4.3 of Tiny Core Linux, the lightweight modular Linux system. The new version introduces a “Self Contained Mountable applications” (SCM) package format for adding additional applications. Mountable applications take the file extension .scm and can be dynamically mounted and unmounted at runtime. They are managed using scmbrowser, a new graphical application.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia at FOSDEM 2012

        This FOSDEM thing could turn into a habit! Mageia was at FOSDEM 2012 in Brussels – and this year, we had quite a noticeable presence.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Inspecting the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD

        Following a recent request I downloaded the Gentoo 12.0 Live DVD for a test drive. I tried Gentoo many years ago but gave up after a few hours due to the time involved, and my knowledge back then was a lot more rudimentary than today. Gentoo is a source distribution that is supposed to be configured and compiled from stage 2 or stage 3 tarballs, although some base images are available that allow you to cheat and skip the early part of kernel compilation etc. with minimal install images.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Semi-Open Source

  • Project Releases

    • Apache 2.4 Delivers More Performance

      A key focus in the 2.4 release is improved performance which is delivered by way of multiple innovations.

      “What we have done is checked 2.4 against itself and other web-servers; in general, we find 2.4 to be the fastest version of Apache by far,” Jim Jagielski, ASF President and Apache HTTP Server Project Management Committee, told InternetNews.com.

    • Apache releases first major new version of popular Web server in six years

      The Apache Software Foundation has just announced the release version 2.4 of its award-winning Apache HTTP Server. This is the first major release of the Apache Web server in more than six years. Long before the release of Apache 2.2 in December 1st, 2005 though, Apache was already the most popular Web server in the world. Today Apache powers almost 400 million Web sites.

  • Public Services/Government

    • United Kingdom seeking advice on open standards definition

      The UK cabinet office is seeking advice on the definition of open standards in the context of government IT. It posted its consultation documents online last week Wednesday. The consultation follows the withdrawing in November of a IT procurement policy in effect since in January 2011.

      The consultation should also help to make clear what effects compulsory standards may have on government departments, on delivery partners and on supply chains. A third aim is to gain knowledge on international alignment and cross-border interoperability.

      In a statement, Minister for Cabinet Office Francis Maude said: “We are committed to implementing open standards and want to create a level playing field for open source and proprietary software. Open standards for software and systems will reduce costs and enable us to provide better public services. We want to get this right; so we want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to have their say on this matter.”

  • Openness/Sharing

    • How to Kickstart an Open Source Music Revolution with CASH Music

      On February 10, 2012, CASH Music launched a Kickstarter campaign and raised more than 70% of their $30,000 goal in about 24 hours. What is CASH Music? And why does it already have vocal support from musicians, Firefox, and even Neil Gaiman? Jesse von Doom, Co-Executive Director of CASH Music, explains the inspiration behind the project and the big role Linux plays in it.

    • Booktype makes book collaboration web-based and simple

      If you’ve ever tried to collaborate with other authors and editors and the many other people who work to make a book successful, you know it’s not easy. Even if your experience stops at trying to incorporate three comments with changes tracked in word processing software, you get the idea. Last week at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, a new platform called Booktype was announced. It was created to help you collaborate on editing content and getting it ready for publishing.

    • Open Hardware

      • Like to tinker? Two new devices are fully hackable

        “Open source” is a term most often applied to software, and it’s become increasingly common in both the business and consumer worlds.

        What some may not realize, however, is that hardware can be open source too, with design specifications, schematics, source code, and other data about the device’s inner workings available for inspection and customization by the user.

        I’ve already written a few times about the new, Linux-based Spark tablet that’s on the way with unlocked hardware, but recently I came across two other open devices launched in the last few weeks that can be freely hacked and modified. Both the Openmoko GTA04 phone and the Auraslate Lifepad tablet promise a veritable playground for tinkerers and anyone who values complete openness and customizability.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Open Season on Open Standards

      The increasingly heated debates about the traditionally dull area of computer standards is testimony to the rise of open source. For the latter absolutely requires standards to be truly open – that is, freely implementable, without any restrictions – whereas in the past standards were pretty much anything that enough powerful companies agreed upon, regardless of how restrictive they were.

Leftovers

  • VA could give Microsoft Office the boot

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • On Anniversary of Prank Call the Real David Koch Wants to “Stop Union Power” in Wisconsin

      One year ago this week, blogger Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast pranked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by posing as billionaire David Koch on a phone call. As the crowds at the Capitol protesting Walker’s bill to end collective bargaining were increasing in size and volume, the fake Koch inquired how Walker’s efforts to “crush that union” were going. Walker’s fawning response helped rocket the Wisconsin protests into the national media limelight.

  • Civil Rights

    • From encryption to darknets: As governments snoop, activists fight back

      As the Arab Spring hits its first anniversary, tech activists around the globe are continuing their efforts to enable secure communications—especially in areas of the world that are in conflict or transition. After all, it’s become an open secret that governments ranging from Assad’s Syria to local American law enforcement to the newly created government of South Sudan are actively trying to find out what is being said and transmitted over their airwaves and networks.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

    • Copyrights

      • Canada’s C-11 Bill and the Hazards of Digital Locks Provisions

        While copyright owners claim that they need anti-circumvention laws to address copyright infringement, twelve years’ experience with the U.S. DMCA provisions demonstrates that overbroad digital locks laws can wreak havoc on lawful, non copyright-infringing activities, stifle free speech and scientific research, and harm innovation and competition. The issue is that overbroad anti-circumvention bans can override exceptions and limitations in national copyright laws, restricting or eliminating perfectly lawful non-copyright infringing uses of copyrighted works.

      • ACTA

        • How To Fight ACTA

          Now that the US bills SOPA and PIPA have been put on ice, attention has returned to their parent, an international treaty called ACTA. I’ve written extensively about ACTA before, but in summary it is an international treaty that has been secretly negotiated to ensure as little input as possible from the citizens of any country.

          While superficially about stemming the flow of counterfeit physical goods (ACTA stands for “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement“), the copyright and patent industries (music, movies, software, pharmaceuticals and more) have successfully infested it and the result is a trade agreement that substantially reduces the scope for discretion over new approaches to business on the internet.

        • MEP Phil Prendergast has a few questions on ACTA

          Members of the European Parliament could submit as many written parliament questions to the Council and the Commission as they like and force these institutions to make official statements. If you have a technical question about specific ACTA provisions or procedural oddities feel free to suggest your Member of Parliament to table them. Most MEPs are not as industrious in tabling parliament questions as Phil Prendergast (S&D, Labour Party Ireland) recently, and they limit their tabling to the “priority questions”/”oral questions”, where they have limitations but the institutions have to answer in a faster pace. In the past most of the numerous questions on ACTA were posed to the Commission, not the Council. However, only the Council is competent to answer the procedural specifics of the strange criminal sanctions parts.

        • Economy Minister blocks ratification of ACTA

          The Economy Minister Daniels Pavluts has decided to block the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has caused wide protests in the society.

          On Wednesday, February 8, the Minister announced that he made the decision taking into account the mood of various groups of the society, as well as worries of several experts about the possibility of ACTA implementation in Latvia.

Links 21/2/2012: HijackThis Becomes Open Source, LibrePlanet 2012 is Coming

Posted in News Roundup at 8:21 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Thoughts on Hiring Linux Hackers (in 2012)

    I have interviewed hundreds of candidates and had the delight of hiring dozens of Linux and open source developers, engineers, and interns over the last 10 years — at IBM, Canonical, and now Gazzang. The most recent one signed his contract this morning, in fact! It’s quite a rush to bring new talent into a small team.

  • Some things you may have heard about Secure Boot which aren’t entirely true

    Talking about Secure Boot again, I’m afraid. One of the things that’s made discussion of this difficult is that, while the specification isn’t overly complicated, some of the outcomes aren’t obvious at all until you spend a long time thinking about it. So here’s some clarification on a few points.

  • Desktop

    • Top 5 Ubuntu pre-installed Laptop companies

      While Canonical has a well established business desktop scenario with Ubuntu, finding laptops with preinstalled laptops is sometimes a challenge. Laptops are usually available in two formats. First is the ODM (Original Design Manufacturers) who make the laptops. Second, is OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) who purchase from ODM but install their own brand of CPU, hard drive as well as the software. Some of these OEM

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • OpenChrome VIA KMS Has A Goal For This Summer
      • Nouveau 2D Still Has Room For Improvement

        The Nouveau 2D driver performance used to be very good against the proprietary/binary NVIDIA Linux driver. After running the new Intel SNA benchmarks earlier this month, I ran some quick 2D benchmarks of the latest Nouveau driver and NVIDIA binary driver.

      • Merging feature work to Mesa master

        Over the last six months a lot of feature work has happened in Mesa, and the load has been carried by a lot of different people / organization. In the process, we discovered a number of development process issues that made things more difficult than they needed to be.

      • First Release Of The New Mode-Setting Driver

        David Airlie officially released the first version of the xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver this week. The xf86-video-modesetting driver is a generic KMS X.Org driver that will work with any kernel mode-setting DRM driver in Linux, but only provides shadow frame-buffer support.

      • There’s Hope For DMA-BUF With Non-GPL Drivers

        There’s some resurrected hope for the kernel symbols of the DMA-BUF buffer sharing mechanism to be not restricted to only GPL drivers, which started off as a request by NVIDIA. This could lead to better NVIDIA Optimus support under Linux, among other benefits.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

  • Distributions

    • First look at Asturix 4 and On desktop

      About once a year I try a new Asturix release and every time it’s something very different from the previous trial. The developers appear to be casting around, experimenting with this or that, and it always makes for an interesting ride. This time around I found the distribution to be a mixed bag and not in the way I had expected. When I heard they’d put out a release based on Ubuntu with a new, custom desktop I expected a solid base with functioning applications under a buggy interface. For the most part my experience was the opposite. The On interface is pretty good, mixing the mobile-like interfaces we’re seeing cropping up everywhere with enough traditional pieces to make it usable on a full-sized desktop screen. The developers surpassed my expectation there and I found only a few issues with the new interface. On the other hand I found some bugs which shouldn’t have made it through QA testing. For instance, the update manager that pops up and the Software Centre don’t launch with administrator’s privileges and don’t prompt for it. On the live CD there is a log out button in the corner of the screen where I would expect it, but the log out button doesn’t appear post-install, requiring the user to hunt for the proper icon. When trying to launch the backup utility it appears the software wasn’t actually installed, there’s just a useless icon in its place.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project News – February 20th, 2012

        * Goodbye Lenny!
        * Debian GNU/Hurd on the rails
        * DPL and legal work
        * Multiarch-ready dpkg
        * GPL in Debian: a study
        * Interviews
        * Other news
        * Upcoming events
        * New Debian Contributors
        * Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release
        * Important Debian Security Advisories
        * New and noteworthy packages
        * Work-needing packages
        * Want to continue reading DPN?

      • The newsletter for the Debian community

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • What does Ubuntu want to be when it grows up?

            Once upon a time I knew exactly what Ubuntu was. Built on top of Debian Linux, it was the most popular Linux desktop around. Today, Ubuntu is in the clouds, on servers, tablets and smartphones, and, oh yes, it’s still on the desktop. By spreading its energy in so many directions it’s hard to see what Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company, really wants from Ubuntu. So what exactly is Ubuntu today? Well, here’s my overview of Ubuntu 2012.

          • Ubuntu Command Center: Gnome Control Center

            Ubuntu 12.04 is all about pixel perfecting everything and focusing on the quality of the overall release. This is important since it is a LTS release which would be used by companies and users all over the world for a long time. From the view point of a user and sys-admins, it is important to have all the customizable options in one place. Gnome Control Center is meant for just that. There have been quite some updates on the gnome control center which are worth mentioning.

          • Ubuntu One Available on Vodafone AppSelect

            Ubuntu One team announced today, February 20th, that the Vodafone company has recently added the Ubuntu One Files app on their Vodafone AppSelect app store for the Android platform.

            Vodafone offers the Ubuntu One Files app in the following countries: United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Portugal, and Greece.

          • ARM On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Battling Intel x86?

            In recent weeks I have shown how Ubuntu 12.04 is ARM-ing up for better performance on the ARMv7 architecture by enabling hard-float builds and how the TI OMAP4 support has come together resulting in significant performance gains. Nevertheless, how is modern ARM hardware now comparing to the low-end Intel x86 competition? In this article are some results from Ubuntu 12.04 comparing the ARM performance to some Intel Core, Pentium, and Atom hardware.

          • Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Will Try For Intel RC6 By Default

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 12: Why it’s the best desktop OS

              Over the years, I’ve tried every shade of desktop — from the ridiculously complex to the overly simple, from the barely usable to the extremely useful. Recently, the push seems towards touchscreen technology, with little success. Nevertheless, some operating systems — such as Ubuntu Unity, GNOME 3 and Windows 8 — are persisting with touchscreen-friendly features. The problem is these desktops aren’t particularly user friendly.

              Then along comes Linux Mint 12. In terms of user friendliness, it offers something special. Here are the reasons why I think it’s the best desktop operating system available.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Intel Ships A MeeGo Update For Cedar Trail

        Cedar Trail represents the latest-generation 32nm Intel Atom processors. Unfortunately its graphics though aren’t developed in-house, but at least that’s changing to avoid such situations in the future.

      • Android

        • ZTE bringing two scoops of Ice Cream Sandwich to Mobile World Congress

          Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE today announced that it will be brining a pair of new Android smartphones to Mobile World Congress next week, both of them running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

          The ZTE PF200 sports a 4.3-inch display at qHD (540×960) resolution, with an 8-megapixel rear camera and a front-facing camera for video calling. It’ll have LTE, UMTS and GSM radios, as well as NFC, and DLNA and MHL high-def outputs.

        • Huawei Honor (U8860) Review
        • Sony Xperia U shows up next to big brother Xperia S

          Exciting news if you’re a fan of Sony’s Xperia designs, but not the huge displays that seem to permeate the mobile world these days: the Sony Xperia U (also known as the Kumquat/st25i) has been spotted in its first set of leaked photos. It’s getting comfy with Sony’s new international flagship, the Xperia S, in a series of shots found by Android HD Blog (Italian). Both phones share a lot of design DNA, but it looks like the Xperia U is much smaller, with a screen somewhere in the ballpark of 3.2 inches. Like the S, the Xperia U is still running Gingerbread.

        • Huawei Ascend D1 Q press photos leak

          We’ve known that Huawei had something special planned for Mobile World Congress, and this would appear to be it. The first entry in Huawei’s Diamond line is the Ascend D1 Q, and TechOrz.com got their hands on some leaked press shots prior to Huawei’s conference. The renders show a typical high-end Android phone that’s clearly of the large screen variety – probably with a 4.3-inch or larger display. The device’s red-on-black color scheme is reminiscent of the HTC Rezound, though the shape looks more like a Galaxy-class smartphone.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Is Tablet-Creep in Operating Systems a Bad Thing and Must we Accept it?

        Like it or not, it would appear that the tablet-ification of our desktop operating systems is inevitable. Setting aside the new Metro interface that will take the main focus of Windows 8, Apple are slowly creeping more tablet features into OS X and even Canonical are getting in on the act with their Unity interface for Ubuntu and their removal of drop-down menus. So is tablet-creep a bad thing, and need we accept it?

      • on the economics of Spark

        A question about Spark that we’re hearing fairly often is how the economics behind it will work. This question has come in a few different forms such as requests to explain the price point we settled on or how much of the proceeds will go where. I thought since it has come up a few times instead of answering it in blog comments repeatedly I’d answer it here in a proper blog entry.

        The economics around Spark have, as you might expect, been a focus point for us from the very start of project planning. To state the obvious: if the economics weren’t workable then the project wouldn’t be viable. So that was where we started.

      • Auraslate Is An Open Source Android Tablet For Hackers

        If you’re sick of firmware lockdowns and failed reflashings on your other Android tablets, the Auraslate may be for you. It’s basically an Ice Cream Sandwich-compatible tablet built from the ground up for hax0rz and programmers alike.

      • HP releases source code for its internal TouchPad Android kernel to CyanogenMod
      • HP releases Android on TouchPad code to happy hackers

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

    • Security biz scoffs at Apple’s anti-Trojan Gatekeeper

      Security watchers are expressing reservations about whitelisting security that Apple plans to integrate with OS X Mountain Lion this summer.

      The security feature, dubbed Gatekeeper, restricts the installation of downloaded applications based on their source. Users can choose to accept apps from anywhere (as now) but by default Gatekeeper only lets users install programs downloaded from the Mac App Store or those digitally signed by a registered developer. More cautious users can decide to accept only applications downloaded from the Mac App Store.

  • Finance

    • Why Toxic Debt Looks a Lot Less Toxic

      Some of the same investors who made big profits betting against mortgage bonds before the 2007 housing bust have started snapping up the toxic assets. Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, who made $500 million when subprime debt cratered, is raising a fund to buy them. He’s joining John Paulson, who made $15 billion in 2007 thanks to the housing bust. Goldman Sachs Group has bought the bonds this year. Remarkably, so has American International Group —the insurer that had to be rescued by the U.S. government in 2008 after its wagers on risky mortgages went bad.

    • Emerging Asia Demand for Gold
    • Vulture Capitalism Gets a Makeover

      The candidacy of Mitt Romney for President of the United States has drawn scrutiny to the practices of the “private equity” industry. Tired of being bashed as greedy “vulture capitalists,” the industry has launched an effort to polish its image.

      The Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC), a trade group representing many of the most powerful firms in the venture capital and private equity industry, recently announced its intention to begin a new media initiative called “Private Equity At Work” to correct what it views as “a real lack of understanding about private equity.”

      Private equity firms use the funds of their investors to buy up struggling companies. These companies are then retooled to enhance their perceived potential for profitability and are subsequently resold for a profit. Critics argue that private equity firms often force their corporate clients to cut jobs, increase their debt load or shut down solely to benefit the private equity firm’s bottom line.

  • Censorship

    • Twitter Suspends Four Accounts Critical of Sarkozy: Is This What He Meant By ‘Civilizing’ The Net?

      We don’t know at this stage exactly who asked for these four accounts to be removed, only that according to Twitter’s rules it must have been done “by Sarkozy, or someone acting on his authority”. We asked Twitter about this and it refused to provide specifics on why the accounts were closed or the timing, other than to say that just because the accounts were suspended in the same general time frame, it wasn’t necessarily for the same reason.

      Be that as it may, the near-simultaneous closure of four accounts all critical of a powerful national politician inevitably reminds us that for many countries, “civilizing” the Internet often comes down to censoring it. It’s worrying to see France apparently starting to go down that route — and for Twitter to be helping it.

    • MegaBust’s MegaQuestions Cloud the Net’s Future

      On Saturday, January 14th the White House issued a policy statement in response to an online petition against pending anti-piracy legislation signed by more than 100,000 individuals. While supporting efforts to curb infringement of U.S. intellectual property by foreign websites, it outlined that to be acceptable to the Obama Administration any such legislation must guard against online censorship, be narrowly targeted at websites currently beyond the reach of U.S. law, have strong due process protections, be targeted at criminal activity, and not inhibit innovation. The statement was interpreted as indicating that current versions of the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) were not acceptable to the President — although no explicit veto threat was made.

    • Wikileaks Denied A Speaking Opportunity At UN Conference About Wikileaks?

      UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, is hosting a conference about The Media World after Wikileaks and News of the World. Sounds like it could be an interesting event, but one organization not happy about it… is Wikileaks. Seeing as it was a conference that touched on Wikileaks’ interests directly, Wikileaks asked to take part, and was instead denied a chance to speak at the event. When asked about this, UNESCO actually claimed that choosing to not allow Wikileaks attendees was an exercise in “freedom of expression,” which seems like a poor choice of words.

    • No Indian government shall ever censor social media, says minister

      India made headlines last week when Minister of State for Communications & IT, Sachin Pilot, said that online companies like Facebook and Google must comply with the country’s laws. His statement came one day after Google and Facebook revealed that they had in fact already removed content at an Indian court’s request.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Linsanity… At The Trademark Office

        Perhaps you’ve been following the “Linsanity” story over the last week or so. Even if you’re not a sports fan, it’s a pretty incredible story. The short summary for the six or seven of you who are sharing a rock to live under is that Jeremy Lin, who excelled at basketball as a high schooler in Palo Alto, was all but written off as having a real future in basketball. No college would give him a scholarship, and many thought that he should sign with a lower ranked college where he could play for fun, but not have any future. Even Stanford, which has a great basketball program and is literally across the street from where Lin played in high school, had little interest in getting Lin to play for them. He ended up going to Harvard (who did want him, but doesn’t do academic scholarships and isn’t known for its basketball program) and then wasn’t drafted by any NBA team. He did eventually sign with the Golden State Warriors (making him the first Taiwanese American NBA player) who played him sparingly last year and then cut him. He was with the Rockets in the pre-season, but they cut him before the season started. Then he signed on with the Knicks who had sent him down to the D-League and were rumored to be getting ready to cut him… before “Linsanity” began about 10 days ago.

      • 97 Las Vegas Karaoke Locations Sued By ‘Righthaven Of Trademarks’ Demanding $500 Million

        Steve Green, who was the absolute best reporter covering the Righthaven saga, recently wrote about the fact that 97 Las Vegas karaoke providers were recently sued by a company called Slep-Tone Entertainment Corp., which apparently mainly does business as “Sound Choice,” selling various karaoke content — music and videos. Green notes that someone familiar with Slep-Tone has called it the “Righthaven of trademark

    • Copyrights

      • UMG Artist Tyga’s Album Gets Pulled For Unauthorized MLK Speech?

        After several delays YMCM artist Tyga is set to finally release his album, Careless World, on Feb. 21st. Well he was supposed to – apparently retailers like Best Buy have thrown a wrench into the plan by yanking the album and returning it to the label. It also appears to have been removed from Itunes Pre-Order. According to reports the title track “Careless World” contains portions of a Martin Luther King speech and it’s use on the project is unauthorized. Kings estate has apparently sent notices to retailers asking them to halt the sale of the album and return the copies to Universal Music Group.

      • When We Copy, We Justify It; When Others Copy, We Vilify Them
      • MPAA: Ripping DVDs Shouldn’t Be Allowed Because It Takes Away Our Ability To Charge You Multiple Times For The Same Content

        It’s that time again when the Librarian of Congress is considering special exemptions to the DMCA’s anti-cicrumvention provisions. One of the key proposals, which we discussed earlier, was Public Knowledge’s request to allow people to rip DVDs for personal use — just as we are all currently able to rip CDs for personal use (such as for moving music to a portable device). The MPAA (along with the RIAA and others) have responded to the exemption requests (pdf) with all sorts of crazy claims, but let’s focus in on the DVD ripping question, because it’s there that the insanity of Hollywood logic becomes clear.

      • Hadopi Sends Info On Those Accused (Not Convicted) Of Repeat Infringement On To Prosecutors

        You may remember last fall’s numbers concerning how many first, second and third strikes Hadopi, the French agency in charge of kicking people off the internet for possible copyright infringement, was sending out. Now come reports that France is finally moving beyond just the strikes, and has passed along info on those accused (not convicted) of infringement to “prosecutors” for the next stage, which could result in them losing internet access.

      • MPAA Hires Four Ex-Federal Government Employees, Including One From ICE & Another From The White House

        Two of these aren’t huge surprises. The Pastarnack hire hit the news a few months ago, when people noticed that she jumped from being a point person on PIPA to working directly for the MPAA. Swartsel’s name may also be familiar. We tangled with her last summer, when she bizarrely took to the MPAA’s blog to attack reporter Janko Roettger for accurately predicting that bad economic news might lead people to seek out unauthorized sources of movies, rather than paying through the nose for authorized versions. Now, the MPAA’s former boss had said the exact same thing, but according to Swartsel it’s somehow “intellectually dishonest” to point out what might happen. Swartsel also was the one who flat out mocked the concerns of tech entrepreneurs concerning SOPA and PIPA. Turns out she did all this as a “consultant” to the MPAA — and they thought she did such a bang up job that they’ve hired her full time as “director of global policy.”

      • ACTA

        • IFPI accuses: “protests silence democratic process”

          A lobbying letter, attributed to the IFPI, the international arm of of the recorded music industry, and circulated by a coalition of rights-holders, attempts to wear the mantle of the moral high-ground in Europe’s political battle over ACTA. This wolf in sheep’s clothing also appears to have access to documents which have been denied to civil society.

        • EU Member Bulgaria Halts ACTA, Minister Of Economy Offers Resignation
        • “Green Week”: Ask MEPs to Reject ACTA Back in Their Home Districts!

          This week, Members of the EU Parliament will be back in their home districts to meet with their constituency. This is an important opportunity for EU citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives, and make sure that they understand how dangerous and illegitimate ACTA is. Next week in Brussels, many decisive meetings will take place in the committees of the EU Parliament regarding ACTA.

        • Shining Light On ACTA’s Lack Of Transparency
        • ACTA is a Bad Way to Develop Internet Policy

          ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) is a proposed new international law establishing international enforcement standards against counterfeit goods and pirated intellectual property items. ACTA was negotiated as a “trade agreement” which means that it was negotiated in private without open involvement of all the stakeholders. There has been no formal opportunity for input from people other than those who were lucky enough to be invited into the private discussions.

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