12.07.09

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• What Chrome OS has on Windows that Linux doesn’t

  Chrome OS faces the same applications challenge as any other operating system, but it’s rising to that challenge in a different way. It includes the Chrome browser running on a stripped-down version of Linux, but the applications won’t run on Linux, they’ll run on the Internet. Chrome is the conduit to the Web applications, and Chrome OS is the vehicle by which Google will get the browser installed on Netbooks starting in the second half of 2010, the company promises.

• Applications

  • Video

    • Subtitle Applications & Tutorials for GNU/Linux – Rip, Edit, Embed Subs

      Below I tried to gather programs written for GNU/Linux that do all the above (and more) as simply as possible, through a friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI). I know that programs that perform similar tasks in the terminal do exist and work perfectly, but they won’t be listed here.

    • The CinelerraCV Project

      Continuing my tour of Linux-based video editors this week I’ve profiled Cinelerra. Specifically I’ve reviewed the community-supported version produced by the CinelerraCV project.

  • Instructionals

    • More Special Variables in Perl: Outputs

    • Android Development with Eclipse – Tutorial

    • [OpenOffice.org] A new configuration

  • Games

    • Trauma – Flash Based Point-and-Click Adventure

    • Review: Crossover Games (Linux) 8.1.3

      In this review Crossover Games 8.1.3 will be pitted and benchmarked against Wine 1.1.33 using Everest Ultimate Edition benchmarking utilities (don’t ask me why I use it. I just happen to have it conveniently on hand.)

    • Wine 1.1.34

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Tiny Core 2.6.1

    • PCLinuxOS 2009.2 (MiniMe-KDE3)

    • SystemRescueCd 1.3.3

    • [PLD Linux Distribution] A new LiveCD with KDE4 released

      Today the LiveCD with KDE4 project’s finally got updated.Main feature is the new preview of the upcoming KDE 4.4 version – KDE 4.4 Beta1. Read more and download it on the official website http://kde4.livecd.pld-linux.org/

    • SimplyMEPIS 8.5 beta1 Release

      MEPIS has released SimplyMEPIS 8.4.90, the beta1 of MEPIS 8.5. The beta is available from MEPIS and public mirrors. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.90-b1_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.90-b1_64.iso.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat revs real-time MRG Linux to 1.2

      Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat today kicked out the 1.2 release of its Enterprise MRG Linux variant for real-time, messaging, and grid computing.

    • Red Hat Tunes Up Real-Time OS

      Red Hat is aiming for lowered latency and improved performance with the second update of the year to its real-time Linux platform.

      The Linux vendor’s new MRG 1.2 (short for Messaging, Real-Time, Grid) release includes new tools and improved technology designed to better enhance the OS’s value for customers who rely on real-time performance.

    • Independent Study Highlights Significant Opportunities for Cost Savings and Benefits with JBoss Enterprise Middleware

      Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the release of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Red Hat detailing significant cost savings and benefits achieved by one Red Hat customer, a major telecommunications provider, after migrating from proprietary middleware to JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

• Devices/Embedded

  • CrunchPad partner plans media event

    Rathakrishnan, who had earlier promised via an email to the San Francisco Business Times that a statement would be forthcoming, “just wants to be able to share his side of the story and he’s going to be showing the device very briefly as well,” Alpers said.

  • Phones

    • Majority of new HTC phones will run Android

      A leaked HTC roadmap for 2010 has revealed that the majority of the company’s smartphones for the first half of 2010 will run Google Android, not Windows Mobile.

    • Why Carriers Love Open-source/Openness

      The first thing Nokia did when they decided that they wanted to work with the Maemo community to offer the operating system, was to tie up the loose ends that would not suit a commercial playground in the long run. For instance, Nokia’s own Canola Media Player app is not an open-source application. It’s got components licensed under GPL/LGPL, meaning that it’s a commercial application at the end of the day. In other words, commercial app developers, manufacturers and carriers can protect their Maemo offerings just as easily as on any other platform.

  • OLPC

    • Fedora devs keeping OLPC sweet with Sugar

      Developer Sebastian Dzialias (who was also in the OLPC session), said that a new version of Sugar on a Stick was coming this Tuesday – codenamed Blueberry. It’s a good thing too, the promise of the XO and its desktop, deserves better than to end up in a landfill.

    • OLPC’s Netbook Impact on Laptop PC Industry

      I will list the ways in which OLPC has influenced the target market which probably defines the interest of most readers of OLPC News, the angle from which most bloggers and industry commentators have been talking about the OLPC project for the past 4 years, which is how OLPC technology may affect the rich Western country’s PC/Laptop industry.

      [...]

      5. Google is now planning the Chrome OS. Educated from the netbooks, the demand from the mass consumer market has now definitely shifted from performance and bloat, towards just asking to have the bare minimum. Google is seeing the convergence of market trends and are as a result building a very optimized OS to boot in 5 seconds and run on $50 ARM powered laptops.

      OLPC has thus influenced the mass consumer and geek markets of rich countries in all these ways. But I do think OLPC has still a long way to go in the coming months to influence the industry even more.

Free Software/Open Source

• What’s Coming for Open Source in 2010

  With the end of the year quickly approaching, it’s time for a few 2010 predictions. This past year was a big one for open source. Just think, back in March, it wasn’t clear whether Google’s open source Android platform had any future at all, but now it’s absolutely flourishing. Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun was a huge story this year, and it’s still making headlines as the deal sits stalled by European regulators. There were lots of other notable stories. In this post, you’ll find many predictions for open source in 2010, and the reasons for them.

• Lower Enterprise Storage Costs: Open Source

  Two data storage vendors have released new products that they claim can save users a bundle over more traditional storage systems.

  Nexenta and ParaScale both use open source software and commodity hardware to lower storage costs for enterprises.

• Releases

  • Open source NAC system PacketFence 1.8.6 released

    PacketFence is a free and open source network access control (NAC) system. It can be used to effectively secure networks – from small to very large heterogeneous networks. PacketFence has been deployed in production environments where thousands of users are involved – on wired and wireless networks.

• Licensing

  • Open Source In A Parallel Universe

    More than anything else I have read recently, the phrase “parallel universes” sums up so much of what open source’s fiercest advocates seem to be aiming for. The GPL makes it all too easy not just for software to exist in dual incarnations, but for the entirety of IT to follow suit — the software, the hardware, the licensing, the whole thing.

  • Palm Sued Over PDF Technology Dispute

  • Press Releases

    San Francisco, CA (December 02, 2009) Artifex Software Inc. today announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Palm, Inc., based on Palm’s unauthorized copying and distribution of one of Artifex’s registered technologies. Artifex is the developer and copyright owner of muPDF, a high-performance PDF rendering engine.

• Programming

  • Localization pros offer a Translation Toolkit

    Most of the Translate Toolkit’s infrastructure is provided by SourceForge.net – version control, mailing lists, file releases, and web site – but the project also uses locamotion.org for hosting the official Pootle server as a showcase, testing experimental features of Pootle, and for managing its own UI translations. It also uses Bugzilla for bug reporting, with infrastructure hosted by the Junta de Extremadura in Spain.

  • Forget Perfection, Release Your App to the World

    Most developers are probably familiar with Linux founder Linus Torvalds’ motto: “release early, release often.” The reason is quite simple: Shipping something useful is better than withholding that usefulness until it’s reached perfection.

Leftovers

• TSA can’t redact documents properly, releases s00per s33kr1t operations manual

  The TSA has published a “redacted” version of their s00per s33kr1t screening procedure guidelines (Want to know whether to frisk a CIA operative at the checkpoint? Now you can!). Unfortunately, the security geniuses at the DHS don’t know that drawing black blocks over the words you want to eliminate from your PDF doesn’t actually make the words go away, and can be defeated by nefarious al Qaeda operatives through a complex technique known as ctrl-a/ctrl-c/ctrl-v.

• HSBC exposed sensitive bankruptcy data

  In notification letters made public Thursday, the bank said it had redacted sensitive information in Chapter 13 bankruptcy proof-of-claim forms that were filed electronically, but that the information turned out to be viewable “as a result of the deficiency in the software used to save imaged documents.”

• Latest lame UK gov’t excuse for supressing drug policy report: “if we release it, it will be hard to manage the news”

  The British government has reached new heights of absurdity in stonewalling the release of a report on the efficacy of drug prohibition. The report was commissioned from independent academic researchers, and various activist and citizen groups have spent years filing four separate Freedom of Information requests for it. The government has manufactured excuse after excuse, going out on such bizarre limbs that even the Economist has taken notice.

• Shoddy phones becoming the norm

  With mobiles becoming increasingly capable of being upgraded automatically once they are connected to a computer, or even directly over-the-air, McHugh argues that this is leading to sub-par devices being rushed out the door, with manufacturers sitting safe in the knowledge that they can correct mistakes as complaints arise from users.

• Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

  • So, Verizon, about those doubled early termination fees…’

    The FCC wants a “more complete understanding” of why Verizon Wireless recently doubled its early termination fees on smartphones. Is it really just about recouping costs? And if so, why would people on a two-year contract still owe $120 after 23 months?

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • US Trade Rep weasels and squirms when cornered on an airplane and questioned about secret copyright treaty

    Read this account of James Love’s conversation with Ambassador Ron Kirk, the head US Trade Representative, on the question of why the Draconian Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is taking place in secret. Love cornered Kirk on a United Airlines flight from Geneva to DC following a WTO Ministerial meeting. Love asks Kirk why the treaty isn’t public, and Kirk’s answers are — at best — total weaselling and at worst fabrications.

  • Artists To National Gallery Of Canada: ‘Pay Us Again And Again And Again!’

    Rose M. Welch writes in to point to the latest example of entitlement culture gone wrong. Apparently, two groups representing artists in Canada, The Canadian Artists’ Representation, known as CARFAC, and the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Quebec (RAAV), have filed a complaint against the National Gallery in Canada. The National Gallery already pays artists an exhibition fee to display their art. But, CARFAC and RAAV think that the National Gallery needs to pay them multiple times for the same artworks, because the Gallery also uses some of the artwork it displays in brochures, catalogs and other offerings.

  • SOCAN Wants To Charge Buskers Performance Fees

    Remember how one collection society wanted to charge a woman because she put on music for her horses? Or how about the woman who worked in a grocery store, who was told to stop singing while stock the shelves, or the store would have to pay a performance fee. And, of course, we had ASCAP trying to claim that ringtones were performances, and mobile operators needed to pay up — beyond the license fee that was already paid on the recording.

    SOCAN, up in Canada, has been no exception, pushing for drastically increased rates that cover new places as well. But the most ridiculous may be the one sent in by a few people (Jesse was the first) about how SOCAN is trying to get buskers — street musicians — to pay a performance fee if they perform in SkyTrain stations in Vancouver. SOCAN is claiming that TransLink, the transit authority for the trains in Vancouver should be paying up to $40,000 in performance fees for all the buskers singing in stations, and TransLink’s response is to pass those fees on to the buskers.

  • Sherman Alexie – A Study in Misunderstanding

    Piracy didn’t destroy the music industry. There has yet to be a study which shows piracy had any more of an impact on the music industry than the following: 9/11, the rise of the video game as a cultural phenomenon, the transition towards HDTV, the rise of MySpace, or the iPod. Each of these items are tied together in a way much more convoluted than the music industry would like to admit.

    The major labels were first through the door when it came to the digital transition, and they came in still fat from the profits of the shift from LP and cassette to compact disc. They stumbled and fell, and file-sharing (often used in analog settings to build an artists career) became the boogie man of the digital switch.