Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• How much GNU is there in GNU/Linux?

  After building the infrastructure to analyse the code in an Ubuntu release I decided to satisfy a simple curiosity and figure out how much GNU software is actually part of a modern distribution. I picked Ubuntu natty (released in April) as a reference, am counting lines of code (LOC) as the rough metric for size of a given project, and am considering only the “main” repository, supposedly the core of the distribution, actually packaged by Ubuntu and not repackaged from Debian.

• Raspberry Pi: Tiny Computer That Runs Linux

  700MHz processor, 256MB of RAM. It doesn’t seem that long ago since I was running a desktop PC like that. However, these are the specs of a new keyring-sized computer to be released by a UK not for profit company. They hope to be able to sell it for $25 dollars a pop, and best of all, it runs Linux.

  The idea is that this small unit can output 1080p video to a digital television. Permanent storage is provided via a memory card slot, and IO (keyboard and mouse) requires a USB hub. In other words, it’s a small but functionally complete computer.

  [...]

  As for simple MIPS/FLOPS performance, I doubt that this processor is competitive with say, a Pentium III running at 700MHz, as modern ARM processors in desktop applications tend to be power-saving rather than powerhouses.

• Celebrating 20 Years of Linux

• Linux Cabal

  Yesterday evening I went to a Linux user group meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico. The name of the group was “Linux Cabal”.

  The meeting was held in a very large warehouse-like room with a shelf and seats placed around the wall, and convenient electric outlets and Ethernet hookups. On the walls were mounted T-shirts of many past events, as well as posters and banners from various past Linux events and diagrams of how code goes together.

  The organizer and host of this group was a man named Richard Couture. An expatriate from the United States, he wears colorful clothes and several earrings in each ear (who doesn’t?), is helping a hawk recuperate (he has a permit from the government) as well as a pet pig (who ran around the meeting visiting people) and various other animals.

  Richard also has some ancient computer equipment that are used as tables and seats for people who do not want to use the worn, but comfy, chairs.

• The Linux Week In Review May 31

• Desktop

  • System76 quietly updates Starling Linux netbook with Atom N570 chip

    The folks at System76 announced today that they’re launching a new high performance 15.6 inch laptop called the Pangolin. It’s a big heavy machine that I’m not particularly interested in, but when I saw the news I decided to take a peek at the company’s 10 inch Starling NetBook page and I noticed that System76 has updated the processor without changing the price.

  • Will Google’s Chromebooks Play Well with Linux?

    But wait, there’s more! Google has also worked hard to make sure that your printer will be completely useless when connected to your new Chromebook. That’s right, unless you happen to have an ePrint compatible HP printer, using the Chromebook to print is apparently not an option.

    The best part: if you wish to connect to a standard printer at all, you must jump through more hoops and run Windows or OS X on a separate computer. Comically, no Linux support is provided for this separate computer despite the Chrome OS itself being using the Linux kernel to operate.

• Kernel Space

  • The Linux 3.0 Kernel Will… Reboot Better?

    Beyond file-system cleancache support, a Microsoft Kinect driver, Intel Ivy Bridge support, and various open-source graphics driver improvements, the Linux 3.0 kernel may also reboot your system better. Yes, really.

    Matthew Garrett of Red Hat today is blogging about the different ways to reset an x86 system and the limitations of these five different methods available on Linux. These methods include using kbd (rebooting via the keyboard controller), triple (generating a triple fault), PCI, EFI, and ACPI.

  • Rebooting

    3.0 will ship with this behaviour by default. It makes various machines work (some Apples, for instance), improves things on some others (some Thinkpads seem to sit around for extended periods of time otherwise) and hopefully avoids the need to add any more machine-specific quirks to the reboot code. There’s still some divergence between us and Windows (mostly in how often we write to the keyboard controller), which can be cleaned up if it turns out to make a difference anywhere.

  • New Name, Same Linux

• Applications

  • UI Forensic Tool for File Information – FileInfo

  • Boot-Repair – Simple tool to repair frequent boot problems

    Simple tool to repair frequent boot problems.

    - Repair the boot when an OS does not boot any more after installing Ubuntu
    - repair the boot when access to GRUB and any OS is lost
    - Allow to reinstall GRUB bootloader easily
    - Allow to restore the original bootsector (MBR) if it has been saved by Clean-Ubiquity

  • PiTiVi Gets Ready With A New Release

    After being in development for a number of months, the GNOME-sponsored PiTiVi project has put out a new pre-release. In this updated version of the PiTiVi video editing application are a number of notable additions, such as support for video effects, as this open-source editor tries to catch-up to the proprietary competition.

  • Sigil, Open Source and Cross Platform WYSIWYG E-Book Editor

    Sigil is an open source, multi platform WYSIWYG e-book editor designed for editing e-books in ePub format. The application has an impressive list of features that allows you to do basic as well advanced editing. Sigil also comes with proper documentation.

  • Proprietary

    • So, What’s the Deal With MicroSkype?

      Well, the Linux bloggers down at the blogosphere’s Broken Windows Lounge had just barely finished chanting Skype’s funeral dirge last week when word came that there might be reason to belt out another round.

      Sure enough, turned out Skype has decided to cut its ties with the free and open source Asterisk telephony system, leaving Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) new VoIP offering with one fewer FOSSy friend to worry about supporting — and leaving Asterisk users with one fewer option for Skype integration.

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to install Linux Mint 11 on a btrfs file system

    • Fedora 15 – How to fix the font rendering

    • Basic Linux Security for Beginners Part II

    • Lossless JPEG rotation preserving EXIF data

    • How to install Linux without a CD or USB stick

    • [HOWTO] Enable ‘sudo’ in Fedora 15

    • How To Install ATI Catalyst 11.5/FGLRX 8.5 In Ubuntu 11.04

    • How to configure Postfix MTA on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

    • [HOWTO] Enable right click and desktop folder in Gnome 3

    • How-To: Make KDE Elementary

    • How to Bring Back the Firefox Default Menu Button in Ubuntu 11.04

    • Should a Power-User Key Mapping Change Be This Difficult?

    • Script of the Week: Changing Terminal Color

    • How To Use FreeRADIUS With LinOTP 2 To Do Two Factor Authentication With One Time Passwords

    • Ho to install Pandorafms on RHEL,CentOS & Sientific Linux

    • Four Simple Ways to Install Enterprise Apps

  • Games

    • DOOM Ported to JavaScript and HTML5

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

    • digiKam 2.0 beta review – the ultimate open source image editor

      digiKam has earned a reputation as the most powerful and comprehensive photo management solution on Linux. But does the upcoming version 2.0 offer enough to keep digiKam ahead of the pack? We put the latest release through its paces…

    • Configure the Main Toolbar in digiKam

    • krunner doing just one thing

      So here’s a feature of KRunner than probably very few of you know about: KRunner can be made to query a single specific plugin for one search. You can even quite easily create shortcuts, both launchers and global keyboard shortcuts, to trigger this behavior. This feature was added some time ago by Jacopo, but it’s rather well hidden unless you know it is there or stumble over it accidentally.

    • Key open source project about to fail

      Open sourcers are a little worried that an important project is about to be killed off thanks to Nokia’s involvement with Microsoft. Nokia’s jump to Windows Phone 7 has meant that the Qt toolkit, is living a promise of continued investment, bonuses for developers who stick with the platform and even a phone or two that might use it.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Gnome Shell

      So recently I’ve finally started to try an use gnome-shell as my primary UI. I primarily use computers for web browsing and writing code. In general, I don’t use keyboard short-cuts for window management, I prefer to use the mouse only. I’ve run into some issues with usability and perhaps those more familiar with gnome-shell can help me. At the moment, I end up running a lot of stuff from the terminal since I cannot seem to find the proper way to do it from the GUI.

• Distributions

  • Zenix 2.0

    The general goals of Zenix are:
    Buddhism within the Linux community

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Mageia 1 is here

    • ALT 6.0.0-20110531

    • Mandriva 2011 Beta 3 Looks Awesome, Screenshot Tour

      Mandriva, through Eugeni Dodonov, announced today, June 1st, the immediate availability for testing of the third and last Beta version of the upcoming Mandriva 2011 Linux operating system. This unexpected release is here to make Mandriva 2011 a more stable OS.

  • Gentoo Family

    • Picking up the pieces

      Lately I’ve been doing some “undertaker” work. Many of you might not be aware of that so let me explain that to you. When a developer is slacking without apparent reason, someone has to poke him about his status. This is usually done by sending two e-mails before declaring him officially away and let the infrastructure people disable his account etc. When we retire a developer, all of his packages are going to the notorious maintainer-needed list. Unless a developer picks some of these packages, they will remain on tree as long as no outstanding bugs appear on bugzilla. In this case, treecleaners will remove them. However, since the very beginning as a developer, I tried to be as close to users as possible. This is why I act as a proxy to quite a lot of them. This actually makes me feel happy and more useful, than playing solo if I may say. So, when we retire a developer, someone has to take care of his packages, reassing bugs etc. What I usually do is to search through the open bugs for easy fixes like stabilization requests or bugs that have a patch attached. This is actually a 2′ fix that would make another user happy But that is not enough. In my opinion, portage is growing much faster that we can handle, leaving too much craft behind in case someone retires. Quite a lot of herds are almost empty, so packages are maintained by a single developer not by a group of them. So, when he retires, nobody is taking care of his packages anymore.

    • music made with gentoo: 20110530

  • Red Hat Family

    • Is Red Hat’s Stock Expensive by the Numbers?

      The more consistent a company’s performance has been and the more growth we can expect, the more we should be willing to pay. We’ve gone well beyond looking at an 82.3 P/E ratio and though we see consistent profitability, recent growth has been slow relative to Red Hat’s expensive price multiples. But these are just the initial numbers. If you find Red Hat’s numbers or story compelling, don’t stop. Continue your due diligence process until you’re confident one way or the other. As a start, add it to My Watchlist to find all of our Foolish analysis.

    • OVA: Virtualization’s Good Eggs

    • Fedora

      • Five really unique gnome shell themes for fedora 15

        When the current gnome shell theme mockups started to coming in, one of the first reactions was that the theme looked so dark and so boring. I am one of those who admire the beauty of gnome shell and its default theme. Thanks to it, for the first time I have a wonderful looking desktop (by default) that so nice to look at (even ubuntu was never this beautiful) and at the same time does not look like a cheap windows rip off. For the first time linux desktop has a character of its own and makes a unique feel to your computer.

      • GNOME Shell, panel applets, and eating your cake

        One of the complaints doing the rounds about GNOME Shell is that it has no panel applets. This is technically true. It’s also entirely the wrong way of looking at things: I hope this post will make it clear why this is, and make some people happier with the road GNOME is going down.

        So, to start with, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves what exactly panel applets are, and what we mean by GNOME Shell not having them.

      • Kororaa 14 – Linux Mint of Fedora?

        Kororaa is a pretty desktop system that provides welcome convenience for users. It is also a plus for those not anxious to make the leap to GNOME 3 just yet. But I think in order to become a similar force as Linux Mint, releases will need to keep up with Fedora. For example, today’s release probably should have been Kororaa 15. If it continues to run a version behind, it may fail to resonate with users. Development on Kororaa 15 has begun and perhaps Smart will catch up and get in sync with Fedora in the coming months.

      • Installing Fedora 15

        The following tutorial will teach all Linux users how to install the recently released Fedora 15 (Lovelock) operating system on their personal computers.

        Fedora 15, also known as Lovelock, was released on May 24th, 2011, and it brings the highly anticipated GNOME 3 desktop environment with the GNOME Shell interface, a new search tool, Deja Dup, GTK+ 3, RPM 4.9, Mozilla Firefox 4, LibreOffice 3, and much more.

        This guide will make things very simple for you, but if you get stuck somewhere in the middle of the installation and you need help, do not hesitate to use our commenting system at the end of the article.

  • Debian Family

    • Derivatives

      • antiX derivative still “Looking Good!”

        Anyone who follows and reads my journal, blogs, for forum posts anywhere on the Internet, including this blog, knows that I have been a big Debian software enthusiast for many years, and that in recent years, I have developed a particular enthusiasm and attachment to two of the MEPIS projects, SimplyMEPIS (for an easy, stable desktop system) and antiX (for a light, extremely flexible, customizable, and modifiable desktop or server system).

        As proof of how flexible MEPIS has been, antiX has been in existence over five years now and it has three derivatives (or “flavors”) of its own, the original, “full” version, a cut down “base” version, which includes a graphical user environment and customization tools, but withholds the applications so that you can select the ones you prefer, and then there is an even more minimal approach called antiX “core”, which provides the installation and configuration tools, but no graphical user environment or applications, so you completely build what you want from scratch.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • 5 Stunning Plymouth Screen Themes for Ubuntu 11.04

          Plymouth is simply an application that provides a graphical boot animation while the boot process happens in the background. Ubuntu has a simple yet beautiful Plymouth screen by default. But that doesn’t mean that you should not experiment with some really cool alternative Plymouth screens in your Ubuntu. As we had promised while featuring Zorin Splash Screen Manager, here is our collection of beautiful Plymouth Screen themes for Ubuntu.

        • The Sins of Ubuntu

          Fair or not, Ubuntu reflects on the Linux community as a whole. How well Ubuntu meets criticisms matters even to Linux users who don’t use it.

        • Ubuntu 11.10 Features Defined

          UDS is over and any post UDS super bugs (stupid ubuflu/ubupneuomonia) should be out of people’s systems. Here is the feature list of items for Ubuntu this cycle.

        • Unity interface makes Ubuntu worse.

          I downloaded the latest Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal edition. The latest Ubuntu comes by default with the Unity interface. Previously, I already got to play with the unity interface on the netbook edition but was not impressed at all. Now the netbook edition has been merged with the destkop one. The Unity user interface makes Ubuntu worse and upsets some long time Ubuntu users such as myself. I think that Unity is too prominent on the screen and lacks customization. It is nice to have a simplistic user interface instead of something so pronounced on your desktop.

        • [launchpad] team owner no longer implies team member

        • GNOME Shell Is Finally Available In The Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Repositories [Oneiric Updates]

          GNOME Shell is now available in the official Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot repositories, along with most of the GNOME 3 applications (Gedit 3, Nautilus 3 Evolution and so on; some of them are available for quite some time – like Nautilus, while some were uploaded recently – like Gedit or Evolution).

        • Elementary File Browser “Marlin”, Available To Install Via Ubuntu PPA

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 11 will not dislodge me from 10… yet

            So this weekend, because I apparently have nothing better to do, I installed the new Linux Mint 11 (Katya) on one of my test machines.

            Readers will remember my recent post praising Mint 10. I’m using it on my laptop right now, and it’s super stable and very polished. I have a hard time remembering any distro I’ve liked better, actually, so Mint 11 has a tough act to follow.

          • On Upgrading to Linux Mint 11

            The restoration of the extra software that I had added beyond what standardly gets installed was took its share of time but the use of a previously prepared list made things so much easier. That it didn’t work smoothly because some packages couldn’t be found the first time around so another one was needed. Nevertheless, that is nothing compared to the effort needed to do the same thing by issuing an installation command at a time. Once the usual distribution software updates were in place, all that was left was to update VirtualBox to the latest version, install a Citrix client and add a PHP plugin to NetBeans. Then, next to everything was in place for me.

          • Bodhi Linux Service Pack 1 Ready to Go

          • Super OS 11.04: Ubuntu 11.04 With Muscles

            Hacktolive.org announced today, May 30th, the stable and final version of Super OS 11.04, their Ubuntu 11.04 based Linux distribution with “super powers.”

            Super OS 11.04 includes extra apps, patches, utilities and other useful packages that are missing from a standard Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) default installation.

            Among the applications included in the new Super OS 11.04 distribution we can mention powerful web browsers such as Google Chrome and Opera, aMSN instant messenger, the VLC Media Player with support for DVD playback, a Live USB creator, and much more.

          • Mint 11 Screenshots

          • The Perfect Desktop – Linux Mint 11 (Katya)

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linaro supports Linux and Android on new Cortex-A9 open platform board

    Linaro announced an open-platform $199 “Origen” development board made by InSignal that incorporates Samsung’s dual-core Cortex-A9 Exynos 4210 processor, a Mali400 GPU, and Linaro open source Linux and Android BSPs. At Computex this week, Linaro is demonstrating its first Linaro Evaluation Builds for Android and Ubuntu, and announced a Linaro Partner Program, with founding members including Canonical and Mentor Graphics.

  • Phones

    • Half of all mobile PCs will be ARM’d by 2015, officials claim

    • Android

      • Smartphone OS wars settling into a stalemate?

        Google’s Android operating system accounted for 36 percent of U.S. smartphone market…

  • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

    • Lenovo’s MeeGo Netbook: Hands On

      It hasn’t been exactly smooth sailing for MeeGo, Intel’s Linux-based operating system that was developed to go up against offerings from Google and Apple. But there have been signs of life here at Computex 2011, beginning with Asus’s launch of the EeePC X101. And now there’s the Lenovo Ideapad S100, which was spotted in the wild running a version of MeeGo that’s actually usable. Let’s take a closer look.

    • Asus netbooks include MeeGo model

      Undeterred by slumping netbook sales, Asus announced three such devices, one of which — the Eee PC X101 — will be offered with the Linux-based MeeGo operating system for just $200. The EeePC X101 comes with a new 1.33GHz Atom N435 processor, while the Windows-only EeePC 1025C and 1025CE will include the “Cedar Trail” Atom N2600 and N2800, according to multiple reports.

    • Are Android Tablets Stumbling Out of the Gate?

      “Android will eclipse in the next two years. It is just a matter of getting the devices into the market,” Brian Reed, vice president of products and CMO for mobile management platform provider BoxTone, told LinuxInsider.

    • Asus shows Android-based phone/tablet combo and seven-inch 3D device

      At this week’s Computex conference in Taipei, Asus unveiled an Android-based hybrid tablet/smartphone device called the Padfone, embedding a removable smartphone in a 10.1-inch tablet. The company also announced a more conventional seven-inch tablet called the Eee Pad Memo 3D, with Android 3.x, a stylus, and glasses-free 3D video playback.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Open Source Road Ahead: Open Source and Parmesan Cheese

• Getting help with open source software

  One of the best things about open source, particularly those that adhere to the GNU General Public License (GPL) is that the code must be made available for the general public. This entire design has many benefits as described by the GPL’s creator, Richard Stallman. If you ever want some interesting reading, look into why he created the GPL and what it is designed to do. I’ve found it very interesting on his personal thoughts and what he experienced with the Xerox code and how it spawned his crusade for opening up source code for software. The book “Free as in Freedom” is a good read on this subject.

  Recently as I wrote about previously, I had the pleasure of replacing Windows XP and Windows 2000 with Fedora 14 for several people. With those deployments, I found a problem with each one that I was not able to fix right away. It was with Rhythmbox (a full featured media player that is installed with Fedora by default). Rhythmbox has been quirky in the past, partially because I think the developers have tried to make it support a wide variety of players, formats, and also give it a lot of features that are common with media players now. But, the issues I saw with every Fedora 14 installation was that when opening Rhythmbox the first time, it would pop up with an error saying “Unable to activate plugin Audio CD Player”. After clicking Close for the error, Rhythmbox would open up and work until a mp3 song was played. When playing any mp3 song, another error would pop up saying “The playback of this movie requires a GStreamer element audioconvert plugin which is not installed.”.

• Why you should pay for “free” software

  Tell me, what’s the difference between open source and commercial software? If you’d have asked me not long ago, I’d say that there was a world of difference between the two, and that they both sat at opposite ends of the software spectrum. “Isn’t it bad,” I thought, “to pay for software?”

  No! The correct answer is that it’s perfectly OK to pay for free software. Free and open source software at its heart is a philosophy: it is software that enables and empowers through the provision of its own internal code. This offers the public auditable standards, and an end consumer has the final say in choice, customization, and community.

• Open Source Tools and the End of Price Gouging

  Have you ever read Tolstoy’s famous short story “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” It’s a morality parable about a man whose greed for land leads to his death. On the technology scene these days, it’s worth asking an analagous question: How much technology does a man (or woman) really need? There are numerous signs that upcoming operating systems, chips and other key components represent overkill for many users, and lots of those users can take advantage of fully functional technology for free, or for very low prices. Open source has helped create this environment, and as the trend continues, it bodes especially well for open source platforms and applications.

• Google open-sources WebRTC

• Events

  • Ten days to SELF 2011.

    This weekend included a Monday holiday for people in the USA. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of said holiday was interrupted by coming down with some sort of sinus bug on Friday, which wiped about half of my weekend. On Monday, though, I finished some retouches on my presentation for the upcoming Southeast Linux Fest 2011, where I’ll be talking with people about “Graduating to GUI: PyGObject for Beginners.” This is an update to a talk I gave last year on PyGTK, incorporating information about what’s changed from a beginner’s perspective.

  • Submit a Talk for Ohio LinuxFest 2011

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Chaufr Chrome Extension Lets You Navigate the Web Using Voice Commands

  • Mozilla

    • Webian Shell: A full screen web browser built on Chromeless

      If you’re anything like me then you’ll find that most of the stuff you do on your PC these days happens in a web browser, and the desktop environment you used to depend on is now just getting in your way. Modern web applications can do just about everything traditional desktop applications can do (like flashy graphics, sound, video and offline storage) so often all you really need is the browser.

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Oracle v. Google – Google decides to pack some heat

    In a sign that it is doubling down and getting serious in the case brought by Oracle, Google has now retained well known patent litigator Robert Van Nest of Keker & Van Nest, LLP. The Keker firm has represented Google in other cases in the past, but interestingly, they have also represented Oracle. At present Van Nest is representing HTC in its on-going battles with Apple. A tribute to Van Nest’s abilities is his being named the Bet-The-Company litigator of the year for the San Francisco region by Best Lawyer. With the addition of Van Nest and his team from Keker, the Google litigation team now includes the firms of King & Spaulding and Greenberg, Traurig (GB attorneys: Ian Ballon, an experienced IP litigator and well-regarded expert on IP, and Heather Meeker, an expert on open source).

  • VirtualBox 4 Builds a Clean and Easy Sandbox Inside Your Linux Desktop

    Constantly testing software and tinkering with a variety of Linux operating systems puts my multiple test-bench computers to constant use. Granted, Linux comes with a lot fewer security risks. But dealing with unknown factors and beta glitches can be time consuming to correct when they take down an entire box.

    A much safer and quicker way to deal with such potential harm is to spare the physical machines and run the new stuff in a virtual machine instead. Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) VM VirtualBox 4.0 is a handy app for doing just that. It runs nicely in a variety of Linux distros.

• CMS

  • Avoid these Drupal hosting mistakes

    Reliable, high-performance hosting begins with good planning. Believe it or not, one of the most common mistakes is also one of the most obvious: Not anticipating a surge in demand. Whether you’re the site owner, developer or hosting provider, it’s critical to consider this factor. Commercial sites, for example, will experience upticks with every sales promotion, publicity event, or shift in user base. If your hosting environment isn’t capable of scaling quickly to accommodate these changes, you risk frustrating users and incurring potential losses in revenue.

• Education

  • CH Parliamentarian: Schools should use open source to inspire students

    Changing their attitudes from mere consumers into participants, will make students more interested in IT, she believes. “Schools simply apply IT, ignoring the educational possibilities of new technologies.”

    Schools in Switzerland should increase their use of open source software, says National Councillor Kathy Riklin.

  • Anki – An alternative learning program

    There are two simple concepts behind Anki: active recall testing and spaced repetition. They are not known to most learners, despite having been written about in the scientific literature for many years. Understanding how they work will make you a more effective learner.

    Active recall testing means being asked a question and trying to remember the answer. This is in contrast to passive study, where we read, watch or listen to something without pausing to consider if we known the answer. Research has shown that active recall testing is far more effective at building strong memories than passive study.

  • A counter-response: Education in 2030

    Mel Chua’s recent post Education in 2030: Open source and community based is typical of the challenges to the educational establishment that are en vogue today. Because I know her well, trust her a great deal, and know that she works and thinks hard about FOSS participation and education, I feel mostly comfortable using her post as a starting point for my response. I say “mostly” because I’m going to challenge her writing, and that my reflections here are meant to be the start of a discussion/debate — this is all complex stuff we’re talking about.

• Public Services/Government

  • DE: Open source in coalition agreement Badem-Wuerttemberg

    The newly elected coalition goverment of the German state of Badem-Württemberg wants to use open source software wherever appropriate, according to its coalition agreement.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Simple Java API for ODF Release Notes

    We are pleased to announce the release of the Simple Java API for ODF version 0.6 today. A major improvement of this version is the chart API. Now you can add charts to text, spreadsheet and presentation documents with easy-to-use methods. An interesting demo is uploaded to the website to show how to create a presentation/text/spreadsheet document with charts only using Simple ODF API.

Leftovers

• Security

  • PBS Sites Hacked: Attackers Publish False News Story and Login Data

  • Cyber Combat: Act of War

• Transparency/Cablegate

  • Alaska Prepares to Release Palin Emails

    But officials say they are withholding 2,415 pages that are privileged, personal or otherwise exempt from the state’s disclosure laws. As the Daily News notes, it also “remains to be seen how many of the released emails are going to be at least partially blacked out.”

    A host of media organizations requested the records during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Palin was named as a the Republican VP nominee. But at the time state officials said they weren’t prepared to handle the requests for a number of reasons, including an antiquated electronic database system and the fact that Palin commonly used a personal Yahoo account to conduct official state business.

  • WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3/Day

    The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 7-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.

    But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

    To resolve the impasse between the factory owners and Parliament, the State Department urged quick intervention by then Haitian President René Préval.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Germany to scrap nuclear power by 2022

    Germany on Monday became the first major industrialised power to agree an end to nuclear power in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out to be completed by 2022.

    Chancellor Angela Merkel said the decision, hammered out by her centre-right coalition overnight, marked the start of a “fundamental” rethink of energy policy in the world’s number four economy.

  • Cleaning Up Japan’s Radioactive Mess with Blue Goo

    A clever technology is helping hazmat crews in Japan contain and clean up the contamination caused by the ongoing nuclear disaster there: a blue liquid that hardens into a gel that peels off of surfaces, taking microscopic particles like radiation and other contaminants with it. Known as DeconGel, Japanese authorities are using it inside and outside the exclusion zone on everything from pavement to buildings.

• Finance

  • Libya’s Goldman Dalliance Ends in Losses, Acrimony

    In early 2008, Libya’s sovereign-wealth fund controlled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi gave $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs Group to sink into a currency bet and other complicated trades. The investments lost 98% of their value, internal Goldman documents show.

  • Lambregts Says EU Debt Woes `Banking Crisis in Disguise’

  • Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low?

    Historically, the term “tax rate” has meant the average or effective tax rate — that is, taxes as a share of income. The broadest measure of the tax rate is total federal revenues divided by the gross domestic product.

    By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

    The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagan’s administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.

  • Galbraith on Goldman Sachs and the Fed

    Age of Uncertainty which came out of a BBC series of the same name. While there was much of interest a second time around, a couple of items jumped out at me. The first was the role that Goldman Sachs played in the run up to the 1930s Depression; not unlike it’s role in the current Great Recession.

  • Moody’s, S&P Caved In to Ratings Pressure From Goldman, UBS Over Mortgages

    Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s adjusted the way they graded securities after Goldman Sachs Group Inc., UBS AG and at least six more banks pressured them, according to a U.S. Senate report.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Canada’s Intellectual Property Protection for Pharmaceuticals Stronger In Many Ways than EU and US

    Canada’s intellectual property system for pharmaceuticals is already stronger than that in any other industrial sector in Canada, and is in many ways stronger than pharmaceutical IP in the European Union (EU) and United States (US), according to a new report by Edward M. Iacobucci, the Osler Chair in Business Law at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.

  • Copyrights

    • Massive Copyright Class Action Settlement Approved: Record Labels to Pay $50 Million

    • Access Copyright Responds: So Much For Getting the Facts Straight

      Access Copyright has posted a two-page response to my recent series of blog postings (transactional licensing, economics of the collective, future reforms, all three posts in single PDF) titled “Let’s Get the Facts Straight on Access Copyright.” Unfortunately, as has become typical for an organization that based its advocacy strategy on Bill C-32 on misleading claims about fair dealing in an effort to “break through” beyond talk of digital locks and levies, the document contains very few facts to address its transparency and financial concerns.

    • Big Content sued for not paying musicians

      While Big Content claims that it is taking action against file sharers to protect the poor struggling musicians, it seems that this is not the case.

      A judge has given the go-ahead to a $50-million settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought against four Canadian record labels for unpaid royalties. Judge George Strathy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved the settlement of the proposed class action in Toronto on Monday.

    • Senators Want To Put People In Jail For Embedding YouTube Videos

      So yeah. If you embed a YouTube video that turns out to be infringing, and more than 10 people view it because of your link… you could be facing five years in jail. This is, of course, ridiculous, and suggests (yet again) politicians who are regulating a technology they simply do not understand. Should it really be a criminal act to embed a YouTube video, even if you don’t know it was infringing…? This could create a massive chilling effect to the very useful service YouTube provides in letting people embed videos.

Reader’s Picks

• Anti-trust

  • Nokia can’t move phones in China or anywhere else. The author promotes Windows 7 and ignores Nokia’s well developed Debian derivative.

  • More Microsoft damage to Skype. Strangely, people blame Skye in the article.

    Just days following the announcement that Microsoft is to buy Skype for a massive $8.5 billion, the company has begun pushing crapware called ‘EasyBits Go‘ onto Windows systems without consent or permission.

  • Microsoft proxy, Lodsys, goes after Android developers with bogus patents

• Health/Nutrition

  • Meet Watson, IBM’s would be doctor.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Journalists arrested in Casablanca.

  • UK training Saudi forces used to crush Arab spring

    The Saudi army is using UK training to crush the population of Bahrain.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • (A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!): repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change, so that you don’t notice the collection of record breaking floods and droughts

    climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

  • Big budget Exxon advertisments make gas drilling look safer than it is.

    The ad, which depicts a gas well in the Marcellus Shale, implies that these layers of protection extend all the way down the well. But in the vast majority of horizontal wells, they do not. … [the Natural Resources Defense Council] sent a letter to the editor to the Washington Post last week, disputing the ad’s claim that thousands of feet of rock protect groundwater from contamination.

  • Fish with lesions and discolored skin alarm fishermen and scientists in the Gulf of Mexico.

  • Japan thinks twice about permissible radiation exposure for children.

    The government’s initial raising of the exposure limit for schoolchildren prompted one key nuclear advisor to quit in protest.

  • 35 years ago, studies proved that anti-biotics given to farm animials produce anti-biotic resistant bacteria in humans

    Within one week of introducing the tetracycline supplemented feed, the chickens’ intestinal bacteria contained almost entirely tetracycline-resistant organisms. … After three to four months’ exposure to tetracycline on the farm, the chickens and humans excreted bacteria that were resistant to multiple antibiotics including four OTHER types of antibiotics … Within 5-6 months however, 31.3% of weekly fecal samples from farm dwellers contained almost entirely (> 80%) tetracycline-resistant bacteria. … within six months after removal of the antibiotic in the feed, no detectable tetracycline-resistant organisms were found (less than 1%) in the vast majority of the farm workers …

  • Ten environmental justice articles from Facing South.

  • Idiots look to cut the budget for successful bike riding and walking initiatives.

    talk around Washington and state capitals this year is about eliminating or slashing these successful programs. That’s penny-wise and dollar-dumb. Biking and walking comprise only 1.5 percent of the overall federal transportation budget, while they account for 12 percent of all trips made by Americans today. … bicycling and walking also boost environmental quality and public health-which translate to considerable costs savings in federal and state budgets for Medicare, Medicaid and health care.

  • Terrorist kidnappings and killings have caused travel bans, severely hindering research into how the monsoon affects food security and drought in Africa

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • US Health Insurance companies blame their victims.

    The PR and lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) absolved the industry of any responsibility for constantly rising premiums and pointed the finger of blame at just about everyone else. The real culprits, AHIP president Karen Ignagni insisted, are greedy doctors and hospitals, state legislators who make insurers provide coverage for an overly broad range of illnesses, and, of course, irresponsible American citizens, especially healthy young people who decide not to buy insurance.

• Censorship

  • Clueless doctors and medical staff try to censor patients with copyright assignment using “mutual privacy agreements”.

    “It’s completely unethical for doctors to force their patients to sign away their rights in order to get medical care,” he said. He pointed out that patients seeking treatment can be particularly vulnerable to coercion. Patients might be in acute pain or facing a life-threatening illness. Such patients are in no position to haggle over the minutia of copyright law.

  • Kicking “liberal looking” people out of public events.

    Anxious over their increasing unpopularity, Republicans lawmakers across the country are banning media from chronicling the blowback at public events. … Scott failed to avoid anger from those in the crowd – most notably, Republican lawmakers.

  • CBS Outdoor censored a billboard ad calling for end to Haiti deportations due to cholera.

  • Internet monitoring and censorship in India

• Civil Rights

  • Geographic correlations between hate groups, poverty, and ignorance as well as hate crime and economic adversity provide verification of the frustration-aggression thesis.

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Making local laws for network neutrality

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Universities are afraid to share orphaned works, so special collections remain hidden from the public and scholars

    • eG8 conclusions drafted before end of conference by copyright maximalists

      Cory Doctorow appears to be at least partially vindicated. Doctorow chose to make a strong statement when he publicly declined the invitation, describing the eG8 as a whitewash, an attempt to get people who care about the Internet to lend credibility to regimes that are in all-out war with the free, open net.