04.21.09
Posted in News Roundup at 6:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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The aggregate amount of computing power for mainframes that IBM shipped in the quarter actually rose by 18 per cent, Loughridge said, with MIPS shipments of so-called specialty engines that run Linux, WebSphere, or DB2 accelerators up 20 per cent and Linux-related MIPS up more than 50 per cent.
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Gear6 today released Web Cache in an effort to commercialize the Internet’s predominant (de facto, for Linux) distributed caching protocol, memcached. Every Top 20 web site not owned by Microsoft uses memcached (Facebook has almost 1,000 servers dedicated to its memcached tier) and 50-60 percent of all Alexa-ranked Top 10,000 sites use it to some degree, according to Joaquin Ruiz, EVP of products and corporate development at Gear6. With Web Cache, Gear6 is offering a turnkey solution that brings high availability to memcached, as well as significant capital and operating expenditure savings.
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Would you be kind enough to provide us at FLISoL Bogotá with say, 15 or 20 of those installation CDs/DVDs? We won’t be using them to install Windows on the computers, don’t have to worry about it. I will personally hand them out to the kids so that they use them to play around (as frisbies or just to scratch on their surface) while we are on our stuff. I know that yours is a toy OS and so we should install them on the kids computers, but I refuse to.
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Blackmagic’s Linux support in Media Express 2.0 allows for fully cross-platform development on Macs, Windows or Linux machines. Version 2.0 adds new double-speed capture from Sony HDCAM SR decks and ships in June 2009.
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But here’s the question: Would you rather buy a netbook with a deliberately crippled OS that still costs more than Linux, and pay for an upgrade, or just buy a cheap laptop that runs a fully functional Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Mandriva, Xandros, or Linpus Linux Lite? OK, if you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’re a geek and you’re not scared by Linux. So let me rephrase the question and ask which netbook operating system option would you recommend to your friends and family members?
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RPath on Monday released version 5 of its rBuilder product for building virtual appliances to run under Linux and ease the number of steps needed to create a workload for Amazon’s EC2 and other cloud computing environments.
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I suppose , in answer to the question “When will Linux be ready for the user desktop?”
It was ready almost two years ago in this house. Children use it daily, as well as computer phobic wives and memory challenged mad computer geniuses. (The ‘genius’ part is up for speculation.)
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“It’s amazingly easy to start,” he says. “You just need to get onto the internet. A great example is clarkconnect.com, a site from a Linux distributor that is designed to help people who don’t know what they’re doing set up open source.”
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It is also a blessing in disguise for Linux. It could have no better than Google itself starting to promote it. Does it mean more Open Source apps? Free apps? Better GUI on Linux games? What else?
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Red Hat
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Global Knowledge, the worldwide leader in IT and Business training, today announced that it is joining training partner Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) in celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) program. Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source solutions.
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Ubuntu
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Under the hood, the latest version of Ubuntu offers a kernel upgrade, the latest version of GNOME, support for the Ext4 filesystem, and a more stable and robust Linux distro than its less-than-thrilling 8.10 predecessor.
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He argued that the major sources in software today are either free software or powered by free software, Google Yahoo etc.
“The fact that Oracle has just announced a multi-billion dollar acquisition of a company that describes itself as the world’s biggest Free Software and Open Source company to me is enormously instructive,” Shuttleworth said. “To me it suggests that it cements the idea that open source and free software are the big game in town. And everyone is trying to figure out what that means and how they integrate it, what’ they can’t do is ignore it.”
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During an open Q&A, Shuttleworth said that customers should expect a major netbook OEM announcement within the next couple of weeks or months. Also, when answering a question about the Canonical-Dell relationship, Shuttleworth said the engagement continues to expand.
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Canonical will release Ubuntu 9.04 (nicknamed “Jaunty Jackalope”) on April 23. The new release of the fast-growing open-source Linux distro boasts faster boot and resume operations, a new desktop notification service, smoother handoffs between WiFi and 3G service, and Ubuntu’s first ARM port, says Canonical.
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He may sound innocent, but Leigh Dyer has attempted to get Linux working on an iPod, which means help desk workers everywhere view him as “difficult”. He also knows his stuff. Leigh is a software developer and systems administrator with more than 10 years Linux and Windows experience. He’s been using Ubuntu since before its official announcement in 2004, although he’s not afraid to admit he’s also quite a fan of Mac OS X.
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DRM Free
The company that make this device, Neuros Technology, have clearly positioned themselves as anti-DRM – they created an ‘Unlocked Media’ trademark and logo to market their devices as being open and DRM free. They are also supporters of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Free Software Foundation’s ongoing ‘Defective By Design‘ campaign that aims to ‘identify defective DRM enabled products and target them for elimination’.
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1. You will find it quite easily that Ubuntu stands as the best Linux distro available that takes the hardware recognition quite easily and effectively. I have used Ubuntu on many systems including laptops and desktops with different configurations and there is no hardware problem that I faced.
2. Synaptic makes it easier and simple for you to handle package management and software installation and you won’t feel dismembered from your earlier love operating system Windows.
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Besides the main desktop release, Canonical is also releasing the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix. This is a version that’s designed to work well on the limited resources of a netbook like the Dell Mini 9. That said, you can, of course, run ordinary Ubuntu on a netbook.
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Need a cloud in a box? Want a cloud in a box? Well, then, start requisitioning a couple of machines now so you’re ready on Thursday to load up Ubuntu 9.04, install Eucalyptus, and follow the prompt to register your cloud with RightScale! And best of all, it’s all free! Free open source software and access to a free RightScale service account.
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One of the great promises of the Ubuntu spring release is the shortening of boot times. Alongside a modest range of humble changes, the boot performance is supposed to be one of the major improvements that Jaunty Jackalope brings over Intrepid.
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I upgraded at 6:30. I turned off at midnight (another wild evening), having forgotten I’d done it. Fantastic.
There is an argument – for want of a better word – among creationists, that while microevolution is possible (small features may change between generations of living beings), macroevolution (ie, a dog to a horse) is impossible. The biologist’s world-weary reply is, well, a dog never becomes a horse. Things do change gradually – and if they diverge enough, then one day you’ll have a dog and a horse from a common ancestor. In short, there is no ‘macroevolution’.
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The applications in the sensor panel are running on Linux and data is communicated back and forth to the main PC, which runs Windows.
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But that’s not all that’s brewing at Maemo.org. So if you get a chance, drop by Maemo.org and check out the project. They’re a group worth your time and consideration.
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The last time we saw the Pre’s Classic Palm OS emulator in action, we had a few lingering questions in our mind, chief among them being how well can it game? From the looks of this latest video, released by Motion Apps to answer that very question, pretty well so far. In addition to confirming sound support for the latest build, we also get a brief glimpse of the software handling 3D driver GTS World Racer.
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Shock jock Howard Stern may have picked a BlackBerry over the Palm Pre, but the unreleased device has captured the heart of actress Angelina Jolie.
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Phones
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The Intrinsyc Center of Excellence will make it easier for device makers all over Asia to take advantage of Intrinsyc’s years of experience in Linux and handset development.
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Schmidt said this year’s Android-related announcements will include both phones and netbooks, and will be “quite significant.” Schmidt said device manufacturers have started putting Android into netbooks without any prodding from Google (NSDQ: GOOG). IDG said Taiwan’s Asustek Computer is rumored to be working on an netbook that uses Android, while other Taiwanese companies are also reportedly developing products.
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SkyTone isn’t the only Android Netbook game in town either, they are just first to announce. Plenty of others are planned, namely Pegatron’s Freescale based netbook. There is also the i-Buddie prototyple shown below (although this is based on Intel Atom).
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Sub-notebooks
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Here is a long series of articles about things that i think which could be improved concerning Mandriva PR. If possible, I will take a subject or some articles and show how Mandriva could have react or communicate about this. Today i will take about the netbook market and Mandriva situation.
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Being the nice guy, I suggest I would install it for her, right in front of her face. She agreed and I whipped out the USB drive containing Eeebuntu (that I carry with me all the time) and proceeded to install it over her Windows installation. After it was finished, I sat with her for a bit to make sure she could use it. She didn’t ask a single question. Instead she was all smiles at how cool the new interface was on her netbook. Did she know it was Linux? No. Did she need to know it was Linux? No.
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Computer skills must mean more than word processing, says Bill Thompson.
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The research, conducted by Georgia Tech, is based on the prevalence and acceptance of open source software in 75 different countries around the world. Each country was awarded points for “its policies, practices, and other data in the fields of Government, Industry, and Community.” The data also takes into account that, though some countries have may not have a particularly high rate of FOSS use, the fact that it holds several IT patents or has a large number of Internet users indicates a open source software has a high potential of gaining traction in the future.
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The economic situation is eating into your profits, and the Microsoft Office licenses look more expensive than before. Or maybe you are familiar with the way Microsoft Office has looked for over a decade: it had a file menu, edit menu, and format menu, and you balk at the thought of retraining your staff for Microsoft Office 2007’s bizarre ribbon. In either case, you don’t have to buy Microsoft Office thanks to OpenOffice.org: the best kept secret in office suites.
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Martin Kool, a developer from Web applications specialist Q42, has released his open source multi-player game engine. Sarien.net is a “portal for reliving the classic Sierra On-Line adventure games” and is completely browser based. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome are all supported.
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Business
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By around August 2008, Untangle exited the hardware appliance business to build stronger OEM relationships. Apparently, it was a smart move. A case in point: Untangle’s March 2009 software subscription sales were up 5 times over March 2008, according to Andrew Fife, a senior product marketing manager at Untangle.
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Sun/Oracle
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GOOGLE HAS AVOIDED paying over £100 million in UK tax through employing an elaborate revenue billing structure, an accountant reckons.
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Censorship/Web Abuse
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Foxy, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program popular among Taiwanese Internet users, is illegal because it may help users illegally download files, the Banqiao District Court ruled.
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Time Warner Cable may have backed off its plans to meter broadband for now, but AT&T still has tiered broadband trials going on in Reno, Nev., and in Beaumont, Texas. And judging from one consumer’s experience with the trial, AT&T doesn’t inform users of the caps until after they’ve ordered service.
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Copyrights
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In their proposed response, the RIAA lawyers personally attacked The Free Software Foundation, Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer), and NYCL’s blog, ‘Recording Industry vs. The People’. The 9-page response (PDF) — 4 pages longer than the document to which it was responding — termed the FSF an organization ‘dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs’, and accused the FSF of having an ‘open and virulent bias against copyrights’ and ‘blatant bias’ against the record companies.
Natasha Humphries on globalization and job security with Free Open Source Software 05 (2004)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in Free/Libre Software, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Search at 11:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“I’ll see Google as a very big corporate blob, currently benevolent by virtue of their indifference to freedom, soon to become malevolent as time catches up with them.”
–Paul Gaskin
Summary: Evidence in the news of Microsoft’s losses to Google on the Web and Free software on the desktop, Web, mind share
MICROSOFT is simply unable to compete against Google, so it resorts to cheating and political intervention. Google is still hiring, whereas Microsoft is claimed to be preparing for another round of large-scale layoffs. This is very much proportional to what happens on the surface. Google reported good figures last week (financial results), whereas Microsoft is preparing to deliver some more bad news to its investors (there is already a backlash). That’s the financial side alone; on the technical side, and judging based on market share, Microsoft continues to lose ground. Here is a report from yesterday:
Year after year, and month after month we keep an eye on the search engine market share picture. Over and over again in the US, we see Google completely dominating (more so with each year it seems), Yahoo a ways back, and Microsoft even further back.
Mozilla Firefox proves that Free/open source software can be subjectively superior to its proprietary counterparts and it’s part of a Free software domination on the Web in general. Here is the press recommending against Internet Explorer 8, which has its share of known problems.
Internet Explorer 8 might not be best choice
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Software like Gimp (and OpenOffice and Linux and hundreds of other titles out there) are developed by smart people who donate their efforts for the greater good. This “open source” initiative believes that a whole bunch of people each doing a little bit of work can develop some pretty cool code. This has worked in the past and will continue to work in the future. What has hampered the open source community is the lack of paid support options… if Gimp breaks, you have to rely on user groups and others to help you fix it; if you buy Photoshop and it breaks, you can call someone and they will help you fix the problem. That support is part of what you are paying for. However, you will find many open source products to be high quality and ready for your use.
Another area where Microsoft loses control on the Web is encyclopedias (information). There too, Microsoft’s Encarta is losing to openness and mass collaboration. David Wheeler characterises it as an open source win over Microsoft.
Microsoft loses to Open Source Approaches (Encarta vs. Wikipedia)
The competition is over. On one side, we have Microsoft, a company with a market value of about $166 billion (according to a 2009-04-20 NASDAQ quote). On the other side, we have some volunteers who work together and share their results on the web using open source approaches.
Also from the same day we have this from IDG:
Has Microsoft lost its war on open source?
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Most recently, Microsoft settled a patent-infringement case it filed against GPS device maker TomTom over patents that involved TomTom’s implementation of Linux, a case that stirred up old feelings among open source companies that Microsoft plans to reignite a patent fight against them. Microsoft insisted the TomTom suit was a patent issue and not any specific grievance against Linux or open source software.
Most of the Linux community accepted that assessment, but leaders such as Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says that any patent litigation against a technology that involves open source will keep the community wary. “It’s just another example in the mind of an open source developer that this is not a positive company to be jointly working on development projects with,” he adds.
Microsoft is trying to fight against openness in the courtroom, but fighting against openness is like fighting against ethics; it’s a lost fight from the get-go. Richard Stallman famously said that Free software is not about price but about freedom. Microsoft seems to be using its open source infiltrators [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13] to warp Stallman’s message and insult the value of Free software in the process. Here is a rebuttal:
Microsoft to open source: Please don’t compete on price!
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No, price isn’t everything: it’s simply a fruitful way to start a conversation. The reason that commercial open-source companies are thriving in the downturn is precisely because they can make healthy profits while charging a lot less.
Microsoft may not like that but, well, this is competition, not charity.
There is an extensive discussion in Slashdot about this. Here is what the Managing Editor of Linux Today wrote:
LOL! Poor Cannon Fodder I mean Sam Ramji. He has the most thankless job at MS. Though it is true that people will pay more for something if they feel they are getting a good value.
Microsoft has no clue what it’s doing, but there is not much that it can do because its business model is collapsing and no matter what it does (accept change or fight change), it’s bound to get injured. Rivers too run dry. █
“Do you feel like you’re screwing a porcupine and you’re one prick against thousands?” the OSCON audience member asked Ramji. Ramji politely replied: “It takes time to change and I knew that I’d be unpopular when I took this job…”
–Microsoft: Not worried about open source patents
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 6:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How (and why) the American secret services rely on Windows
THE back doors in Microsoft Windows are a serious issue that we've already covered, so there is no point doing it again. Adding to what we already know, there is now this report from Wired Magazine and another from IDG:
CIPAV spyware helped nab unemployed engineer angry over outsourcing
There is also a discussion at Slashdot and one reader of ours wrote: “A good question to ask is, what is it about Windows that allows CIPAV to be so easily activated? Does it even require visiting a contaminated Web site (see the Slashdot article)? What is it in Windows that allows such features?” Here is some relevant information which this reader sent to us:
CIPAV, which stands for “Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier,” is secret surveillance software that the FBI used last month to help identify whoever was e-mailing bomb threats almost daily to a Washington high school.
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The only clue in the affidavit is that the CIPAV would operate as a pen register for up to 60 days after the software had been “activated” by the recipient. In other words, the FBI swore that the monitor would “time out” after 60 days. But not that it would delete itself or not be able to spread in some worm or bot fashion.
This post neither defense nor criticism of malicious and dangerous behaviour that the FBI is rightly intercepting. It is merely recognition of the operation of Microsoft Windows.
It is not news that the FBI uses Windows viruses (there were several articles about it last year) and the DHS, which recently recruited Microsoft after pressure from the BSA, is now recruiting hackers. █
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[1] FBI remotely installs spyware to trace bomb threat
While there’s been plenty of speculation about how the FBI might deliver spyware electronically, this case appears to be the first to reveal how the technique is used in practice. The FBI did confirm in 2001 that it was working on a virus called Magic Lantern but hasn’t said much about it since.
[2] FBI ducks questions about its remotely installed spyware
There are plenty of unanswered questions about the FBI spyware that, as we reported earlier this week, can be delivered over the Internet and implanted in a suspect’s computer remotely.
[3] FBI to Notify Microsoft Windows Users Who Were Victims of Botnets
The Department of Justice and FBI have announced the results of an ongoing cyber crime initiative to disrupt and dismantle “botherders” and elevate the public’s cyber security awareness of botnets.
[4] FBI: Operation Bot Roast finds over 1 million botnet victims
The Department of Justice and FBI Wednesday said ongoing investigations have identified more than 1 million botnet crime victims.
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Posted in Debian, GNOME, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell, Patents, TomTom, Ubuntu at 5:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Tomboy does not fancy Gnote; Jo Shields keeps promoting Mono in Debian and Ubuntu
IN PREVIOUS POSTS which mentioned Gnote [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] it was shown and pointed out that there might be a future for GNOME without Mono, which is a patent trap exploited by Microsoft and Novell. We were not really expecting the developer of Tomboy to draw attention to Gnote, but he just did:
A Note about Gnote
Some people have started asking about Gnote, Hubert Figuiere’s line-for-line port of Tomboy to C++. Our stance on Gnote is that it is counterproductive to maintain identical software in two languages. It will be harmful to the community, especially as these two apps inevitably diverge. It will result in duplication of effort, duplication of bugs, and a lot of wasted time for those who are trying to add value to the user experience.
Tomboy is not going away, and it will continue to be developed on the extremely productive Mono/GTK# language platform. Anyone thinking about distributing Gnote should consider the impact on users and their data. When we develop, we should always be asking ourselves, “is this adding value for our users?”
The answer is, “definitely.”
After the TomTom row, it is abundantly clear that Microsoft seeks to resolve its serious problems by suing (or ‘settling’) over patents where its de facto standards — such as FAT or .NET — are used. Only a “box of monos” (pun intended) would consider Mono to be a Good Idea™.
As a team, the Debian Mono Group (which is these days a joint Debian/Ubuntu effort) have helped to reduce our footprint by a good few meg in the Jaunty cycle, as part of the Mono 2.0 transition. And now I have a proposal which I’m going to make to the Desktop team at Ubuntu Developer Summit in May, which will save six precious megabytes.
The problem is not just technical; it’s not about bloat, either. It is an issue of programmer control (by Microsoft) and legal control (by Microsoft). Moments ago we shared a news report confirming that Windows XP being sold for less than $15. Microsoft is hurting financially because of GNU/Linux and it is actively looking for ways to tax GNU/Linux, thereby elevating the price of its #1 competition. Mono is one such convenient route. █
“I saw that internally inside Microsoft many times when I was told to stay away from supporting Mono in public. They reserve the right to sue”
–Robert Scoble, former Microsoft evangelist
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Posted in News Roundup at 4:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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So it’s no surprise that Intel, which has a very close relationship with notebook and netbook manufacturers, is really on the side of Linux rather than Microsoft Windows 7 Starter Edition. It rights an imbalance where Widnows software gobbled up much more of the PC pie than rest of the component manufacturers. And, of course, Windows is a component too.
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As a whole, Kubuntu 9.04 performed much better than PC-BSD 7.1 in these tests. Some of these performance differences may be attributed to PC-BSD 7.1 / FreeBSD 7.1 using the slightly older GCC 4.2.2 release compared to GCC 4.3.3 in the Jaunty Jackalope release for Ubuntu and Kubuntu. In a few benchmarks, PC-BSD had the upperhand over Kubuntu. PC-BSD was better with Dhrystone 2 and complex ray-tracing using POV-Ray.
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The last time I looked at PC-BSD was way back in 2007. PC-BSD is another option for those who want an alternative to Windows but who might not be interested in Linux or Mac OS X. PC-BSD is an operating system that is based on FreeBSD and uses the KDE desktop. My last experience with it was quite positive so I was pleased to see that there’s a new version available.
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If configured with an operating system, did you go for a Linux variant or XP?
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Welcome to this year’s 16th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It’s the Ubuntu release week (or Ubuntu “circus”, as some prefer to call it), a major event in the calendar of many open source software enthusiasts. What will the distribution’s 10th official release be like? And will the download servers cope with the expected heavy demand? We’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out; in the meantime, read below for a quick tip on reverting to an older kernel under Ubuntu and visit Canonical’s ShipIt service to order your free CDs. In the news section, Mandriva gains support for hardware database known as Smolt, Easy Peasy ponders a few ideas concerning the distro’s default user interface, and Fedora’s Ricky Zhou points out the importance of innovation in Red Hat’s community distribution. Finally, don’t miss our feature article which calls for an implementation of a centralised bug-tracking database for all open source software projects.
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Kernel Space
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This code will allow open-source 3D acceleration on the Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series of graphics cards. Those using the Radeon X1000 series (R500) or earlier have already had open-source ATI 3D support for a while.
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Desktop Environments
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Qt Software and the KDE e.V. are happy to report that they are sponsoring a developer sprint for all North American students accepted into Google Summer of Code 2009 to work on KDE. The event will be completely free for all accepted students, with round-trip flights, lodging, and some meals fully reimbursed; all students that applied for GSoC 2009 are welcome to attend, although those not accepted into the program will not be reimbursed for travel and lodging expenses.
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Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition is available to download from Thursday 23 April. Canonical offers assessment, deployment, migration, training and support services to ensure that companies can make the most of the cost-effective, powerful and reliable Ubuntu Server Edition platform.
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Inching closer to the final release of Ubuntu 9.04, codenamed as “Jaunty Jackalope”, the Ubuntu development team has come up with the release candidate (RC) for the upcoming operating system.
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RightScale®, Inc., the leader in cloud computing management, today announced that the popular RightScale Cloud Management Platform will support the global debut of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (powered by Eucalyptus) to help enterprises deploy and manage “private” clouds in their own data centers.
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Canonical this afternoon debuted its Ubuntu 9.04 release of Linux, the tenth release since the company founded the Ubuntu project in October 2004. This iteration of Ubuntu, code-named “Jaunty Jackalope,” comes with mixes designed specifically for three platforms: netbooks, desktops, and servers.
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Some developers who’ve gotten a head-start working on applications for Palm’s webOS have indicated that they like what they see. A lot. Pandora’s CTO noted, “Everything about the Pre feels like it’s ‘future-oriented,’ not an iPhone-inspired knockoff.”
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MontaVista® Software, Inc., the leader in embedded Linux® commercialization, today announced that MontaVista Linux has been deployed by Spanish network equipment provider (NEP) Teltronic in its next-generation private radio network base stations. Teltronic, a manufacturer of mobile terminals, in-car terminals and infrastructure for TETRA-based radio networks used by emergency services, security services, the police and public transportation systems, selected MontaVista Linux for use in forthcoming products due to the commercial-grade quality, integration and support provided by MontaVista.
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Sub-notebooks
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Windows 7 Starter edition is designed to run no more than three applications simultaneously — purchasing an upgrade allows users to run, presumably, as many apps as their netbooks can handle at one time. Now, three concurrent applications at a shot might be sufficient for a number of users; it might be all that some netbooks can handle, depending on the applications and system resources running in the background. Microsoft isn’t hiding the fact it is experimenting with a limited Starter, and hopefully netbook manufacturers will also make buyers aware of this. But awareness and being almost sufficient in even most cases is irrelevant. It’s the concept that there is a limit, and purchasing an upgrade for functionality that most won’t need every day (but when it’s needed, it’s really needed) that will make netbooks running alternative operating systems increasingly attractive. It’s an advantage not only for Android, but any Linux distribution netbook builders optimize for their hardware.
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But these features are still there, installed on the netbook but not enabled until you pay for an upgrade.
Now this has a number of things wrong with it in my mind, if the netbook can run more than 3 applications why not allow it? If the features are installed why not enabling them?
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To be successful and to stay competitive in the ever changing business world, a business should be able to adapt modern changes that should be applied. E Commerce has been proven to be an effective way to help your business to achieve these goals. With proper marketing strategy and building a solid E Commerce application, these can be all possible.
Web site plays a vital role in business. However, website should be meeting the business need. There are many ways to manage your web site. From simple Web log (blog) engine system that allows limited publishing content to a full content management system framework to application framework, on which you can build your own custom content management system.
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Vienna’s city council has been using GNU/Linux and open source for years and has developed its own Ubuntu-based software distribution called Wienux. Yet no binding political decision in favour of open source has been made and the city relies on voluntary use of the free software. Councils are free to change to open source or stick with Microsoft and other proprietary software.
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I’ve attended my share of Linux installation festivals (installfests), where open source volunteers typically take donated Windows PCs and revive them as Linux systems. Now, the installfest craze seems to have found a new calling: The Asterisk IP PBX market, where open source meets telephony.
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Home education is all very well, especially if the parent is a polymath, but this is not usually the case. More often input from subject-specialists is required. Even the best online ‘teach yourself spanish’ is a big ask for the home learner. Independent learning is something that is mastered by few and in any case takes a long time to acquire the skills to do so.
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DISA CUSTOMER PARTNER CONFERENCE 2009 — CollabNet, the leader in distributed application lifecycle management (ALM) solutions, today announced that the Defense Information System Agency (DISA), the information systems group for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), has promoted its Forge.mil initiative from limited operational availability (LOA) to Initial Operational Capability (IOC), making it generally available for unclassified use. Forge.mil enables collaborative software development and cross-program sharing of software, system components, and services in support of net-centric operations and warfare. Forge.mil is powered by CollabNet TeamForge, the leading application lifecycle management platform for distributed software development teams, and CollabNet Subversion, the best version control and software configuration management (SCM) solution for distributed teams.
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Infobright’s quest began in September o2008 when the company open-sourced its commercial column-oriented data warehouse. At the time it had eight customers but today has more than 50, including Royal Bank of Canada and Xerox, Davis added. Those customers reside largely in the telecom, mid-tier financial services, and marketing firm spaces. “We’re really going into the area where MySQL is,” Davis explained.
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Network Solutions has expanded its Open Source Application offerings, it was announced recently. The company has broadened its range of open source hosted application offerings through the Application Packaging Standard (APS), which was developed to enable companies to make applications available in the software-as-a-service model quickly and simply. Network Solutions is a leading global hosting provider that manages more than 7 million domains, over 1.5 million e-mailboxes, and more than 350,000 websites. The APS applications have been added to the Network Solutions Open Source Library to enable web hosting customers to create new revenue streams by offering value-added services and better engage and interact with their own customers. The newly added services include blogging software WordPress, content management service Joomla! and photo organizer Gallery2.
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ONE/Northwest is a US non-profit supporting the environment and grass roots organizations through the use of technology. For over a decade, ONE/Northwest has helped over 800 environmental organizations fuse technology with new ways of doing their work. The organization relies intensively on open source software, for example, offering websites powered by the Content Management System Plone in order to help environmental NGOs make the leap to the Internet age.
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Cloud
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Does using open source software pay off in a total cost sense when compared to commercial offerings today? Is it worth the usually lower cost, or will an enterprise that casts its lot with FOSS be trapped in a high-risk situation where they can’t get support and innovation?
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Mozilla
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One of Firefox’s greatest strengths is that it can be extended to provide additional functionality to the end user. However, the vast number of extensions available for Firefox can be a bit overwhelming. We look at that top 10 Firefox add-ons that can improve your productivity on Linux.
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The document below is a proposed high-level strategy for Mozilla accessibility-related activities, both those funded by grants to third parties and those engaged in by Mozilla personnel.
Note that this covers accessibility work proposed for the future; it is not meant as an exhaustive description of past Mozilla and Mozilla-related accessibility projects, and also does not constitute a commitment to fund or perform future projects.
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Business
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Coming out of a record first quarter and feeling bullish, SugarCRM has its sights trained on the IPO market. “An IPO is also good news for the CRM industry, which has had about 20 IPOs in the last 20 years,” according to CEO John Roberts. “We represent the latest generation.”
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Sun
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Moreover, this development would fit nicely with the increasing number of Android developments in new contexts – netbooks, consumer devices etc. As a result of all this interest from across the computing spectrum, Android is going to become much hotter, and that will drive even faster innovation, development and uptake in this area. Bad news for the other Linux-based mobile platforms perhaps, and certainly bad news for people like Symbian and Microsoft.
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Here’s the press release. So they own Java and Solaris and MySQL, not to mention all the patents Sun pledged to use to defend Red Hat and Ubuntu when Microsoft began patent saber rattling, plus whatever patents Sun had that made Jonathan Schwartz say he had been approached to sue Linux but decided not to:
With business down and customers leaving, we had more than a few choices at our disposal. We were invited by one company to sue the beneficiaries of open source. We declined. We could join another and sue our customers. That seemed suicidal.
So whatever he was talking about now belongs to Oracle.
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I’m talking Linux partitions on mainframes. Eventually the sheer number of x86 boxes involved will mean it makes monetary sense to consolidate.
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Open Access
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Enrico Francesconi and Ginevra Peruginelli, The Florentine Debate on Free Access to Law, VoxPopuLII, April 9, 2009. (Thanks to Joe Hodnicki.) A report on Law via the Internet: Free Access, Quality of Information, Effectiveness of Rights (Florence, October 30-31, 2008).
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The Internet Archive is seeking leave to file a motion before the Southern District of New York U.S. District Court to intervene in the matter of The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as a party defendant.
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A globe-spanning U.N. digital library seeking to display and explain the relics of all human cultures has gone into operation on the Internet for the first time, serving up mankind’s accumulated knowledge in seven languages for students around the world.
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Standards/Consortia
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The appointment of Aneesh Chopra as the U.S. federal government’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO), together with the earlier appointment of Vivek Kundra as the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO), is a signal of the importance of information technology to the Obama Administration. We expect Chopra to play a vital role in achieving the policy goals set out in the Administration’s IT platform.
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New federal CTO Aneesh Chopra is not an open source executive. He’s not a programmer, either. And he has no political fingerprints on the open source-proprietary divide.
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An AP win could kill “fair use” and change the Internet as we know it.
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The Election Technology Council (ETC), a trade group comprised of the most prominent electronic voting machine vendors, has published a paper that argues against mandating source disclosure for electronic voting machine systems. The paper (PDF), which broadly conflates source disclosure and open source software licensing, dubiously contends that enabling public scrutiny of voting technology would lead to compromised security.
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Censorship/Web Abuse
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The Rapporteur of a European Parliament directive plays a crucial role at the second reading: he must forge a compromise with the Council of Ministers between the opinion expressed by the Parliament at the first reading and the common position adopted by the Council. If he succeeds, this compromise stands an excellent chance of becoming the report that comes to a vote in parliamentary committee, then reach a vote in plenary session by all Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). So the directive, the outcome of a consensus between the two legislative bodies, will become European law. If not, the Council and Parliament must reach an agreement for a third reading: the conciliation phase.
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Amendment 138, which protects Internet users rights against blocking and 3-strikes measures, has been scrapped in a back-room EU deal. The European Parliament has sacrificed users rights, in order to appease the French and UK government demands, so that they can move ahead with plans for 3-strikes and protocol blocking.
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Copyrights
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A California Senate candidate is using a Don Henley song in a campaign video on YouTube, and when Henley sued for copyright violation, the candidate fired back that it was his first amendment rights to use the song. It seems he failed to understand the nuances of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Maybe he should be complaining to the RIAA instead.
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The “liberal” CNN has filed a DMCA notice to have video taken down that was being used by a conservative blog for commentary purposes — again, almost certainly fair use. Also, it sounds like some of the video footage that CNN demanded be taken down wasn’t even filmed by CNN, suggesting they don’t hold the copyright on it.
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A pair of consumer groups have surveyed 16 copyright regimes around the world. The worst one they found was the United Kingdom, a “blessed plot” which makes it illegal to rip CDs, doesn’t protect parody and satire, and puts a copyright on government documents.
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Given the way in which copyright law was transplanted into China without a fulsome cultural understanding of the values that informed the system, it seems the power of copyright can be easily usurped for means that infringe on political and civil rights. And yet, the United States, through the WTO process, is seeking stronger copyright protection in China.
This seeming inconsistency may not currently be a large issue because of the more explicit means of control available to the Chinese government. However, as political pressure mounts on the human rights front, it is possible that the Chinese government may have to be more covert in their attempts to suppress political speech. If that happens, copyright law may begin to look appealing to the Chinese government as a means of control.
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TPB
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Set up a torrent tracker, get fined, go to jail.
Join a bank, destroy the economy, profit.
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Hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks against music industry association ifpi.org and lawyers involved in the prosecution of the four Pirate Bay defendants in the wake of a guilty verdict against the quartet last Friday.
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To hear some tell it, file sharing gutted the music industry by encouraging people to gorge themselves on free, illegal content. Indeed, unless Friday’s landmark verdict against The Pirate Bay is overturned, four Swedes will spend a year in jail and owe millions of dollars to entertainment companies for operating a file sharing network.
Natasha Humphries on globalization and job security with Free Open Source Software 04 (2004)
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