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06.29.11

Links 29/6/2011: Munich’s GNU/Linux Migration in Track “on Track”; Linux 3.0 Now in RC 5

Posted in News Roundup at 5:16 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Android and Red Hat Prove Linux’s Merit on Phones and Servers

    Debate over Linux’s viability on the desktop may rage unabated in light of the recent changes made to Canonical’s Ubuntu, in particular, but there’s no questioning the operating system’s strength in the server and mobile arenas.

  • Sony CEO blurs line between Linux and piracy at shareholders’ meeting

    Sony CEO Howard Stringer told shareholders that his company was the target of hacker attacks in April “because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames.”

    In April Sony was forced to take its PlayStation Network (PSN) offline for several weeks after hackers broke in and stole information from more than 70 million user accounts, finally relaunching it in May. A similar attack also affected Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) servers, which control Sony’s online role-playing games. Combined, more than 100 million user accounts were affected.

  • Desktop

    • Farewell to Microsoft

      To me this seems to be the perfect combination, you can use all free software out there in your Linux computer (or partition) and also run that special software you really need on the Mac computer (or partition), and at the same time you can forget about the blue screen, you can forget about the poorly done operating system that Windows is.

    • DE: Munich’s move to a vendor independent desktop “on track”

      The German city of Munich’s migration to a vendor independent IT infrastructure is “in time, in budget and on track”, says one of the external consultants involved in the project. The city aims to migrate about 80 percent of all the city’s fifteen thousand desktop PCs to Ubuntu Linux.

      That 20 percent of the city administration’s PCs will remain locked-in to a proprietary operating system has been foreseen from the start, says Andreas Heinrich, a consultant at IBM closely involved in the project, dispelling rumours that the project is missing its target.

      “The project scope is to migrate 80 percent of PCs in the administration. From the onset, it was foreseen that there will be financial or technical constraints where a move to open source is not beneficial.”

    • Munich To Migrate 15,000 PCs To Ubuntu

      The German city of Munich’s migration to a vendor independent IT infrastructure is “in time, in budget and on track”, says one of the external consultants involved in the project. The city aims to migrate about 80 percent of all the city’s fifteen thousand desktop PCs to Ubuntu Linux.

      That 20 percent of the city administration’s PCs will remain locked-in to a proprietary operating system has been foreseen from the start, says Andreas Heinrich, a consultant at IBM closely involved in the project, dispelling rumours that the project is missing its target.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.0-rc5

      The most noteworthy thing may be that only about a quarter of the
      changes are in drivers, filesystem changes actually account for more
      (40%): btrfs, cifs, ext4, jbd2, nfs are all present and accounted for.

      On the driver side, there’s some gpu updates, infiniband, mmc, sound
      and some SCSI target fixes.

      And the normal random smattering of changes all around. Like some
      long-standing compile failure (admittedly you need to enable some
      esoteric resource counting options and disable NUMA to trigger it, but
      still). I think there’s a few more lurking in staging, with fixes yet
      to be merged.

    • Linux Turns 3

      In case you missed it, Linux is turning 3. Well, really, it’s turning 20. 20 years of Linux have come and gone, and yet, until recently, we’ve been stuck in 2.6.x kernel hell. The kernel has been in the 2.6 phase for almost half of that 20 years, in fact. This has caused endless annoyances for developers and distribution managers, sadly.

      You see, because my laptop runs kernel 2.6.32, it is relatively up to date. It includes the Completely Fair Scheduler, and a host of other major improvements over, say, a machine running 2.6.20. One might even suggest that two machines running kernels that far apart are essentially running completely different Linuxes. It’s like the difference between Windows XP and Windows 7.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Putting things together

        Putting things together
        Half a year ago there was a thread on the kde-core-devel mailing list with the topic “why kdelibs?”. I gave a potential answer and this resulted in a series of great discussions. While these discussions were very constructive, it was pretty clear, that we would need an in-person meeting to finally answer the question about the future of the KDE platform.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva 2011 RC 1 Released, Almost

        Eugeni Dodonov announced the release of Mandriva 2011 RC1 earlier, but I’m still waiting for it to hit mirrors. He did actually said it was “coming,” so his announcement could be considered a big ole tease. In fact, I hate it when a release is announced and we have to keep checking the mirrors for it to actually become available. But they do this every time.

        Anyway, he said, “The images are built and are undergoing an internal testing right now, and unless any critical issues are discovered, they will be pushed to the mirrors in the coming hours! Those additional testings for RC1 images before their release to the mirrors was intended in order to certify that the final changes for the RC-stage of Mandriva 2011 release, containing the (almost) final UI and Desktop experience, do not result in any unexpected issues.”

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • News from Debian
      • Updated Debian 6.0: 6.0.2 released

        The Debian project is pleased to announce the second update of its stable distribution Debian 6.0 (codename “squeeze”). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Security

    • John The Ripper Expedites Password Auditing
    • Protecting Linux Against DoS/DDoS Attacks

      When I first heard ridiculous-sounding terms like smurf attack, fraggle attack, Tribal Flood Network (TFN), Trinoo, TFN2K, and stacheldraht, I didn’t take them too seriously for a couple of reasons — I worked mainly on non-Internet facing systems and I was never a victim. I thought it was primarily a network or application administrator’s problem.

      I am not too proud to admit that I was completely wrong. The truth is that I only had a grasp of the impact of such attacks but I didn’t know anything about the methods and the things that can and should be done at the operating system level.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Privacy

    • Facebook spent $230,000 lobbying in 1Q

      Facebook spent $230,000 lobbying the federal government in the first quarter on issues such as online privacy, rules that aim for equitable Internet access and other issues, according to a disclosure report.

      That’s up from $130,000 Facebook spent in the fourth quarter and nearly six times the $41,390 that it spent in the first quarter of last year.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Forget “Skinny Basic”, It’s Time For the CRTC To Mandate Full Consumer Broadcast Choice

      The CRTC vertical integration hearing continues today, following several full days last week in which the Commissioners repeatedly asked whether companies such as Rogers, Bell, and Shaw should be required to offer a “skinny basic” service – a cheaper television package with limited programming. The introduction of skinny basic appears to be one of the CRTC’s preferred responses to the issue, since it is concerned that vertically integrated companies will use their broadcast distribution services to require subscribers to subscribe to their broadcast properties. The major integrated providers have opposed the idea, arguing consumers aren’t interested.

    • Ottawa to contract out spying, but who cares? It’s only the Internet

      Imagine that, because you’re pressed for time, you take a cab to the library. The cab driver is obliged by law to install a device that will monitor where he takes you. While in the cab, you call your friend to talk about your day. The phone company is obliged to track whom you talk to and for how long.

    • Civil Society Groups Reject OECD Internet Policy Principles

      The OECD is meeting this week in Paris for a meeting on the Internet economy. The meeting features many government leaders and is expected to conclude with a Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making. This builds on the June 2008 OECD meeting in Seoul, Korea that not only placed the spotlight on Internet economy issues, but opened the door to participation of civil society groups in OECD policy making. That was a big step forward, but today there was a major step back as the civil society groups – now representing over 80 organizations from around the world under the name CSISAC – announced that it was withdrawing its name from support of the draft OECD communique.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Canadian ‘Lawful Access’ laws come at too high a price, critics argue

        Hidden deep within the federal government’s comprehensive bundle of crime legislation lies a bill that opponents claim will rob Canadians their right to online privacy as well as their cash.

        During the last federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to combine 11 separate crime bills into one omnibus piece of legislation and pass it within 100 days of taking power should his Conservative Party win a majority.

      • Drake Tells Universal Music To Stop Taking Down The Music He’s Leaking

        It’s been an interesting week for Universal Music. The company was outed for their secret war on various hiphop blogs, including some of the sites of their own artists, such as 50 Cent, whose personal site was declared a “pirate” site on a list that Universal helped put together. Now, super popular Universal artist Drake is lashing out at Universal for issuing takedowns over his own music. Apparently, like many artists who value the promotion, he’s been leaking his own tracks to the various hiphop sites and blogs that Universal has declared evil. And Universal has been taking them down, leading Drake to tell them to stop…

      • The AUCC Diagnoses the Problem but Prescribes the Wrong Remedy

        Unfortunately, while the AUCC correctly diagnosed some of the problems, it asks to Board to prescribe the wrong remedy. I am not persuaded that amending the Interim Tariff to require Access Copyright to grant transactional licenses on a per copy basis—as the AUCC requests—is the optimal remedy for these issues. In fact, I am concerned that ordering Access Copyright to grant transactional licenses might actually—under some circumstances—aggravate the problem. While I am confident that this was not the AUCC’s intention, I believe that the remedy that it proposes could inadvertently backfire and serve the interests of Access Copyright to the detriment of Canadian academic institutions.

Clip of the Day

CyanogenMod 7 Gingerbread Detailed Review


Credit: TinyOgg

06.28.11

Links 28/6/2011: Android Activations Surpass Microsoft Windows, Millions of OLPC XOs Noted

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

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: BIOS bugs behind greater power use

      Since version 2.6.38, kernels have used more power because, in certain situations, they disable the power-saving ASPM feature. New stable and long-term kernels offer corrections; however, one of them is conspicuously lagging behind.

      In April, the Phoronix web site reported that some systems require more power with Linux 2.6.35 and 2.6.38 than they did with the previous versions. Phoronix says it has now found the reason for the increased power consumption in 2.6.38.

    • Linux Kernel Power Issue Workaround
    • The kernel column #102 with Jon Masters – celebrating 20 years of kernel history (and a look ahead to Linux 3.0)

      Jon Masters marks the 20th anniversary of the Linux kernel with a reflection on 20 years of Linux kernel history and a look ahead to Linux 3.0…

      Twenty years ago, in April of 1991, a young Finnish computer science student at the University of Helsinki began work on a piece of software that would fundamentally change the computer industry. Linus Torvalds had just recently acquired an Intel 80836 microprocessor-powered PC system and wanted to exploit its support for ‘Protected Mode’ paged virtual memory (the ability for the processor to isolate individual programs from one another and give each an entire memory address space of its own to work with), and in the process learn about how such features worked. At the time, contemporary consumer operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows 3.0 had only very limited support for the advanced features of the new Intel processor, and commercial UNIX-based alternatives were extremely expensive propositions, while open source operating systems such as Minix used alternative (older) techniques like memory segmentation, which had been in older Intel CPUs.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Nord: A Beautiful Glassy GNOME Shell Theme

        Nord is a new glassy GNOME Shell theme based on Zukitwo, created by WebUpd8 reader rAX.

        The theme is currently in beta and there are some known bugs but it already looks great, featuring some unique elements like the switches which look amazing (see the screenshots). If you use GNOME Shell, you must really give it a try!

      • making the jump to gnome 3

        Well the pros, well really the wants, finally won out over the cons and I upgraded my primary laptop that I use for work and just about everything else to Fedora 15 and gnome 3. What finally pushed me over the edge? Evolution 3 and Firefox 5.

      • Gnome 3, its got some issues…

        Since I switched to Gnome3 I’ve been finding some weird inconsistencies. The problem is, I can’t be sure its actually Gnome3 or something else?

  • Distributions

    • TLWIR 6: What City Is Your Distro?

      Which GNU/Linux distribution a person prefers is a very individual choice. Some people like distributions that give them total access: the freedom to do whatever they want. Others want a desktop OS that will hold their hand if they run into problems. There is no single distribution that provides all of the right answers; each GNU/Linux user has to find the operating system distribution that best meets their own needs. In this week’s TLWIR, I will look at some of the best GNU/Linux distributions with a unique twist: I will compare the distribution to the city that I think most embodies its fundamental spirit. This week’s stories are as follows:

    • DoudouLinux 1.0 Released, Now Available In 15 Languages [Linux For Children]

      DoudouLinux is a Linux distribution for children, designed to be both educational and fun. It can be used from a CD/DVD or an USB stick so you don’t have to install it. We’ve reviewed it a while back so check out that post for more info.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Open Framework Systems (OFS), a new strategic partner for Mandriva.

        Mandriva, Europe’s leading publisher of Linux solutions, announces the collaboration with the Norwegian company Open Framework Systems (OFS).

        Mandriva and OFS are working together to provide a secure collaborative solution to its customers. OFS Collab Collaboration Suite is designed to be a real time secure collaboration suite that can be accessed from different types of clients and editors. With simple mouse clicks, user will be able to secure parts of a document with read and edit access rights. The Collab Collaboration Suite is client server based. The server handles the security and stores the documents in a centralized document management storage.

      • PCLinuxOS KDE 2011.6 Released

        I will be installing this release on my other systems over the next day or two, and I will add the results of those installations to this post.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon Linux 6.0 released — without GNOME 3.0

        The Sabayon community released version 6.0 of its Gentoo-based Linux distribution, moving up to Linux 2.6.39.1, but opting for GNOME 2.32.2 and KDE 4.6.4 desktop environments instead of the controversial GNOME 3.0. Sabayon 6.0 adds support for the Btrfs filesystem, switches to LibreOffice 3.3.3, and updates to version 1.0 of its Entropy package manager.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • 500,000 Android device activations per day

          This number is, of course, great news for Google and the Android platform. With such a large number of activations per day, it really shows how popular the mobile operating system is around the globe, and how much demand there is for Android devices overall. Not only is this number high, but it’s also a more true representation of consumer activity as it directly relates to users purchasing (and activating) their devices, as opposed to numbers referring to shipments (to retailers), as companies often provide.

        • Android/Linux Activations Exceed “7″

          We were told that, once upon a time, “7″ was shipped on an average of 7 PCs per second. Growth of “7″ is about 1% per month. On 1400 million PCs, that’s about 14 million PCs shipping with “7″ per month, ~5.4/s per second. Android/Linux is activating 500K per day (500K/86400 = 5.8/s). Further, the growth rate of the growth is 4.4% per week…

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • 1 Million XOs Missing in Action, Lack of Measurements to Blame

        Wait, what did he say, 3 million XOs? Did I miss something? The map on OLPC’s Web site says “over 2,100,000 children and teachers have xo laptops” and the corresponding wiki page also mentions “2.1 million XOs in the field as of January, 2011″.

Free Software/Open Source

  • The decline of ‘open source’ as an identifying differentiator

    One of the things that I have observed in relation to open source-related business strategies in recent months is the decreased use of the term ‘open source’ as an identifying differentiator in some companies’ marketing material, either to describe the company or its software.

    The way in which a company identifies itself in the opening lines of a press release may not necessarily describe accurately what the company does, but it is a clear indicator of how the company wants to be perceived.

    It seemed to me that a significant number of high profile open source-related vendors had stopped using the term open source as an identifying differentiator.

  • A window to open source OS

    Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning ‘humanity to others,’ informs www.ubuntu.com. The word also means ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’, adds the site.

    “The vision for Ubuntu is part social and part economic: free software, available free of charge to everybody on the same terms, and funded through a portfolio of services provided by Canonical.”

    It was, therefore, a pleasant meeting that I recently had with Prakash Advani, Regional Manager – Asia Pacific, Canonical, Mumbai (http://bit.ly/F4TAdvaniP). “I have been using the latest Ubuntu 11.04 on a laptop that’s almost three years now and I don’t see any degradation of performance,” says Prakash. “It performs the same that it used to three years back when I installed Ubuntu 9.10. After that we released three more versions and they have all worked beautifully on the same hardware.” Our conversation continues over email.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox in the Enterprise

        Mozilla is committed to providing the best Web experience for people everywhere, for whom the Web has become such an important part of their daily lives. Providing updates to Firefox more frequently allows us to secure users against emerging threats and provide the platform for innovation that today’s rich and compelling Web experiences demand.

        The Mozilla Community has focused our efforts on the needs of the individual user, and prioritized the product roadmap and features accordingly. However, as is the case with many technologies, loyal Firefox users and their IT departments have sought to bring Firefox into their places of work.

  • SaaS

    • Future of cloud survey shows significance of open source

      The 451 Group was pleased to work with North Bridge Venture Partners, GigaOM and additional companies and players in the industry for the Future of Cloud Computing Survey 2011, which confirmed the early nature of the market, but also indicated customers and users have learned from previous trends, particularly open source software and virtualization. The Future of Cloud Computing Survey 2011 garnered 417 responses from both vendors and end users, focusing on current use, drivers, barriers and future plans regard‪ing cloud computing.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.6.1 Compiler Released

      As expected when mentioning the GCC 4.6.1 release candidate one week ago, GCC 4.6.1 has been officially released this Monday morning.

  • Public Services/Government

    • UK shakes dust off open source policy

      If it looked like UK open source policy, just recently exhumed, had already been swept back under the same carpet it has been kept under since it was first launched two and a half years ago, the announcement yesterday that Liam Maxwell had acquired responsibility for it with a Cabinet Office portfolio did surprisingly little to improve its mien.

      It is then just as well Cabinet Office is about to announce long-overdue progress in its cause of creating a level-playing field for open source software. Because the new appointment will need all the help he can get.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Afghans Build Open-Source Internet From Trash

        In light of events that occured in the Middle East earlier this year, many worry that in the future, rogue governments could cut off access to the internet as a way to control political “threats.”

        Douglas Rushkoff has championed the idea that the current corporate-controlled internet is far from the open commons we pretend it is.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • BIRT 3.7 Released

      Open Document Text (ODT), Open Document Presentation (ODP), and Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) outputs are also available with the addition of three new emitters.

Clip of the Day

I’m A Climate Scientist (HUNGRY BEAST)


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 28/6/2011: ASUS to Have Linux Netbook, Silver Lake and Skype Theory

Posted in News Roundup at 7:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Donating 20% Of Flash Drive Sales Back To Developers

    Our reason for doing so… don’t have one. We set out to provide a service that was easy and inexpensive, we somehow overlooked the developers of these great GNU/Linux distributions. That e-mail opened our eyes to what kind of harm we might be causing, or more likely, what kind of good we easily could be doing but aren’t doing.

    So we now donate 20% of every purchase back to the respective distribution’s project, foundation, company or developers, however donations for the distribution are handled. So now when you purchase a Live USB Flash Drive from InaTux you’re also supporting the development of your favorite distribution in the process.

  • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 153

    Summary:
    · Announced Distro: Porteus 1.0
    · Announced Distro: Sabayon Linux 6.0
    · In Other News: Mozilla Firefox 5, Top 10 Unity indicators, and more…
    · Tutorial of the Week: Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop Customization Guide
    · Review of the Week: Sweet Home 3D 3.2
    · Video Clip of the Week: Mozilla Firefox 5 Final Review
    · New Distributions: BlueOnyx 5.6-20110621, Semplice Linux 2.0 Alpha 1, Zorin OS Multimedia/Ultimate/Gaming 5, and more…
    · Distributions Updated Last Week: Greenie Linux 9N, Fuduntu 14.10, Absolute Linux 13.38, SlimPup 2.8, and more…
    · Development Releases: Parsix Linux 3.7 Test 2, openSUSE Linux 12.1 Milestone 2, Scientific Linux 6.1 Alpha 2, and more…

  • Server

    • Building a Legacy

      The IBM i platform and its bigger brother, the System z mainframe, take a lot of guff for being a legacy platform. But guess what? Solaris is turning 30 next year, as is HP-UX the year after that. AIX will be 25 this year, Windows server variants are almost 20 years old (remember Windows for Workgroups 3.1?), and Linux pretty much freeze-dried after a hectic 20 years of development. OS/400, of course, just turned 23 last week, but has deeper roots back into CPFon the System/38 in 1978 and SSP on the System/36 in 1983. They are all legacy environments as far as I am concerned.

  • Kernel Space

    • The Leading Cause Of The Recent Linux Kernel Power Problems

      “Mobile users are urged to seriously consider these results, and possibly even avoid the Natty Narwhal…I hate to say it, especially in an Ubuntu review, but the mobile edge goes to Windows for now…There are also compelling reasons for folks to avoid [Ubuntu 11.04] at all costs. Linux gamers should see substantial improvements, while mobile users suffer a dramatic loss in battery life,” were among the critical comments that Tom’s Hardware had in their Ubuntu 11.04 review as they were referencing the power regressions I discovered nearly two months ago within the mainline Linux kernel. As I mentioned on Sunday, the Phoronix Test Suite stack and I have now nailed this major power regression in the Linux 2.6.38 kernel that is affecting a significant number of mobile Linux users. Here is what is happening and a way that you should be able to workaround the serious regression should it affect your computer system(s).

    • A Comment On The Linux 2.6.38 Power Regression

      Jesse Barnes, the maintainer of the PCI subsystem for the Linux kernel and one of the developers who signed-off on the patch that I discovered is causing the major Linux 2.6.38 kernel power regression, has commented on the matter.

      When Jesse isn’t working on the Intel Linux graphics driver stack as part of Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center, he’s working on the Linux PCI subsystem. At the time the article was published last night that details the 2.6.38 power regression commit, there wasn’t any comment from the kernel developers due to being unable to reach them over the weekend.

    • Linux 2.6.34.10 has been released
    • The bigger the beard, the harder the core

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • 5 Best Linux/BSD Firewall Distributions

      If you’re having a small computer network at home or a huge office with hundreds of desktops, cyber security is something you can never compromise on. One thing that is a quintessential part of security is something we call a firewall.

      A firewall is like the security guard at your door who keeps a watch on everyone who goes in and out. By allowing only legitimate connections to pass through and blocking connections based on a certain set of rules, the firewall secures the network from most kinds of threats that lurk around on the Internet.

    • Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Puppy Linux
    • The Five Best Desktop Linux Distributions

      While I wasn’t there from the very start of Linux. I was an early adopter. Even before Linux, though, I was a Unix desktop user ranging from the early character interfaces such as the Bourne shell to graphic Unix desktops such as SCO’s Open Desktop—better known back in the day as Open Deathtrap—and Solaris’s Looking Glass. In the last twenty years I’ve used almost every significant Linux desktop out there, and was the editor-in-chief for many years of Desktop Linux. In short, I know what I’m talking about.

      Before giving you my list of favorites though, if you don’t know my work, you should know where I’m coming from. First, I’m a big believe in What Works. I use Linux on my desktop not because I find its free and open-source software foundations morally superior to the proprietary competition from Apple and Microsoft. I use it because it works better for me. When it comes to technology, I’m a pragmatist, not an idealist.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Expands Real Time, OVA

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15 KDE

          I enjoyed using Fedora 15 KDE; I think it has definitely arrived as a viable alternative to the GNOME version. Given all of the controversy and problems with GNOME 3, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see an exodus of disgruntled users move from the GNOME version of Fedora to the KDE version. If so then I think they might find this release of Fedora KDE to be just what the doctor ordered.

        • The Perfect Desktop – Fedora 15 i686 (GNOME)

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Teo Natty Netbook: Good Things in Small Shiny Packages

        Right away ZaReason sets themselves apart from other computer vendors by including a screwdriver and encouraging you to tinker with your system. Since actually using your computer all but violates the warranty for most other computer vendors, this is a nice change of pace.

        Their hardware policy is also different. ZaReason uses open hardware, so you get components that work with any Linux distribution, and they design their systems to be upgrade-friendly. They also stick with good hardware that you can depend on, rather than pinching pennies on substandard components.

      • ASUS GNU/Linux Netbook Imminent

        There it is and XP is too dead to hold back GNU/Linux again. So is Vista. “7″ costs too much in these small, cheap computers. MeeGo is a GNU/Linux distro developed by Nokia and Intel. While Nokia has dropped MeeGo, Intel is still involved and ASUS will ship products.

Free Software/Open Source

  • In defence of open source

    Equally, it’s why I distrust proprietary software. I don’t know what it’s doing most of the time, and I assume the worst. I also don’t see the need to guard the software so closely.

    An important element of open source is that is never gives up software copyright. All it does is gives me permission to view – and usually edit – the source code. (You also get “free” open source but it’s not as socialist as the proprietary software companies would have us believe.)

    Proprietary software is like buying a car that comes with the bonnet welded shut. To check your oil or water levels would require a trip to the manufacturer, and a fee to go with it. Their biggest concern is that, should I see the engine, I would immediately go and create my own car from scratch.

  • Bungie open sources the complete Marathon Mac FPS franchise

    To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Bungie, the American game developer now famous for its Halo franchise, has announced that it will release the source code for Marathon Infinity, the third game in its Marathon Trilogy. The company says that the move is something it “should have done a long time ago (but didn’t because our legal counsel ‘forgot’)”. This means that the entire Marathon franchise will now be available as open source.

  • Hacking to make things Usable

    I’ve noticed a disturbing trend occurring with software. Until recent months it was largely limited to closed source software such as iOS, but today we see it even in the FOSS world.

  • Events

    • How RailsBridge has inspired OpenHatch events

      RailsBridge logo (used without permission)

      Over 2009, two women worked to bring more people into their programming language meet-up group. Their RailsBridge effort has lessons for community building in free software as a whole.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Ooo2gd and LibreOffice – Almost good enough for me to switch from Dropbox to Google Docs

      Cloud storage kicks ass for those situations were you can either use an online web service to view and edit your files, or where you want a service like Dropbox to sync your files across multiple PCs. You get the benefit of a single access point to your files, and (although you can’t assume this to be the case) your cloud storage provider should have a robust backup system in place to keep your files safe.

      Where cloud storage fails is when you just need to get access to one or two files, and your local application does not have any functionality for accessing files stored online. I find myself in this situation all the time with a few OpenOffice documents that are synced with a Dropbox account, but the Dropbox account itself is not synced with all the devices I use. Editing files in this siutation is a case of logging into Dropbox, downloading the file, making some changes, and uploading it again. It’s a tedious process.

  • CMS

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

    • Nonprofit helps government expand open source software usage

      At L-3, Jaghori runs a mobile technologies practice that does iPhone and Android development for the government. It turns out the open source model of Google’s Linux-based Android mobile operating system is appealing to government agencies, Jaghori says.

      “95% of all agencies that I’ve talked to have begun looking at Android,” Jaghori says. The agencies are intrigued by “the ability to bring an operating system like Android and really call it your own, develop around it.”

    • NASA Open Source Summit Proceedings Online

      On March 29 & 30, NASA hosted its first Open Source Summit at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The event brought engineers and policy makers from across NASA together with well-respected members of the open source community together to discuss current challenges with NASA’s open source policy framework, and propose modifications that would make it easier for NASA to develop, release, and use open source software.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • UK is unprepared for Cybercrime – A look at “Digital Britain” and a prediction for its future.

      The news that alleged Lulzsec member Mr Cleary being brought before the courts is widespread. Its very telling that this “growing industry” of crime is hitting the mainstream press and it also shows how completely unprepared and unskilled the UK is in dealing with it.

      I am sure the government and its agencies will claim a great victory over the news that Lulzsec is disbanding, but lets look at this a little deeper and see how exactly it is alleged that the power of the UK Police and FBI were brought to the alleged hacker and asberges sufferer.

      It is alleged by some that the person now charged with Computer Misuse Act offences was named by Anonymous some time before, which if true really makes a mockery of the involvement of two massive governmental agencies on an investigation which stretched accross the ocean.

  • Finance

    • JP Morgan Chase sued – for FRAUD – Again !!!

      Mounting evidence of outrageous behaviour and even more examples of outright FRAUD (committed by JP Morgan Chase?) has become so overwhelming & obvious, that soon, we’ll need “State Scorecards” to track the sheer volume and huge numbers …of lawsuits… being filed against JP Morgan Chase.

    • Too Big to Fail or Too Big to Change

      Two and half years removed from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the investing public has grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of criminal prosecutions of, and absence of truly significant fines levied against, the senior executives and companies responsible for igniting the subprime meltdown. Pundits have criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) as capitulating to the interests of “big finance,” citing SEC settlements that have been characterized as mere “slaps on the wrist” and the DOJ’s failure to convict a single executive responsible for creating the “great recession” despite significant evidence of intentional misconduct.

      For decades, the public’s trust in the integrity of U.S. capital markets was a source of economic stability and unparalleled prosperity. To maintain this trust, investors must believe that they compete on a relatively equal playing field and that the laws governing the markets will be strictly enforced. In furtherance of these goals, violators of federal rules face civil penalties from the SEC or criminal prosecution by the DOJ. In connection with previous corporate scandals, the government held a significant number of the principal wrongdoers civilly and criminally accountable for their misconduct. In the wake of the current financial crisis, however, many argue that the lack of such accountability has eroded the public’s faith in U.S. capital markets.

    • ‘Did It Work?’

      It’s time someone answered this question.

      The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government injected trillions into the economy, yet the recovery has remained “moderate” at best for two years.

      Instead of generating “shovel-ready jobs,” most of that money benefited financial companies that probably deserved to fail. So how are these companies doing? They’re laying off thousands of people, according to a report released last week by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employment consulting firm.

      Layoffs are up 21% this year at banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies. Challenger expects the trend to accelerate through the year and become more or less permanent. So not even those employed at the national targets of bailout envy, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are safe.

    • Supreme Court issues limited campaign finance ruling

      The case, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, was closely watched by advocates for reducing the role of money in politics. They feared that the high court, which has issued sweeping rulings striking down campaign finance restrictions as violations of free speech, would use the case to rule broadly on the constitutionality of programs that provide public money to candidates.

    • Consumer spending in May weakest in a year

      For the first time in a year, Americans have stopped spending more.

      Consumer spending failed to budge from April to May, evidence that high gas prices and unemployment are squeezing household budgets. When adjusted for inflation, spending actually dropped 0.1 percent last month, the Commerce Department reported Monday.

    • GOP, Democrats seem to harden stance on debt

      President Barack Obama plunged into deadlocked negotiations to cut government deficits and raise the nation’s debt limit Monday, and the White House expressed confidence a “significant” deal with Republicans could be reached. But both sides only seemed to harden their positions as the day wore on, the administration insisting on higher taxes as part of the package but Republican leaders flatly rejecting the idea.

    • Ex-Citigroup VP Pleads Not Guilty in Fraud Case

      NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former Citigroup Inc vice president charged with embezzling $19 million from the bank’s accounts — an alleged fraud that went undiscovered for more than a year and a half — pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn federal court on Monday.

Reader’s Picks

Clip of the Day

Pub Archos 10.1 Internet Tablet


Credit: TinyOgg

06.27.11

Links 27/6/2011: Wine 1.3.23, KDE 4.7 RC

Posted in News Roundup at 4:06 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Mac experience

    So in my personal opinion, it is pointless comparing a Mac experience to a Linux Desktop one.

  • LinuxQuestions.org Turns Eleven

    I’m extremely excited to announce that exactly 11 years ago today I made my very first post at LQ, which served to introduce it to the web. As I’ve stated numerous times, since then LQ has exceeded my expectation in every way. 4,382,316 posts and 457,176 registered members does not even begin to tell the story. The community and mod team that has grown here at LQ is truly amazing and something that I’m very proud to be a part of. I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member for their participation, dedication and feedback. Without you guys, LQ quite simply wouldn’t exist.

  • LinuxQuestions.org Turns Eleven
  • Linux Format issue 147 is on sale now!
  • LulzSec Used Ubuntu

    In the latest (and seemingly final) batch of documents dumped on The Pirate Bay by computer hacker outfit ‘LulzSec’, a familiar looking operating system can be seen in use.

  • On reboots

    Rebooting machines is a interesting study in the varied opinions of the Linux community. On one end, there are folks who will use ksplice or simply avoid rebooting for any reason short of a hardware failure. On the other you have desktop users who reboot their machines daily. I’m somewhere in the middle: For servers if there is a security update to the kernel or glibc that applies, the server should be rebooted. For my laptop, I usually reboot when there’s a reason (I want to test something related to the boot process, there’s a security update, etc).

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Torvalds: User-Space File-Systems, Toys, Misguided People

      Yesterday I mentioned what Anton Altaparmakov of Tuxera had recently said about their NTFS kernel driver being the fastest Linux file-system, which erupted into a large debate in our forums. Within that mailing list thread was also another interesting comment by Linus Torvalds. “Userspace filesystem? The problem is right there. Always has been. People who think that userspace filesystems are realistic for anything but toys are just misguided.”

      Torvalds additionally added, “fuse works fine if the thing being exported is some random low-use interface to a fundamentally slow device. But for something like your root filesystem? Nope. Not going to happen. So Andrew, I think that arguing that something _can_ be done with fuse, and thus _should_ be done with fuse is just ridiculous. That’s like saying you should do a microkernel – it may sound nice on paper, but it’s a damn stupid idea for people who care more about some idea than they care about reality.”

    • Burning Through Power: Linux Regressions Found

      For the multiple Linux kernel power regressions that I’ve talked about on Phoronix now for a number of weeks and have been affecting mobile Linux users en mass, I said I was looking for a better power measuring approach by using an AC power meter / UPS rather than a notebook battery to use in nailing these regressions. Using such a power meter would lead to a fully-automated process by the Phoronix Test Suite as no longer would I need to keep pulling the power plug from a laptop, could use much faster hardware, and allow for some other interesting possibilities. Well, last week I bought a power meter that plays with Linux. So now there’s some news to share.

    • Linux 3.0 Faster Than Linux 2.6

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Six Lives and Counting

      But the miracle didn’t sustain. Today, the same techniques that made yields multiply have now rendered many fields unusable due to the upward leaching of subsurface salt deposits, a process that has left their recently enriched owners both destitute and desperate. So also with nuclear energy, which at one time seemed to promise limitless clean energy, but today seems fraught with threats both immediate, with the risk of accidents, and long term, through our failure to come up with adequate storage solutions for radioactive generator waste. And while new technological advances have opened up previously inaccessible sources of fossil fuels, the recent deep drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as unresolved concerns over deep water pollution arising from oil shale “fracting,” remind us in this domain as well that accidents happen, and that unanticipated consequences, by definition, cannot be anticipated.

      Meanwhile, the process of globalization continues apace, in all of its positive and negative aspects. The latter include increasing competition for finite resources conjoined with the inevitability that greenhouse gases and nuclear fallout do not respect national boundaries. Indeed, it seems only a matter of time — and not much of that — before hostile alliances and the threat of war rise again. This time it will not be ideologies that define power blocs, but resource dependencies and trading relationships.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME developer quote of the day

        In the past users could just select the their favorite terminal in gnome-default-applications-properties. Some things required additional configuration: For a mail client the system needs to know the command to compose a new mail or to add attachments and for a terminal emulator an option to run something in a terminal is required. Developers could pre-configure these values with an xml file in $(prefix)/gnome-control-center/default-apps.

      • Wallpaper Slideshow App For Gnome 3 (Updated)

        Dhananjay Sathe sent in news of an application he’s been working on that will be of use to GNOME 3 users.

  • Distributions

    • Distros Jockeying for Position

      It’s not a race but people do keep track of the relative popularity of various distros of GNU/Linux. After years of being at the top of the heap on Distrowatch, Ubuntu has been passed by Mint and Fedora. At the same time openSUSE passed Debian GNU/Linux.

    • The SliTaz Experience

      Slitaz is yet another Linux distro! (oh no…) It’s a very small and efficient one, ranking in the same category as Damn Small Linux and Puppy. I am probably not the most qualified person to talk about linux distros as i am not the bigest fanboy of them (i’m more of a windows/mac user – but let’s remember mac os came from the same place as linux UPDATE BELOW), but if you want to hear a somewhat more impartial view on the matter keep on reading.

      [...]

      So definitely go and give it a try, it’s worth at least that!

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Gentoo Family

      • More software freedom of choice!

        The first system I worked with to begin the weekend was Sabayon 6.0. I had Sabayon 5.5 previously installed, liked it a lot, had added quite a bit of software to it, and during a recent upgrade it ran out of space. I unsuccessfully tried to clear the cache of enough space to make it worthwhile to keep, but the disk stayed 100% full, so it was an excellent candidate for a replacement. Too bad: it had worked well, and it also only recently started offering rolling release upgrades as an alternative to fresh installations. But I needed a fresh installation, plus installing a new system always shows off the new features – and sometimes the limitations as well. That, at least initially, proved to be the case here. Sabayon is in the middle of making some infrastructure and packaging improvements. Chances are that in the long run these will work very well. In the meantime, though, I ran into problems. When I went to update the system, it told me that there were eight new packages available, but none of them would install for me, and I started getting error messages about something wrong with the package management system. I sent one of them along to Sabayon; hopefully it reaches them, they are aware of whatever issue it was that cropped up, get it fixed soon, and maybe even drop me a note to let me kno

      • Review: Sabayon 6 KDE

        Sabayon 6 KDE seemed faster and more stable than Sabayon 5.5 KDE, and the replacement of Mozilla Firefox with Chromium was a pleasant change, I suppose.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat declares war against VMware on cloud front

        Red Hat declared war on VMware’s Cloud Foundry today, announcing that 65 new companies have joined the Open Virtualization Alliance backing KVM in a month’s time.

        In May, Red Hat, SUSE, BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM and Intel, announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance.

        As of today, 65 new members have joined, including Dell. Scott Crenshaw, who leads Red Hat’s cloud effort, denounced what he called VMware’s proprietary cloud platform.

      • Markets Lose Ground As Italian Banks Faces Crisis, Technology Sector Slumped

        The US stock indexes closed the week on a negative note amidst rising concerns for the Italian banking sector, Greece’s austerity plans.

        The Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.96 percent or 115.42 points to close at 11,934.58. The Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. composite index was down 1.26 percent or 33.86 points to finish at 2,652.89. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 1.17 percent or 15.05 points to end at 1,268.45. Among other major indices, the New York Stock Exchange composite index slipped 0.99 percent or 79.36 points to close at 7,974.72. The American Stock Exchange composite index shed 0.84 percent or 19.04 points to settle at 2,260.78.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 15 KDE review

          Final Thoughts: I think Fedora 15 is a decent distribution. Because of the projects philosophical stance on Free Software, there are certain features that are not expected to work out of the box. However, there are other features that have nothing to do with that philosophical stance that did not work as expected. I am referring, of course, to the state of Amarok, the default music player, but also to printer configuration. On many of the top distributions, a connected printer is automatically configured, but not so on Fedora 15 KDE and the other Fedora 15 Spins that I have reviewed. I am yet to review Fedora 15, the main Fedora 15 version, but judging from how a connected printer is configured on Fedora 14, I do not think it will be anything like the situation on these Spins.

        • An In-Depth Look at Fedora 15

          If you fancy a distro that strives for stability and giving you the best cutting-edge software and tools Linux has to offer, Fedora is well worth a test.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian moves to LibreOffice

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical Alienates Their Major Asset.

            Canonical beat the odds with Ubuntu. The fan-base became so large, so fast that Universal Awareness of Ubuntu can be credited to a simple grass-roots effort that expanded across the globe.

            It wasn’t television or radio advertising.

            It wasn’t billboards.

            It was good old fashioned proselytizing.

            Gimmee that old-time religion any day.

            And if you take some time to really look back at the process, many of us would admit it was a thing of beauty…almost a force of nature.

          • [Ubuntu 11.10 Updates] New Window Auto Maximize Option in CCSM
          • Ubuntu Certification: What components do we test?

            Certification is a generic level of functionality to be expected for hardware running on an Ubuntu Release. Part of the challenge is to identify what hardware components should be included in the test.

          • Ubuntu One: A long way to go!
          • Full Circle #50 – the half-centenary issue!

            This month:

            * Command and Conquer.
            * How-To : Program in Python – Part 24, LibreOffice – Part 5, Ubuntu Development – Part 2, and Use KDE (4.6).
            * Linux Lab – Gnome Shell -vs- Unity.
            * Review – PAM Facial Recognition.
            * Top 5 – USB Installers.
            * I Think – Should Ubuntu keep it’s current schedule, or switch to a rolling release?
            plus: Ubuntu Games, My Story, and much much more!

          • Top 10 Ubuntu 11.04 Unity Panel Applets

            The following article will list some of the most important panel applets, also called indicators, for Ubuntu 11.04′s Unity interface.

            The Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system introduced a different user interface, designed by Canonical, called Unity. The default indicators are nice, but many people complained that they miss their usual applets on the panel.

          • Ubuntu is…
          • Distro Review: Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

            It’s been a very long time since I did an in-depth distro review here, but today I’m going to write about my experiences of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. I’ve been running it as my main desktop for about a month. The last version I properly reviewed was Ubuntu 9.10 and though I’ve used the other releases in the meantime, there’s still a lot of changes to talk about with Natty. Most notably the complete shift to the new Unity interface which feels very different to Gnome. I’d heard a lot about it but how would I fare? Let’s find out…

            [...]

            I know this reads a lot like a review of just Unity and not Ubuntu, but in this release Unity really is the story.

          • Unity and Gnome 3: What is good and what is evil?

            With two recent releases of Linux operating systems, Ubuntu and Fedora, new age of desktop environments began.
            These two operating systems bring you new user interfaces: Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 and GNOME 3 in Fedora.
            Are these new interfaces good or evil for Linux community? Let’s try to analyse.

          • Interesting Ubuntu Unity Concept with Android-esque Trash Icon Gesture

            We have featured a number of really good Ubuntu Unity concepts before, here is another one which supposedly deals with the trash button in Unity more efficiently.

          • Why I Use Linux Ubuntu

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • ARM-Based Notebooks Are On The Way
    • nD, New $10 Gaming Handheld Device Claimed to be more Powerful than Nintendo DS, Runs Custom Embedded Linux Firmware

      nD is a new indie handheld gaming device currently in prototyping phase. nD is a brainchild of Robert Pelloni, creator of Bob’s Game. Many of you who follow Nintendo DS news will be familiar with Bob’s game and Robert as there has been quite a bit of history between him and Nintendo. I won’t get into details about this but you can just search for Bob’s Game on the web or hit Wikipedia for more info.

    • Phones

      • Nokia’s new MeeGo-based N9 is set up for failure

        Nokia has finally announced the long-anticipated N9 handset, the culmination of Nokia’s five-step plan to deliver a mainstream Linux-based smartphone. The N9 is an impressively engineered device that is matched with a sophisticated touch-oriented interface and a powerful software stack with open source underpinnings. It’s a worthy successor of the developer-centric N900, but it provides a user experience that is tailored for a mainstream audience.

      • Meego/Harmattan – A willfully misunderstood platform.

        Huzzah! The Nokia N9 has finally arrived in a genuinely consumer-oriented package. Granted, it is not step-five-of-five given the February 11th announcement to abandon Meego as Nokia’s smartphone future, but it is getting rave reviews even from the likes of engadget – usually the first to take a pop at Nokia’s hubris in pursuing alternatives to Android/Apple.

      • Android

        • FUD Flows Freely Against FLOSS

          In fact, sales of Android tablets have been quite good and share of page views from Android tablets are nearly on par with iPads. iPad + iPhone gets 3.93% of page views on Wikipedia compared to 1.19% for Android. Surely Lawrence Latif and others should know that iTunes soaks up lots of megabytes and megabytes do not trounce page-views as usage. In fact, Gartner shows Android is expected to have a 20% share of tablets shipped in 2011, up from 14% in 2010. They project Android will catch iOS after 2015. I think Gartner is way off on that. The Android tablets released lately are spectacular compared to iPad 1 or 2 and the Android tablets produced in 2010. The Android tablets are being widely promoted by heavy hitters and many smaller operations. The exposure of Android tablets to the market is huge. Android tablets are not being “trounced”.

        • In a first, a Nook beats the Kindle in our e-book reader Ratings

          The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch Reader is more than merely a worthy competitor to the Kindle, as I wrote when I saw the e-book reader demonstrated late last month. Now that we’ve tested the device in our labs, it actually scores a few points above the Kindle in our tests. [To clarify: The Nook scores 1 point above the Kindle below it in the 6-to-7-inch category. But it ranges from 4 to 5 points higher than other Kindles.]

          That marks the first time since the Kindle launched that Amazon’s e-book reader hasn’t been the top-scoring model in our Ratings (available to subscribers). It also continues the steady improvement in Barnes & Noble’s e-book devices since the company rushed out a glitchy first version of the Nook during the holiday season of 2009.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Free OpenShot Video Editor is Tremendous

    OpenShot is a free, simple-to-use, feature-rich video editor for Linux. The brainchild of programmer Jonathan Thomas, OpenShot has garnered a large and enthusiastic following for many reasons, one being Thomas’s responsiveness to user feedback. To quickly see the best uses of OpenShot, check out the beautifully created music videos of Verity and Gersom de Koning-Tan, from the Netherlands. Several of their videos have had more than one thousand video views. These videos have much going for them, not least their musicality and playfulness.

  • The Thecus® Open Source Module Competition Begins!

    Thecus is opening the floodgates for new open source modules. With the release of the Thecus software development kit (SDK), third-party developers and adventurous users can get involved in writing their own modules to fit even the most specific needs. This competition is the beginning of building a vibrant Thecus developer community with open dialogue, improved support, and an unlimited range of features that can only be supported by a grassroots society. Everyone will be able to get involved: commercial developers, computer savvy techies, and even basic home users.

  • Open source music identification technology launched

    A digital company called The Echo Nest has launched a Shazam-style technology that is open source, and can therefore be used by any developers wanting to incorporate audio-based music identification into their product. There’s a tie up with 7Digital, which means the Echoprint system can identify the millions of tracks in their digital catalogue. As an open source technology it’s hoped that catalogue of identifiable tracks will grow as other developers use it.

  • Web Browsers

    • Web Browser Battle Royale turns Dirty

      Tweet 2

      The all-out web browser brawl has competitors throwing dirty punches in a below-the-belt free-for-all fight for market share.

    • Chrome

      • Chrome’s security overhaul begins with PDF plug-in

        Google has begun work on the first step of rebuilding Chrome from the inside out on a more secure foundation called Native Client, CNET has learned.

        That first step is the built-in Chrome module used to let Google’s browser read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Linus Upson, vice president of engineering for the Chrome team, revealed the plan in May at the Google I/O conference, and now evidence is emerging that the first step is under way.

        References to the Native Client version of the PDF extension have begun cropping up on the Native Client’s bug-tracking database. Programmers are encountering problems with scrollbar rendering, Gmail integration, loading PDF files, and displaying URLs when the mouse pointer hovers over a link

      • Exploring Art with Chrome Store

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla FireFox 5 vs Google Chrome 12 #Benchmark

        I have been using Mozilla Firefox 5 since Mozilla developer announced it, firstly when I decide to add this post I was not going to compare between Mozilla Firefox 5 and Google Chrome 12, just to check Firefox 5 enhancements. But when I used couple benchmarks for checking HTML 5, JavaScript, and CSS 3, didn’t expect this result.

      • 10 must-have Firefox extensions
      • Should Mozilla Ditch The Rapid Release Cycle Again?

        Mozilla has successfully released its first rapid release cycle version of Firefox. While Mozilla is proud, there has been criticism that the new version number cannot be justified given the new features in Firefox 5. The transition also screwed corporate users and there is mounting disapproval close to Mozilla that the current product plan is beneficial to Firefox. Should Mozilla roll back its release strategy?

      • Firefox Drops URL Prefix

  • Business

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • [Jimmy Wales:] Free Knowledge requires Free Software and Free File Formats

      People sometimes ask me why I’m so adamant that Wikipedia must always use free software, even when in some cases it might be the case that proprietary software might be more convenient or better suited for some particular need that we have.

      After all, the argument goes, our primary mission is to produce free knowledge, not to promote free software, and whlie we might prefer free software on practical grounds (since it is generally best of breed for webserving applications), we should not be sticklers about it.

      I believe this argument is seriously mistaken, and not on merely practical grounds, but on grounds of principle. Free knowledge requires free software. It is a conceptual error to think about our mission as being somehow separate from that.

    • Open Data

      • Big data and open source unlock genetic secrets

        The world is experiencing an unprecedented data deluge, a reality that my colleague Edd Dumbill described as another “industrial revolution” at February’s Strata Conference. Many sectors of the global economy are waking up to the need to use data as a strategic resource, whether in media, medicine, or moving trucks. Open data has been a major focus of Gov 2.0, as federal and state governments move forward with creating new online platforms for open government data.

        The explosion of data requires new tools and management strategies. These new approaches include more than technical evolution, as a recent conversation with Charlie Quinn, director of data integration technologies at the Benaroya Research Institute, revealed: they involve cultural changes that create greater value by sharing data between institutions. In Quinn’s field, genomics, big data is far from a buzzword, with scanned sequences now rating on the terabyte scale.

  • Programming

    • Perl, Perl 5, Perl 6, and Names

      The benefit to Perl 6 is obvious, in the same way that applying liberal amounts of lubricant to a mechanical joint producing an extended and incessant whining sound is an obvious solution.

Leftovers

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • ‘You can’t stay at home’: G20 reflections and Ford

      Following the demonstration, we went to lunch up the street, and over drinks B. and I talked about the police fear-mongering that had gone on in the past few months. We wondered whether that would dramatically reduce the number of people on the streets in the week to come. I recall B. saying that despite the police media spin (remember the talk about the sound cannons, the special laws, the constant talk about the violence to come), people knew that the decisions made at these meetings would impact their lives and they would resist it.

  • Finance

    • Stop Oil Speculation Now

      he increased cost of oil and gasoline is damaging the American economy and is causing severe economic pain to millions of people, especially in rural America, who often have to drive long distances to work. Many workers are already seeing stagnant or declining wages and high gas prices are just taking another bite out of their paychecks.

      People in Vermont and across the country are also worried about the high price of heating oil for the coming winter.

      The price of oil today, while declining somewhat in recent weeks, was still over $95 a barrel today. That’s about $30 higher than it was two years ago.

    • JPMorgan Settlement With SEC Recalls Case Against Goldman Sachs

      JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s deal to settle a U.S. regulator’s claims that the bank misled buyers of mortgage-linked securities before the housing market collapsed echoed a case brought last year against Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

      JPMorgan agreed to pay $153.6 million to end a Securities and Exchange Commission suit. The SEC alleged that the New York- based bank failed to tell investors in 2007 that a hedge fund helped pick, and bet against, underlying securities in the collateralized debt obligation they purchased. In July, Goldman Sachs paid a record $550 million for failing to inform clients in 2007 that it allowed a hedge fund that also bet against housing to help formulate the CDOs.

    • Gensler Evolving in Derivatives War Sees No Deed Go Unpunished

      Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, took his seat before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on May 4 to make his case for a $106 million budget increase.

      Without the money, Gensler said, his agency wouldn’t be able to perform its new job of policing roughly $300 trillion in U.S. over-the-counter derivatives, a market that includes the credit-default swaps that helped push the U.S. economy into the worst recession in 70 years, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August issue.

  • DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article Is Fair Use

        A federal judge ruled Monday that publishing an entire article without the rights holder’s authorization was a fair use of the work, in yet another blow to newspaper copyright troll Righthaven.

        It’s not often that republishing an entire work without permission is deemed fair use. Fair use is an infringement defense when the defendant reproduced a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, commentary, teaching and research. The defense is analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

Clip of the Day

Fedora 14 vs Ubuntu 10.10: Death Match


Credit: TinyOgg

06.25.11

Links 25/6/2011: More Linux in Airlines, More Patent News

Posted in News Roundup at 11:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Is VDI Really an Option?

    For those of you who’ve followed along on my virtualization posts, you’ve noticed that I’m a fan of certain types of virtual desktop infrastructure implementations. This was not always the case. In fact, if you Google my name and VDI, you’ll find that for most of the past three years, I’ve come out strongly against it. So, you’re probably asking, “Why the change of heart?” The answer is simple, it’s a matter of timing and technology. VDI really was not an option before but it is now.

  • Wintel, Death by a Thousand Budget Cuts

    So, goodbye, Wintel. We knew thee well. Hello, Apple and Linux.

  • Desktop

    • Linux is all growed up now

      A weird little meme is squiggling through the Internet this week, one which I feel obligated to squash because it’s just plain wrong.

      It’s this notion that somehow Ubuntu is losing its popularity because it’s slipped in the rankings on DistroWatch. That seems just about the silliest thing I have read in a while.

      First, there’s the whole notion of how the rankings on DistroWatch work. They don’t count downloads or boxes: they count page hits for each distro’s page on the DistroWatch site. “Only one hit per IP address per day is counted,” the site explains.

      [...]

      This is where Linux is: thousands of developers and contributors have poured their skills and hearts into creating this operating system, and sometimes it’s hard not to fall into the old habits from the days Linux is young. But to help Linux, we have to look towards a new future, one where the desktop may not be the primary platform, but one where Linux may yet be the most important operating system the world will ever use.

  • Server

    • Supercomputing Freakonomics – Finding Meaning Beyond the Headlines

      Twice a year, the Top500 Project publishes its list of the fastest supercomputers in the world. In the last announcement, we continue to see Linux dominating the list. This is nothing new since Linux has been dominating since the mid-2000s. In fact, Linux share in supercomputing looks a lot like Microsoft’s historical share of the desktop market. I thought it would be interesting to take a step back and look at the performance capability of these computers as a whole and also how the rise of Linux is mirroring the geographical expansion of supercomputers.

      Everybody tends to watch the number of Linux systems on the top500, but there’s a fascinating story being told by the Rmax performance numbers (Rmax is the maximum performance of a computer (measured in Gflop/s) achieved in the HPL benchmark. In many ways, this is a much more enlightening statistic, because it shows us the overall nature of performance on this list, instead of just focusing on individual computers. (This time around, five Linux systems were actually bumped off the bottom of the list, even though Linux’s *total* computing power grew by 38%.)

  • Applications

    • Proprietary

      • Linux Web Conferencing Plugin by Banckle Online Meeting

        After supporting online meeting on Windows and MAC, Banckle Online Meeting now allows you to participate and collaborate in web conferencing, eLearning and webinar activities on Linux as well. It can work on both 32-bit and 64-bit machines.

    • Games

      • Steel Storm: Burning Retribution Summer Special

        Alexander Zubov from Kot-In-Action the developers of the Steel-Storm games loves the GNU/Linux users and want as many of them (us) to buy his game.
        But he is very disappointed from the sales, only 3% of the consumers are GNU/Linux users.

      • Quake Turns 15, Frag On!

        Somehow many years ago I had gotten hold of a Linux version, perhaps it was distributed by Loki.

  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3 vs. Unity: A Schism in the Making?

        Both GNOME and KDE recently underwent massive redesigns. GNOME 2 morphed into version 3.0 with a radically different look and feel. KDE 4 is also graphically much different from the KDE 3 lineage. Meanwhile, Ubuntu has added Unity to the mix. The future of all will depend on ease-of-use perceptions and end-user hardware.

  • Distributions

    • Musix in the air

      Linux world is huge. Seems like there are more different distributions then stars in Debian galaxy. Some of them are generic, some of them are not. I have already made couple of reviews of Linux-based Operating System specifically created for creative people. They are brothers in blood: Dynebolic and Puredyne. It would be incomplete set if I just stopped at number 2. Number 3 is much more appalling. That’s why today’s review will be also dedicated to creative Linux.
      This Tux was born far-far away from many of you: in country of football, beef and tango. Do you know which country I mean? Yes, that is Argentina.

    • Review: Porteus 1.0

      Considering that I reviewed Zenwalk 7.0 not too long ago, I must be going on a Slackware-derived binge or something. Yes, both Zenwalk and Porteus are based on Slackware. Maybe my subconscious is trying to make up for the terrible review (not my assessment of Slackware, but my skill level and writing in that post) of Slackware 13.1. Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, Porteus 1.0 came out yesterday, so I decided to review it.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Gentoo Family

      • A Quick Look at Sabayon 6

        Today, it’s not difficult to find a ‘great’ distro, one that makes it easy to get up and running with a fully functional and robust desktop, fast. Even just five years ago, though, finding a ‘do it all’ distro was a little more difficult, and it was for that reason that I found myself loving Sabayon Linux (pronounced Sah-by-yon (silent ‘n’)). Despite being built on an intermediate distro, Gentoo, it made things easy on the layman user – and I know this to be true as I’ve had many Linux novice friends use it and enjoy it.

        [...]

        Sabayon 6 was my first foray into testing out the Entropy package manager though, and I do have to say that its command-line component, equo, is quite nice.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat posts bumper financial figures, touts Linux popularity

        Whitehurst’s comments about cloud deployments generally using open source have been echoed by Canonical, which claims that Ubuntu is the most popular operating system installed on Amazon’s EC2 cloud service.

      • Dell, dozens of other companies, join Red Hat’s fight against VMware

        Fresh off the glow of its first quarter earnings showing double-digit growth, Red HatbizWatch Red Hat Latest from The Business Journals Atlanta in running for 1,000 Time Warner jobsRed Hat CEO: Sales to triple to BRed Hat beats earnings estimates to start off the year Follow this company Inc. announced on Thursday that 65 new companies, including Dell Inc.bizWatch Dell Inc. Latest from The Business Journals DBJ Tech Watch for Friday 6/24: News of Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Google and moreDell joins alliance to compete with VMwarebizWatch VMware Latest from The Business Journals DBJ Tech Watch for Friday 6/24: News of Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, Google and moreDell joins alliance to compete with VMwareTerremark, Verizon to integrate services Follow this company Michael Dell to bid .45M for Seattle TV station Follow this company (NasdaqGS: DELL), have joined the Open Virtualization Alliance.

        The alliance, established a month ago, is a consortium of tech companies in favor of an open virtualization technology — which is used to move systems to cloud computing. Red Hat, the Raleigh-based open source company, is a co-founder of the alliance along with IBMbizWatch IBM Latest from The Business Journals Federal Contracts: Big Wins for June 23, 2011Meet the Young and the BoldSAS links with Japan’s Fujitsu to open up revenue stream Follow this company (NYSE: IBM), Intel Corp.bizWatch Intel Corp. Latest from The Business Journals Intel plays role in Obama manufacturing initiativeTop 7 Bay Area Patent Recipients – No. 1Feds OK Intel, Rockstar bids on Nortel patents Follow this company (Nasdaq: INTC) and Hewlett-Packard CobizWatch Hewlett-Packard Co Latest from The Business Journals Toolbox: Week of June 24, 2011Oracle’s Safra Catz: Growth ‘with almost no help from acquisitions’Terremark, Verizon to integrate services Follow this company . (NYSE: HPQ).

      • Convirture Joins Open Source Virtualization Alliance
      • $3 billion in sales is Red Hat goal

        Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has set an ambitious new sales target for the company: Tripling its annual sales to $3 billion in five years.

      • JBoss Application Server 7 to ship in July

        As part of Red Hat’s wide ranging cloud briefing today, its middleware division announced that JBoss Application Server 7 will be delivered in July.

        Execs provided a brief preview of the forthcoming application server, which will incorporate a full implementation of EE 6, including support for web profiles, a tenfold improvement in startup time, enhancements in operational management and ease-of-use in management, monitoring and configuration.

      • Red Hat (RHT) Earnings Estimates Increased by UBS AG (UBS) Analysts

    • Debian Family

      • People behind Debian: Sam Hartman, Kerberos package maintainer

        Sam Hartman is a Debian developer since 2000. He has never taken any sort of official role within Debian (that is besides package maintainer), yet I know him for his very thoughtful contributions to discussions both on mailing lists and IRL during Debconf.

        Until I met him at Debconf, I didn’t know that he was blind, and the first reaction was to be impressed because it must be some tremendous effort to read the volume of information that Debian generates on mailing lists. In truth he’s at ease with his computer much like I am although he uses it in a completely different way. Read on to learn more, my questions are in bold, the rest is by Sam.

      • Debian Project News – June 24th, 2011

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Synaptic Removed From Ubuntu 11.10, Deja Dup Added As Default [Oneiric Updates]

            This was an expected move but it’s still a bit weird because there are quite a few features available in Synaptic which are still missing in Ubuntu Software Center, like upgrade/downgrade functionality, lock packages to the current version and so on. But of course, there are 4 months till Ubuntu 11.10 is released so Ubuntu Software Center might get some (or all) of these missing features.

          • Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal review

            Ubuntu 11.04 – codenamed Natty Narwhal – sports a new graphical user interface. This popular Linux distribution’s interface is now an opinion divider but worth investigating to see how the free OS compares to Windows and Mac operating systems.

            [...]

            the classic Ubuntu is readily accessible and more polished than ever.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Xubuntu 11.04 Review

              The default file manager for Xubuntu is Thunar 1.2 which has seen many great improvements recently. The default Thunar interface is quite typical for standard file managers. The left side of the main Thunar window is the shortcuts panel. New items can be dragged into the shortcut panel at any time. The right side of the mian window is where files and folders will be displayed. Above that is a path bar and a menu bar where you can find other ways of interacting with Thunar. Thunar now has improved support for connecting to external devices or networks. Thunar is also lightweight and very fast.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Does MeeGo stand a chance against iOS/Android?

        Is it even fair to pit MeeGo against the market that iOS and Android rule at the moment, some may ask. But, since it is here now, the new kid in town will have to face the music from its other big brothers who rule the locality at the moment.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Airlines To Use Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 For In-Flight Entertainment

        Soon the premium class passengers of the American Airlines will experience the magic of Android powered tablets on their journey. Samsung and American Airlines announced they will provide Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1 to travellers in seated in premium cabins for a select number of transcontinental and international flights.

        American Airlines, a founding member of the oneworld Alliance, plans to deploy 6,000 of the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices onboard select flights beginning later this year.

      • Why the Linux netbook crashed and burned

        This was always Microsoft’s plan since they first were cold-cocked by the sudden explosion of customer interest in netbooks. When netbooks first came along, they almost all ran Linux. Microsoft, which was then stuck with the resource pig known as Windows Vista, simply couldn’t compete. So, reluctantly, Microsoft gave Windows XP Home a new lease on life and sold it below cost to OEMs to kill the Linux desktop on netbooks.

        They were successful. Mind you, the last thing Microsoft wanted was for people to keep using XP. They wanted, oh how they wanted, users to turn to Vista. But, they also didn’t want to turn over the low-end to Linux. So, instead they dumped XP Home to OEMs at below cost to chase Linux off netboooks. It worked.

        The way things were going to go was clear in June 2009 when, I kid you not, Asus’ chairman, Jonney Shih, after sharing a news conference stage with Microsoft corporate VP, OEM Division, Steven Guggenheimer, apologized for showing an Androd-Linux Eee netbook the previous day.

        Mission accomplished, Microsoft finally shut down the XP production line on netbooks on October 22nd, 2010. Today, you can still get XP via the downgrade route from some versions of Windows 7, but you can’t do it for netbooks.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

  • Business

    • Pentaho 4 Improves User-Driven Business Intelligence

      Business intelligence (BI) software is all about deriving value from data. It’s a goal that commercial open source BI vendor Pentaho is aiming to expand upon with the Pentaho BI 4 Enterprise Edition release this week.

      The Pentatho BI 4 release includes new tools like an enhanced visual interface and report designer that are intended to help make it easier for users to fully leverage the power of BI.

  • BSD

    • VirtualBSD review – Sneak a peak at FreeBSD

      FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system, designed to be super stable and super secure. As such, it is probably not the simplest one to tame and run on a daily basis. Unfortunately, reliability and robustness do not always fully align with the mass-usage model of friendliness.

      [...]

      While the virtual machine test is far from being a real-life example of how simple or difficult or well-integrated a desktop is, VirtualBSD is a pleasant, refreshing diversion from the mainstream of free operating systems. It is an excellent technology demonstrator. The appliance testdrive proves that BSD is not a monster. Far from it; it’s a witty, charming, highly useful platform that anyone could use.

      Even if you never intend on using BSD on your machine as the primary desktop, VirtualBSD could shatter some of your fears and misconceptions about the dreadful UNIX. It may not eclipse the Linux just yet, and probably never will, and it does not have to. What it can do is become another alternative should you need it, should you seek it. Overall, VirtualBSD delivers a handsome punch of good quality in all aspects of the desktop usage, aesthetics, availability of programs, codecs, everything. Quite a surprise and a breath of fresh air.

      Looking back at my flirtations with the BSD family, things are getting better, significantly. The critical turning point is not there yet, but in time, this operating system might stir the flames of competition in the software world. For the time being, you have the perfect appliance to play with and sharpen your UNIX skills.

  • Licensing

    • Berlin GPL case: no decision after oral hearing

      AVM Computersystems, a manufacturer of DSL routers including the popular FRITZBox, is trying to stop Cybits, a maker of web-filtering software, from changing the code which is present in the firmware of its routers.

      The code comes partly from the Linux kernel; given this, the terms of the GPL would extend to the entire codebase giving users the freedom to modify it and use the changed version if they so wished.

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Bitcoin – I Hardly Knew Ya

      I first heard of Bitcoin when the Free Software Foundation announced they would start accepting it for donations. Before long another story about Bitcoin appeared in my news feeds. Then another. And another. Then the new currency got a black eye, and finally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stopped accepting donations of it. You know something is on very shaky ground when a non-profit will no longer accept donations of it.

      Bitcoin began life just two short years ago as what some may characterize as an experiment in a new currency. It was to be one that wasn’t tied to any country currency and demonstrated the characteristics of rising or decreasing in value somewhat like a stock on an exchange. Perhaps the best advantage of using Bitcoin currency was the ability to conduct purchases anonymously.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Reader’s Picks

  • Microsoft’s Azure service is a roach motel.

    Getting your data in costs nothing. But you’ll need some cash to get it off.

    As is the case with most things Microsoft, data goes in but it won’t come out.

  • Hardware

    • Cheap instruments promise to be a game changer for environmental monitoring

      Society is on the cusp of major advances in exposure science. These advances will have the effect of generating large amounts of information about what chemicals we are all exposed to (and what gets into our bodies), democratizing the collection and availability of that information, driving improvements in chemical toxicity testing and changing regulatory policy.

      A few years ago, monitoring equipment was labeled “terrorist gear” and confiscated by the US DHS.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Anti-Trust

    • Microsoft claims DMCA gives it the right to kill your hardware.

      At issue is Microsoft’s 2009 remote disabling of Datel memory cards, which prompted an antitrust lawsuit that lives on today-litigation that has morphed into the latest test of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

      The DMCA is an injustice because it says that you can’t make your hardware work the way you want it to or tell your neighbors the same. Vista era hardware, particularly monitors, come with keys that can be remotely revoked. This case would extent the DMCA to replacement parts, something that was denied to Lexmark when they tried to block ink cartridge makers by courts instead of software and legitimize behavior that’s simply anti-competitive. ACTA would be even worse.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Internet Innovation Alliance an ATT front group

      the chair of the IIA is in reality working for AT&T. If you look a little deeper at the alliance’s Website, you’ll find that AT&T is also a major sponsor of the supposedly independent IIA

  • Censorship

  • Privacy

    • Facebook Archiving

      [hiring managers are looking to Facebook to find dirt on prospective employees] the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Social Intelligence Corp. has been given the legal thumbs up to archive seven years worth of your Facebook posts. These archives will be used as part of their background checking service for job applicants

      The author mentions Facebook’s privacy settings but these are changed at whim by the company and the founder called users, “dumb f***s” for trusting him. Betraying users is the company’s business model.

    • Canadian Spy Law Fast Tracked

      Proposed “Lawful Access” bills would require telecom providers in Canada to hand over personal information to authorities without a warrant or judicial oversight, says OpenMedia.ca. The bills go beyond violating the civil liberties of Canadians, says OpenMedia.ca – it will also hurt their pocketbooks.

  • Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Clip of the Day

Freescale i.MX 6 Quad-core reference design at FTF 2011


Credit: TinyOgg

06.24.11

Links 24/6/2011: Linux 3.0 is Fast, Lots of Android 3.0

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

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Kernel Space

    • Re: [GIT PULL] nsfd fixes

      Eric, stop making up random letter combinations that make sense to NOBODY but you. Ok?

      If you can’t be bothered to write a few more letters and make things readable, why would you expect anybody else to bother spending the time looking at your emails?

      Linus

    • Re: Linux 3.0-rc4

      3.0 will still be noticeably faster than 2.6.39 due to the other changes made (ie the read-ahead), so yes, the regression itself is
      fixed.

    • Linux Filesystems LOC

      The XFS filesystem has taken a beating for being a big, complicated, foreign filesystem since it’s introduction, and there is no doubt that there is a fair bit of code in there. But an interesting thing happened on the way to the Linux Kernel v3.0.0 – XFS developers have steadily reduced lines of code, while other up and coming filesystems such as Ext4 and BTRFS are steadily growing in LOC and complexity. And XFS has been under constant improvement at the same time as well.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Google’s Into Intel Gallium3D For Chromium OS?

        The open-source developers working on the drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon and NVIDIA (via the Nouveau project) graphics hardware have tossed all their weight behind the Gallium3D driver architecture. The Gallium3D drivers have surpassed the “classic” Mesa DRI drivers in terms of capabilities, performance, and stability. The only strong holdout to Gallium3D has been Intel since they aren’t convinced that it’s the appropriate choice and they aren’t interested in overhauling their Linux driver stack once more with the large upfront investment that’s required in rewriting their user-space 3D driver in moving from classic Mesa to Gallium3D.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Plasma Active Updates

        During the past weeks, we’ve been kind of silent around Plasma Active. This doesn’t mean we’ve just been sitting on our lazy bums, but that we’ve poured a lot of work into various aspects of the Plasma Active user experience. Let me details these changes to give you some idea of where we are. But first off, …

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • Arch Package Visualization

      Nothing like seeing a reddit post, saying you’ll spend a few minutes looking into something, and then realizing you spent multiple hours on it. Today that time sink was Gephi, a pretty cool desktop application for generating graphs from a variety of data sources. It is available in the AUR if you are an Arch Linux user.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • New clothes for Mageia: preview of ARM port is now available

        We spoke about this some weeks ago, it’s now done! Thanks to Arnaud Patard (aka rtp) the Mageia ARM port is available for a first preview. The port’s code name is “arm eabi”, as a future port should be “arm eabihf”. It will use the hard float feature of Cortex family processors.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat: Cloud, Virtualization Provide Path to $1 Billion

        How serious is Red Hat about pushing beyond Linux? Take a look at Red Hat’s latest quarterly results, disclosed yesterday, and a cloud seminar that’s set for today. You’ll get a feel for how the open source company is striving to reinvent its business amid a march toward $1 billion in annual revenues.

      • Open Virtualization Alliance gains 65 new members

        American Linux distributor Red Hat has announced that the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) has gained 65 new members, a nearly ten-fold increase in membership since it was first established last month. Brocade, Dell, EnterpriseDB, Fujitsu Frontech, FusionIO, Gluster, Groundwork Open Source, MontaVista Software, Univention and Vyatta, for example, are among the group’s new members.

    • Debian Family

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia: no luck with Linux

        For years, Nokia had been working on Linux as a future operating system for its smartphones and mobile devices. Then, the firm did an about-face and chose Windows Phone. Having had no luck with the penguin, the recent release of the N9 smartphone marks the end of an era.

        In 2005, Nokia was a pioneer when it produced the 770 Internet Tablet: the first mobile device in its regular product portfolio with a Linux operating system. The unit was a small 5.5 by 3.1 inch tablet computer that would just fit into your trouser pocket; the touchscreen had a sufficiently large diagonal of just over four inches, with a resolution of 800 by 480 – quite high at the time. Linux developers who bought the 770 Internet Tablet, which normally cost €350, received a €250 discount with no strings attached.

      • Android

        • Archos tablets run Android 3.1 on 1.5GHz OMAP4

          Archos announced two high-end Android 3.1 tablets that use Texas Instruments dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP4 processors. The eight-inch Archos 80 G9 and 10.1-inch Archos 101 G9 are both offered with a 250GB hard disk drive option, available 3G, as well as standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and HDMI.

        • Google TV 2.0′s ‘Fishtank’ dev system surfaces

          Google has selectively released Google TV 2.0 “Fishtank” beta code based on Android 3.1, featuring the ability to run an Android app and stream TV at the same time, says a Geek.com report. The company is said to have sent out a Fishtank developer’s system to about 50 developers, while another report says Logitech will offer a 2.0-based system in late summer.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • More Android 3.2 and Amazon tablet details emerge

        More details have surfaced about Android 3.2, including support for seven-inch screens and Qualcomm processors. The release may appear on Amazon.com’s Android tablets, which are rumored to be arriving in August bearing Texas Instruments processors and could hasten the fall of the monochrome Kindle.

        Google and its Android tablet vendor partners face a double-edged sword in their epic struggle against the almighty Apple iPad. Android 2.x is both functionally and aesthetically lacking on larger screens, especially beyond seven inches. Meanwhile, Android 3.0 solves this problem and introduces some cool features not found on the iPad, but is widely criticized for being buggy and complex.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Eclipse Indigo Releases 62 Open Source Projects

    The Eclipse Indigo release train is now officially available, delivering 62 projects covering 46 million lines of code. According to Eclipse, there were 408 developers and 49 organizations that contributed code and collaborated for the Indigo release.

    “We’re continuing to refine the release process and it’s already quite scalable,” Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, told InternetNews.com. “Even though we’re getting more and more projects and code, we’re finding that we’re able to leverage our history in moving the release train forward each year.”

    Milinkovich noted that from a Java developer perspective the Indigo release offers a number of interesting new projects. One of them is the WindowBuilder GUI project, which just became part of Eclipse this year. Google donated the technology to Eclipse in December of 2010, after first acquiring the technology from developer tools vendor Instantiations in August of 2010.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Building Open-Source Video Chatting Software into Chrome

        In a clear challenge to Web calling clients like Skype, Google is building its open-source voice and video chatting software into its Chrome browser, according to CNET.

        Google acquired the open-source technology, known as WebRTC, last year when it bought out VoIP software provider Global IP Solutions. The search engine giant is now looking to hand the royalty-free software over to developers for browser-based applications.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla delivers Firefox 5 | Moves to more frequent release cycles

        Three months ago, when we saw the Firefox 4 release, there was a hell lot of buzz surrounding it, and the news trended in Twitter for hours as people felt that, it had been quite a while since they got a new Firefox, unlike the case with Chrome(the direct competitor). Some may admit that, a huge release with a lot of new features is better than frequent releases with not so important features!

  • CMS

    • Drupal Gets Social Software Facelift

      Acquia’s Commons 2.0 community management tool provides Facebook-style activity feeds with like and share buttons for the open source content management system.

    • WordPress Plugins for Security & Robustness

      Yesterday I wrote about how WordPress has evolved into a first rate platform that can be easily customized. One of the ways that WordPress is customized to meet the unique needs of a site is through the use of plugins that add functionality. Most of these functions are visual and offer visitors a richer experience while on your site. Others are never even seen by the visitor and only indirectly affect his or her experience.

  • BSD

    • BatteryMonitor supports NetBSD

      BatteryMonitor for GNUstep now has support for NetBSD acpi too now! Support languished because decent acpi support in NetBSD is relatively recent and reading it requires checking a property list (which is of course more complex, but at least consistent and clean compared to the maze of files linux provides). To manipulate it libprop sports handy functions, yet I always had some problems here and there, until I realized something very cool. Property lists are familiar to GNUstep and Cocoa users.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open source & Bristol City Council – a brief(ish) round-up

      As one of the country’s leading open source outfits had abandoned Bristol, one might begin to question the City Council’s commitment to open source. Indeed, your correspondent, cunningly disguised as a member of the public, emailed council leader Barbara Janke about the council’s commitment to open source, highlighting the reliability, lack of licensing fees and lower support costs of open source. Another point I raised with Barbara Janke was the fate of Cllr Mark Wright, the cabinet member with responsibility for IT in the last council and a firm open source advocate, as he did not feature in the new cabinet after the May 2011 council election.

      Barbara Janke’s reply is reproduced below.

      You are correct that Mark was not re-elected to the Lib Dem cabinet this time. In the current cabinet I have responsibility for ICT in the current cabinet. The commitment to open source remains the same. Mark continues to advise me on this. The council is also heavily engaged with the external digital media and creative sector and this area lies within my area of responsibility.

      So there you have it. Bristol City Council remains committed to open source. Perhaps someone less trusting of the City Council than your ‘umble scribe should file a FoI request to ask the council just how far their commitment stretches.

      As regards the fate of Mark Wright, Mark Ballard of Computer Weekly has done some fine investigatory work and discovered that Wright’s ousting from the cabinet was a result of internal party politics, not part of a conspiracy to do down open source wherever it reared its head in the public sector.

    • Open source vanguard routed in Bristol after political reshuffle

      Bristol City Council’s seven year campaign to use open source software has been sent reeling after the shock departure of two lead architects of its ICT Strategy.

      Councillor Mark Wright, the computer expert who pushed Bristol’s pioneering ICT strategy through the council chamber just last September, was voted out of his post as ICT portfolio holder a month ago, after a private vote of Liberal Democrat members.

  • Licensing

    • Introducing the Compliance Lab’s summer intern

      William Theaker recently started working at the FSF as this summer’s licensing intern. In this post, he writes about what brought him to free software, and the goals for his internship.

      Hi! My name is William Theaker; I’m a college student from Connecticut interested in free software and copyright law. This summer I will be interning with the FSF; I will be working on various free software licensing issues by answering questions about licensing, investigating possible GPL violations, and working on my biggest project this summer, organizing the drafting archives for the GPLv3. My first interaction with free software was when I started using “Linux” in 2003, though I was unaware of the actual origins of the software in my computer. What I referred to as “Linux” is, in fact, GNU/Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system, made useful by the GNU core libraries, shell utilities, and vital system components comprising a full operating system as defined by POSIX.

  • Programming

    • Getting Started with Jenkins for PHP Developers

      The maturing Web development industry is inextricably intertwined with a constant companion: complexity. Gone are the days of assembling a few simple database-backed PHP-driven pages and calling it a website; these days clients expect rich JavaScript-based user interfaces, cloud-backed data stores, and tight integration with third-party APIs. To accommodate such challenges, developers have put a great deal of time and effort into devising tools and techniques which help to identify, track and resolve bugs. One such technique is continuous integration, which facilitates the merging of code changes made by various members of a development team by automating tedious processes such as testing, documentation generation, and deployment.

Leftovers

  • Microsoft BPOS crashes

    The software giant’s cloud computing service went down for over three hours.

  • Hardware

    • AMD, VIA, Nvidia quit benchmark group due to ‘Intel bias’

      AMD has publicly announced it is withdrawing its support from BAPCo, a non-profit consortium which develops and distributes a benchmarking program called SYSmark, refusing to endorse the latest version of the suite because its results are allegedly unrepresentative of the workloads used in everyday computing. The company also believes there’s a bias in favor of Intel.

      The suite uses a number of application-based benchmarks to recreate usage patterns in the areas of office productivity, data/financial analysis, system management, media creation, 3D modeling and web development. Among the applications used in SYSmark 2012 are Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Acrobat, WinZip, Autodesk AutoCAD and 3ds Max, and others. But AMD argues that BAPCo is not taking advantage of GPUs for general purpose computing tasks, despite the fact that many applications support it, and instead solely relies on performance of CPUs.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • Like in Mexico, Parliaments Must Reject ACTA

          Paris, June 23rd, 2011 – The Mexican Senate approved a resolution calling on the government not to sign the anti-counterfeiting agreement ACTA. La Quadrature calls on French and European Members of Parliament to do the same.

Clip of the Day

Radiohead – Paranoid Android: YouTube Artists Mix by OHADI22


Credit: TinyOgg

06.23.11

Links 23/6/2011: Sabayon Linux 6, Eclipse BIRT 3.7, and Blender 2.5 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 6:11 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

    • Google: Chromebooks will succeed where Linux netbooks failed

      Pichai says that Chromebooks are ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with the complications that come with more traditional operating systems.

      [...]

      “We have 160 million users of the Chrome browser and for them, buying a Chromebook would be the most seamless transition ever. If you’re already using Chrome sync, and you log in to a Chromebook and first time, it’s all there.

    • Hey, Where Are All The Clueless Newbs Who Can’t Use A Phone?

      Why is a “command line” on a microwave OK, but not on a computer?

      Why are dashboard indicators OK on a car, but not on a computer?

      Why is it OK to have three remotes with a total of 200 buttons just to watch TV, but if a computer interface has more than two steps to do anything, that’s unacceptable?

      [...]

      Everybody’s too embarrassed to admit that they don’t know how to use a phone, so they MAKE SURE THEY KNOW HOW TO USE A PHONE. Being computer illiterate, however, is trendy and fashionable. It’s considered cute in our society to giggle tee-hee-hee, “I’m a computer-dummy!” But to be a phone dummy? Now you’re ostracized from society, handicapped, crippled, can’t even get a job or a date!

    • Aroint thee, Linux Penguin! Thou Hast Made Me Look like a Fool!

      The moral I learned after my pride was shattered: You don’t have to be a genius anymore to use Linux. Any plain, regular individual may use it provided that he or she remembers it is something different and thus wants to learn about it.

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • The Stomach-Churning Prospect of Installing Linux

      Ninety percent of today’s Linux distributions “can be easily used by just about anyone when properly configured and presented with a couple minutes of explanation to the new user,” wrote Thoughts on Technology blogger and Bodhi Linux lead developer Jeff Hoogland in his post on the site.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Press Release: Sabayon Linux 6 GNOME and KDE

        We’re once again here to announce the immediate availability of Sabayon 6, one of the biggest milestone in our project.
        Letting bleeding edge and reliability to coexist is the most outstanding challenge our users, our team, is faced every day.
        There you have it, shining at full bright, for your home computer, your laptop and your home servers.
        Because we do care about our community, we do listen to our users, we consider them part of the game, we decided to leave GNOME3 out for another, last, release cycle, in order let things to settle down: providing a broken user experience has never been in our plans.

      • Sabayon Linux 6 Released, Looks Better Than Ever

        · Linux kernel 2.6.39.1;
        · X.Org Server 1.10;
        · GNOME 2.32.2;
        · KDE SC 4.6.4;
        · Chromium as default web browser;
        · Native support for Btrfs filesystems;
        · Support for 16:9 and 16:10 widescreen LCD monitors;
        · Brand new and amazing artwork and boot music intro;
        · Improved boot speed;
        · LibreOffice 3.3.3;
        · Entropy 1.0 RC10;

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Profit Jumps 35%

        Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ), the world’s largest seller of Linux software, said Wednesday after the markets closed that its first quarter profit rose 35% from last year, as revenue surged 27% amid strong demand for its products and services.

      • Red Hat Sales to Triple to $3 Billion in Five Years, CEO Whitehurst Says

        Red Hat Inc. (RHT), the largest seller of Linux software, aims to triple sales to $3 billion in five years, helped by the rising popularity of cloud computing, Chief Executive Officer Jim Whitehurst said.

      • Red Hat shows robust growth

        Red Hat shares are likely to rise this morning after its latest quarterly results exceeded expectations and the Linux software company upped its guidance for the year.

        Meanwhile, the Raleigh-based company has narrowed its search for a new headquarters site to “two or three” and expects to make a decision by the end of the summer, Chief Financial Officer Charlie Peters said in an interview.

      • Red Hat: ‘Yes, we’ll break $1 billion this year’

        Red Hat’s top brass talks a good game about being concerned with the global macroeconomic situation, but the truth of the matter is that what Red Hat has is selling despite the economy, or maybe because of it. And all that the world’s largest beneficiary of the open source community needs to do is not screw it up and it will break the $1bn mark this fiscal year.

      • Convirture Joins Open Source Virtualization Alliance
      • Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2.0 Now Available with Expanded Performance, Scalability and Cloud Readiness

        Red Hat Enterprise MRG delivers high-speed/low latency, open-standard application messaging; a deterministic low-latency realtime kernel; and a high-performance computing grid scheduler for distributed workloads and cloud computing. Today’s release of Red Hat Enterprise MRG 2.0 expands upon the Enterprise MRG functionality with the following enhancements…

    • Debian Family

      • If you’re running Iceweasel 4.0.1 from mozilla.debian.net, change your sources to Iceweasel 5.0
      • LibreOffice is now in Debian Squeeze Backports

        But what about Debian Squeeze, the project’s Stable release? Stable Debian releases traditionally don’t get new packages in their core repositories. That means LibreOffice will be included in the next Stable release, the current Testing release (Wheezy). Wheezy will be declared stable sometime in the future. I’d say a year from now.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Verdasys Extends Digital Guardian Linux Support to Ubuntu 10
          • Has Unity Knocked Ubuntu Off Its Pedestal?

            Ubuntu, meanwhile, has now slipped down to third position for the month, marking the first time in a very long time the distribution has held anything but the No. 1 crown.

          • Ubuntu 11.04 explored: a new dawn for Linux?

            …wait till you experience Unity – and there’s a lot more to it than glitter.

          • New Tutorial for Unity Desktop Customization–Worth Looking Into

            Some would argue that Unity doesn’t make things easy, though. At least in terms of desktop customization, Softpedia’s tutorial is worth looking into for this reason. The tutorial walks you through cleaning your desktop, installing the Cairo dock, installing a new GTK2 theme, and making final touch-ups.

            Community outcry against Unity will continue for the next couple of years, but easy-to-follow documentation for it is appearing, and, in the end, it will probably make Ubuntu friendlier for many potential new Linux users. If you are brand new to Ubuntu itself, also check out our guide to free Linux resources.

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Development Update

            *

            Oneiric development is in full swing and with Feature Freeze still 7 weeks away, most of the intrusive changes are landing in the development release as we speak. Alpha 2 will be released in two weeks which should be a great time to check out what’s currently happening. As always: the status overview might give you an idea how each feature is progressing.

            [...]

            In 2004 I had been using Debian for a couple of years already as my exclusive computing experience and enjoyed it very much. Looking back it’s a bit hard to say why I never got involved in Debian immediately.

          • [Ubuntu 11.10 Updates] Synaptic Gone, Welcome Aboard Deja Dup

            Synaptic Package Manager will be no longer shipped as default application as an update today removed it from CD. However, it will be easily installable from repositories.

          • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • 15 Best Android Apps for Travelers Among You

          Google is activating some 400,000 new Android devices every single day now(source) and Android is already the fastest growing and most popular smartphone OS in many parts of the world. In tune with its rising popularity, Android’s applications base is also showing stupendous growth. We have already featured a bunch of must have open source Android applications and now here is a collection of Android apps dedicated to travelers among you.

        • New Xperia phones include fitness model with Ant+ networking

          Sony Ericsson announced two compact Android 2.3 phones, including a 1GHz, 3.0-inch Xperia Active, which offers features such as water resistance and Ant+ wireless networking — aimed at personal fitness and health monitoring.

        • Android market share grows 400%
        • Five Reasons Why Android Can’t Fail!

          I have great respect for SJVN, and I am also a big fan of his for writing sensational headlines. The latest being “Five reasons Android can fail”.

        • US Patent Office Rejects Oracle’s 17 Out Of 21 Android Claims

          Groklaw reports, “In the reexamination of U.S. Patent 6192476 the USPTO has issued an office action in which it rejects 17 of the patent’s 21 claims.”

          The site further writes, “While Oracle has asserted seven different patents in its claims against Google, if this reexamination is exemplary of what Oracle can expect in each of the other reexaminations, Oracle will have a hard time finding claims that it can successfully assert against Google, and there lies Oracles conundrum. Oracle either has to agree with the court’s directive to limit the number of claims it will assert at trial, or it is likely the court will simply stay the trial until the reexaminations are complete.”

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source isn’t an innovation killer

    While open standards give customers options, execs from Dell, VMware and Facebook at GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco Wednesday said that open source wouldn’t be the death of innovation or revenues in cloud software and hardware development. However, businesses that wish to survive will need to provide value over and above the commoditized aspects of open computing platforms.

    [...]

    Unlike proprietary solutions, open source offerings let developers use computing platforms without the fear of being locked in. For them, the advantage isn’t about being free so much as being flexible. “Everyone wants to be in the public cloud, but there are few that want to walk into the deep end and just jump in,” said Derek Collison, CTO and Chief Archictect of VMware’s Cloud Division.

  • The Big Open Source Winner May Be Rackspace

    OpenStack is based on a software project originally begun by NASA, designed to manage its computing needs. Since the project was first announced last July, in order to reduce government expenses and keep the software growing, 77 companies have joined it.

    Why? Ever since Amazon (AMZN) made a success of its EC2 cloud, software companies and hosting providers have been searching for a way to match it.

  • Ridiculous Assertion: Righthaven Ruling Threatens Open Source

    With the recent Righthaven ruling effectively declaring Righthaven’s legal strategy a sham, someone going by the somewhat uncreative name “Plessy Ferguson” sent us the following essay claiming that the ruling is a disaster for open source development.

  • Echo Nest launches open source audio fingerprinting tool

    “Our platform becomes even more powerful for developers with this new addition.”

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

    • Mozilla

      • Brendan Eich hands over responsibility for Mozilla’s JavaScript engine

        In the announcement, Eich describes how he wrote the first prototype for the script language in just 10 days, 16 years ago; at the time, he was practically the only person handling the development. He also discusses some early milestones, including standardisation by Ecma (European Computer Manufacturers Association).

      • Mozilla Firefox, From Darling to Enemy in One Release

        Complaints pretty much have one thing in common: They claim there isn’t enough ‘new and shiny’ things inside FF5 to warrant a major version. This is illogical thinking because major version means NOTHING when it comes to usability of software. I’ve noticed that I can browse and use FF5 just as easily as I could FF4 and FF3 before it…I still type in URL’s and websites display. My plugins all still work. It starts up a bit faster and websites seem to load just a bit faster…which is good. So why all the whining and complaining?

  • Healthcare

    • How open will open-source be?

      Of keen interest regarding the VA’s open-source project is: Will the remodeled VistA remain as open as the current VistA is, or will it become more proprietary, subjecting users to an increasing number of software license fees? To look for answers, I’ve asked the VA to send me a copy of Tiag’s winning bid, but some clues can be found in a 72-page document linked to the contract award notice posted June 20 on the FedBizOps website.

  • Project Releases

    • Eclipse BIRT 3.7 released, now talks Hadoop

      The latest release of Eclipse BIRT, Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, has been made available by the Eclipse Foundation project as part of the Eclipse Indigo release train. The latest version includes a reworked POJO runtime which is easier to integrate into Java EE applications; previously, as BIRT was an Eclipse-based project it relied on OSGi to deploy the report designer and the runtime, but the latter was difficult to configure under Java EE because of OSGi’s classpath handling.

    • Blender 2.5 series update improves stability

      After two months of development, the Blender Foundation and its associated online developer community have announced the arrival of the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series. According to the project’s roadmap, the next stable update to the open source 3D content creation suite, Blender 2.59, is expected to arrive in August, after which development on the 2.6x cycle will begin, targeting new updates every 2 months.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Bristol’s voyage to open source software hits choppy waters

      Sirius’ managing director, Mark Taylor, said his company had been engaged by the council 12 months ago to undertake strategic work prior to the roll out of an open source pilot. However, he says Computacenter unilaterally changed a joint report made by the two companies at the last moment and “we were kicked off the project”.

    • Bristol City Council open source project in turmoil

      Councillor Mark Wright, who pushed through the project in September 2010, was voted out of his post as ICT portfolio holder a month ago, after a private vote of Liberal Democrat members.

      [...]

      The ICT portfolio was passed to Council leader Barbara Janke, who has said she is still committed to Bristol’s open source strategy, which she had backed when Wright put it before the Cabinet as an instrument of economic regeneration and part of Bristol’s “Digital City” campaign.

    • S. Korea pushing to open integrated information center on N. Korea

      South Korea is pushing to build an open source-based center that will consolidate information on North Korea next year, an official said Thursday.

      The envisioned center will collect scattered information made public by media reports, press releases and announcements by international organizations, said the official at the Unification Ministry handling inter-Korean affairs.

  • Licensing

    • Embedded GPL – An Important Case from Germany

      Law suits involving the interpretation of the GNU General Public License actually tend to be pretty far and few between . . . except in Germany. And that’s where we find the most recent case of interest involving Cybits, a company that makes products for protecting children on line, AVM, the maker of the Fritz!Box router, and well known GPL enforcer, Harald Welte, who in this instance is intervening on behalf of Cybits. This suit involves the actions of Cybits which downloads the Fritz!Box software/firmware onto a user’s computer, modifies that software, and then reloads it onto the Fritz!Box router. AVM brought an action for copyright infringement, trademark infringement and violation of competition law.

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Eclipse Indigo released with WindowBuilder GUI tool and EGit 1.0

      The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of Eclipse 3.7, codenamed Indigo. The latest version of the popular open source integrated development environment (IDE) introduces some new components and improved functionality.

      Eclipse’s modular design and emphasis on extensibility have helped attract a large ecosystem around the software. It is built and maintained like a tooling platform rather than just a standalone application. A great deal of specialized functionality is implemented in plug-ins, allowing the IDE integrate with a lot of external tools and support a wide range of programming languages and development toolkits.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The importance of standards

      Mankind has always struggled to agree on the best way to do certain key tasks. This is the origin of society itself – every culture that has ever existed has at its heart a shared set of standards by which it lives and through which it interacts with the world around it.

      These standards define what is and what isn’t acceptable, and they give the members of that society a shared frame of reference by which they can understand each other. Language, commerce and even religion have all been expressions of that shared set of standards.

      Financial messaging standards are a continuation of this trend. Sitting at the heart of virtually all economic activity, from executing the smallest retail transactions to managing massive global institutional businesses, they play a key role in enabling modern society to function effectively.

      Nowhere is the cause of standards in financial messaging championed more enthusiastically than at SWIFT. Since its genesis in the 1970s, SWIFT has worked at removing ambiguity and incompatibility in how banks and financial institutions interact with each other, while simultaneously championing security and higher levels of automation.

    • UK open standards commitment cut back

      Bill McCcluggage, deputy government CIO and Cabinet Office director of ICT policy, has sharply curtailed the government’s previous plans to mandate royalty-free open standards. According to reports, McCluggage was speaking to the Guardian Computing Conference in London when he said that the government only intends to implement a handful of open standards.

      Referring to government ICT policy, McCluggage said “It doesn’t say we will mandate all open standard, it says we will decide upon a series of open standards and then we will decide which ones to almost fixate upon in terms of delivery.”

      Although the policy described by McCluggage may have a better chance of success, it is a step back from the previous policy declaration of open standards mandated across government. That policy had already drawn criticism from standards organisations who objected to the royalty-free element of the UK Government policy.

Leftovers

  • Civil Rights

    • EFF Urges Supreme Court to Hear Vernor v. AutoDesk First Sale Case

      EFF has filed an amicus brief [PDF], urging the US Supreme Court to grant certiorari to Timothy Vernor in Vernor v. AutoDesk. This is a first sale case, so I know many of you are interested in this latest development.

      Here’s Groklaw’s coverage of the decision by the appeals court last year, and here’s our coverage of the ruling at the district court in 2009, which had ruled in favor of Vernor, only to be reversed by the appeals court. Some background and resources on first sale cases may help you to follow along. Here’s a list of important first sale cases on Groklaw’s Legal Research page. If you recall, Michael A. Jacobs of Morrison & Foerster, who represented Novell against SCO successfully, represents AutoDesk.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Axe the Act

        The Pirate Party is constantly working hard to protect the rights of citizens across the country. From the outset we have been vocal critics of the Digital Economy Act. The Act was forced through in the dying days of a discredited parliament and survived a judicial review. It has seen popular opposition and objection from business, it has been rejected by those who it will have an impact on as well as those who must enforce it.

      • ACTA

        • ACTA Ratification Underway, Must be Rejected

          With the EU Commission’s announcement of the upcoming release of a memo regarding the signature and ratification of ACTA by the European Union, La Quadrature has sent a letter to Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Economic Affairs. The citizen advocacy group solemnly asks France not to sign this dangerous and illegitimate agreement and encourages citizens from all the negotiating countries to do the same.

Reader’s Picks

Clip of the Day

Lulzsec, Anonymous join forces to hack governments


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 23/6/2011: Red Hat’s Record Financial Performance, Scientific Linux 5.6 is Out

Posted in News Roundup at 6:46 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • PS3 Hacker Resigned to Prison Sentence after Money Dries Up

    PS3 Hacker Resigned to Prison Sentence after Money Dries UpAmerican hacker George Hotz got all the headlines for his exploits trying to bring Linux back to the PS3, but he was only one of many working towards the same goal. And while Hotz today walks free, not everybody is so lucky.

  • Windows Newlines Will Kill Your Linux Scripts

    What’s going on is that you really do have a fatal error in your code, and it’s an error that you can’t see. In fact, it’s invisible. The error is that you have uploaded a file that you created on a Windows machine.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 3.0-rc4

      Some filesystem fixes (btrfs, cifs, afs, xfs, nfsd).

    • Linux 3, LibreOffice and Firefox Advance as Adobe Falls Behind
    • Will Linus Like Your Video?
    • The Linux Kernel Power Problems On Older Desktop Hardware

      As mentioned last week, a plethora of Linux power tests are on the way now that we have found an AC power meter with USB interface that works under Linux and we’ve been able to integrate nicely into the Phoronix Test Suite and its sensor monitoring framework. In this article is one of the first tests that have been completed using this power-measuring device as we monitored the Linux kernel power consumption for an old Intel Pentium 4 and ATI Radeon 9200 system for the past several kernel releases. Even this very old desktop system looks to be affected by the kernel power problems.

    • XFS Is Becoming Leaner While Btrfs & EXT4 Gain Weight

      Red Hat’s Eric Sandeen has written an interesting blog post concerning the size of popular Linux file-systems and their kernel modules. It turns out that the XFS file-system is losing lines of code, while maintaining the same feature-set and robustness, but the EXT4 and Btrfs file-systems continue to have a net increase in lines of code.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Harnessing GP-GPU Power The Easy Way

        The remarkable computation power of General Purpose Graphical Processing Units (GP-GPUs) has led them to steadily gain traction in High Performance Computing (HPC). But creating GP-GPU programs can require new programming methods that often introduce additional work and code revisions, or even re-writes, and frequently become an obstacle to the adoption of GP-GPU technology.

      • Intel Continues Work On Ivy Bridge Linux Graphics Support

        Intel’s current-generation “Sandy Bridge” processors continue to sell incredibly well and perform phenomenally relative to AMD’s current offerings and Intel’s previous-generation hardware. Under Linux, the Sandy Bridge support is now excellent if pulling in the latest components (namely the Linux kernel, xf86-video-intel, and Mesa) and only continues to be improved over time with advancements like their new driver acceleration architecture. By year’s end, Intel is expected to launch their “Ivy Bridge” processors as the successor to Sandy Bridge. Intel is already preparing the Ivy Bridge Linux support code.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Keynote Interview: Claire Rowland

      Claire Rowland, user experience guru, will be a featured keynote speaker at this summer’s Desktop Summit 2011 in Berlin.

      Claire is Head of Research for Fjord London, an international digital service design agency and has worked extensively in user experience research and design. Recently her focus has been on a shift in user experience from the desktop toward services delivered through multiple platforms of widely differing form factors and the cloud. Her research and recommendations relate to what this shift means for what users expect from their devices, and what effective design, across platforms and the cloud, looks like. It also addresses what users increasingly care about the most, and what this might mean for Operating System design.

    • Meet Claire Rowland, Desktop Summit Keynote Speaker
    • Xfce Design SIG launches

      I’m looking forward to working with Xfce directly and more closely after working years with Xubuntu. It’s both easier for us and assures that all Xfce users can enjoy the improvements, not just those who use Xubuntu.

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • The 2011 Linux Distro Scorecard

      You can find hundreds of Linux distributions, depending on what your needs are. For this scorecard, we’re focusing on desktop distributions that are fairly popular, well-supported, and have a reliable release history, and strong community. In last year’s scorecard, we started with seven distros — this year, we’ve narrowed the field to six distributions:

      * Debian
      * Fedora
      * Linux Mint
      * openSUSE
      * Slackware
      * Ubuntu

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Setting for a Break Out?

        New York, June 22nd (TradersHuddle.com) – Shares of Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) closed the trading session at $43.75 near its 50 day and 200 day moving averages currently set at $44.64 and $43.31 respectively. Red Hat’s price action is above the 200 day moving average but below its 50 day moving average, signaling a possible break out.

      • Red Hat to Host Cloud Technology Update Webcast on June 23
      • Amazon EC2 now runs Red Hat Linux

        EC2 has many different operating systems available, including Windows Server and several different Linux versions including SUSE, Oracle and OpenSolaris. (On the horizon are support for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo.)

      • Oracle support of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in question

        A recent Oracle Support note has some Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) customers wondering about Oracle’s future support of Red Hat. But one expert says it’s more a statement of Oracle’s plans for its own database storage management features.

        The note, released this spring and updated earlier this month, has to do with ASMLib, a support library for the Automatic Storage Management (ASM) feature of Oracle Database. According to the note, the support library “allows an Oracle Database using ASM more efficient and capable access to the disk groups it is using.”

      • Scientific Linux 5.6 released

        The developers of Scientific Linux (SL) have released version 5.6 of their Linux distribution. As with the project’s previous versions, this one is a free remodeling of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the same version number – SL 5.6 therefore also includes all of the improvements that Red Hat added to RHEL 5.6.

        In the release email, the developers emphasise the Atom Shine graphical theme as being one of the main innovations, followed by a list of packages that the SL developers have included which are not in RHEL 5.6. Versions of SL prior to 6.0 contain a lot of such packages; in SL 6.0, the developers added only a few additional packages, referring users instead to repositories such as ATrpms, EPEL and RPMforge for additional software.

      • 3 Hot Stocks Lighting Up Trading Screens After-Hours

        Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) shares have spiked 4.07% after closing bell today with a the report of a fiscal first-quarter profit of $32.5 million, or 17 cents a share, up from $24 million and 12 cents a share from the same period last year.

      • Red Hat Inc. Offers Potential Plays for Both Bulls and Bears
      • Red Hat Reports First Quarter Results

        Total revenue for the quarter was $264.7 million, an increase of 27% from the year ago quarter. Subscription revenue for the quarter was $225.5 million, up 26% year-over-year.

      • The Linux Week in Review June 22, 2011

        Red Hat Corporation is a great Linux company: the first company to earn a billion dollars on free software.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • The Unity Report – Carving away the Stone
          • Linux vs. Windows: Should Your Office Make the Switch?

            The surprise, for me, was that I could get the majority of my work done on an old, “slow” PC that I’d written off as useless. That’s definitely one of Linux’s charms: it has very modest system requirements.

            I also found it very comforting to work without the threat of malware, which is more or less non-existent in Linux. (Of course, there’s always phishing, which is OS-agnostic.)

            For my work situation (which, again, is largely Web-based), Ubuntu made a fine substitute for Windows. In fact, I’m still using it, even though my HP has been repaired and returned. I can’t abandon Windows altogether just yet, but that day may come.

            Something else to keep in mind: every time you buy a new PC, you’re paying upwards of $100 just for the Windows license. If you buy 10 machines, opting for Linux could save you $1,000. (The trick is finding a vendor that offers the option. I know Dell does.) Ubuntu, like all Linux distributions, is free.

            And pretty awesome. If you haven’t tried it, you owe it to yourself to do so. Hit the Download page and check out the “Try it from a CD or USB stick” option.

          • Firefox 5 Officially Available on Ubuntu 11.04
          • Firefox 5.0 Update Arrives in Official Ubuntu Repositories
          • Ubuntu Pushes Firefox 5 Through Update

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Is There Anyone NOT Making Tablets This Fall?

        * Google,
        * HTC,
        * LG,
        * TI,
        * Toshiba,
        * Dell,
        * HP,
        * Apple,
        * Archos,
        * Amazon,
        * Acer
        * Sharp,
        * Asus,
        * Lenovo, and
        * millions of “white box” tablets.

        Even the few who are producing tablets running that other OS are producing Android/Linux versions. B

Free Software/Open Source

  • Should you give a rats ring about Open or Closed Source?

  • Web Browsers

    • 85% of Firefox users use add-ons; Chrome users, just 33%

      At long last, Mozilla has managed to calculate how many Firefox users have at least one add-on installed: 85%. It gets better, though: the average Firefox user has no less than 5 add-ons installed — but considering over 2.5 billion add-ons have been downloaded in the last 5 years, that’s not all that surprising. In total, 580 million add-ons are used every day by the Firefox user base.

    • 85% Of Firefox Users Install Add-ons

      We all know that add-ons are one of the best things about Firefox and Firefox users love their add-ons. However there was never any clear data on the add-ons installed untill Firefox 4. In Firefox 4, a new feature was introduces which allows Mozilla to keep track of an aggregate of add-on usage in Firefox.

    • HTML5 in Sugar

      It seems like now is the time to revisit the notion of integ­rat­ing HTML5 into Sugar itself. I feel that this can achieve a far more power­ful out­come than just swap­ping Browse with Surf. The primary weak­nesses of HTML5, its imma­tur­ity and dearth of good devel­op­ment tools, are being addressed. Microsoft and Adobe are con­tinue to move towards HTML5, which can only be a good thing.

    • Chrome

      • [Quick Tip] Try out the redesigned New Tab interface in Chrome

        Google has been trying out a redesign of Chrome’s famous New Tab page. The new interface is more organized than the previous one as it cleverly categorizes apps and bookmarks into separate screens. The user can slide between the screens by simply grabbing and pushing the mouse in the required direction. Here’s how to enable it on your browser.

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla Launches Firefox 5 Browser: 10 Things You Should Know About It
      • Firefox does silent major version update!?
      • Firefox 5 goes live. But is it any better than Firefox 4?
      • Mozilla retires Firefox 4 from security support

        Unnoticed in the Tuesday release of Firefox 5 was Mozilla’s decision to retire Firefox 4, the browser it shipped just three months ago.

        As part of Tuesday’s Firefox 5 release, Mozilla spelled out vulnerabilities it had patched in that edition and in 2010′s Firefox 3.6, but it made no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

      • Do We Really Need a New Browser Every Six Weeks?

        I am a software geek and I love new software. As a businessperson, I also want to be as productive as possible when using my software. New software can cause things to stop working and become a productivity killer.

        Today I got news about a new version of Firefox. It is my browser of choice and I couldn’t stop myself from installing it. Of course this version comes only a few weeks after the last version was released. The explanation for the quick update cycle was to keep up with the update cycle of Google Chrome. After reading the explanation, it got me to thinking if rapid updates were truly a good thing?

        We definitely need browser updates on a regular basis to patch security issues. Yet those updates don’t have to come as a new version with new features (and new problems).

      • Is Google’s App Engine Too Restrictive, Given Increasing Open Competition?

        If you demand total extension compatibility it may be worth waiting a few days for incremental fixes to appear for Firefox 5. However, it appears to be much faster than other versions and other browsers, and mostly reliable upon release. That’s yet another reason to expect heated market share competition between Firefox and Google Chrome throughout this year.

      • Firefox 5 Should have been Firefox 4.02!

        Mozilla has officially released Firefox 5, only 3 months after the releases of Firefox 4 following the rapid release strategy of Google Chrome. The idea behind is to bring about changes in the browser as soon as possible and keep the browser up-to-date by creating different development channels.

      • The Speed of Firefox 5.0

        I’m a Google Chromium (right now version 12.0.742.91) user because of the speed. I found previous versions of Firefox to be just a little too slow. Especially when starting the browser. Through the grapevine I heard people discussing the better speeds of Firefox 5.0, which was released this week. This makes me re-consider using Firefox as my default browser. I took a look at the speed and several of the new features. Here are the results.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle’s Android claims slashed by US patent authorities

      Oracle’s broad legal front against Google has been whittled back further, this time by the US patent and trademark authorities, according to Groklaw.

      The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected 17 of 21 claims associated with one of the patents in Java that Oracle asserted Google had violated with Android. The patent in question is number 6192476, one of six Oracle says Google has stepped on.

    • Google Replaces Oracle As The World’s Largest Open Source Company

      The leading open source projects were forked and Oracle distanced itself from them. OpenOffice is dead (only to be scavenged by IBM), OpenSolaris is gone, Hudson is gone, Java has become a ‘closed’ technology owned by Oracle/IBM. Java developers may never forgive Oracle for the way it took a U-Turn from its own stand on Java. Now, MySQL is the only major open source project which is being run by Oracle – forks are already in place in case Oracle pulls plugs off MySQL.

  • CMS

  • Business

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • German court case could imperil GPL licensing

      In a case that could threaten open source GPL licensing in Germany, a Berlin court yesterday began hearing a lawsuit from German DSL router vendor AVM against web-filtering software firm Cybits. AVM charges that by modifying Linux kernel code in router firmware, Cybits is infringing on copyright, while Cybits’ defense claims GPL licensing permits it to alter the code.

  • Project Releases

    • Blender 2.58

      The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.58. This is the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign, development and stabilizing work.

      We name this version “Stable” not only because it’s mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

    • Mozilla releases SeaMonkey 2.2 Beta 1
    • Tornado Web Server 2.0 released

      The Tornado project developers have announced the release of version 2.0 of their open source web server. The Python-based, non-blocking web server framework was first released as open source in September 2009 by Facebook, following its acquisition of FriendFeed.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Can the U.S. ‘win the future’ without open data?

        “Winning the Future through Open Innovation,” is a progress report recently released by Aneesh Chopra, US Chief Technology Officer, to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) on the Administration’s Open Government Initiative.The report highlights a number of programs at different agencies that represent a wide variety of open innovation techniques, from opening datasets and APIs to creating incentives for competition or testing and certifying open standards.

        Less than a week after the report’s release, the Administration launched the Campaign to Cut Waste through the newly-formed Government Accountability and Transparency Board (GATB), an 11-member group which will review and cut about 50% of Federal websites to reduce spending and prevent duplication of efforts.

    • Open Hardware

      • Tilera throws gauntlet at Intel’s feet

        Upstart mega-multicore chip maker Tilera has not yet started sampling its future Tile-Gx 3000 series of server processors, and companies have already locked in orders for the chips.

        That is how eagerly hyperscale data center operators are anticipating some alternative to power-hungry Xeon processors from Intel and Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices.

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HU: Government planning to use vendor-independent document format

      The Hungarian government wants to use the Open Document Format, a vendor independent format for electronic documents, as a default for its documents. Zsolt Nyitrai, Minister of State for ICT, earlier this month explained to the parliament that legislation to use ODF by default is being prepared.

      The ODF plans were announced on 1 June, during a conference in the Hungarian Parliament “The Parliament of Information Society”.

Leftovers

  • F.B.I. Seizes Web Servers, Knocking Sites Offline

    The F.B.I. seized Web servers in a raid on a data center early Tuesday, causing several Web sites, including those run by the New York publisher Curbed Network, to go offline.

    The raid happened at 1:15 a.m. at a hosting facility in Reston, Va., used by DigitalOne, which is based in Switzerland, the company said. The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raid.

  • Security

  • Finance

    • Apple, Google, Microsoft seek gargantuan tax break

      Apple, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and a host of US megacorps are lobbying hard for a massive tax break – and they’re gaining powerful friends in business, government, and labor in support of that effort.

    • “This Is The Most GUTLESS Institution!” Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur
    • Guest Post: Goldman’s Disinformation Campaign: Drilling Down Into The Documents

      In other words, the answer shall remain secret. Only those deemed worthy by Goldman may see its data, which purportedly refutes the Levin report. The rest of us are kept in the dark. We cannot challenge Goldman’s claims, because we cannot see what they see. They know what they are talking about; we do not. Instead, we must rely on Andrew Ross Sorkin, Holman Jenkins, Dick Bove, and others to reveal the truth.

    • Wall Street Gets Eyed in Metal Squeeze

      Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other owners of large metals warehouses are being scrutinized by the London Metal Exchange after being accused by users like Coca-Cola Co. of restricting the amount of metal they release to customers, inflating prices.

      The board of the LME met on Thursday to discuss complaints from aluminum users and market traders, who say operators of warehouses, which also include J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Glencore International PLC, should be forced to allow the metal out more quickly to meet demand.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Weiner doll creates ‘mad rush’ at Oxford company

      While former U.S. Rep. Anthony’s Weiner’s scandalous “sexting” has had a slew of negative consequences for him, it has meant big business for a local company that started making an action figure in his likeness.

      There has been a “mad rush” of interest in the latest offering from HeroBuilders.com, a company at 198 Goodhill Road known for controversial figures it makes and sells online, President Emil Vicale said Monday.

    • Rick Scott cares! He really does care!

      For a guy who claims not read newspapers — or care what the polls say or the public thinks — Rick Scott sure is putting a lot of effort into trying to score some good publicity.

      In fact, if regular old rank-and-file Floridians won’t write nice things about him in letters to the editor, Scott has decided to write the words for them.

    • Brave New Films Exposes the Koch Echo Chamber

      Over and over, cable TV and Sunday news show pundits have been telling us that Social Security is going bankrupt, and we have to raise the retirement age or the economy will collapse. These two axioms have practically become common knowledge. The only problem is, there isn’t a shred of evidence that either statement is accurate.

      So how did it happen that these erroneous statements have become mainstream American group-think? It’s the result of a sophisticated corporate echo chamber propaganda strategy funded primarily by the Koch brothers for the purpose of turning business-friendly, fringe right-wing ideas into mainstream policy arguments. The echo chamber strategy is very real, and has been perfected by corporate interests over the last several decades. It involves carefully selecting and fine-tuning a message that resonates with the populace, and then arranging to get that message repeated over and over through a variety of credible media sources.

  • Censorship

    • Rights holders’ proposed voluntary website blocking scheme

      From these links you can access what looks like the proposals for a voluntary website blocking scheme, apparently put forward by the Rightsholder Group engaged in Minister Ed Vaizey’s roundtable discussions with ISPs and others.

      The documents, sent to James Firth’s blog, set out a dangerous voluntary scheme that would involve ‘expedited court procedures’ and a ‘balance’ between evidence and speed of action. Definitions of what content is to be judged blockable is scarce. References to exactly how such blocking would work, and the consequences, are non-existent. The case for blocking is left unmade, with no analysis about the effects of such measures. There is cursory reference to the rule of law and proper oversight. The proposal, if it is the genuine proposal, adds up to a dangerous revocation of the rule of law where lobby groups would decide what you are allowed to see and read.

    • Secret website blocking proposals presented to Ed Vaizey

      It is unacceptable for trade groups and government to conduct policy in this way. Censorship proposals must be made and discussed in public. Many of us will oppose any censorship that impacts directly and widely on free expression. Governments would be wise to assess the strength of our arguments, rather than waiting for trade bodies to find their narrow, commercial arguments unravel once their proposals reach the light of day.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Is Internet Access A Human Right?: The Implications for the Rules of Access

      Given the critical role it plays in communication, culture, and commerce, most people now recognize the importance of Internet access. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes a new report for the United Nations Human Rights Council takes Internet access a step further, however, characterizing it as a human right.

    • Dutch Lawmakers Adopt Net Neutrality Law

      The Netherlands on Wednesday became the first country in Europe, and only the second in the world, to enshrine the concept of network neutrality into national law by banning its mobile telephone operators from blocking or charging consumers extra for using Internet-based communications services like Skype or WhatsApp, a free text service.

    • Netherlands launches internet freedom legislation

      A broad majority in the Dutch parliament voted for crucial legislative proposals to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to introduce a net neutrality law. In addition, provisions were launched protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers. Digital rights movement Bits of Freedom calls upon other countries to follow the Dutch example.

      The net neutrality proposal (Dutch) prohibits internetproviders from interfering with the traffic of their users. Dutch telecom incumbent KPN recently received world-wide media-attention because it planned to charge Internet users for the use of innovative and competitive services such as Internet telephony. The legislative proposal aims to prevent this, while still allowing for measures in case of congestion and for network security, as long as these measures serve the interests of the internet user. A small technical error in the amendment was introduced last minute and will in all likelihood be corrected next week.

    • A great moment for the free flow of information
    • Dutch Require Consumer Consent to Put Cookies on PC

  • DRM

    • Exclusive: Top ISPs poised to adopt graduated response to piracy

      After years of negotiations, a group of bandwidth providers that includes AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are closer than ever to striking a deal with media and entertainment companies that would call for them to establish new and tougher punishments for customers who refuse to stop using their networks to pirate films, music and other intellectual property, multiple sources told CNET.

      The sources cautioned that a final agreement has yet to be signed and that the partnership could still unravel but added that at this point a deal is within reach and is on track to be unveiled sometime next month.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • ACTA

        • Mexican Congress Says No To ACTA

          Earlier, we mentioned that a bill from the Mexican Congress opposing ACTA was going to the full Congress today, and apparently the bill was approved. Now, the question is whether or not the Mexican executive branch will try to ignore the will of Congress on this issue and sign ACTA anyway.

Reader’s Picks

Clip of the Day

Fiber optic cables: How they work


Credit: TinyOgg

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