Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• [Linux share]

  Top five operating systems used to visit PC Pro on 15 December:

  1. Windows XP 46.6%

  2. Windows 7 14.5%

  3. Windows Vista 13.7%

  4. Mac OS X 9.1%

  5. Linux 7.2%

• Events

  • SCALE 8X Presenters Announced But There’s Room For More

    Even though the call for papers deadline doesn’t end until December 24, 2010, organizers for the 8th annual Southern California Linux Expo have announced a partial list of presenters for the February, 2010, event. Although more slots will be filled in the coming week, a variety of experts in the FOSS industry are already slated to be on hand to talk about everything from the KDE4 desktop environment to what’s happening with the development of mobile open source platform Moblin.

  • Exciting Speaker Schedule for Camp KDE 2010

    The schedule for Camp KDE 2010 has just been published! The event will be taking place in sunny San Diego at the University of California, San Diego from January 15th-22nd, 2010. Registration is free and there are still some space left for attendees so sign up right away if you’re interested in attending.

• Desktop

  • My job is to make you happy. About using Linux. UPDATED

    I’ve convinced a few people to use Linux and most of them don’t hate me, but most of them were masochistic geeks who were probably going to use Linux anyway. But there are three people who are pretty important to me who are now using Linux because of me, but who otherwise would not likely have ever used Linux, and who are not masochistic geeks. The whole idea of Linux being “grandmother ready” now takes on new meaning for me.

  • Linux and the Mysterious Netbook-to-Desktop Gap

    Then came Exhibit B — specifically, predictions out of the recent Netbook World Summit in Paris that Linux will dominate in ARM-powered laptops next year. Furthermore, such machines are expected to take over a significant share of the overall laptop market.

    Not even the strongest eggnog can beat declarations like that for lifting a Linux geek’s spirits!

  • How I switched to Linux

    I was doing Win-Lin dual boot for some time. By reading various stuff, I got to know that there are many distributions. I’ve used Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Mandriva, Puppy, Knoppix and PCLinuxOS 2007. But none of them were able to suit me like Ubuntu did. I know, it’s psychology,… the first impression with the meaning of the word “Ubuntu” — humanity; it simply didn’t let me run away.

  • Geek Squad Wouldn’t Honor My Netbook’s Protection Plan

    An anonymous reader said a Best Buy manager refused to replace his broken laptop and threw him out of the store twice when he tried to argue. The reader had even gone so far as to purchase an $80 extended warranty. He writes:

    I’ve seen examples of Best Buy’s poor service on the Consumerist, but what I faced last weekend at the [redacted] Best Buy in [redacted] blows them all out of the water.

    My four month-old netbook’s touchpad and power adapter all stopped working. I took the machine into Best Buy for service under the Geek Squad’s Black Tie Protection Plan on Saturday, and demonstrated its problems. The manager of the Geek Squad informed me that installing Ubuntu Linux on my machine voided my warranty, and that I could only have it serviced if the original Windows installation was restored. Furthermore, he insisted that the touchpad and power adapter had been broken because I installed Linux. Another employee ridiculed me for insisting that Linux couldn’t cause a hardware issue, saying “Sure, I don’t know anything, I just work for Geek Squad!” The entire department was hostile, acting as if I was now a problem rather than a customer. I waited at the desk to see the store manager, who gave the impression that if I reinstalled windows I could return the computer.

    That night, I bought an external CD drive, dug out the system restore disc for the netbook, and reinstalled Windows.

  • Why you should not pay for extended warranty if you use Linux

    I have read a rather sad story today. Apparently the Best Buy Geeks squad refused to service the machine of someone who had purchased an $80 extended warranty for its netbook just because he had installed Ubuntu Linux. This story not only shows how best Best Buy’s Geeks squad is far from having anything even close to the technical knowledge of a geek, but also raises 2 other questions: are extended warranties worth it, and are Linux consumers correctly protected in the US? Let’s dig into these two rather important questions.

• Server

  • [Review] OpenBlock S600, a powerful server in the palm of your hand

    Entirely made in Japan, the OpenBlockS600 may not feature the most exciting design ever made to mankind, but who would argue that design for this kind of a product is important? After all, what we want and need here is something extremely reliable, easy to handle and rock solid… And believe me, the OpenBlockS600 is ALL of those in one tiny white aluminum box.

  • InfoWorld review: Desktop virtualization for Windows and Linux heats up

    Desktop virtualization is one of those technologies that confound the experts. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, along comes some interloping development to upset the apple cart. Most recently, that role has fallen to Sun’s VirtualBox, the plucky open source VM solution that’s quickly gobbling up the general-purpose desktop virtualization space left vacant by Microsoft and VMware. Users from the three major platforms — Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux — are flocking to VirtualBox for its scalability, robust networking, and bargain price point (it’s free).

  • Storage Highlights of 2009

• Kernel Space

  • ALSA 1.0.22 Released With Plenty Of Changes

    There are plenty of changes with ALSA 1.0.22 but among them are continued work on the CMI8788 Oxygen APU, a few fixes for the Creative X-Fi sound card support that was introduced this year, numerous improvements to the HDA and HDA Intel drivers, and countless improvements to other Linux kernel audio drivers and codecs.

  • Graphics Stack

    • Radeon HDMI Audio Set For Linux 2.6.33 Kernel

      We still may see power management patches for the ATI kernel driver arrive in time for 2.6.33, but being called for a pull into the mainline kernel this morning is the long-awaited HDMI audio support for the ATI kernel mode-setting driver. HDMI audio support for ATI Radeon graphics cards used to be the unique advantage for the RadeonHD driver, but it’s been ported to the DRM driver and will be supported under Linux 2.6.33.

    • Nouveau Makes Its Own NV40 Firmware Replacement

      Since last week the DRM code for the Nouveau driver has been in the mainline kernel code-base for its official debut with the Linux 2.6.33 kernel.

    • Radeon DRM Power Management Moves Along

      This in-kernel power management code is working with more (older) Radeon graphics processors and offers various other improvements compared to earlier revisions.

• Applications

  • TurboPrint for Linux Saves the Day– Again

    Printing in Linux, even in this glorious year 2009–almost 2010–of the new millennium, the 21st century, is still fraught with vexations. I have always liked CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. Once you figure out your way around it, it is powerful and network-friendly, even to allowing remote printing over the Internet. Which I think is better than faxing, at least when you’re dealing with trusted senders and recipients. Linux PCs will find networked CUPS printers automatically, and now CUPS support automatic driver downloads for Windows clients. Though networking CUPS printers with Windows still requires a bit of fiddling, thanks to Windows’ inability to handle ordinary simple networking sanely.

  • 12 Days Of Xmas: Best Apps of 2009 – Day Two

    For those who have yet to hear of Gloobus Preview it is essentially a “file peeker”; allows you to preview pretty much any file by selecting a file then tapping the space key on your keyboard – an elegant window pops up instantly showing you the contents of the selected file.

  • Multimedia

    • The beauty of XBMC

      Here’s some screenshots taken from my XBMC setup. Mainly films because I need to sort out the library feature for TV and Music.

    • Rhythmbox – Useful for iPod Users

      I’ve been rediscovering Rhythmbox and its features. I know I haven’t really given it much chance before as Listen was more lightweight and it pretty much worked well with my netbook. So now that I’m using my old laptop for work more often, I decided to mainly use the default apps on Ubuntu Karmic Koala.

    • Minitube Streams YouTube Videos Right to Your Desktop — No Flash Required

      YouTube is a great service but its cluttered user interface leaves a lot to be desired. Minitube is a solid open source YouTube viewing client that gives users a way to search and watch videos without all the visual distractions.

  • Instructionals

    • Openoffice.org extensions- Personal/Family Budget Spreadsheet

    • Create a simple Grunge-Stamp!

    • Minimalism Rocks: Gain Back Space By Removing a GNOME Panel

    • Install MS office2007 on ubuntu using PlayOnLinux

    • Linux 101: Updating Your System

    • Keep tabs on your projects with GanttProject

    • Add uptime and/or a daily fortune to your email signature

    • Sync application preferences with Dropbox

    • How to Hide Secret Data in image and audio files Ubuntu / Debian: Steghide

    • How to Assign Custom Shortcut Keys on Ubuntu 9.10

    • Having a tidy systray

    • One downside to a CLI setup

  • Games

    • Linux: Install a million games in one click!

      Well, not really a million, but how about tens or hundreds? Good enough for you?

      Today, we will talk about two extremely useful applications that allow to you search for hundreds of games that run on Linux, sorted by category, popularity, license, or price, read game synopses, check out the screenshots, and then, should you decide that you like some of them, install them with a single mouse click.

    • Getting to know the Irrlicht 3D engine

      This tutorial series shows you how to use some of the features of Irrlicht, which is a free, powerful and cross platform C++ 3D engine. If you just want to see Irrlicht in action, all of these demos have been combined into one application. You can download the Linux version, complete with source code, here.

    • Irukandji – Score Attack Shooter Released !

      Irukandji GNU/Linux port was recently released by Charlie Games.
      Irukandji is a score underwater shooter with flashy graphics, many enemies, bosses, weapons, ships, challenges and much more !

• Desktop Environments

  • GNOME

    • Split-View Nautilus Coming To Gnome-Shell?

      Split-panel nautilus tweaks/hacks are incredibly popular but up until now the feature remained a 3rd party enablement.

      With the upcoming GNOME Shell raising questions as to the purpose Nautilus due to features Nautilus traditionally provided instead being served-up by the Shell.

  • KDE

    • Team Sets Seventh Beta of KDevelop4 Loose

      The KDevelop team is proud to announce the seventh beta of KDevelop4. At the same time we’re a bit sad as this beta also marks our drop-out of the KDE SC 4.4 release cycle. We feel that we didn’t manage to get the needed features for the 4.4.0 release working properly and that we’ll need a longer freeze period than what is available in the release cycle. We’re now concentrating on getting the existing features shaped up and ready for release as well as fixing as many of the bugs as we can. No new features will be introduced into KDevelop anymore until the first release, which is currently aimed at end of March.

• Distributions

  • The Five Distros That Changed Linux

    You can measure Linux’s history in many ways. We usually think of it in terms of releases. The Linux kernel got its start in September 1991 with version 0.01. The kernel turned 18 this fall with the release of 2.6.something-or-other. But, another way of looking at Linux is in terms of its important distributions.

    For users, these distributions have been the mountain tops. Each of the truly significant distributions changed how Linux was seen, and brought the operating system new and different groups of users. You can argue about which distro is more important than another, but, all the distributions in my list changed how we saw and used Linux.

    I made this list by both looking at Linux’s history, and from my own experiences at the time with Linux. While I wasn’t a Linux user in its very early years — I was working with the commercial Unix and the BSD operating systems — I did come on-board quickly.

  • Review: Slackware 13.0

    In the end, Slackware continues to grab the latest software and it continues to be the distro that leaves a lot of the decision-making to the user. I have not yet tried Arch Linux, but I intend to try it soon. It seems to be a distro trying to take the crown for most customization away from Slackware and Gentoo.

  • [conv] Why Slackers are labeled as geeks and ubuntuers as n00bs?

    My reply:

    People using a “way too User-friendly” distro has been referred to as n00bs by people using a “not so user-friendly” distro, who in turn have been labeled geeks. This has been the case for years now.

  • Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu Marketing

      I admire how Mark Shuttleworth is investing his time, money and efforts into Ubuntu, but one man can not be everywhere. Even adding in all of his team I don’t think they can have the same effect as a media campaign which is visually based.

    • My new focus at Canonical

      From March next year, I’ll focus my Canonical energy on product design, partnerships and customers. Those are the areas that I enjoy most and also the areas where I can best shape the impact we have on open source and the technology market. I’m able to do this because Jane Silber, who has been COO at Canonical virtually from the beginning, will take on the job of CEO.

    • Shuttleworth steps down as Ubuntu CEO

      Shuttleworth also added that while its work with Google on the Chrome OS isn’t Canonical’s main direction, they’re looking forward to doing more work on Chrome OS. He added that Ubuntu is looking forward to gaining more of the desktop market with its own Ubuntu offering “right under Windows 7′s nose.”

    • So a Man Walks Into a Bar and Asks for an Ubuntu on the Rocks

      Earlier today, I had to go to IT Square in Laksi to do some banking. Knowing what a geek that I am, and since there are ten branches closer than the IT Square one, you’d be forgiven for assuming that I went to bank there as an excuse for computer shopping, but you’d be wrong. I was required to go to that specific branch. After the baning, though, my gf and I walked around a little.

      She was checking out laptop bags, and my attention went to the Acer display just outside the bag store. To my shock, there was a low-end laptop (about USD400) with a localized version of Ubuntu on the computer. There was a special Acer desktop background, and the menus were in Thai. The next computer had the same system. Hmmm. The specs described the computer as having Linpus Linux installed (pictured above), but the system was definitely Ubuntu. There were about twelve models on display, but some of them weren’t on.

    • DVD Ranger on Ubuntu – Improved Functionality for a New Category of Users

      Pixbyte Development SL today announced that DVD Ranger will be available for Ubuntu users, thus expanding the range of functionality. Starting today, if you want to burn DVD on Ubuntu, you can enjoy the best video quality using our DVD Ranger.

    • Ubuntu’s Lucid plans

      In April the Ubuntu developers will release Lucid Lynx, the next version of the popular Linux operating system. Also known as Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx will be the third long term support (LTS) release from Ubuntu and is likely to have a strong focus on stability and security and will be geared at appealing to enterprise users and hardware makers. Ubuntu releases new versions every six months with LTS releases supported for five years on servers and three years on desktops.

    • My kid will, in fact, do it with Ubuntu (and other 2010 predictions)

      There he is, kid #4: his t-shirt says it all. By way of disclosure, I got that t-shirt for free from the good folks at Canonical. I don’t, however, think he will end up using Ubuntu because they gave me a free t-shirt. I think he’ll use Ubuntu because he already does. I also think that Ubuntu use will continue to spread beyond the kids of the sorts of people to whom Canonical sends t-shirts. Ubuntu is not just for geeks anymore.

    • Ubuntu 10.04 will bring panel overhaul, social network menu

      Canonical has revealed plans to bring social networking integration and GNOME panel improvements in the next major version of Ubuntu. Notification area icons will be replaced by a new application indicator system. The panel will also feature a new Me Menu for setting messaging status.

  • Mint

    • Linux Mint 8 Installation Visual Walk Through – VirtualBox

      Here’s a walk through of the Linux Mint 8 Helena. You’ll notice a ton of similarities between the installation process of Linux Mint 8 and the base it’s built from Ubuntu.

    • Linux Mint 8

      Product: Linux Mint 8
      Web Site: http://www.linuxmint.com/
      Price: Free
      Pros: Software Manager & Update Manager upgrades, configurable places, Upload Manager & File Uploader added.
      Cons: Slightly less attractive default wallpaper, no bundled games, Chrome browser not available in software repositories.
      Suitable For: Beginner, intermediate or advanced desktop Linux users.
      Summary: Linux Mint 8 brings Linux Mint up to speed with Ubuntu 9.10 and adds some custom upgrades of its own. An excellent desktop distribution that any Linux user should consider using.
      Rating: 4/5

    • Linux Mint Helena: C’est fantastique!

      Having seen what the open source community can do to improve and support a product, I have to say I’m extremely impressed with the work they’ve done. Just last week I stated that I would probably run a dual boot with Windows 7 as my primary system and Mint or Ubuntu as my secondary system. Well, after installing and using Helena, I have to say I’m strongly considering sticking with Mint and possibly having Windows 7 as a secondary OS for compatibility issues. I can definitely say that I wasn’t expecting a free operating system to work as well as this one does. Bravo.

    • Two other great Linux distributions: MEPIS & Mint

      I also like the additional utilities, the so-called MEPIS Assistant programs. These take what can sometimes be complicated tasks on other Linux distributions, such as networking and X-Windows set-up, and make them simple. Last, but not least, MEPIS has always done an outstanding job of using the KDE 3.5x to good effect. In the upcoming MEPIS 8.5, he’s using the brand-new KDE 4.3.4 for those who like the KDE 4.x series. But, for those who are still fond of KDE 3.5, and while I finally warmed up to KDE 4.x I also continue to like KDE 3.5x, he’ll continue to support it in the MEPIS 8.x line.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive 500GB

    A network drive serves two main purposes. One, it is a place to store your files – plain and simple. When you are maxed out on space on your PC, a network drive affords the extensive storage required for advanced computing work, media files and backups. The second main purpose: enhancing your digital life. More than just a network drive, the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive – which is about the size of a male hand and styled with an unassuming black enclosure – provides a wealth of powerful and unusual digital media features, many of which work quite well with Linux computers.

  • PC fits into keyboard, uses only five Watts

    Thailand-based NorhTec announced a device touted as “the world’s most energy-efficient desktop computer,” offered for only $99 with the Linux version. Built into a standard-sized keyboard, the “Gecko Surfboard” runs on a 1GHz x86 SoC (system on chip), operates fanlessly, and uses just five Watts, the company says.

  • Camera board plugs and plays with OMAP35x module

    E-con bundles the e-CAM32 OMAP Gstix with a Linux support package that offers Linux camera drivers with full source code. The drivers include support for V4L2 (Video for Linux 2) buffer management interface, as well as close integration with TI’s IVA 2.2 (Image, Video and Audio Subsystem) accelerator subsystem on the OMAP35x SoCs.

  • LAN appliance hosts CPUs up to 3GHz

    Lanner announced a Linux-ready network appliance that sports up to 8GB of RAM and seven Ethernet ports. Featuring LAN bypass on two of its ports, the FW-7580 supports a variety of Intel CPUs, has a 40-character front panel display, and offers both hard disk and CompactFlash storage, the company says.

  • Phones

    • Nokia N900 will be landing soon

      The Linux-based device builds on from Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet, with a 3.4-inch 800×480 touch screen, 32GB of storage and a slide-out Qwerty keyboard.

  • Android

    • Motorola Milestone Android smartphone

      The Milestone marks another step forward in Motorola’s renaissance. It’s a joy to use, thanks to its sensitive screen and decent, if not the very best, Qwerty keyboard. The tweaks to the Android OS are welcome, if not exactly ground-breaking and though the camera could have been a bit better, and we’re bewildered by the decision to omit Motoblur, it’s a top quality smartphone with satnav.

    • Is the Google Phone an Unauthorized Replicant?

      Motorola tugged at the hearts of science-fiction fans everywhere when it announced that its first smartphone using Google’s Android software would be called Droid, the name given to the lovable robots in “Star Wars.”

    • Another Thought on the Google Nexus One Phone Announcement

      Google will continue to promote its Android OS, which is used by HTC, Samsung and Motorola, with Sony-Ericsson, Acer, and LG Electronics announcing Android-powered phones.

Free Software/Open Source

• Alfresco, RightScale: Open Source’s Next Cloud Move

  Alfresco Chief Marketing Officer Ian Howells is talking up a new cloud relationship with RightScale. But that’s not all. More than 1,000 customers now pay for Alfresco’s open source content management system. Next, Howells expects a winner-take-all scenario in the open source market. Should VARs care? You bet. Here’s why.

• Eight IT Predictions for 2010

• FOSS: How Did 2009 Shape Up?

  A major release of the Linux kernel happens every three months, which means this year has seen four new versions. Of course, not all of these will see major circulation as most distros only release every six months. Typically every second or third release makes it into the major distributions. Version 2.6.32 was released just two weeks ago, but it won’t actually make it to most distros. Nevertheless, most of the major features do make it onto the desktop, eventually.

  This past year has seen some amazing new work enter the kernel. Perhaps the most work centered around file systems with the introduction of Btrfs, SquashFS, FUSE, EXOFS and NILFS2 into mainline. For the majority of distributions, the new Ext4 file system has become the default (although it was not without its problems).

  Graphics architecture was re-worked which caused no end of issues for most machines with an Intel graphics card. Kernel-based mode setting (KMS) was introduced including support for Intel and Radeon cards. With 2.6.33 on the way the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA cards has just been merged into the mainline staging tree. Linux was also the first kernel to gain support for USB 3.0, although there are no consumer devices widely available yet.

• SaaS Partners Boost Open-Xchange

  As you may know, Open-Xchange is an open source email system. The company claims 2009 was a banner year; more than 15 million people worldwide are running Open-Xchange, an 80 percent increase from 2008.

• Mozilla

  • Pushing Prism on Ubuntu

    One of Ubuntu’s most useful but rarely discussed features is one-click installation of a variety of popular webapps via Mozilla’s Prism. Here’s a look at what Prism can do in Ubuntu, with some thoughts on why Canonical should work harder to push features like this.

• Sun/Databases

  • Enterprise Applications: 10 Reasons Why Sun Is Still Relevant (and One Reason Why Not)

    A nagging question has been hanging over Oracle’s long-delayed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Is Sun still relevant after seeing its once powerful market position slowly but steadily eroded over the past decade? This question rose to prominence back in April, when the database giant first announced its plans to buy out Sun. It’s become a critical issue as Sun has continued to hemorrhage cash as Oracle has faced delay after delay in getting regulatory approval of the deal in Europe. But there are still a lot of factors that demonstrate how Sun’s products and technology remain relevant and in demand in the IT industry. This eWEEK slide show illustrates why Sun still has a strong market influence.

  • EU Set to Approve Oracle-Sun Deal

    European regulators have given Oracle the tentative green light in its long-delayed merger with Sun Microsystems now that Oracle has assuaged concerns about the stewardship of the open source MySQL database.

  • Why Oracle Ultimately Stands to Win the Bitter Battle over MySQL

    It’s not officially a done deal, but eWEEK has learned through knowledgeable sources that the standoff between Oracle and the antitrust regulators of the European Commission has been broken and that an agreement is probably imminent.

    Oracle’s complicated eight-month-long mission to annex Sun Microsystems is finally coming to an end.

    It’s not officially a done deal, but eWEEK has learned through knowledgeable sources that the standoff between Oracle and the antitrust regulators of the European Commission has been broken and that an agreement is probably imminent.

  • Nexedi Press Release

    Nexedi, the creator of ERP5, one of the most advanced Open Source ERPs used for mission critical applications in Europe, Africa and Japan in Aerospace, Central Banking, Financial Services, Chemical, Government, Health and Transportation industries has published today a position letter sent to the European Commission in the context of the recent acquisition of Sun Microsytems by Oracle Corporation. Nexedi recommends to the European Commission that Oracle should be requested to sell the MySQL Business Unit to a third party which offers reasonable guarantees for its Business development. Nexedi offers to takeover MySQL Business Unit for 1 Euro and relieve Oracle from what has become a negative asset in its merger and acquisition strategy.

• CMS

  • Drupal 6.15 and 5.21 released

    Drupal 6.15 and 5.21, maintenance releases which fix issues reported through the bug tracking system, as well as non critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Both releases fix other smaller issues as well.

  • On Microsoft’s anti-Drupal ad

    Yesterday, an anti-Drupal ad by Microsoft was spotted in the wild; see the image on the right. The news spread on Twitter like wildfire. I said this was “interesting”, not because Microsoft isn’t allowed to compete with Drupal but because Microsoft is also promoting Drupal. In fact, I was flattered by the idea that Microsoft considered Drupal worthy of competition. However, it left many of us confused about the fact that Microsoft decided to both partner with Drupal and compete against it.

• BSD

  • FreeNAS 0.7: powerful and not dead

    Recently, the FreeNAS developers have released version 0.7 of their FreeBSD-based operating system for network-attached storage (NAS). This is a major release, which introduces support for the ZFS file system among other things. Around the same time, fears were expressed about the future of FreeNAS as a BSD-based NAS but, in the end, a solution has been found.

  • BSDTalk interview with Josh Paetzel (iXsystems)

    BSDTalk has a 12 minute interview with Josh Paetzel, IT director at iXsystems. Will and Josh talk about the recent takeover of the FreeNAS project by iXsystems.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU

  • Join the Free Software Foundation, and get a Trisquel USB card!

    The card can load an incredibly fast Trisquel Live environment that will keep your settings and files from one run to the next. And you can also use it as a normal USB disk, which comes with a set of free software related texts, audio and video files. A wonderful advocacy tool.

• Openness

  • Open Science and climategate: The IPCC/CRU needs to take a leaf out of CERN’s Book

    Self serving, incestuous cliques are not unique to proprietary software or big science. Spats in open source projects are known but unlike the CRU or the IPCC, the data and code is free and open and no exclusive, corrupt peer review process can long hide facts. This article has only touched the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended). This matter is properly the subject of whole books and websites. My intention has been to see what is wrong with the process from the perspective of the culture and practice of open source methodology. I suspect though, that matters have degenerated so far that the best practice of free software geeks would not have saved the CRU from itself. What a mess. What a bloody mess.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Web Boosts the Cause of Free Color

    But what’s to be done about it? In an effort to support open-source graphics programs and foster a wider understanding of, and engagement with, color, there’s a nascent movement underway to develop what we call, with refreshing lack of originality, an Open Color Standard.

Leftovers

• Cheques to be phased out in 2018

  Cheques will be phased out by October 2018, but only if adequate alternatives are developed, the body that oversees payments strategy has said.

• Security/Pseudo-Security

  • House Delays Patriot Act Spy Vote

    The House of Representatives tabled on Wednesday legislation to reform U.S. surveillance law. The two-month delay puts off a collision with a competing Senate version.

  • RockYou password snafu exposes webmail accounts

    Millions of user passwords to social networking sites have been exposed, after a serious SQL injection flaw on the Rockyou.com website left login details – stored in plain text – up for grabs.

  • Document Reveals TJX Hacker’s Assistance to Prosecutors

    Admitted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez has identified two Russian accomplices who helped him hack into numerous companies and steal more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers.

  • Texas company lays out ‘hacking’ case against Minnesota Public Radio

    Do Minnesota Public Radio and reporter Sasha Aslanian realistically face civil and criminal penalties after uncovering a Texas firm’s security breaches involving state of Minnesota job-seeker data?

  • China cages game Trojan hackers

    The malware slingers were sentenced to up to three years behind bars and fined a total of $120,000. More prosecutions are pending against other alleged gang members, IDG reports

  • Adobe Reader, Acrobat Security Vulnerability Patch Coming as Attacks Continue

    Adobe Systems plans to release a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that has come under attack. This is the second critical security vulnerability Adobe has promised users it will fix in the coming weeks.

• Environment

  • Christmas baubles on icy mission

    Greenland holds the equivalent of 7m of global sea-level rise in its ice sheet, so its future evolution is a subject of considerable interest to researchers.

  • Photos from Copenhagen protests

    Treehugger photographer Matt McDermott happened to be in the right place when the massive climate demonstrations in Copenhagen broke out, and the site has a great gallery of shots of the action.

  • Johann Hari: Leaders of the rich world are enacting a giant fraud

    Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city’s central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos – the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald’s announces “I’m loving it!” in great red letters above. “Welcome to Hopenhagen!” it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air.

  • How to Slow Climate Change for Just $15 Billion

    Weaning humanity from its fossil fuel habit will take decades, and it will take decades more for global warming to stop. But one simple measure could slow warming in some of Earth’s most sensitive regions, effective immediately — and it would cost just $15 billion.

• Finance

  • Obama brings purrs from Wall Street’s fat cats

    “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,” President Obama told “60 Minutes” onSunday, the eve of White House meeting with top Wall Street bankers. This line, and the credulous media coverage that followed, fed the image of Obama as the people’s crusader against the wealthy special interests.

    But if you skip the rhetoric and focus instead on verifiable facts — campaign contributions, administration appointees, White House visitor logs, Obama’s bailouts and even his proposed regulations — you see instead that Obama may be closer to Wall Street than any modern president.

  • McCain backs restoring Glass-Steagall bank limits

    No immediate comment was available from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase.

  • Two bills in Congress to restore Glass-Steagall

    Both would reinstate the 1930s-era Glass-Steagall laws that barred large banks from affiliating with securities firms and engaging in the insurance business. Those limits were largely repealed in 1999, a high-water mark for deregulation.

  • Hoffa Says Goldman Sachs Is Driving Trucker YRC Into Bankruptcy

    International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is creating derivatives trades that would benefit from the bankruptcy of YRC Worldwide Inc., the trucking company trying to avert failure with a debt exchange.

  • Goldman Sachs Mortgages Should Be Probed, Union Says

    Goldman Sachs Group Inc. should be probed for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis, according to letters sent to 10 state attorneys general by a labor union that represents 150,000 people in the U.S. and Canada.

    Workers United sent the letters this week urging officials to follow the example of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. In May, Goldman Sachs agreed to a $60 million settlement to end an investigation by Coakley’s office into how the New York-based bank packaged securities containing home loans made to Massachusetts residents.

  • Goldman Protests Mount

    The union, whose members include janitors and security guards, has no specific grievance on behalf of any Goldman employee.

    Rather, the SEIU, part of a coalition, Americans for Financial Reform, which is set to demonstrate in front of Goldman’s headquarters today, says it is merely standing up for millions of working class people.

  • Max Keiser: “Goldman Sachs Are Scum”

    “They are literally stealing a hundred million dollars a day. Goldman Sachs is stealing every day on the floor of the exchange. They should be in the Hague, they should be taken on financial terrorism charges. They should all be thrown in jail”

  • As Goldman Thrives, Some Say an Ethos Has Faded

    Even so, many Goldman employees are stunned by the public resentment directed at the bank in general and Mr. Blankfein in particular, who, after first steadfastly defending Goldman’s profits and pay, recently offered a vague apology for “mistakes” that led to the financial crisis.

  • Dumbest moments in business 2009

    Last month, however, he got a bit carried away, telling a Times of London reporter that he was just a banker “doing God’s work.” For $43 million a year.

  • Has Goldman Sachs Lost Its Luster?

    The Washington Post says the U.S. Government gave up billions in tax money when it agreed to let Citigroup (C) out of the TARP program this week. “The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.” A Treasury source paints the decision to let Citigroup keep the tax exemption as a Catch-22. If the government hadn’t granted the break, Citigroup might not have been able to raise the money to exit TARP and foot its tax bill. “Either the government changed the rules and parted ways with Citigroup or the company kept the government as a shareholder and kept the tax break anyway.”

  • Bank Bonuses: The ‘Fat Cats’ Try to Look Slimmer

    December has been tough for the global banking elite. First Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, slapped a 50% tax on bonuses paid to bankers. Then, days later, President Barack Obama chided “fat-cat bankers” on national television in the U.S. On Dec. 14, Wall Street began cranking up its PR machine to contain the damage, sending U.S. Bancorp (USB) CEO Richard Davis—a lesser-known, lesser-paid member of its ranks—to address reporters in Washington. America’s top bankers, he said, “agreed very much” with the President “on the principles of executive compensation,” adding that they “are looking forward to you seeing the good efforts we’ve taken in the last couple of months.”

    But a close look at Goldman Sachs’ (GS) recent maneuvers shows that some of the changes in pay practices on Wall Street are more stylistic than substantive.

• Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

  • What is DRM doing in my garage?

    My new garage door opener comes with both DRM and a DMCA warning: don’t even think about using a third-party remote. But didn’t a federal court already say this sort of behavior was illegal years ago?

  • Google accused of scrubbing bloody Berlusconi pics

    Move over, Facebook. Now Google is caught in the middle of Italy’s epic row over Sunday’s violent assault on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

    Bloggers, netizens, and at least one news organization are claiming that the web giant has removed images of a bloodied Berlusconi from the Italian incarnation of Google Image search. On Wednesday afternoon, a blog post from Google Italia said it had not removed the pics, pointing out that it takes time for newer content to appear on Image Search, but many continue to insist that the photos appeared on the site earlier in the week.

  • Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action against anyone who uses it without permission

    Former South Dakota State Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt — presently serving time for raping his two foster daughters — is sending bizarre “copyright notices” from prison to news agencies and outlets that use his name in print or online, claiming a “common law copyright” on his name and demanding $500,000 for any unauthorized use.

  • Ex-Lawmaker Convicted of Rape: Name Is Copyrighted

  • North Face sues South Butt

    The North Face Apparel Corp. has sued the South Butt LLC, seeking to put a stop to University of Missouri college freshman Jimmy Winkelmann’s parody clothing line.

  • Hiring Of FCC Scholar Criticized

    The FCC’s hiring this week of Stuart Benjamin, a telecommunications law professor on leave from Duke University, as a “distinguished scholar in residence” drew sharp criticism Friday from the Parents Television Council, which claims that he’s called for long-standing broadcast indecency law to be found unconstitutional, CongressDaily reported.

  • Journalist Fired After Critical Report Published

    A journalist who wrote for the Summit Daily News claims he was fired because his publisher was concerned about losing advertising dollars after he wrote a column that was critical of how ski resorts report their daily snow totals.

    Bob Berwyn has more than a decade reporting the news in Colorado’s high country. He was terminated at the Daily News five days after the column was published.

  • Filtering coming to Australia in 2010

    It looks like the Australian blogosphere and twitterverse are in an uproar, and the media have not been very kind. What remains to be seen is how much this issue can crossover into the mainstream public consciousness. If the policy is seen as a vote-loser rather than a crowd pleaser, the Government might be a little readier to see reason.

    So is Australia the new Iran? Should you encrypt your hard drive or install a VPN before visiting Australia next year? Well, it’s not the law of the land yet, but unless the political winds change, Australia is set to join a club with some rather unsavoury members.

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • Three strikes law reintroduced in New Zealand

    The New Zealand government has reintroduced its controversial “three-strikes” Internet law, Bill 92A. Previously defeated after widespread outcry, the new 92A was introduced minutes before Parliament recessed for the holidays, and makes no substantial improvements over the initial proposal. Under the revised proposal, if anyone in your house is accused of three acts of infringement (without any proof of wrongdoing), your entire household loses stands to lose Internet access for six months, and/or pays a NZ$15,000 fine (the previous version of the bill would have taken away your family’s internet for life). The major change in the bill is the opportunity for a counter-notice, if you believe the accusation is false.

  • Leaked secret EU-Canada copyright agreement – EU screws Canada

    Leaks have emerged from another secret copyright treaty, this one between the EU and Canada. The EU is really screwing Canada with this one, demanding longer copyright terms, more liability for ISPs (which means that it gets harder and more expensive to host anything from a message board to a video), laws against breaking copyright protection (even for a legal purpose, like getting your own files back), and a royalty on the sale of used copyrighted goods (so you’d have to track down and pay the rightsholder when you resold a painting or other copyrighted work).

  • CD seller pleads guilty to breaking copyright law

    The owner of a local record store said he had no choice but to plead guilty Tuesday to a charge of offering for sale 100 CDs that were illegal under Canadian copyright law.

  • Fees for playing music in charity shops ‘will be excessive’, Association of Charity Shops warns

    The Government’s plan to make charities pay royalties to play music will apply to each charity shop individually and could cost charities that run shops a total of more than £500,000 a year, according to the Association of Charity Shops.

  • Payment pending; Canadian recording industry set for six billion penalties?

    A report published last week in the Toronto Star by Professor Michael Geist of Canada’s University of Ottawa claims a copyright case under the Class Proceedings Act of 1992 may see the country’s largest players in the music industry facing upwards of C$6 billion in penalties.

    The case is being led by the family and estate of the late jazz musician Chet Baker; moving to take legal action against four major labels in the country, and their parent companies. The dispute centres around unpaid royalties and licensing fees for use of Baker’s music, and hundreds of thousands of other works. The suit was initially filed in August last year, but amended and reissued on October 6, two months later. At that point both the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA) and Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors (SODRAC) were also named defendants.

  • Obama Sides With Blind in Copyright-Treaty Debate

    The Obama administration announced Tuesday it supports loosening international copyright protections to enable cross-border distribution of special-format reading materials for the blind, a move that puts it at odds with nearly all of U.S. industry.

    The government announced its support for the underlying principle of the WIPO Treaty for Sharing Accessible Formats of Copyrighted Works for Persons Who are Blind or Have other Reading Disabilities. The announcement was made in Geneva (.pdf) before a subcommittee of the the World Intellectual Property Organization, which has about 180 members.

  • Sarkozy’s Party Found Violating Copyright Yet Again With Awful Lipdub

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been pushing himself as a defender of copyrights, and even helped create the original three strikes plan in France. And yet, he and his political party keep getting caught infringing on copyrights. First there was the use of a song in some online videos without proper licensing. Then there was the issue with mass pirating DVDs. So you would think that his party would be extra careful when putting together yet another online video involving music. Apparently not.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Announcing LinuxCon 2010

  The Linux Foundation — the non-profit organization dedicated to all things Linux — is involved in a number of conferences throughout the year. Among those, the newest is LinuxCon, which will be celebrating it’s second year in 2010.

• How is it doing that?

  Most impressively, the machine can flawlessly stream a 1280×528px 1536kb/s *.mkv file over my wireless network.

  As a comparison, I have a Windows Vista machine with a 2.3GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 512MB video card upstairs that can’t play the same file without special codecs and the help of a program called CoreAVC. Even with these, it plays the file imperfectly.

  I can’t explain how this is possible, but needless to say, I am astounded at the ability of Linux.

• Chrome for Linux: Good Browsers Come to Those Who Wait

  About a year after it first appeared as a Windows application, Google’s Chrome browser is finally available in beta for Linux. Google had to limit its compatible distro list to a handful of popular Linux versions, but those who can use it will likely enjoy its speed, features and the hundreds of extensions Google has made available.

• Kernel Space

  • Phoromatic Tracker Launches To Monitor Linux Performance

    Last month Phoromatic went into public beta, which is our remote test management software for the Phoronix Test Suite that allows a wealth of possibilities including the ability to easily build a benchmarking test farm.

  • How I apply patches to the stable tree

    I decided to do a screencast of how I apply patches to the Linux stable tree to give people an idea of my patch workflow.

  • When your hobby becomes a job: reflections on the em28xx driver situation

  • Graphics Stack

    • The Linux Graphics Documentation That’s Needed

      A week ago we shared that the first of the slides and videos from VMware’s recent Gallium3D workshop were now posted on the Internet. This morning some more of this content is being published, which covers the VMware SVGA driver status, a Gallium3D state tracker overview, and the status of the OpenGL ES state tracker. The content from the previous video/slides push along with today’s uploads can be found here. Unfortunately we have found out that some of the videos from the Gallium3D workshop have been lost.

    • NVIDIA Releases New X.Org DDX Driver

      Only 11 code commits have been made to the xf86-video-nv driver (that only touch about 100 lines of code) since the 2.1.15 driver update back in September, but coming out this afternoon is xf86-video-nv 2.1.16.

• Applications

  • YouTube Videos With Linux: Part 1

  • It’s About Time: Why Your Network Needs an NTP Server

  • AWN 0.4-Beta for Ubuntu is Back, Quick Review and Installation

  • Learn to use extended file attributes in Linux to boost security

  • Customizing htop

  • HowTo: Create sar Graphs With kSar [ Identifying Linux Bottlenecks ]

  • Fix for vmware-hostd crash on ubuntu 9.10 with vmware server 2.x

  • CIFS VFS Shutdown Error When Using SMBFS

  • How to Get Missing PPA GPG Keys Automatically

  • How to Synchronize a local directory with a remote directory using rsync in ubuntu

  • Custom MOTD for your linux machine.

    I created this script to run at start up of a login. so make a file in your linux machine and chmod +x tha file. Put the text below in it. bash filename and see it work, if everything looks good go into your .bashrc or .bash_profile and tell it to bash filename this will cause the script to run when you login and make your motd blank so this somewhat replaces it.

  • Improving boot time on Gentoo

  • Games

    • Charlie’s Games Release Irukandji for Linux!

      Charlie’s Games today announce the immediate release of Irukandji for Linux! Irukandji is a fun score attack shoot-em-up, set in an abstract underwater trench. You fly your ship against the flow of hundreds of amazing procedurally animated sea monsters, blasting your way to the final showdown, a Giant Enemy Crab!

• K Desktop Environment

  • KOffice – We Have a Plan

    At the end of November, the KOffice developers met in Oslo for their semi-annual developer sprint. You have probably read some of the many blog entries from that meeting or read some of the news articles that Jos Poortvliet wrote on the dot.

    Many things were discussed during the meeting, and one of them is how we can make KOffice mature enough for real users. If you have followed KOffice development, you have probably noticed that in all our release announcements, the latest of them for KOffice 2.1, we always labeled KOffice as not yet ready for real production usage. This is now about to change.

  • Searching and Filtering Photos in digiKam — Part 1

  • Custom Transitioning Backgrounds In KDE3

• Distributions

  • One XFCE 2010 Live edition is out

    Please remember, this edition is not a Mandriva product (so do not expect any kind of support directly from Mandriva), but has been completed with a great cooperation between the company and the community.

    On the 19th November 2009, the mandriva community has released the One XFCE 2010 Live edition to the world. We tried to ensure the XFCE experience is even better than before, do not hesitate to contact us if you think more polish is needed.

  • Taking a Look at VLOS

    This is the second distro that I know of that is using entropy as their main package manager. Cuba came out with a distro called Nova a while back and they are using entropy. I have no experience with their distro. We currently have another guy developing another linux distro based on Sabayon tools also. This is all good and exciting stuff to see. Sabayon Linux is making a difference for many. I would like to hear from those that are currently using our tools to build their distros. Drop us a line and let us know. If you are looking to do something like this, I suggest looking at molecule. Fabio should be proud of himself and the best part, he is willing to help these developers. He will take the time out of his busy day and answer questions.

  • Debian Family

    • MEPIS 8.5 Beta1

    • Quick change artist

      ONE of things that might disconcert Windows users after they’ve switched to Ubuntu Linux is the frequency with which the operating system is updated.

    • What’s New In Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 1?

      As per their report, the new Ubuntu will come with a decreased number of games, cutting short the number to just 5. The Update Installer gets a new button that when clicked, will update the Updater itself, so that a broken Update installer shall not cause problems for other installations. Amongst other things, the Software Center has earned itself breadcrumbs for smoother navigation and a new application called Byubo comes pre-installed. Although not revolutionary changes, the updates are worth checking out, as it is said, ‘small steps makes up the complete run’.

    • UDS from an embedded hacker’s perspective

      The Ubuntu Developers Summit (UDS), held November 16-20 in Dallas, while kicking off the development cycle for the next Ubuntu release, “Lucid Lynx”, had a surprising amount to interest a kernel hacker with embedded tendencies. The Summit covered a wide range of topics from low level kernel details, to best community practices, but the ARM netbook support sessions were particularly interesting. At this UDS, the Ubuntu ARM developers set out to enable support for many ARM machines in a single distribution, a difficult task due to the lack of a standard firmware interface on ARM systems; a familiar problem to embedded developers. This report covers the solutions debated at UDS — including Kexec bootloaders and the flattened device tree — and the choices made for the next Ubuntu release.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Europe’s txtr Ready to Fight Amazon’s Kindle

    txtr, a Berlin-based startup, is building an e-reader that it hopes will be Europe’s answer to the Amazon Kindle. Christophe Maire, CEO of the company, sat down with me in Paris earlier this week and gave me the details. He is one of the co-founders of gate5, a German navigation/mapping service that was acquired by Nokia in 2006. While Maire went to work for the Finnish phone giant, his co-founders started txtr, and Maire only just joined as the CEO.

  • x86 SBCs gain flashy new Linux SDKs

    Diamond Systems announced software development kits (SDKs) that include solid-state IDE flashdisk modules. Preloaded with Linux 2.6.23, the bootable modules plug directly into Diamond’s boards, supplying all required drivers, the company says.

  • Cisco 802.11n router for SMBs runs Linux

    Cisco announced a Linux-based WiFi router touted as the first 802.11n dual-band clustering access point for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The Cisco AP 541N Wireless Access Point includes 802.11n, gigabit Ethernet, “robust” security, voice roaming, and clustering technology, enabling a single point of administration for multiple access points.

  • Nook hiding MMS and speech recognition smarts

    If you somehow get your hands on a Nook, the process for getting at it’s secrets is a little involved – you’ll need a screwdriver, a microSD card reader and a computer running Linux – but if you’re keen you can read through the process over at the Nookdevs Wiki.

  • Nook Hacked Within Two Weeks of Release

Devices/Embedded

• Europe’s txtr Ready to Fight Amazon’s Kindle

  txtr, a Berlin-based startup, is building an e-reader that it hopes will be Europe’s answer to the Amazon Kindle. Christophe Maire, CEO of the company, sat down with me in Paris earlier this week and gave me the details. He is one of the co-founders of gate5, a German navigation/mapping service that was acquired by Nokia in 2006. While Maire went to work for the Finnish phone giant, his co-founders started txtr, and Maire only just joined as the CEO.

• x86 SBCs gain flashy new Linux SDKs

  Diamond Systems announced software development kits (SDKs) that include solid-state IDE flashdisk modules. Preloaded with Linux 2.6.23, the bootable modules plug directly into Diamond’s boards, supplying all required drivers, the company says.

• Cisco 802.11n router for SMBs runs Linux

  Cisco announced a Linux-based WiFi router touted as the first 802.11n dual-band clustering access point for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The Cisco AP 541N Wireless Access Point includes 802.11n, gigabit Ethernet, “robust” security, voice roaming, and clustering technology, enabling a single point of administration for multiple access points.

• Nook hiding MMS and speech recognition smarts

  If you somehow get your hands on a Nook, the process for getting at it’s secrets is a little involved – you’ll need a screwdriver, a microSD card reader and a computer running Linux – but if you’re keen you can read through the process over at the Nookdevs Wiki.

• Nook Hacked Within Two Weeks of Release

• Pandora

  • Homebrew pocket console Pandora’s box is now open

    The long awaited British-made (well, designed) open-source handheld platform, Pandora, is one of Pocket Gamer’s most eagerly awaited devices. We saw footage of one of the first mass production models just last week, and now the Open Pandora team is celebrating as the first batch arrives on British soil.

  • Open-source handheld Pandora arrives

• Phones

  • Smartphone market will grow says Pyramid

• Nokia

  • Vodafone to sell N900 from next month

    Mobile giant Vodafone will make the N900 available to its users from January.

  • Nokia N900 Review

    Overall, it’s good, and Maemo is showing real promise. For non geeky users, it’s probably best to give it a couple of months to wait for the infrastructure to be there, and some bugfixes to be released.

  • How to update the firmware on the Nokia N900

• Android

  • Motorola’s Milestone (The U.K.‘s Droid) Flies Off The Virtual Shelves

    Some very positive news for Motorola (NYSE: MOT) as we head into the weekend … Online retailer eXpansys says that the Milestone—the U.K.-version of the Droid—sold out in just three hours. eXpansys is the exclusive seller of the handset; the company said it had received well over 1,000 pre-orders for the Milestone a week before it went on sale. eXpansis expects a second shipment of Milestones to arrive in time for holiday orders.

  • Acer A1 Liquid Android smartphone

    Over the last 12 months Acer has been spitting out smartphones like there is no tomorrow. Some of them, like the Tempo F900, have been quite good while others, like the beTouch E101, have been, ahem, less impressive. Yet none have really scored as a hit in our book, but that may be about to change with the release of the A1 Liquid, Acer’s first Android phone.

  • Googlephone videos uncovered

    Evidence is mounting that Google’s smartphone will be called the Nexus One, following the appearance of a video showing the phone’s packaging and OS.

  • Happenings: droidcon London 2009

    As Android starts appearing on more devices, so developers are getting together to exchange notes on how to develop on the rapidly changing open source mobile phone platform. At the first droidcon London, subjects ranged from alternate languages, programming audio and implementing Android on devices to reverse engineering programmes, testing Android applications and the future of mobile devices.

  • Bright future for HTC’s Hero

    As you’ll probably know by now, the Hero runs Google’s Android operating system, which – like the iPhone – is built around a Unix-based core OS, in Android’s case that core being the ever popular Linux kernel.

  • Google phone with T-Mobile contract in Jan: source

    Google Inc plans to sell two versions of its own-branded cell phone: one with a service contract with T-Mobile USA and another that is unlocked, a source familiar with the matter said.

  • Unofficial id classics pulled from Android

• Sub-notebooks

  • Cherrypal Launches $99 ‘Africa’ Netbook

    Cherrypal has added a new netbook to their range, which will cost just $99, the Cherrypal Africa Netbook, which is named after Cherrypal’s recent community building initiative in Ghana.

Free Software/Open Source

• Eucalyptus open-sources the cloud (Q&A)

  It’s reasonably clear that open source is the heart of cloud computing, with open-source components adding up to equal cloud services like Amazon Web Services. What’s not yet clear is how much the cloud will wear that open source on its sleeve, as it were.

  Eucalyptus, an open-source platform that implements “infrastructure as a service” (IaaS) style cloud computing, aims to take open source front and center in the cloud-computing craze. The project, founded by academics at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is now a Benchmark-funded company with an ambitious goal: become the universal cloud platform that everyone from Amazon to Microsoft to Red Hat to VMware ties into.

• 50 Essential Free Open Courseware Classes for Web Designers

  Web design is an increasingly important aspect of media and business. Because the Internet has become essential to the way we do business, find information and accomplish a number of other tasks, Web design truly is vital. And someone who understands Web design and can do a good job with it is valuable in a number of ways. If you are interested in improving your web design skills, here are 50 great open courseware classes for web designers

• China to nurture open source software development

  China intends to nurture the development of open source software in 2011-2015, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

• Is open source a train anyone can stop?

  Open source code is steadily seeing growth. WordPress, Opera and Mozilla are companies making significant financial inroads in the software industry. With thousands of open source developers and volunteer programmers adding features and plug-ins, open source software continues to rise in popularity and is for many a profitable industry. Using a variety of software licence options within GNU – GPL, vetted by several organizations such as Open Source Initiative and Free Software Foundation, the genesis of a software application now flourishes, creating a never ending ecosystem of growth and updates.

• Find Bar – Second version of a search toolbar for OpenOffice.org

  The find bar consists of an edit field which contains the search text and buttons to search down and upwards. A hidden button to open the find & replace dialog can be configured via the context menu.

• FOSDEM 2010: Call for presentations

  The tenth annual Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting (FOSDEM) is scheduled to take place on the 6th and 7th of February, 2010 at the University of Brussels. The KDE Developer Room (DevRoom) organisers have announced that they are now accepting submissions for talks on any KDE related topic. All proposals must be submitted before the deadline of the 3rd of January, 2010. More details about submitting talks, including available times and requirements, can be found on the KDE FOSDEM 2010 wiki.

• The Open Source IP PBX: A Growing Trend

  For instance, the five-year-old FreeSWITCH platform recently came out with its 1.0.5 release and, working with its parent, developed the standalone Cudatel Communications Platform, featuring FreeSWITCH as the core technology, along with integrated Sangoma hardware.

• Open Source Business Intelligence in the real world

  What are the options for developers constructing intensive data churning software systems that need to overcome the hurdles of compliance? Surprisingly perhaps, if you simply Google “BI” for business intelligence, the third result (at the time of writing) comes in US open-source vendor Pentaho.

• GoGrid Exchange: BitNami Open Source Web Applications Images Available

  BitNami also offers development environments for LAMP (Apache, MySQL and PHP on Linux), Ruby on Rails, JRuby and others.

• Open source, Linux set for unheralded coronation in 2010

  Perhaps Mike Olson, Sleepy Cat founder and now Cloudera CEO, said it best when he told Network World earlier this year, “At Sleepy Cat, we were proud to be an open source company. At Cloudera, I think of us as an enterprise software company that happens to be built on open source software.”

• RSSOwl.org Selects Versant to Power Its Atom & RSS Newsreader

  Versant Corporation (Nasdaq:VSNT), an industry leader in specialized data management software, announces a new customer, RSSOwl.org and a case study on its product, the Atom & RSS Newsreader RSSOwl. The case study provides an overview of the compelling reasons for which RSSOwl.org selected Versant’s db4o object database for its next generation newsreader, RSSOwl 2.0.

• Mozilla

  • A Firefox Add-on Store Likely to Open Next Year

    With the launch of Google Chrome and Chrome OS, Mozilla and Firefox are knee deep exploring alternative business models, ones that don’t rely on Google.

• Databases

  • Oracle, MySQL and the EU: The Endgame Q&A

    Like a tea kettle, the ongoing acquisition of Sun by Oracle, objected to by the EU, has gone from cold to boiling to cold to boiling and back again these past few months. The diversity of opinions, even amongst the those considered to be experts on the subject, is remarkable and has led to a wide ranging, passionate debate.

  • MySQL 5.5 Milestone 2 improves replication and stored procedures

    The MySQL developers have released milestone 2 of MySQL 5.5, on the path to a general release in mid-2010. The new milestone release incorporates semi-synchronous replication in MySQL 5.5 based on patches to InnoDB developed by Google. This is designed to ensure that when a change is committed in the master database, at least one slave has confirmed that the data has arrived and been buffered before the commit is complete.

  • EnterpriseDB Receives High Marks from AQA

    EnterpriseDB, the enterprise Postgres company, today announced that the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), the UK’s largest examination board, has selected and deployed Postgres Plus Advanced Server to create a business-critical extranet application. Utilizing Postgres Plus as the database solution for its ‘Examiner Extranet,’ AQA empowers its users with reliable, real-time access to core business data in a secure and highly cost-effective manner, ultimately saving the non-profit organization valuable capital and ongoing operational expenses.

  • The case in favor of the open source enterprise database

    Another indication that the database market is ripe for commoditization is that specialized, open source database management systems are appearing on the horizon to address niche markets. Derby (pure Java) and Hadoop (for data-intensive, distributed apps), for example, are gaining traction for unique applications.

  • BI and Data Warehouse Vendors Chime in on Oracle’s MySQL Commitments

    Cautious optimism. This was the basic reaction shared this week by open-source business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing vendors commenting on ten commitments Oracle announced December 14 on how it would handle MySQL. Issued in hopes of winning approval of its acquisition of MySQL owner Sun Microsystems by the European Commission, the commitments made a favorable impression on open-source database partners and OEM licensees.

• BSD

  • Quick Overview of Bsd Systems With Main Focus on Openbsd

    Today, when too many companies bring out various distros, it is hard to tell which of them best suits our needs and you may become mixed-up in such a huge list. If companies invest money to a software solution, they may become disappointed if its licensing policy changes. OpenBSD has one sturdy feature above everything – the system and packages are perfectly audited for security holes.

  • My experience with FreeBsd 8 (comes free with rants and review)

    I would like to give FreeBSD 8 two thumbs up. It really lives up to its name in terms of stability and sleekness.

  • Install a BSD-variant with the help of PC-BSD

    I’m very glad to see that someone has created a BSD variant that is easy enough for the masses to install. PC-BSD allows anyone to give one of the most solid, reliable, and secure operating system available a try.

• Licensing

  • Understanding licenses, bit by bit

    An idea that is suggested every now and then is to look at software licensing and give it a kind of “Creative Commons” feel; that is, present the terms of the license in a pleasant and orderly way by means of icons. Now, we’ve already come to the realization that calling something “Creative Commons licensed” is vague to the point of being useless (just “some rights reserved“). Calling something “Free Software” is also vague, but there is a rock-solid guarantee at the bottom: the term guarantees you, the recipient of the software, at least the Four Freedoms. Any Open Source software you receive usually means at least the Four Freedoms as well. So you need to say which CC, which Free Software license, which Open Source license.

• Openness

  • Open Source Football: Goal Line Technology

  • MPs behaving better over expense claims, says Speaker

    Commons Speaker John Bercow claimed MPs had started to behave better over their expenses, saying many of the revelations of wrongdoing published on Thursday preceded parliament’s decision to publish the expenses.

  • mySociety’s Next 12 months – Part 1

    Over the last weekend of November 2009 a group of 21 mySociety staff, volunteers and trustees went to a house outside of Bristol to wrestle with the question of what mySociety should build over the next 12 months.

  • Jordan S. Hatcher: “Why we can’t use the same open licensing approach for databases as we do for content and software.”

    Legal certainty is crucial when it comes to build business around new technologies. The Open Knowledge Foundation has started to tackle this problem with respect to Linked Data. Tassilo Pellegrini spoke to the Open Content Lawyer Jordan S. Hatcher about licensing issues in Open Data and got some practical advice to get started on a complex but crucial topic.

• Programming

  • Qt Graphics and Performance – An Overview

    At the centre of all Qt graphics is the QPainter class. It can render to surfaces, through the QPaintDevice class. Examples of paint devices are QImage’s, QPixmaps and QWidgets. The way it works is that for a given QPaintDevice implementation we return a custom paint engine which supports rendering to that surface. This is all part of our documentation so perhaps not too interesting. Lets look at this in more detail.

Leftovers

• Top cop’s ‘stop stopping snappers’ memo: Too little too late?

  As yet another senior copper reads the riot act to his fellow officers over the policing of photographers, concerns are growing amongst senior ranks that this is all too little too late – and that serious damage has now been done to relations with the public over this issue.

  John Yates, Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations, put out a message yesterday reminding all Met Police officers and staff that people taking photographs in public should not be stopped and searched unless there is a valid reason.

• Police release film of suspects’ ‘terror targets’

  Police have released footage which they say was made by a suspected terror cell filming potential targets.

  They believe an Algerian gang was conducting reconnaissance for a plot to target train stations in London.

• Facebook’s loosening sense of privacy

  I’ve taken care to keep much of the private data on my Facebook account properly private; my public profile is quite limited and only friends can see anything I want to keep personal. Seeing no reason to change this, I kept the settings as they were and left it that. But then a few days later, in our conversation Kathryn warned that there were new privacy settings added in, so I checked it out. And lo and behold, there’s a section I hadn’t seen before, in the “Applications and websites” section, called “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites”

• Googling for Sociopaths

• Data Nerds Hack NASA — in a Good Way

  A bunch of data nerds from inside and outside NASA will gather this Saturday at a house in Cupertino, California, called the Rainbow Mansion to hack through the agency’s data jungles.

• Introducing namebench

  Slow DNS servers can make for a terrible web browsing experience, but knowing which one to use isn’t easy. namebench is a new open source tool that helps to take the guess-work out of the DNS server selection process. namebench benchmarks available DNS services and provides a personalized comparison to show you which name servers perform the best.

• Intoxicated by power, Blair tricked us into war

  The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions and playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want, and on a basis that it’s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible. Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister’s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?

• Look Out, Canvas – A Fifth Of TVs Will Have Internet In 2010

  Project Canvas, the BBC’s proposed connected-TV EPG standard, is facing a couple of challenges next year…

  Not only has the project been delayed from 2009 to late 2010 by the regulator’s request for a more detailed proposal (meaning it won’t get to piggyback the launch marketing of Freeview HD) – many of the very same TV makers that the BBC is trying to convince to use Canvas are busy actually selling tellies with their own built-in internet services…

• Health-care bill needs major improvement to be worth passing

  Few Americans will see any benefit until 2014, by which time premiums are likely to have doubled. In short, the winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced with a bailout in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.

• Data

  • Alistair Darling signals death of ID cards

    The Chancellor suggested that biometric passports, which carry the same information as ID cards, would be sufficient.

    In an interview in The Daily Telegraph today, he said there was “probably no need” to “go further” than the new passports, paving the way for ID cards to be scrapped. Although he claimed later that he wasn’t going beyond existing plans, his intervention could spell the death knell for the project.

  • DVLA data powers likely to be abused by foreign officials

    Personal data belonging to nearly 40 million UK motorists is likely to be abused by foreign officials under new automatic access powers, according to a restricted report.

    Drivers’ details such as name, address, motoring convictions and some medical information will be available to more than two dozen European countries around the clock under the Prüm Convention.

  • ID card minister forgets ID card

    Hillier blamed her forgetfulness on the demands of looking after her baby.

• Environment

  • Climate Talks Near Deal to Save Forests

    Negotiators have all but completed a sweeping deal that would compensate countries for preserving forests, and in some cases, other natural landscapes like peat soils, swamps and fields that play a crucial role in curbing climate change.

  • Canadians *Do* Have a Sense of Humour

    Of course, everyone should have known that Canada wouldn’t do anything like accept massive emission reduction targets, or agree to reparations.

  • The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble

    Canada’s highly unconventional resource (heavy oil from sand or rock) lies under a forest area the size of England (140,000 square kilometers) and is arguably the world’s last remaining giant oil field. Almost every major private and state-owned oil company has a presence in the tar sands. The project could make Canada the world’s fifth largest oil exporter by 2020.

  • There is plenty of oil but . . .

    There is a huge amount of oil which theoretically can be extracted, but the question is whether the cost will be cheap enough for us to be able to afford to extract it. If the oil is too expensive to extract, the shortage of oil seems to cause a recession, similar to what we are having now. I discuss this in purely monetary terms, but it is also an issue with respect to low energy return on investment (EROI), for those of you used to thinking in EROI terms.

  • Demand a Science-Based Treaty

  • Deniergate: Turning the tables on climate sceptics

    “Climategate” has put scientists on trial in the court of public opinion. If you believe climate sceptics, a huge body of evidence involving the work of tens of thousands of scientists over more than a century should be thrown out on the basis of the alleged misconduct of a handful of researchers, even though nothing in the hacked emails has been shown to undermine any of the scientific conclusions.

• Finance

  • WaMu filing: JPMorgan had inside info

    A filing in the Washington Mutual bankruptcy case says that new evidence supports allegations that JPMorgan Chase used access to inside information about WaMu to drive down the bank’s credit rating and share price, scare away other suitors and arrange to buy the ailing Seattle bank from regulators at a bargain price.

  • Evening Wrap: Wamu Demands JP Morgan Documents; XTO Execs Waive Some Payout; Wells Offering Oversubscribed

    Washington Mutual, the bankrupt holding company whose banking business was sold to JP Morgan-Chase (JPM) last year, requested a U.S. federal court to ask the Federal Reserve Board, the Treasury Department and others to turn over documents it believes are relevant in its suit against JPM. Wamu filed suit against the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in March asking for $13 billion in damages. A Reuters piece tonight says Wamu has a JPM email from the week before the sale to JP Morgan showing the FDIC talking with the bank about whether it might be interested in Wamu.

  • WaMu seeks to investigate US regulators, others

  • SEC Report Sheds New Light on Deal for Bear Stearns

    The report looked into allegations made in an anonymous letter that Linda Thomsen, who was SEC enforcement chief at the time of the Bear Stearns takeover in March 2008, improperly gave information about ongoing SEC investigations involving Bear Stearns to a lawyer for J.P. Morgan who was also Ms. Thomsen’s former supervisor. The report exonerated Ms. Thomsen, concluding that she didn’t violate any rules and didn’t provide specific information about the SEC’s investigation into Bear Stearns.

  • JPMorgan Poised to Lead CLO Comeback After Loan Rally

    The $440 billion market for CLOs, which pool loans and slice them into securities of varying risk, largely disappeared at the end of 2007 as losses on subprime mortgages led investors to flee bundled debt. While new sales would signal Wall Street’s return to investments that contributed to $1.7 trillion of writedowns and credit losses worldwide, they may help companies refinance $1.5 trillion of high-yield loans and bonds maturing by the end of 2014.

  • FDIC Approves Giving Banks Reprieve From Capital Requirements

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. gave banks including Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. a reprieve of at least six months from raising capital to support billions of dollars of securities the firms will be adding to their balance sheets.

• Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

  • Questions for the new European Commissioners

    2 weeks after launching a consultation, la Quadrature du Net is submitting to the European Parliament a set of questions to be asked to the Commissioners designate.

    They cover a broad range of issues that are essential to people’s right to access a free and open Internet. All these topics should be a core component of the upcoming European digital agenda.

    All questions directly relate to the portfolio of Neelie Kroes, Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Other Commissioners designate whose Directorate-General are competent for specific issues are indicated below.

  • Government wants new powers to block wikileaks and squeeze web tv

    Just over a week ago I wrote a fairly dry legal analysis of the Digital Economy Bill. I spotted an extremely serious provision — clause 11 — in the version being discussed in the House of Lords. Having looked at the amendments (which you can find on the Bill’s document page) I am worried that no-one in Parliament appears to be taking the problem serious.

  • Danish police abuse climate-change demonstrators

    Zoran sez, “Earlier this week (12th Dec), a massive, peaceful protest of 100,000 people — the largest demonstration for climate justice in world history — was met with a heavy-handed response by the Danish police. Thousands of riot police swarmed the march route, blocked off streets surrounding large groups of protestors, and arrested almost 1,000 people. Arrestees were cuffed and forced to sit in rows for hours, as the temperatures dipped below freezing; numerous people urinated on themselves after being denied use of toilets.”

  • BBC deletes important story on toxic waste dumping in the Ivory Coast after legal threats, 12 Dec 2009

    This file contains a deleted BBC news article on the toxic-waste dumping of commodities giant Trafigura. According to a September 2009 UN report, the dumping drove 108,000 people in the Ivory Coast to seek medical attention.

    Trafigura and their lawyers Carter Ruck had been pursuing an ongoing libel case against the BBC over a news story from on the case that aired in May 2009[1].

    In the story “Dirty Tricks and Toxic Waste in the Ivory Coast”, the BBC’s Newsnight programme stated: “It is the biggest toxic dumping scandal of the 21st century, the type of environmental vandalism that international treaties are supposed to prevent. Now Newsnight can reveal the truth about the waste that was illegally tipped on Ivory Coast’s biggest city, Abidjan”. The programme alleged that a number of deaths had been caused by the dumping of this toxic waste, which had originated with Trafigura.

    Until this week the story was still available on the BBC website.[2]

    The link stopped working some time on December 10th or 11th, but at the time of writing the Google cache is still available[3].

  • Stand up to Trafigura abuse of outdated libel laws

    Trafigura took a very aggressive stance, using the UK’s outdated libel laws to gag the media, and questions in Parliament. When the Guardian reported that it had been served with a “super-injunction” that didn’t allow it to name Trafigura, or Carter-Ruck, *or* the fact that they had taken out an injunction on them, the Internet took up the case and plastered the details everywhere.

  • Child groups slam Conroy’s ISP filtering plans

    Children’s rights groups have spoken out against the Federal Government’s plans to introduce mandatory ISP-level filtering, saying it will not effectively protect children.

    International child rights group, Save the Children, said while it congratulates the government on its attempt to improve the safety of children online, an ISP-level filter is not the best way to offer protection.

  • Child safety vetting list will grow from initial 9m

    There had been plans for some 11.3 million adults to be vetted – but after criticism from school leaders and children’s authors the rules on frequency of contact have been eased, reducing this to an estimated nine million.

  • Silvio Berlusconi: Italian government threatens to block anti-Berlusconi Facebook groups

    Outraged Italian ministers have threatened action against dozens of Facebook groups which have sprung up praising the actions of the man who allegedly attacked Silvio Berlusconi.

  • Battles over Berlusconi rage in cyberspace

  • Facebook to Monitor Berlusconi Content

    Facebook said Tuesday that it would monitor content on its Web site dealing with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy following an attack at a political rally that left him hospitalized.

  • Italian student tells of arrest while filming for fun

    Police community support officers (PCSOs) stopped Italian student Simona Bonomo under anti-terrorism legislation for filming buildings in London. Moments later, she was arrested by other officers, held in a police cell and fined. She talks Paul Lewis through the footage she recorded of her conversation with the PSCOs. Source: guardian.co.uk Link to this video

  • Online-only news to be overseen by press watchdog

    Internet-only publications are to face the same regulations as newspapers for the first time under an extension to the powers of newspaper industry self-regulator body the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

  • Google weighs in to Aussie firewall row

    Google has criticised the Australian government’s forthcoming mandatory ISP censorship system for targeting a “too wide” a range of content.

  • Australia introduces web filters

    Australia intends to introduce filters which will ban access to websites containing criminal content.

    The banned sites will be selected by an independent classification body guided by complaints from the public, said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • Will The Chinese BitTorrent Crackdown Boost Criminals?

    Recently it became clear that Chinese authorities were going ahead with their planned video site purge. Many BitTorrent sites fell including some of the country’s largest, but of course none of this changes the demand for free or near-free media. So will the crackdown force those seeking cheap movies back onto the streets?

  • Of Access to Copyright Materials and Blindness

    First, in what sense is providing more access to the visually impaired not compatible with US copyright laws? The proponents of this change have gone out of their way to make sure that the access given is within current copyright regimes, which are not serving this huge, disadvantaged constituency properly. And how would it undermine expanded access? It would, manifestly, provide access that is not available now; the publishers have proposed nothing that would address the problem other than saying the system’s fine, we don’t want to change it.

    But the most telling – and frankly, sickening – aspect of this post is the way its author sets up the rights of authors against the rights of those with visual disabilities, as if the latter are little better than those scurvy “pirates” that “steal” copyright material from those poor authors.

    In fact, *nothing* is being taken, it’s simply that these people wish to enjoy their rights to read as others do – something that has been denied to them by an industry indifferent to their plight. And which author would not be happy to extend the pleasure of reading their works to those cut off from it by virtue of physical disabilities?

  • [A2k] US delegation welcomes views on WIPO Treaty for the blind

    Justin Hughes of the US delegation asked that I pass on his email address, so that people can communication with him if they want to express views on the WIPO treaty for disabilities being discussed at the WIPO SCCR 19 this week.

  • Statement of Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) at SCCR 19

    I represent the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), which works to serve the 2 million people with sight loss in UK.

    As part of this work, RNIB has a library of some 40,000 books in audio, large print and Braille, which we distribute to reading disabled people.

    Most accessible books are made by specialist organisations like ours, even in cases where publishers provide licenses or the source files. These specialist organisations have limited resources, and are very often charities.

    It should be noted that we cannot even use all our funds to make accessible books! We provide many vital but costly services, such as emotional support and employment advice.

  • Digital Economy Bill [HL]

  • Taking forward the Gowers Review of IP

  • New Zealand Releases Revamped Three Strikes Proposal

    The New Zealand government has released a revamped three strikes proposal that incorporates full court hearings and the possibility of financial penalties. A prior proposal, which would have resulted in subscriber access being terminated without court oversight, was dropped earlier this year following public protest. The new proposal is essentially a notice-and-notice system where ISPs would be required to pass along alleged infringement notices to the subscriber. After the third notice, the rights holder could seek up to $15,000 at the Copyright Tribunal for damages sustained. If the infringements continue, the rights holder could go to court to seek suspension of the subscriber account for up to six months.

  • Openness? Transparency? Not When Biden Gets To Hang With Entertainment Industry Lobbyists: Press Kicked Out

    Then we heard that Attorney General Eric Holder was reinvigorating the Justice Department’s “task force” on copyright. Why? There’s still no indication of any actual harm (both the movie and music industries are growing). Then, Commerce Secretary Locke noted that anti-camcording efforts are an important part of the anti-piracy effort. Funny timing, given the recent fiasco over a young woman arrested for incidental capturing of snippets of New Moon.

    So it started out just great. And then? Well, then the press got kicked out.

  • Holder At White House Summit With Entertainment Executives

    Vice President Joe Biden led a round table meeting of high ranking government officials and entertainment industry executives at the White House conference center today, where he pledged that the Obama administration would work to combat piracy in the rapidly changing technological age.

  • Hypocrisy, Thy Name is MPAA

    What the MPAA wants is for ISPs, for example, to change their businesses “to reflect current realities and adopt modern, flexible systems where they do not exist”: how strange, then, that the MPAA is not prepared to do the same by working according to the new digital rules instead of clinging to the old analogue ones…

  • UK Aggregator NewsNow Dumps Newspapers After They Demand Payment To Link To Stories

    Back in October, we wrote about how various newspapers, under the auspices of the “Newspaper Licensing Agency” were threatning NewsNow, a UK news aggregator that is (in my experience) one of the more comprehensive aggregators out there, but which only shows headlines and links to full stories. It’s difficult to see how that would be a copyright violation in anyone’s definition of the term or why that should require any kind of license.

  • Congress Gives $30 Million To Fight ‘Piracy’

    Recent studies have shown that — despite a massive recession — both the music and movie industries are having fantastic years. However, both industries are complaining about how they’re being “killed” by “piracy.” There’s no evidence of this of course, but when it comes to copyright, politicians don’t seem to believe evidence is necessary.