Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 09/12/2009: Thundebird 3 is Out



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Contents





GNU/Linux



Free Software/Open Source

  • What Will Make Your Project Successful?
    For open source software, the most important thing is having good code. Every project needs more users and more developers, but without the proper technical foundation to absorb them, an open source project could easily hit a wall. (I actually wrote about this almost exactly two years ago under “The Limits of Open Source.”) A successful open source projects must be extensible, stable, and technically interesting — otherwise, who would want to work with your code base?


  • Ardour Manual Done!
    The wonderful wonderful manual about Ardour is done! It was produced in a Book Sprint / Workshop held at moddr_ in Rotterdam and lead by Derek Holzer. Its a super good manual and designed to help the newbies get to grips with Ardour.


  • Olswang Open Source Summit
    On 1st December Olswang held their third and final Open Source Summit in London. For one reason or another I'd been unable to attend the 2007 and 2008 events and was glad to last week be finally able to make it along. Olswang are a law firm and so as you would expect the summit focused on open source legal matters. We were treated to a keynote from Bruce Perens and the overall quality of the event was very high. Numerous topics were covered over the course of the morning and a few notes follow.


  • ES: Cenatic campaign: ten reasons for using open source in education
    Using open source software offers schools a unique opportunity to advance the information society that is fair and free, says Cenatic, Spain's resource centre on open source and open standards.

    Cenatic on Friday published a brochure 'Ten reasons for using open source in education', meant to show the country's autonomous regions the benefits of open source software, and to ensure they consider the use of this type of software when schools modernise their programs.

    The brochure will be sent to all of Spain's secondary schools.

    In favour of free and open source software are objective arguments, technical, social and cultural, explains Miguel Jaque, Cenatic's director in a statement. "Open source is a model in itself, free, democratic, sustainable and technologically competitive. It helps to educate people to be free, independent and critical and shows them that they are able make their own technological choices."


  • Amazon gains professional-grade memcached distribution
    Open source caching startup Gear6 has entered the cloud fray by releasing an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) of its memcached distribution server, dubbed Gear6 Web Cache Server.


  • Open source vendor releases cluster file system
    Open source file system vendor Gluster released its Storage Platform, integrating a file system, an operating system and a management UI to create a cluster that can store petabytes of information and provide failover for virtual machines.


  • Open source is the new driving force
    Barack Obama has chosen it for the White House web site. The London Stock Exchange replaced its previous trading system with it. And Germany has just awarded its most prestigious decoration to Matthias Ettrich for producing it.

    So what makes people opt for open-source software?

    For many, it’s the price. For others, it’s the freedom that open-source licences offer: the freedom to inspect the code, modify it and distribute it, and the freedom from potential vendor intransigence, incompetence and deliberate lock-in.


  • Easier than ever
    Looking forward to what the next 10 to 20 years hold in store, it's clear to me that open source will be the default mechanism for software development.


  • jQuery wins Net Awards Open Source Application of the year award. – Kingin-seo News
    Consider this, jQuery just beat out some serious competition. In the category for open source web applications the entrants, jQuery was competing with Firefox and WordPress.


  • Convincing the Boss to Accept FOSS
    Tell them the software is free. Many open source advocates are sure that the way to any boss' heart is through her budget. While developers and other techies may love open source because of such things as its strong community or the philosophy of open source, they also acknowledge that the best way to appeal to the boss may be the bottom line. This attitude may be cynical — "They are always trying to save because they know that whatever is left in their account at the end of the period will go to their pockets," wrote a guy named Al — but I dare say there's plenty of justification in some firms. As a developer named Jason wrote, "I simply insisted that I will make and save them more money. And I did!... It didn't take much to persuade my boss at all."


  • The Wailing Wall of Open Source BI




  • Web Browsers





  • Business

    • Open Source and Mobile Financial Services
      I was researching the product suite offered by Talend at the request of a client. It seems to be a very rich and robust solution and is based on open source which makes it that much more interesting.


    • Open source management software gets enterprise-ready
      Separately, Zenoss recently announced Zenoss Enterprise 2.5, which the vendor says provides features to support scalability, reliability and security demands typical in enterprise IT environments. For instance, the software includes an agent-less distributed collector architecture and support for “distributed collector non-root installs” that the vendor says keeps customer environments compliant with corporate security policies while installing Zenoss Enterprise. This version also includes Amazon EC2 monitoring and VMware Ready support.


    • Unicon Announces Services for Liferay Portal Enterprise Edition








  • FSF/FSFE/GNU

    • Linux Freedom Under Attack
      I think we also need to send Richard Stallman to meet with new Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, to discuss our government's obligation to use free software. Stallman told me, himself, that he would like an opportunity to meet with Mr. Kundra. So, if any of you have any connections or contacts in that realm, let's help RMS go to Washington.

      We deserve a voice in Washington because we know there are those in the opposing camps with lobbyists and representatives to promote their side of the story. We need ours.


    • Episode 0x1C: Sun, Oracle and the European Union
      Karen and Bradley discuss Eben Moglen's letter to the European Commission regarding the Oracle acquisition of Sun.


    • Barnes & Noble's GPL fun
      Barnes and Noble's new nook ebook reader is now shipping to people. Mine[1] is due to turn up tomorrow, but the instruction manual is available for download already.








  • Releases







  • Government

    • Hungarian Government Banks on Open Source
      Ingres Corporation, the leading open source database management company and pioneer of the New Economics of IT, and FreeSoft PLC, Hungary’s leading service provider in the software development sector, have won the Hungarian government’s open source software tender that has a four-year, $22.3 million budget.








  • Licensing

    • The Anatomy of a Modern GPL Violation
      I've been thinking the last few weeks about the evolution of the GPL violation. After ten years of being involved with GPL enforcement, it seems like a good time to think about how things have changed.

      Roughly, the typical GPL violation tracks almost directly the adoption and spread of Free Software. When I started finding GPL violations, it was in a day when Big Iron Unix was still king (although it was only a few years away from collapse), and the GNU tools were just becoming state of the art. Indeed, as a sysadmin, I typically took a proprietary Unix system, and built a /usr/local/ filled with the GNU tools, because I hated POSIX tools that didn't have all the GNU extensions.






  • Hardware

    • From Open Source to Open Hardware
      This column mainly talks about open source software, for the simple reason that code dominates the world of openness. But open source hardware does exist, albeit in a very early, rudimentary form. Last Friday, I went along to NESTA for what was billed as an “Open Hardware Camp”. Fortunately, I didn't see any tents, since that's not really my kind of thing; what I did see was a huge amount of enthusiasm, and some interesting hints of things to come.


    • Manufacturing, Reinvented
      European researchers have created the architecture, hardware and software that will enable super-agile distributed corporations capable of reconfiguring themselves on the fly. It promises to make 'made-to-order' a reality for consumers.


    • People Power Wins Smart Grid Grant for “Lean Green Energy-Saving Machine”
      People Power plans to distribute OSHAN (Open Source Home Area Network)—its free, open source wireless software —and SuRF (Sensor Ultra Radio Frequency)—its low-cost hardware and software development kit —to engineers early next year.


    • Boxee Swings for Spot in Set-Top Box Ring
      The open source software company debuted its new hardware device at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Monday. The new device, essentially a TV set-top box, will augment the current beta software that's available so far only to invited testers. Boxee officials expect to have the first consumer TV boxes on sale for around US$200 during the second quarter of 2010.






  • Openness (Data/Transparency)

    • Open Access, Intellectual Property, and How Biotechnology Becomes a New Software Science


    • Obama's open-government director opens up
      On Tuesday morning, the Obama administration formally unveiled its Open Government directive, an effort aimed at weaving the philosophies of openness, transparency and participation into the DNA of the federal government and its agencies.


    • White House to release new gov't data collections
      The White House on Tuesday instructed every federal agency to publish before the end of January at least three collections of "high value" government data on the Internet that never have been previously disclosed, an ambitious order to make the administration as transparent as President Barack Obama had promised it would be.


    • MapBox Open Source Toolkit Creates Custom Maps From the Ground Up
      Reading maps is pretty easy, creating them is not. MapBox is an online open source toolkit and database of custom tile sets that let you build great-looking maps in Amazon's cloud.

      [...]

      Data is plugged into the maps via OpenStreetMap, a free and editable map of the world, or TIGER US Census Data. TIGER provides a tremendous amount of geographical data, including states, counties, subdivisions, districts, and more.


    • Postcode data to be free in 2010
      The government is planning to give anyone free access to postcode data.


    • Why the UK's “Smarter Government” Plan is Not So Clever
      There have been various murmurings from the UK government about openness without much substance – except for the recent announcement that Ordnance Survey data would finally be released. Now we have the “Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government” plan that includes further moves in this area as part of a larger government transformation.


    • A Sneak Peek at Cabinet Department Open Government Projects
      In the news coverage over the President’s Open Government Directive, two stories being overlooked are the release of an “Open Government Progress Report to the American People” and the announcement (in a press release) that every Cabinet department will launch new open-government projects, details of which will be made available tomorrow.


    • Declaration of Open Government by Australia
      The Australian government is emerging as one of the leaders in the sphere of open government. It has now published a draft report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, entitled "Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0" (hmm, not quite sure about that phraseology).


    • Zemanta opens up its recommendation engine for bloggers, hopes to drive more traffic to users


    • The 1994 "Subversive Proposal" at 15: A Response
      Will it be another 15 years before the remaining 10,000 universities and research institutions (or at least the top 1000) wield the mighty pen to unleash the even mightier keystrokes (as 68 Institutions and Departments, and 42 Funders have already done)? Or will we keep dithering about Gold OA, publishing reform, peer review reform, re-use rights, author addenda, preservation and the other 38 factors causing Zeno's Paralysis) for another decade and a half?


    • Local Government Data
      The Prime Minister said that "there are many hundreds more datasets that can be opened up - not only from central government but also from local councils, the NHS, police and education authorities."; and the Secretary of State for Communities said "we plan to give local people far better access to information held by local public organisations so they can challenge, compare or scrutinise their local services in order to drive up standards in their area."


    • Brian Cox and Anna Maxwell Martin to star in MPs' expenses drama
      Now the Dundee-born actor Brian Cox is to take on a role rather closer to home, playing fellow Scot Michael Martin, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, in a forthcoming BBC satirical drama about the MPs' expenses affair.


    • The Future of Peer 2 Peer University
      The pilot phase of P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University) ended in October, after having run for six weeks with seven courses and approximately 90 participants. Last month, the pilot phase volunteers, including the course organizers, met in person for the first time at the first ever P2PU Workshop in Berlin.








Leftovers

  • Seagate Goes Super Thin and Solid State


  • Publisher, Know Thyself


  • Google's new open
    Open access and open source are just the first step in the opening of the wireless industry.


  • Doctors query ability of Tamiflu to stop severe illness
    Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today.




  • Police State (UK)

    • Police closing pubs for 'inadequate CCTV coverage'
      From the Lancashire Evening Post we learn that police in Preston have been closing down popular pubs and clubs on account of them having 'inadequate security camera coverage'.


    • Average speed cameras installed in neighbourhoods for the first time
      A new generation of average speed cameras that will police 20mph zones in residential areas are to come into force in the New Year after they were approved by the government.


    • Photographers and anti-terrorism: The holiday snaps that could get you arrested
      At a Downing Street news conference earlier this year, Gordon Brown found himself flummoxed by a question from a foreign journalist. He was asked what impression the rest of the world was getting of civil liberties in Britain now that tourists could be arrested for taking a photograph of a building. Mr Brown responded: "I don't accept that is the true picture of Britain at all." He then moved on, having dismissed the question as beneath contempt.


    • The pernicious rise of the CRB Stasi
      The Daily Mail are reporting that Manor Community College in Cambridge is to ban any visitor who has not been checked by the Criminal Records Bureau.


    • Was Kelly Killed? A question that may put Chilcott in the shade
      After I read Norman Baker's book on The Strange Death of David Kelly I was convinced that he was probably killed - and not by his own hand. Baker's own theory of who did it struck me as implausable and the book is uneven and frustrating and includes unworthy inuendoes. But the defining and scandalous fact is this: there was no coronor's inquest into what was a highly significant death. We know that Blair took us to war and misled the country to justify his decision. We don't know why and how Kelly, the UK's foremost active weapons inspector in Iraq who hated Saddam and also hated the way the evidence to justify invasion was being tampered with, died.


    • Expect libel reform now that MPs are affected
      Therefore as a result of MPs now finding themselves liable under the libel law I conclude that libel reform is set to become a top priority on the legislative agenda. You read it here first!


    • Bruce Schneier on the Future of Privacy
      Schneier believes a step change is coming. We live in a unique time: cameras are everywhere AND we can see them; identity checks happen all the time AND we know they’re happening. However technology is a great distrupter of equilibriums and Moore’s law is a friend of intrusive tools. Soon face-recognition software will obviate the need to carry ID – when you walk into your workplace they’ll already know who you are and whether you’re supposed to be there.


    • New DNA rules may still breach human rights
      The government's plans to limit DNA retention from those arrested but not charged or convicted may not go far enough, according to the body that ensures human rights rulings are obeyed.


    • If people are rude to the police it’s a bad sign…
      But have things now changed? Are people in general less happy now with identifying themselves and cooperating with the police? Is there any research on this?


    • How stranger danger changed the way children play
      This play was unsupervised by mum or dad and children were free to go on adventures far from home. Sadly this world of independent child's play has today largely vanished. One of the important reasons for this decline is the inexorable rise of stranger danger and child abduction in modern Britain.


    • New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths
      A study published Monday in The Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry has concluded that an estimated 98 percent of children under the age of 10 are remorseless sociopaths with little regard for anything other than their own egocentric interests and pleasures.






  • Environment

    • Dragging Anchor
      Since 1990, greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping have increased by 85 percent, or approximately 50 percent if the base year of 1997 is adopted. Either way, greenhouse gas emissions from the maritime sector are rising steeply and are likely to go far, far higher.


    • Murdoch Seeks "Conservation-Minded Conservatives"
      News Corporation media outlets have been at the forefront of championing the views of the climate change skeptics.


    • [Sarcasm] Climate Crisis over, nothing to see here


    • Copenhagen and Common Sense
      I have no expertise in environmental science, and have never made an intensive study. I realise that what I write here is so simple as to be taught to a six year old. But there is a reason I write it.

      I am however trained as a historian. That mankind has changed the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is indubitable from a moment's consideration of the evidence.


    • Elizabeth May: A Response to Comments on East Anglia Emails
      Other scientists point out that we are still not clear on how many sulfates are being emitted, particularly in the rapidly industrializing developing world. It is clear that sulfates (particulates) provide a cooling effect, even while carbon dioxide levels keep growing. In another post, the scientists discuss why NASA results show higher global temperature than the Hadley results from the UK. One conclusion is that the Hadley data does not have as many Arctic data points. Warming in the Arctic is 2-3 times faster than the global average.


    • Norway could kill hundreds more minke whales next year
      Conservationists have condemned Norway's decision to increase the number of minke whales it can kill by 45 per cent, describing the move as unjustified and "political posturing".


    • Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak
      Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol








  • Finance





  • AstroTurf

    • Blue Cross pushing plan to declare health reform unconstitutional
      As the battle for health care reform rages on in the Senate, the powerful insurance consortium Blue Cross Blue Shield appears to have embraced some rather unorthodox methods for achieving its goals.

      After months of fierce insurance industry opposition to the bill, Blue Cross is working secretively with conservative front group American Legislative Exchange Council to use the issue of states' rights as a pretext to declaring health reform unconstitutional.

      [...]

      Former insurance executive Wendell Porter, who now favors reform, declared that private insurers have become "consumed by rising profits, grotesque executive salaries, huge administrative expenses, the cost of weeding out people with pre-existing conditions and claims review designed to wear out patients with denials and disapprovals of the care they need the most."








  • Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

    • New EU digital strategy to focus on users' rights
      Consumers will be at the core of the European Union's 'i2015' action plan for the future of the digital economy, which the EU institutions are beginning to shape and plan to deliver by spring 2010.


    • FTC Targets RoboCalls
      The FTC said Tuesday that it has filed suit against three firms for allegedly making "hundreds of thousands or even millions" of robocalls to consumers in violation of the Do Not Call rule and other laws. The three groups targeted allegedly called consumers in a bid to sell "worthless credit-card interest-rate reduction programs for hefty up-front fees of as much as $1,495," the agency said in a statement. The groups have been ordered to stop making the calls pending trial.








  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • SOCAN Tries To Keep Its Copyright Consultation Submission Offline And Secret, But Fails
      We were just talking about how SOCAN, the Canadian copyright collection society, was going after gymnastics clubs for kids using music in their practice routines. Now they're getting some well-deserved attention for other antics. Michael Geist explains how SOCAN tried to keep its submission to the government copyright consultation secret. The organization apparently requested that its submission not be posted online, even though that was part of the consultation process. The government made it available anyways, but only by email upon request. Of course, it's now available online elsewhere [PDF].


    • Disney CEO: I Can't Figure Out Ways To Adapt My Business, So I Need Government Protection
      If you want to use Iger's logic, you could just as easily claim that copyright laws allow them to charge monopoly rents on products, thus depriving many other industries of money and jobs. Thus -- again, using Iger's own logic -- copyright contributes to unemployment and the harming of our economy. Not sure he really wants to go there.


    • Threatening Internet freedom in the UK
      All too often, the public policy world focuses on subtle legislative distinctions and on regulatory details. But once in a while, an issue comes along that strikes to the heart of the big principles. Such an issue erupted last week in the UK - an issue that incorporates two of the most important subjects on these pages: privacy and innovation.


    • Study: people who buy counterfeit bags likely to buy real ones later
      MIT business professor Renee Richardson Gosline has conducted research suggesting that people who buy counterfeit bags are highly likely to purchase non-counterfeit versions of their treasures at a later date (even though the two bags can't be distinguished from one another by casual observers). Gresham's Law repealed for status goods?


    • Dec. 7, 1999: RIAA Sues Napster
      1999: The Recording Industry Association of America sues Napster, the online, peer-to-peer file sharing service that’s allowing millions of computer users to score free, copyright music. The rules are about to change.


    • Has the world gone crazy?
      Peter Mandelson, in his infinite stupidity, goes for lunch on a yacht in Corfu with the entertainment industry lobby and the next thing we know he has declared war on every single person in the UK who uses the Internet – whether they be guilty of undesirable behaviour or not.


    • Lib Dems to oppose Mandelson copyright powers
      The Liberal Democrats are to oppose a clause in the Digital Economy Bill that would let the business secretary amend copyright law without parliamentary debate.


    • Debate on Mandelson's job
      The Conservatives have accused Business Secretary Lord Mandelson of "empire building", calling for his department to have a cabinet minister in the Commons.


    • What does Detica detect?
      I met with Detica last Friday, at their suggestion, to discuss what their system actually did (they’ve read some of my work on Phorm’s system, so meeting me was probably not entirely random).


    • “No Infringement Intended”
      I have noticed recently while playing around on YouTube and Google Video seeking exam question fodder that many fans of popular movies and TV shows who make mash-up videos of material from the shows post a notice at the beginning or end of their video saying “no copyright infringement intended”. It strikes me that this is actually a really good example of the disjoin between what the law says and what people think the law says. If copyright is basically a strict liability statute, then the intention to infringe is irrelevant. However, the everyday potential infringer doesn’t know this.


    • Getting The Music Business Over The 'But We Must Sell Music' Hump
      This isn't to downplay the importance of music, or say that the quality of music doesn't matter. It absolutely does. But the music is not the scarcity, and you don't make money off of selling something that's abundant. You use the abundance to figure out what other scarce goods it makes more valuable and you sell those. So, people can complain and shout all they want, but it doesn't change the basic fact that until you recognize that selling music directly just isn't a very good business model, you're limiting your market tremendously.


    • Streaming will never stop downloading
      Far from being a cure for the industry's woes, substituting streams for downloads wastes bandwidth, reduces privacy and slows innovation


    • Record Company Piracy = $6bn Losses










Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Stormy Peters, HP open source strategist 03 (2004)

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Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

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