Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• Contributing Upstream: An Editorial

  The foundations of Linux, with how it has been developed and when we look at the Debian model on which Ubuntu is based, the contributions of developers by and large are because of their common interests and a willingness to accept conceptualizations. In recently viewing an interview with Mark Shuttleworth these contributions were stated. Passing on the valor per-say to that foundation and the current developers engaged in the Ubuntu project.

• Software Choices, Blocking

  I had a TEDTalk recommended to me a few months ago called “The Paradox of Choice” and it’s one of those must read books for people who want to do effective UI design. It’s a very good scientific explanation of why presenting users with millions of choices is a bad idea.

  [...]

  Take for instance the number of choices available on Gnome Look for window decoration and themes. The problem is that there are thousands of possible themes to choose from and no matter what you pick, none of them are going to be perfect.

• Linux Australia to fund research into licence compliance

  Linux Australia, the umbrella organisation for Linux user groups in the country, has decided to provide funding for research to determine the applicability of the Trade Practices Act as a compliance tool.

  [...]

  Further, Scott pointed out, there were other difficulties involved in going to court over such licences in Australia – the copyright holders were, to large extent, from other countries. If a case was filed to try and enforce compliance, the copyright holder would have to be party to the case and hence present in Australia.

• Advantages of Combining Training with Outsourcing

  Company B takes a completely different route. Recognizing that their Windows admins are not familiar with Linux and could use structured Linux training to help them achieve the goal, they first send two admins to an virtual training course for Nagios. In the classroom the two admins have practice servers that are available and a live instructor to ask questions and get ideas. The admins build and test Nagios in labs provided by the training company. At the same time, the company outsources the Nagios server install to the same company that trains the admins and within a month they have Nagios up and running and two fully trained admins to support the Nagios server. The training cost $395 each and the Nagios outsourcing cost the company $500. Total cost for training two admins, $2330. This assumes 8 hours of training for each of the administrators.

• Desktop

  • Computer choice

    In forcing Microsoft to offer easy access to competitive web browsers (Report, 2 March), the EU authorities seem to have “strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel”. What about the operating system, the program every computer has to have in order to run? I happen to prefer to use the Ubuntu Linux operating system, but when I buy a computer I am forced to buy with it a Microsoft operating system. I never use it, but there is no system to reimburse the money that Microsoft has obtained from me for nothing. Why? Why should I not be given a choice of systems when I first turn on my new PC, paying for the one I choose if it isn’t (like Ubuntu) free? An investigation of the process by which this monopolistic situation is sustained would be very interesting. I’d be very surprised if it was proved to involve activity even remotely reminiscent of free competition in an open marketplace.

  • Editor’s Note: Windows is Easier, Just Like Stabbing Your Own Eyeballs is Easier

    My fattest Linux system is Ubuntu Studio with all the bells and whistles. A little over 6 GB, and that includes OpenOffice, Abiword, Gimp, Tuxpaint, Audacity, Ardour, JACK, Hydrogen, and bunch of other audio production software, a bunch of games, multiple Web browsers, FTP, instant messaging, email, text editors, a huge set of networking tools, KDE, GNOME, Fluxbox, IceWM, Digikam, a complete build environment, file managers, spreadsheets, partition editors, cloning tools, astronomy programs, and on and on, I think you get the idea. It’s a feast.

  • Linux and kids: What are the best ways to teach children about open source?

    One thing I found was the Qimo desktop operating system, based on Ubuntu, and designed just for kids. You can download it here.

  • PCs for technophobes go head-to-head

    New Alex laptop takes on Valerie Singleton’s SimplicITy range

    A UK vendor has launched a new specialised notebook aimed at technophobes and computer novices, adding to what is rapidly becoming a mini-sector of ‘idiot-proof’ PCs.

    [...]

    “We are competing with SimplicITy to an extent, but what you get from us is support,” Holmes told PCR. “Where SimplicITy has taken a flavour of Linux and offered you four big buttons to click, I think it just leaves you there. What we’re saying is this is a subscription – you pay by the month so we will be with you every step of the way.”

    As Holmes suggests, this service comes at a cost. On top of the £400 price tag for the 15.4-inch laptop (soon to be upgraded to 15.6-inch), users must pay a monthly fee of £9.99, or £24.99 if they want broadband too.

  • The Death of That Other OS

    The writing is on the wall. More OEMs are producing low-end stuff that is good enough for most of the world and consumers are having more choices. Those who shop on the web are free to buy inexpensive PCs running GNU/Linux. That market will grow rapidly. Businesses and governments will be able to buy naked PCs and supply their distro of choice. Since they have to re-image and all that anyway, they can save money by buying naked PCs. Better, they can buy thin clients.

  • What is Happening in Malaysia?!

    I was kicking around on the web and found the trends are good for GNU/Linux in Malaysia, particularly in Prai Poking further, I find a site which advertises the price of the OS separate from the PC!. At the low end, Vista Ultimate costs 50% of the price of the box.At the high end it’s about 10%. The result may be that folks appreciate the price of GNU/Linux in Malaysia more that where I am. Even Dell sells some identical hardware side by side with Ubuntu and that other OS.

• Server

  • Adventure with New Technology

    As a server the thing is limited to two drives easily and with a bit of work, perhaps four, two SATA and two PATA. As a desktop, the thing puts out a lot of heat. What were they thinking? As a server 64bitness wins big on throughput. As a terminal server 64bit could make better use of 4 gB RAM.

    I think 64bitness wins the discussion. XP should go. I don’t need one more XP machine to manage. For now, 512 MB means terminal service is out. Probably a GUI is out. I will make a file/backup/clonezilla server out of it. This CPU is overkill for that but the students and I could use it for building kernels or other applications just to say we did it. It could compile and serve fairly well. RAM is on the wishlist.

  • GNU/Linux on Servers

    I notice that in Netcraft’s latest report, sorted by OS, it is easy to see 21 of the top 36 hosters run GNU/Linux and only 6 run that other OS. That says a lot about the cost and reliability of the OS.

• Kernel Space

  • Google open source guru says Android code will be in Linux kernel in time

    Google’s Android code will assume its rightful place in the Linux kernel — in good time, the company’s top open source guru says.

    The Android code was stripped out of the last kernel release, version 2.6.33, after Google reportedly failed to provide necessary changes and subsystem code required by kernel.org.

  • Graphics Stack

    • The Possibility Of Nouveau 1.0.0?

      Following the very heated kernel DRM discussion that came about as the result of a major interface break in the Nouveau DRM code, David Airlie has asked on the Nouveau mailing list about potentially releasing Nouveau 1.0.0. Right now the Nouveau interface is at 0.0.16 and is wondering if developers will accept just renaming the current code to version 1.0.0.

    • An Explosive Battle Over Nouveau Kernel DRM

      Breaking the Nouveau interface for the kernel DRM is causing the X.Org Server to stop working with this driver and forces the user to upgrade their non-kernel Nouveau drivers. While the Nouveau driver just entered the Linux 2.6.33 kernel unexpectedly at the request of Linus Torvalds himself, he is now outraged over this interface breaking.

• Applications

  • Linux Video Editing with Openshot

    In an earlier post I spoke of different pieces of software I had been using to rip my DVDs to media files, never content to just leave things as they are I took to piecing bits and chunks of various episode clips together. I tried a few different Linux video editors including Kino (a KDE staple), PiTiVi (to be included by default in Ubuntu 10.04), and Cinelerra. After playing with all of these for a short while I still was not satisfied with that these where the best pieces of FOSS software for Linux video editing. I was right, I soon came across one of the newest contenders to the world of Linux Video editing…

  • Lucidor: Simple eBook Reader for Ubuntu

    Lucidor is a computer program for reading and handling e-books. Lucidor supports e-books in the EPUB file format, and catalogs in the OPDS format. Lucidor runs on the GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms.

  • Instructionals

    • Fixing a Problem with Nmap

    • Bash Shell: Convert Tabs To Spaces In a File

    • Heaven and hell with SyncML.

    • Stop CPU beep in Ubuntu/Debian

    • Tulip – Graph visualization software

    • How To Setup Squid Proxy Server to use outgoing IP address

    • Map your mind with VYM (View Your Mind)

    • Virtual Machine clocksource issue

    • Device Or Resource Busy Errors In Linux

    • Linux RAM Disk: Creating A Filesystem In RAM

    • All you need to know about /proc/sys manipulate a running kernel

    • The Book of Xen (Review)

    • Maintain Michael Young’s xen-4.0.0-0.2.rc4.fc12.src.rpm in sync with http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-unstable.hg

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Small systemtray change

      This has been done pretty early in the 4.5 cycle, so it’s still open for change, feedback and the due bugfixes

    • Let me tell you where to put the buttons…

      You really don’t want me to tell you where to put them, as you might not like the answer. However, with KDE, you can put the buttons wherever you would like Daviey, Mike, and everyone else.

    • Feel a “natural flow” in your desktop (Panel at the top)

      As my friends know, I’m addicted to read KDE/Free Software/Open Source/etc.. blogs when taking my morning coffee, and what I’m going to explain is a good example of why I love it.

      Before continuing reading, be aware that I’m not an usability guy, I lack any kind of design or usability sense/knowledgement, In fact, I have been I’m using KDE for years and I never succeed to configure my desktop in a beautiful way (only by copying the others configs), so please keep that in your mind when you read this post.

    • keeping it (our source code) together

      The alternative is quite obvious in my mind: take the time to coordinate.

      There is a git migration project that is making progress week by week. The project is documented on Techbase and can use more hands. It can also use our support, e.g. those two projects who still have svn externals in key places that we can’t just ignore (Oxygen and kget) really need to get moving on that (or face more dire results like finding the code migrated one day in a poor state, e.g. with code being copied around or files commented out of the build).

    • Copy your clipboard to the pastebin

      After that you should be able to send your clipboard to the pastebin with one selection (to copy text into clipboard), one hotkey (to trigger Klipper actions) and one click (to choose between different highlighters). You can paste the URL with a single click on the middle button of your mouse. You don’t even have to open the pastebin page yourself!

    • awesome pastebin workflows

      There is some documentation about this very cool Plasma widget on Userbase and someone even uploaded a screencast to Youtube showing it in action.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Nautilus With Zeitgeist Integration Already Functional [How-to]

      To use it you can either patch Nautilus or just have a new bookmark in Nautilus. If you are not very confortable with compiling software from source, I suggest you skip to the “For both with and without the Nautilus patch (start from here to install it without the Nautilus patch!)” part.

    • Nautilus + Zeitgeist

• Distributions

  • aLinux 12.9 – A Blast From the Past

    How did I find aLinux 12.9? It surprisingly worked real well, for a hobbyist distribution. Packages were as usual, a hybrid of pretty old stuff and new libraries. GCC is a bit outdated; WINE is included in the install as well (it’s old though).

    The planets screensaver for the screensaver settings in KDE always crashed for me. Other than that, all else worked fine.

  • I did it! I found a Linux that works well with Laptops., I installed Mandriva ONE 2010

    For obvious reasons I did not install Mandriva FREE! I had no inclination of chasing all over the place for non-free drivers, and codecs. Although Mandriva ONE is a smaller package, this will suit me fine, since mostly everything works, including wireless laptop networking. And it was all inclusive in the “Live CD Installable Package”. My only immediate concern is that I’ve not been able to install the printer drivers. The Mandriva printer setup is something that I’ve not encountered up ’till now. And my attempt only resulted in the whole thing bombing out.. It is supposed to go on the Internet and download some packages?? to be able to install the printers. But it seems that those applications are broken.

  • PC-BSD 8.0 vs. Kubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks

    PC-BSD 8.0 was released last week and while we have already delivered FreeBSD 8.0 benchmarks including against Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and Fedora / Debian / OpenBSD / OpenSolaris for which PC-BSD is based, we took this opportunity to deliver a fresh set of *BSD benchmarks. In this article we have benchmarks of PC-BSD 8.0 x64 against Kubuntu 9.10 x86_64.

    [...]

    Starting our PC-BSD vs. Kubuntu benchmarking with LAME MP3 encoding, the Canonical OS came out slightly ahead of PC-BSD, but not by a very sizable margin.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Szulik signs on to remain Red Hat chairman for a year

      Matthew Szulik will remain chairman of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) for at least another year, the company disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    • Red Hat extends Szulik’s time as chairman

      The Raleigh-based software company has agreed to extend Szulik’s term as chairman for another year, until Feb. 28, 2011, the company reported in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    • Fedora

      • You know what’s working on my laptop with Intel 830m video? Fedora 12, that’s what

        At the recommendation of reader David Gurvich, as well as the enthusiastic endorsement of “Linux Outlaws” co-host Fabian A. Scherschel and Larry “the Free Software Guy” Cafiero, I burned my first Fedora disc in some time and am testing Fedora 12 in the live environment.

  • Debian Family

    • SimplyMEPIS 8.5 RC2 is Available

      Warren Woodford has released SimplyMEPIS 8.4.99, RC2 of MEPIS 8.5, now available from MEPIS and public mirrors. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.99-rc2_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.99-rc2_64.iso respectively. Deltas are also available.

      Warren reported: “In the past week, we’ve fixed some bugs reported by the community and updated the MEPIS Assistants. And we’ve updated some packages containing bug fixes: digikam 1.1.0, ghostscript 8.71, kdebase-workspace 4.3.4-5 and wl-modules 5.60.48.36. The community is hard at work on translations, updated manual, and a couple of new utilities. I expect RC3 to be ready in a week or so. It should be the last RC before we go final with 8.5.”

    • CeBIT 2010: Debian with BSD Kernel

      Debian developer Alexander Reichle-Schmehl presented Debian GNU/kFreeBSD at the Open Source Forum at CeBIT. The FreeBSD port should become an official part of the upcoming Debian version 6.0 free distro.

      The new architectures kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 will become a part of Debian’s new offerings. The “k” in the name, Reichle-Schmehl indicates, is only that the FreeBSD kernel is involved and not the C libraries, for example. The FreeBSD kernel currently in use is version 7.2, with an update to 8.0 possible. The operating system should provide the “best of both worlds,” the stable BSD kernel and Debian’s package management and infrastructure.

    • Elive

      • Elive 2.0 Stable Finally Released

        The Elive developers finally unleashed last night the next major and stable release of their amazing and eye-candy Elive Live CD Linux operating system. Dubbed Topaz, Elive 2.0 is still powered by the Debian mammoth and the lightweight Enlightenment E17 desktop environment. The developers state that the new release is so light that it eats only half of the resources on a system with less than 128 MB of system RAM. Now, that’s amazing, considering that it also looks fantastic!

      • Elive 2.0 Released into the Wild

    • Ubuntu

      • Announcing The 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit

        I am tickled pink to announce the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place at Dolce La Hulpe Hotel and Resort in Brussels, Belgium from the 10 – 14 May 2010.

        [...]

        For every UDS, Canonical sponsors a number of community members to attend the event. We are looking for those who want to bring some real insight and expertise in their area of Ubuntu, be it development or community governance. If you feel you could offer this but can’t afford to cover your expenses of attending, you should apply for sponsorship.
        How To Request Sponsorship

      • Ubuntu 10.04 Light (Radiance) And Dark (Ambiance) Themes Are Now Available For All (Download)

        The new Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lunx: Light and Dark themes are now available for all. The themes are called Ambiance (dark) and Radiance (light).

      • The Linux Desktop Will Have Its Day: Q&A With Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth

        So we’re seeing a rapid ramp-up of the number of PCs that ship around the world with Ubuntu, which is good for us. And those are going to folks who are not Linux enthusiasts and are not Linux specialists. So it has really raised the bar on the quality and crispness of the experience you have to deliver in order to keep those people happy.

      • Is Ubuntu ready to run your business servers?

        I was very surprised to find that nearly 15 percent of Eclipse developers responding to the survey were using Ubuntu on their development machines. I rationalized the lack of Fedora/RHEL or OpenSuse/Suse usage versus Ubuntu as a proof point of Ubuntu’s user experience investments. But then I realized that Ubuntu performed equally well on deployment server market share among respondents. Granted, Fedora/RHEL led Linux deployments, but only by a single percentage point versus Ubuntu.

      • 6 little thing in Ubuntu 10.04 that I love

        1. Drag n’ Click
        You can now click and move a window from anywhere in the top part – both the metacity and the space next to the menu-bar are dragable.

        2. Software Centre’s navigation buttons
        Not only useful but really slick to look at!

      • New in lucid…

        If you’re running lucid with the latest updates be sure to try click n’ drag the window from anywhere in the top dark area. In other words, the windeco and menubar are both dragable now.

      • Ubuntu 10.04’s UI – What Can Less Brown Do For You?

        If there’s two things Ubuntu has always been, it’s brown and orange. This has a striking resemblance to the not-so good looking nature of, say, a shag living room carpet circa the 1970s.

        You can’t convince me that a brown interface with bright orange icons looks good. Not a chance. Ubuntu has been like that for quite some time. While it’s true you could always change the GUI colors to whatever you wish, the point is that you always see a cavalcade of brown and orange on first install.

        [...]

        If you’re wondering what’s breaking familiarity with 10.04’s desktop compared to 9.10, the bottom panel isn’t there by default, the aforementioned window controls have been moved from right to left, and I don’t see any workspace switching options in the top panel whereas you did before in the now-gone bottom panel.

      • Hands-on: a close look at Ubuntu’s new non-brown theme

      • And Ubuntu changed again!

        If there is one thing I do not like about Ubuntu, or better still, that irritates me about the project, it is the frequency with which things keep changing on the GUI front. Heck, seems every release has a learning curve in terms of GUI!

      • Ubuntu 10.10 To Be Released on 28th of October

        Ubuntu 10.04 LTS will not even be released until next month towards the end of April, but Ubuntu 10.10 (with a codename yet to be announced) already has its release schedule available.

      • Variants

        • The Mint Newsletter – issue 101

          Some news in the blog – a LXDE edition is on its way as well as the Helena XFCE edition Development started on Mint 9, a new menu and a completely new software manager are to be introduced

• Devices/Embedded

  • Analysis: How to get Linux to boot in one second

    MontaVista Software has always been a leader in embedded-Linux commercialization. The company has developed Linux-development platforms since 1999, when founder Jim Ready pledged to bring “100% pure Linux” to the world under the GNU (GNU’s not Unix) GPL (general public license). Since then, MontaVista has specialized in embedded and real-time Linux.

    Its approach is not simply an RTOS (real-time operating system) that runs Linux as one of its tasks. The company has changed the Linux kernel to provide determinism and real-time performance in a real Linux operating system. Cavium Networks recently acquired the company, which just announced the release of Version 6 of its operating system.

  • Hypervisor supports Linux guests

    Enea announced a multi-core-focused “Enea Hypervisor,” which is based on its OSE real-time operating system, but supports Linux clients via its Linx inter-process communication protocol. Meanwhile, Enea announced that its Android Competence Center has been chosen by mobile anti-malware firm Fatskunk to develop an Android proof of concept.

    [...]

    The Enea Hypervisor is based on Enea’s telecom-oriented OSE micro kernel real-time operating system (RTOS), and can run Enea OSE applications at native processor speeds without compromising real-time critical properties, claims Enea. Yet, the Hypervisor can also accept Linux as a guest OS, says the company.

  • Towards Day One

    Hey there! And welcome to MeeGo project on my behalf too. In this post written on behalf of the MeeGo Technical Steering Group I will address some of the top questions on everybody’s mind and written all-across meego.com by now. By doing so, I also will outline the first concrete steps to get the core of the software work on foot by all of us together, including various mobile computing companies and individual members of moblin and maemo communities.

  • Android

    • Kogan promises a sub-$200, Android based iPad rival

      Kogan’s giving Android another shot with a tablet that has HDMI output, 512MB RAM, 2GB internal memory and SDHC expansion slot, ARM 600-MHz processor, and a 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen. All of this wrapped up into a less than $200 package.

    • Resolved Kogan Promises $200 HD Pad

      It’s been a while since we last checked in on Ruslan Kogan, the brains behind the just-about-released Kogan Agora Pro. With a launch only a few weeks away, the Australian electronics maker pulled their Android handset back and quietly went off the radar. So what is Ruslan up to now? Bigger, better things!Recently, he was found demonstrating a new tablet at the MediaConnect Kickstart forum in Queensland.

    • Another day, another e-reader: Gigabyte is working on one too

      Not to be left out, Gigabyte is building an e-reader of their own. Called the EB10, the new reader will be running Android on a 667Mhz Samsung processor.

    • HTC Desire, Legend and HD Mini show up on Amazon UK, expected to arrive on April 1

    • Adobe Adds Features to Photoshop.com Mobile 1.1

    • Motorola’s Android-powered iDEN device to be called i1?

    • Sanity Check: Does Anybody Out There Develop On A Phone?

      Because I see where Google’s Europe boss John Herlihy is getting these headlines that say one thing – “desktops will be irrelevant” – while showing an article body that says something completely different – that mobiles will be “the primary screen from which most people will consume information and entertainment.”

  • OLPC

    • Laptops aid villagers

      Thanks to the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child, children living in the electricity-void village now have access to a learning tool prevalent in the United States and developed countries.

    • Hillary Clinton Touts the Work of OLPC

      She started off by commending Chile’s immediate response to the Haitian earthquake which indicated the increasing strength and cooperation of the region. She goes on to praise region efforts at economic growth including our very own OLPC initiative in Uruguay:

      And like you, I have followed the progress that Uruguay and Panama have made towards spreading the benefits of the digital age through initiatives that distribute laptops to children. I was just in Uruguay, meeting with the out-going president and now-president Mujica, and their “one laptop per child” program has given a great boost to learning and access to the wider world.

Free Software/Open Source

• Can open source make 311 relevant?

  But rather than run for anything at a time when being in public service is assumed to disqualify you for it, he might be better served seizing the opportunities Open311 affords. A foundation to run the .org, a company to run the .com, and the same charismatic gentleman on top of both. Government’s answer to Dries Buytaert, with better clothes.

  Sounds like a better political plan to me. He can gain standing without taking responsibility for running anything, since actual implementation remains in the hands of local governments. He can take credit for success without risking much blame for failure. And he can make money doing it.

• FLOSS Weekly 111: CMake

  Hosts: Randal Schwartz, Jono Bacon, and Leo Laporte

  CMake, the cross-platform, open-source family of tools designed to build, test and package software.

• OSI “categorically rejects” IIPA’s attack on open source

  The Open Source Initiative has condemned the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) for unjust attacks on open source. The IIPA is pushing for the US government to blacklist a number of countries for their open source policies. The OSI’s strong criticism appears in a blog posting on the OSI site by the president of the Open Source Initiative, Michael Tiemann, who points out that the IIPA is singling out countries such as Indonesia for having open source policies which are already implemented by governments and businesses across Europe and the US. He writes “It is a blatant case of selective enforcement, one which hides the absurdity of it’s claims by the narrowness of their application”.

• MSBBC

  • BBC iPlayer Content Protection Enhancements

    A number of our users have expressed concern about BBC iPlayer’s recent content protection enhancements. It’s a complex area so I asked our techical team for an explanation of what has happened. Here it is:

    We make iPlayer content available in a variety of media formats (WMV, H.264, 3GP, MPEG, etc) many of which are open source, or at least not tied to a particular company’s products.

    In order to respect the rights agreements that allow us to make the content available in the first place, we use a range of content protection techniques and technologies:

    - for downloads, we use digital rights management systems (Windows Media, Adobe, and OMA)

    - for streaming, we use systems like SSL, RTMP, RTSP, HTTP

  • BBC claims angry iPlayer plugin mob ‘conflated’ open source term

    Hunter said people had drawn the wrong conclusion because the first iPlayer users to be affected by the change were linking to the BBC’s Flash streams. Auntie has now added what the BBC online MD described as “similar protection levels” to that which already existed with its open source streams.

    At the same time, he reaffirmed that the iPlayer is available in a range of media formats, based on open source and/or proprietary tech.

    “The discussion around this issue suggests that two different uses of the term ‘open source’ are being conflated,” said Hunter.

    The Beeb hasn’t altogether blocked out open source formats, he noted. But he also acknowledged the “unfortunate” demise of the open source XBMC plugin, which “stopped working” after the BBC tightened up its “content protection”.

    Hunter also reminded UK iPlayer viewers and listeners that the corporation uses Windows Media, Adobe and OMA digital rights management (DRM) systems for downloads, while streaming is subject to (acronym alert!) SSL, RTMP, RTSP and HTTP DRMs.

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Swiftfox: a fast Firefox alternative for Linux users only

      In my ongoing search to find the perfect browser, I’ve generally stuck to Opera for the past several years, on Windows and on Linux.

      I’ve used Firefox of course, but I’ve discussed a number of issues that I’ve had with Firefox over the years, and in my hunt for a great browser, I’ve always found myself going back to Opera.

      [...]

      As I mentioned above, I was amazed to find that my opinion of Firefox all these years has been so strongly affected by its performance. I have found that when you fix the performance problems the way Swiftfox has, suddenly all my other quibbles with Firefox become significantly less important and don’t bug me anywhere NEAR as much as they used to.

    • Firefox alpha dons Flash flack jacket

      Mozilla has pushed out a Firefox developer preview that runs Adobe Flash and other plug-ins as a separate process, hoping to prevent crashing plug-ins from crashing the browser proper.

      The move comes as Apple Insider reports that Steve Jobs and cult have asked a group of “elite” testers to kick the proverbial tires on a new version of Safari that includes some sort of Flash crash protection.

    • Mozilla Lands Out-Of-Process Plugins in Firefox 3.7

      One of the big things that Google Chrome introduced is the idea of out of process plugins. It’s something that has now (finally!) landed in Mozilla — albeit in the Alpha 2 release of Firefox 3.7 (officially called Mozilla Developer Preview 3.7 Alpha 2).

  • Chrome

    • Google Chrome extends

      When Google first released its Chrome browser no-one really knew how popular it would turn out to be. Initially its major failure in the face of Firefox’s extensive extensions database was that it couldn’t be extended with additional plugins. Now, however, there is a growing list of extensions available for Chrome. We look at some of the best.

    • Friday Fun: Play 3D Rally Racing in Google Chrome

      If you love racing games and want a fun way to waste the rest of afternoon at work, then you should definitely give 3D Rally Racing a try.

    • Google pumps out Chrome build which knows where you are

      Google yesterday released a dev-only build of Chrome for Mac OS, Linux and Windows which comes loaded with rough-round-the-edges versions of the Geolocation API.

    • Customize Chrome for Better Browsing

      Google Chrome has only had extensions available for a few months, but it already has a great collection of add-ons that will boost your browsing experience. We look at a handful of extensions that let you manage tabs effectively, learn more about the sites you browse, and read feeds with panache.

• Databases

  • MySQL migration and risk management

    Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has opened up all sorts of questions: Will MySQL get the support it needs? What will become of the MySQL community? Where should database administrators put their efforts and resources?

    Ronald Bradford can answer that last question. Bradford, an RDBMS expert and a speaker at the upcoming MySQL Conference and Expo, has been guiding DBAs through key aspects of MySQL integration for years. In the following Q&A, he discusses the pros and cons of migrating from Oracle to MySQL (hint: it’s not just about cost savings). He also weighs in on the future of MySQL and its community.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU

  • The Scoop on LibrePlanet: Interview with Deborah Nicholson of the FSF

    The Free Software Foundation is gearing up for a big event March 19th through 21st to be held in Cambridge, Mass. at Harvard’s University Science Center. LibrePlanet 2010 is a three day event with workshops on using free software for everything from Web development to video editing and graphics. This year’s LibrePlanet is going to feature a new “Women’s Caucus,” a day-long track on Sunday to boost participation by women in free software projects.

  • Tech Comics: “Geeks in a Bar”

• Releases

  • Midnight Commander: Small Update, Big Enhancements

    The MC team has released a new version 4.7.1 version of its Midnight Commander for download that, despite a minor release change, has numerous improvements.

    [...]

    The MC developers additionally fixed more than 30 bugs, among them a few that led to crashes. A few fixes were already integrated in version 4.7.0.3, which the MC project page still identifies as the latest stable release.

• Licensing

  • SCALE 8x: Free software legal issues

    The casual view of open source software is that the code always comes first: releases are made when the code is ready, new contributors prove their chops by the quality of their code, and so forth. But in reality the FLOSS ecosystem relies on a complex legal framework in order to run smoothly and to stand up to proprietary software competition: the various software licenses, contribution agreements, copyright and other “intellectual property” law. Every once in a while, a good status check on the legal dimension is healthy for the typical developer, and SCALE 8x offered just that in a series of talks.

• Openness

  • UCLA Will Resume Streaming Video After Legal Dispute

    The University of California at Los Angeles has restored its streaming video service about two months after temporarily suspending the service amid complaints from an educational-media trade group.

    The Association for Information and Media Equipment told UCLA in the fall that the university had violated copyright laws by letting instructors use the videos, some of which were full-length productions. UCLA decided that beginning this semester it would suspend the password-protected video-streaming service, available only to students in specific classes.

• Programming

  • Second maintenance release for PHP 5.3

    A now available second maintenance release for PHP 5.3 fixes more than 60 bugs and closes several security holes which were already corrected in version 5.2.13, from the 5.2 branch, last week. Among the problems is a validation flaw in the safe_mode configuration variable within the tempnam() function that occurred when the directory path didn’t end in “/)”. The developers also fixed an open_basedir/safe_mode bypass vulnerability in the session extension.

Leftovers

• Campaign to Stop Killer Coke

  On February 25, 2010 a lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight plaintiffs in the Supreme Court of the State of New York against The Coca-Cola Co. and Coke processing and bottling plants in Guatemala. This case involves charges of murder, rape and torture. The plaintiffs include union leaders and family members. This case has been brought in New York State because plaintiffs and other victims of human rights abuses lack access to an independent and functioning legal system within Guatemala, a country with a corrupt judiciary which has been undermined by the intimidation and murder of witnesses, prosecutors, lawyers and judges.

• Newegg Ships Counterfeit Intel Core i7 920 CPUs

  In an almost surreal tale of events, USA electronics retailer Newegg has discovered a reported 300 counterfeit Intel Core i7 920 CPU’s in its inventory, some of which were inadvertently shipped out to buyers!

• Cutting Saturday Mail Delivery? Sure, If It Makes Good Business Sense.

  With a loss of $3.8 billion last year, the US Postal Service is facing a challenging business climate. Mail volume fell to 177 billion pieces for 2009, from 203 billion a year before. Outside consultants have estimated a deficit of $238 billion in the next decade.

• Security

  • Blackwater: Senate Committee Says the Contractor Is Armed and Dangerous

    Both Paravant and Xe are owned by Erik Prince, the owner and founder of Blackwater.

  • One Quarter of Germans Would Embrace an Implantable Microchip

    Privacy-loving Americans have roundly rejected the idea of implanting microchips within their bodies, but one in four Germans is enthusiastic about the idea of having a chip implanted as long as there are tangible benefits involved. Those benefits don’t even have to be of the life-and-death nature; some said they would implant a chip simply to make a shopping experience more enjoyable.

  • First, they came for the Muslim

    As you may have read, two Muslim women refused to go through full-body scanners at Manchester Airport this week.

    My support for them has seen the Big Brother Watch mailbag swell with abuse, and we’ve had some pretty tasty phone calls, too (all pretty much along the lines of the charming comments left over at the Daily Mail website). I suppose that this is bound to happen at some point with an organisation like ours, but it’s the first time for us, so it’s had a particular impact.

    [...]

    People are understandably afraid of terrorism. But as I’ve said before, we didn’t allow the IRA to impede our freedoms or change our way of life to anything like the degree we are changing now. Those upset by the prospect of undergoing these scans shouldn’t be forced to choose between their dignity and their flight. What kind of a free society does the Government think it is “protecting”, when it invades our privacy like this? When we are forced to expose ourselves at the airport in order to go on holiday, the terrorists have won.

  • One big joined up surveillance system, everywhere… the future of CCTV?

    The Home Ministry wants to take footage from CCTV cameras run by agencies under the Transport Ministry and local authorities such as Kuala Lumpur City Hall, as well as private firms to monitor security and traffic flow, and use of all these CCTV feeds as well as their crime-spotting CCTV to counter crime.

  • Lifting the Lid: Number of councils installing chips in bins rises by 62 per cent

    Research conducted by Big Brother Watch reveals that there are now 68 local authorities secreting microchips in the bins of residents, up from 42 a year earlier

• Environment

  • World’s coral reefs could disintegrate by 2100

    The world’s coral reefs will begin to disintegrate before the end of the century as rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere make the oceans more acidic, scientists warn.

  • Climate scientist admits sending ‘awful emails’ but denies perverting peer review

    Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, told a parliamentary inquiry that there was nothing in the hundreds of emails released on to the internet last year that supported the claims.

  • Going Global: Social Innovation

    How should you go about finding new answers to the challenge of an aging population, unemployment, mental illness or cutting carbon emissions? Social innovation has started showing up everywhere, with EU programmes, networks, funds and even an office in the White House. But how should it best be done? Once you leave the rhetoric and the sometimes self-serving case studies behind, what actually works in achieving change?

  • Study Says Undersea Release of Methane Is Under Way

    Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming.

• Finance

  • The Wrong Policy at the Wrong Time

    Widely used in Europe, the Value-Added Tax (VAT) has always seemed a non-starter in the United States. That may be changing given apparently insurmountable structural deficits and fear that the financial collapse of Greece could happen here if revenue isn’t increased. These days, the VAT is being taken seriously even by pro-market conservatives and libertarians. A VAT is a consumption tax which is levied at each stage of production based on the value added to the product at that stage.

  • Could Goldman Sachs Do to California What It Did to Greece?

    Recent reports that financial legerdemain engineered by Goldman Sachs helped destabilize the Greek economy ought to make Californians nervous. It’s time to ask if Goldman could do to us what it appears to have done to the Greeks and, indirectly, to the rest of Europe.

    [...]

    There are reasons to be nervous about California’s entanglement with Goldman, which has been a major participant in bond sales to finance our state’s ballooning deficit.

  • Financial Warfare Exposed: Soros, Goldman Sachs, Hedge Funds Attack Greece to Smash Euro

    Another obvious expedient is that of a bear squeeze or short squeeze. Soros, Goldman Sachs, and their gang of hedge fund allies have now used derivatives to establish short positions against Greek bonds and the euro, betting that these latter will go down. Political pressure is now being brought to bear on the European Central Bank and the Greek central bank to undertake an unannounced large-scale purchase of Greek bonds and euros in the forward market, causing the Wall Street predators to lose their bets, thus punishing them severely with extravagant losses. This is normal central bank practice, and it will be astounding if the Greeks do not execute such a maneuver very soon.

  • Goldman Sachs Authors a Greek Tragedy

    Another Greek-based cargo ship and its crew was recently hijacked by Somalian pirates, costing the Greek owners an undisclosed amount in ransom.

    Such ongoing acts of brazen piracy off the coast of Somalia have riveted the establishment media’s attention. But the same news hawks have missed (or ignored) a much more brazen, longer-running and far larger robbery in Greece by Gucci-wearing thieves who are more sophisticated than common pirates — but lack a pirate’s moral depth.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Miffed Minister’s Gag

    Earlier this year, you may remember, the South Australian government tried to make it unlawful for websites like The Advertiser’s AdelaideNow to publish posts about political matters during an election campaign, unless they carried the writer’s real name.

  • Google convictions reveal two flaws in EU law, not just Italian law

    Criticism of last week’s conviction of three Google executives has focused on Italy’s legal system. That focus risks missing a wider point. Web hosts are unfairly exposed all across the EU and two legal changes are needed.

    It could be three months before we get the court’s full explanation for convicting Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond, Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer and former Chief Financial Officer George Reyes. That judgment will explain why they were held responsible for a video that showed an autistic child being bullied by Turin school pupils, a video that appeared on the Italian site of Google Video in 2006.

  • Soldier Sues Because He Insists Movie ‘Hurt Locker’ Must Have Been Based On His Life

    Of course, it’s amusing to note that while he claims the movie was based on him, he’s also claiming defamation, in that the movie portrays him in false light (such as in that the character is a bad father).

  • Judge: Web site must yank story about center giraffe

    A state judge ordered a Web site to pull a story about a fictional giraffe attack at Global Wildlife Center in Folsom.

    District Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks signed the temporary restraining order Tuesday and scheduled a hearing for March 15 in 21st Judicial District Court in Amite on whether to make the injunction permanent, court records show.

  • Horror Blogger Threatened With Defamation And Copyright Lawsuits After Writing An Open Letter To Horror Magazine

    It’s amazing how some people seem to think that basic criticism is defamatory. We recently wrote about how the editor of a journal that published a review of a legal book is now facing a defamation lawsuit in France, even though the book review was just a typical book review (and only slightly negative). Now, Robert Ring points us to the news of a “horror” blogger who wrote a somewhat critical “open letter” to the horror magazine Gorezone, complaining about the apparent grammar and spelling problems in the magazine combined with what the blogger felt was rather sexist content. Frankly, the open letter isn’t even that critical. It’s one blogger’s opinion with some constructive criticism.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Digital Economy Bill Could Be Pushed Through Before Election

    The controversial Digital Economy Bill could be pushed through parliament as part of the “wash up” ahead of the election in April, according to industry insiders

  • Lib Dems make the Digital Economy Bill even worse

    The government’s Digital Economy Bill has just got even worse:

    Imagine that, in the Summer of last year, you had been following the MP’s expenses scandal and heard that The Telegraph was publishing a rather less redacted version that MP’s were prepared to give us. Interested, you navigated your way to www.telegraph.co.uk only to find it was not responding. After some searching around and asking friends you discover that the website has been blocked by most major UK ISP’s. It seems a junior official in Parliament had asked them to block The Telegraph for copyright violation.

    Just this could happen as a result of amendment 120A to the Digital Economy Bill that was passed yesterday in the House of Lords.

    Amendment 120A was proposed by Lord Tim Clement-Jones, a Liberal Democrat life peer. The amendment could provide a lot of lucrative work for intellectual property law firms whose clients want to crack down on free speech; law firms such as DLA Piper, who — entirely coincidently — Lord Clement-Jones works for.

  • My Lords, you can’t please the entertainment industry and sustain privacy

    Liberal Democrat peers have added an amendment to the Digital Economy bill which outlaws ‘web lockers’. Have they never tried to send a large, personal, private file?

  • Thousands Sign Petition Protesting Net Neutrality Loopholes for Copyright Enforcement

    San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted a petition signed by more than 7000 people to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today demanding that the agency close a loophole for copyright enforcement in its proposed regulations for network neutrality.

  • So what is a digital agenda?

    Is Minister Clement is serious about modernizing the digital landscape in Canada? I don’t know. If he is however, he needs to look at some of the basics:

    1) Is universal internet access important?
    2) If universal access is important, how do you implement it?
    3) If universal access is important, how do you handle the costs?
    4) Is our current system delivering the level of internet access that we need?

    To a certain extent Internet Access is equivalent to Road Access in how it affects the citizens of Canada.

• Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

  • The Cult of Originality

    I write this not to be “original,” but to share what I perceive as true. I share an idea because I am lonely. The less my reality is reflected back to me, the lonelier I become. I want to find “my people,” people who can see what I see, who know what I know. Because the arguing gets tiring. And it turns out that many who argue with me do see what I see and know what I know – they just aren’t aware of it yet.

  • RIAA Claims File Sharers Are ‘Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti’, But Leaves Out The Facts

    Wow. The RIAA is getting seriously desperate these days. In the past, at least, its arguments made a little bit of sense, if you didn’t understand the details or have the data. But these days, they’re really reaching. We’ve already covered Mitch Bainwol’s bizarre attempt to link Chinese hackers breaking into Google with copyright law — despite the two being totally unconnected. And, now, the RIAA is claiming that P2P file sharers are “undermining” humanitarian efforts in Haiti. Now that’s quite a claim, and you would think the RIAA would have some evidence to back it up, but (of course), it doesn’t. It’s just making stuff up.

  • Tiny Novato winery wins trademark case against Trek Bicycle

    A federal judge in Wisconsin today tossed out a trademark-infringement case against tiny Novato-based Trek Winery LLC brought by Trek Bicycle Corp., one of the largest bike manufacturers in North America.

  • Subway, Quiznos Agree to Stop Fighting Over Hard-Hitting Viral Video Campaign

    Subway and Quiznos settled their long-running deceptive advertising dispute just days after trial judge ruled that Quiznos’ CDA Section 230 defense of its user-generated viral video marketing campaign is too meaty for summary disposition.

  • Dissent of the day

    The U.S. Federal Circuit, which usually goes out of its way to unjustly expand the contours of patent law, has issued a typically outrageous decision holding that a U.S. stamp which depicts a view of a public Korean War memorial violates the copyright of the sculptor who designed it.

  • First web copyright crackdown coming

    A coalition of traditional and digital publishers this month will launch the first-ever concerted crackdown on copyright pirates on the web, initially targeting violators who use large numbers of intact articles.

    Details of the crackdown were provided by Jim Pitkow, the chief executive of Attributor, a Silicon Valley start-up that has been selected as the agent for several publishers who want to be compensated by websites that are using their content without paying licensing fees.

  • Archiving Britain’s web: The legal nightmare explored

    A proposal that could give select institutions the power to take snapshots of websites without their owners’ permission is being ruminated by our Government. Civil servants at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are now processing opinions on whether we should be archiving websites for future generations.

  • New study shows some correlation between free ebooks and higher print sales

    John Hilton, a doctoral candidate in Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University whose interests focus on open education and open access, recognizes that there could never be a completely controlled study on the matter, but that hasn’t hindered him in collecting as much data as possible. Hilton coauthored a study recently published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing titled “The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales,” for which he examined Bookscan sales for dozens of print titles before and after they were released online for free.

  • Murdoch’s NY Post Continues To Source Articles From Bloggers With No Credit

    Rupert Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. have been going around banging the drum that Google and others are “stealing” from News Corp. newspapers by linking to their stories and sending them traffic. But at the same time, they seem to have no problem totally taking credit for stories that they source from elsewhere. Late last year, the Times (of London), which is a News Corp. paper was caught publishing someone’s blog post without their permission at all. And then there’s the News Corp.-owned NY Post, which last year had a reporter admit that it was the paper’s “policy” not to credit bloggers as the sources for stories. After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn’t true, but it appears the paper has been caught doing it again.

  • How Balanced Copyright Gives Us As Many Freaky Alice in Wonderlands as We Can Handle

    Each of these versions are inspired by the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Each was made with commercial motives in mind, not some urge to set information free (and generally made a lot of money for their creators to boot). Each, at least according to the descriptions in the Times, is bizarre. However what is most striking is that each is bizarre in a way that was probably unanticipated by Alice’s original author.

  • If you blog unauthorized “Daily Show” or “Colbert” clips, Viacom will sue your ass

    News broke yesterday that Comedy Central would no longer allow popular video site Hulu to present episodes of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”

  • Senate bill would make state’s biodiversity pay off

    Hillyard’s bill would require that people who remove single-cell organisms for research or commercial purposes register with the Utah Geological Survey. It is expected that, in the future, another law would require those who turn that material into a commercial product pay royalties to the state.

  • ACTA

    • Sweden Says It Won’t Agree To ACTA If It Requires Any Changes To Swedish Or EU Laws

      While US negotiators keep insisting that ACTA won’t change US law, they’re perfectly willing to admit that’s not the case for other countries. That’s why much of what the US is insisting on in ACTA looks like the US’s quite problematic existing copyright law (minus a few consumer protections and with some “hints” at stricter compliance).

    • EU Apparently Agrees That ACTA Should Be More Transparent

      As far as I can tell from the earlier list, we’re now down to Singapore, South Korea and the US. That’s odd, because Singapore, South Korea and the US already have trade agreements of this nature. In fact, much of ACTA is actually based on the agreement between the US and South Korea — which is already proving problematic for those in South Korea.