"Linux is like that classic muscle car, in that if you are willing to put in the hours and don't mind spending your weekends under the hood, you'll have yourself a sweet ride at the end of the day and the knowledge you built and tweaked it with your own two hands," said Slashdot blogger hairyfeet. "But if you aren't willing to put in the work, all it is gonna do is make you frustrated."
Behind every successful business, there's Linux and open source. That might be an exaggeration, but it's not an exaggeration to say that Linux and open source are at the core of FlickStream. The Linux-powered service adds all sorts of custom content to the Linux-powered Roku digital video player.
I'm not one of those people who doesn't own a television or get hooked on favorite series. I don't have a problem with spending too many hours in front of the boob tube, mindlessly losing myself in dramatic story lines or unbelievable plots. In fact, I wish I had more time to sit in front of our big flat screen, and if I did, I wouldn't be flipping through the cable channels. Instead, I could lose myself in the wealth of options that my magical little Roku box streams onto my screen.
To compare, Google claims 500,000 Android devices activated every day. Clearly, Chromebook sales leave a lot to be desired.
What is interesting to note though is that after a decade of chipping away at Unix's market share, the way I see the numbers trending, Linux will surpass Unix, sooner rather than later.
This doesn't look tons smaller than -rc2 or -rc3, but it really is. Yes, there are some ARM updates and fixups to the new Exonys DRI code, and a questionably late ocfs2 update, but if you ignore those three areas (and most people can happily ignore them), things really are calming down pretty nicely.
Recently I published some controversial benchmark results of the Xen performance on the Linux 3.0 kernel compared to bare-metal and KVM virtualization along with noting awkward Linux power management when using Xen. The results were valid and have now been confirmed by Xen developers and they have narrowed down the cause of the serious performance issues.
Last month there was a presentation in Brazil by Eugeni Dodonov of the Intel Open-Source Technology Center. The focus was on Intel Linux Graphics and the "following the open-source road from kernel to UI tool-kits."
This is a very powerful and feature-rich tool for taking screenshots. Written in GTK and blending well in GNOME, Shutter offers just about anything you would ask from such an application: timer, screenshots of whole screen, windows, widgets, a quick and easy-to-use editor for fast retouching or pointing out certain aspects of the image, support for plugins, exporting/importing and saving to PNG, JPG or BMP. Definitely a winner in my opinion.
Red Hat, and their community effort, Fedora, are more or less enterprise-oriented. That being said, it's only natural they offer enterprise-specific tools that don't quite make sense on other desktop oriented operating systems. In the enterprise environment, where the system administrator has to manage lots of machines and installations, one tool that helps a lot is one that facilitates automated installations on several computers, using the same options for each of them. Instead of installing each system separately, the administrator just boots the installation media, tells the system where to find the options for installation and comes back after an hour to check on the system. It's a tremendous advantage in terms of time and effort, especially when dealing with lots of systems. Just like HP-UX offers Ignite or OpenSUSE offers AutoYAST, Red Hat/Fedora offers Kickstart. You will learn what that is, how to get the best of it and how to use the newly created Kickstart file. We assume basic knowledge of Linux and we recommend you try this in a virtual machine first before going into production.
The incredible people who brought ioquake3 engine have already started working on a new project - iodoom3. Many popular Linux games like Open Arena and Urban Terror are based on ioquake3 engine. With starting of iodoom3 project we will see more games coming to Linux in future that will be able to utilize high end features of id Tech 4 engine.
In the weekend of November 11, more than twenty Calligra developers braved the fierce weather of Helsinki to meet up again! Well, the weather wasn't that fierce actually, but it could have been! We met up in the office tower that houses Nokia's research department during the weekdays for two days of hacking, presentations and meetings. For several attendants it was their first travel to a community gathering: welcome Smit Patel, Brijesh Patel and Dimitrios Tanis!
Plasma Active is innovative technology for a smarter mobile user experience...the latest member of the Plasma Workspaces family from KDE. The touchscreen interface is more than just an application launcher. Rather than the commonplace grid of applications, an Activity view shows a single project, task or idea, gathering all related documents, people, web sites, media and widgets. By creating multiple Activities, a mobile device can be customized to respond effectively as the user moves between contexts. Plasma Active is based on Qt and KDE technology, enabling quick and efficient development of touchscreen user experiences.
Over the last couple of years the KDE Mobile project has been evolving as it targeted many embedded platforms. Currently, the focus is on the shiny Nokia gadgets (N9 and N950) running the platform called Harmattan. Eleven talented developers met in person at a recent KDE Sprint, giving a boost to porting KDE Applications onto this platform, creating new working relationships, and discussing various issues around the KDE Mobile project for handsets.
Today was the first of two Plasma Bug Days we're hosting this week in #plasma on irc.freenode.net. It started at noon UTC and people started rolling in. With the help of Ann Marie and Marco, we got the volunteer bug hunters up to speed and working with a high degree of effectivity.
Not only did the arrival of Linux Mint 12 deliver a comforting stepping stone for users uncertain about GNOME 3, but Thursday saw the launch of a site dedicated to helping GNOME 3 users further customize that desktop with an array of available extensions.
Even as Ubuntu's Unity draws continued criticism, in other words, GNOME 3 appears to have gotten a nice boost over the past few days.
When GNOME 3 was released, the marketing material emphasized how the new interface was uncluttered and contained nothing that users didn't need. In effect, the advertising copy was a repudiation of everything that the GNOME 2 series had become after seventeen incremental releases in nine years.
A praiseworthy cleanup, you might imagine. So why are most of the extensions for GNOME 3 designed to put the clutter back, and make GNOME 3 look and act more like GNOME 2?
Not all the extensions coming out have that intention. You can find several extensions for Zeitgeist, the combination calendar and file manager. There is also the usual array of minor enhancements, such as windowsNavigator, which enables keyboard selection in overlay mode, and xrandr-indicator for configuring monitors -- both welcome enhancements, but neither of which greatly affects how users work.
With the GNOME Extension catalogue now online it’s never been easier to add extra features to your GNOME Shell desktop.
Ubuntu is undoubtedly one of the most popular Linux-based distros out there (yes, I know LinuxMint is creating quite a buzz out there, kudos to the hard working LinuxMint team.)
The reason of Ubuntu's (and LinuxMint's) success is partly in its ease of use. Unfortunately, Ubuntu's move to Unity has changed that. Unity while offers new features, has also taken away what people were used to, and they are complaining.
The Gnome project has dropped a bomb today by announcing a site for Gnome 3 Shell extensions. The site is in alpha stage and brings the much needed extensions for Gnome 3 Shell under one site.
LinuxMint showed us a completely different side of Gnome 3 by pre-installing and activating useful shell extensions which brings back the much missed functionality in Gnome 3. This customization has made LinuxMint even more popular among Gnome 3 users, and among those who are unhappy with Unity due to its lack of customization [read how to Turn Ubuntu Into LinuxMint].
VectorLinux was released this week. I have never installed VectorLinux at all so this was new to me. VectorLinux 7.0 Standard Gold is available on one easy to install CD. You can download it from VectorLinux or purchase it on CD from Linux CD Shop. They also have a LiveCD version to give it a test drive. As I mentioned above installing VectorLinux 7.0 was very easy. Below are some screenshots of the process
Some time ago, I stopped paying attention to Mandriva. I felt that this Linux distribution, which hails from France and is financially backed by Russia, wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be. All has changed now. Mandriva knows where it is and where it’s heading. Mandriva Linux Powerpack 2011 is available for purchase and is one of the finest releases I have come across in quite some time. What makes it so good? Let’s break it down.
Denis Koryavov, lead user interface developer at the ROSA Laboratory, proudly announced last evening, November 30th, the immediate availability of a new media player for all Mandriva users.
Called ROSA Media Player (or ROMP for short), the new media player for Mandriva/ROSA is based on the source code from popular MPLayer and SMPlayer video players.
Recent proposals from the Fedora Project that could change the fundamental infrastructure of Linux have been met with caution and critical analysis. They also may raise questions on why Fedora and its commercial parent Red Hat seem to be pushing away from existing standards.
If you are a Fedora using running Fedora 15 or even Fedora 14 and want to upgrade to the latest, and the greatest, version of Fedora, you can easily do that using PreUpgrade. The goal of PreUpgrade is to provide a way for Fedora users who wish to upgrade from one release to a newer version of Fedora by easily pre-resolving and downloading all the necessary packages before rebooting the system into the Fedora installer to complete the update.
There are a lot of things I like about Debian GNU/Linux. At the moment APT is the thing I love most. I just upgraded my most complex system, Beast, from it’s thin client, using SSH to the next release and I did not even have to reboot the thin client. Everything I use is working smoothly on Wheezy, which actually is still in “testing”. How smooth is that?
Last night, I came home from a meeting, kissed my wife, and was walking back upstairs when my coat started vibrating. I pulled my phone out to see that I was too late, and wasn't able to answer a phone call from my dad. I called him back, and here's a summary of the beginning of that conversation.
Me: "Hi dad."
Dad: "Hi"
Me: "Did you call? What did you need?"
Dad: "I did. I installed Ubuntu and now I'm trying to figure out how to install the driver for my video card."
If you've been waiting for the next version of Ubuntu, which is a major upgrade, you can now try it in an alpha version. We covered Ubuntu 12.04, dubbed "Precise Pangolin," in this post. In addition to catering to individual users, version 12.04 has cloud computing features, Long Term Support and other offerings that will cater to the businesses that the Ubuntu team is increasingly focusing on. You can download the alpha version of Precise Pangolin here, and here is more on what to expect from it.
Canonical has released the first alpha build of Ubuntu 12.04, dubbed “Precise Pangolin,” and the organization said that the latest version would be a long term support (LTS) release.
Version 12.04, available for x86 and 64-bit platforms, is based around the Linux kernel 3.2 release, and a lot of work has gone into bugfixing around this for Ubuntu’s code, including problems with how it interacts with Intel’s Sandy Bridge and Centrino hardware. The code also includes version 9 of both Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla.
If you're feeling a little adventurous this weekend, the first alpha is out for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 release. Code-named Precise Pangolin, the alpha release contains software updates and (likely) some exciting bugs that you can help squash.
This site it’s a sysadmin relative of the Perl Advent Calendar: One article for each day of December, ending on the 25th article. With the goals of of sharing, openness, and mentoring, the authors aim to provide great articles about systems administration topics written by fellow sysadmins.
A masterpiece in asthetics combined with a highly functional desktop environment ensures that the release of a new version of Kubuntu is highly anticipated by many Linux users. For all the Kubuntu lovers, 11.10 brings a long list of improvements that will surely excite everyone. Kubuntu offers something for everybody and is built on the highly stable Ubuntu core. With Kubuntu you have access to all the powerful KDE applications, and the polished KDE Plasma desktop. The interface does not seem to have changed much, but under the hood things are running better than ever. Another excellent release by the Kubuntu team, they never disappoint.
The moment so many have waited for is finally here. Linux Mint 12 has been released! This update to Linux Mint has had many people on edge since it marks the move from the older version of GNOME to GNOME 3.2. GNOME 3.2, as you might already know, has had many detractors. Linux Mint users have wondered how on earth such a popular distribution would make a transition to such a reviled and hated desktop interface.
Suddenly, everyone's talking about Linux Mint. A six-year-old distribution based on Ubuntu and Debian, Linux Mint has always enjoyed considerable popularity, but, in the last month, it has started receiving dramatically more attention.
This attention has two main reasons. First, pundits have been debating the meaning (if any) of the fact that Linux Mint has received over two and a half times more page views than Ubuntu on Distrowatch for the past month.
Linux Mint, probably the most beginner-friendly Linux system out there, has hit version 12 with quite a few neat features and improvements. Chief among them is a new shell based on Gnome 3 (preferred by at least one Lifehacker editor, new themes, and the choice of DuckDuckGo as the default search engine (which is easily changed, if you'd like). It's free to download and try out on just about any computer.
Ubuntu has been taking some criticism and heat for its falling Distrowatch rankings. I don’t doubt that after years of popularity, we’re finally seeing a bit of a return to the desktop Linux world of old when a new distribution shot up every week or month, then faded, then re-appeared … and so on. However, when I consider where Canonical and Ubuntu are heading, I question the significance of desktop OS standing and Distrowach rankings.
First off, I must say that Ubuntu’s slip off the ‘king of the hill’ game on Distrowatch came at the expense of Linux Mint, another polished, user-friendly Linux. It wouldn’t surprise me if some Ubuntu users may be migrating to Mint or other distributions largely out of frustration or dislike of the new Unity interface over the previous primary interface, Gnome. However, I think the move will be worth it in the long run to Ubuntu, as I’ll explain further.
If considering desktop OS, the most important aspect to me as an enterprise software analyst is enterprise desktop, and Ubuntu does well there. I’m sure there are plenty of shops running other flavors of Linux, including Mint, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian and many, many others, but for corporate desktop, the list quickly thins. Nevertheless, this is where Canonical has had some big victories, including the French police. In terms of consumer and user desktop PCs, the category itself is disappearing into converged and touch-capable devices, further distancing us from the ‘distro wars’ of the past.
Softpedia is the first to announce today, December 1st, that the first Alpha version of the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system is now available for download. As usual, we've grabbed a copy of it in order to keep you up-to-date with the latest changes in the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS development.
GNOME 3 Fallback seems to offer everything I'm used to in GNOME 2, minus the Linux Mint Menu/MGSE Menu, so I'd need to use a standard accordion-style GNOME menu. That said, considering that I'm probably going to replace Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" with Linux Mint 13 LTS "M[...]a" and considering that GNOME plans to phase out GNOME 3 Fallback as it makes GNOME 3 Shell accessible to a far wider range of hardware, I don't know if that's really an option worth keeping in mind. Finally, I had no issues with MATE, and it really is just GNOME 2, and I can do with it what I've done with Linux Mint and GNOME 2 for the last 2.5 years. As MATE gets worked on even more, I have faith that I'll be able to use it without any hitch when the next version of Linux Mint comes out, and I think that's what I'll end up using. What I would like to see though is a live CD that comes only with MATE, so that I could try the live session and check out MATE's true stability and usability without committing it to a hard drive. In any case, given that at least one option (MATE) has given me a great feeling and the other two (GNOME 3 Shell and Fallback) have become pretty amazing environments in their own rights in the hands of the Linux Mint developers, I give version 12 "Lisa" my highest recommendation. Phew! (I was really apprehensive about this release and was afraid that GNOME 3 customization might elude even the Linux Mint developers, but thankfully, that is not at all the case.)
Android this year surpassed both iOS and Blackberry as the most popular smartphone OS, further catapulting Linux into the spotlight in the mobile device industry. Just a couple months ago, Amazon announced what analysts say is the first real threat to the iPad, the Amazon Kindle Fire. This introduction once again put Linux in the spotlight by allowing a major comapny like Amazon to build a self-branded device that is, as BusinessWeek reporter Brad Stone described, "cheap, pretty, and puts Amazon in perfect position to take a bite out of Apple - and every online transaction you make."
OK Labs announced a Genivi Linux and Android-ready "OKL4 for In-Vehicle Infotainment" (IVI) hypervisor, designed to keep infotainment and telematics environments separate despite running on the same processor. Meanwhile, Wind River announced a deal with IVI provider Clarion to use its Wind River Platform for Infotainment in an Android-based system.
As favorable reviews and promises of device support pile up for Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich"), it has received an early CyanogenMod9 port to the Samsung-built Google Nexus One and Nexus S phones. Meanwhile, ZiiLabs released a video of Android 4.0 running on its new Jaguar tablet reference platform, and Embedox posted another of ICS running on Variscite's OMAP4460-based VAR-SOM-OM44 module.
HCI announced an Android-powered infotainment terminal for hospital patients, enabling users to browse the web, communicate with staff and patients, and view customized content as well as watching TV. The RoomMate Generation III devices come with 22-, 26-, 32- and 42-inch screens, plus Ethernet, serial, USB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various remote control accessories.
M$ had a huge headstart on GNU/Linux locking in OEMs, retailers and ISVs for years. In 2008, Apple started its “app store” tm and Android/Linux started it’s “market place” a few months later. Now, Apple has 2/3 of the app market and Android/Linux has about 1/3 with nearly one million mobile apps between them.
Shipments of 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet PCs from Quanta Computer to Amazon have reached 3-4 million units, according to industry watchers. However, Quanta declined to comment.
Samsung has begun sampling its first ARM Cortex-A15 processor, aimed at high-end tablets and capable of supporting resolutions up to 2560 x 1600 pixels. Scheduled for production in 2Q 2012, the Exynos 5250 is equipped with two Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 2GHz, providing what the company says is four times the graphics performance of its previous top model.
Acer announced a new 10.1-inch tablet, initially featuring Android 3.2 but due for an January upgrade to Android 4.0 in January. The Nvidia Tegra 2-based Iconia Tab A200 is slightly leaner and lighter than the earlier 10.1-inch A500, also adding a USB 2.0 host port, but it lacks its predecessor's HDMI port and rear-facing five-megapixel camera.
Version 3.0 of the Low Level Virtual Machine (LLVM) compiler infrastructure has been released, six months after the last major version, LLVM 2.9. For the new update to the Low-Level Virtual Machine, the developers removed "some old baggage" that had built up in previous versions, for example, LLVM 3.0 no longer supports the llvm-gcc frontend; developers will instead have to use Clang or DragonEgg. Similarly, file formats from earlier LLVM versions, such as .bc and .il no longer work in the new version.
A developer for The Tor Project, Appelbaum trains interested parties globally on how to effectively use and contribute to the Tor network. Since its initial release, Tor has enabled roughly 36 million people around the world to experience freedom of access and expression on the Internet while keeping them in control of their privacy and anonymity. Its network has proved pivotal in dissident movements in both Iran and more recently Egypt.
Mozilla is in a bit of a quagmire. Not only is usage of the Firefox browser declining, and according to some metrics Google’s Chrome has pushed it into third place, but it’s also having trouble convincing Firefox 3.6 users that it’s the end of the line and it’s time to upgrade to Firefox 8.0.1.
No sooner did the parties file their respective positions on the subject of patent marking with the court (see Proof of Patent Marking) than Judge Alsup has issued an order on how to move forward. (636 [PDF; Text]) Except for the deadlines (Judge Alsup allowing more time for responses than Google had proposed), the court has, as we anticipated, largely adopted the approach suggested by Google, although at this first step Judge Alsup is only interested in getting a complete list of products the parties contend embody the patents. Where the court then elects to go remains to be seen.
Google, on the other hand, used all of the permitted five pages to explain that it isn't quite that simple. (635 [PDF; Text]) According to Google, it does plan on presenting evidence of "the practice (or failure to practice) by Oracle and/or its licensees of each of the six patents still being asserted by Oracle in this action." Google suggests that the presentation of this evidence could disrupt the trial, depending on the extent of the dispute. Consequently, Google suggests that the parties "narrow the issue now, by identifying the patents (if any) over which there is a legitimate dispute about whether Oracle or its licensees practiced the asserted claims."
One worthwhile distinction to draw between the two communique's to the court. Oracle makes no mention of licensee products that may practice the asserted patents, focusing solely on Oracle products. Google makes clear that Oracle licensee products are also in the mix.
Lead WordPress developer Ryan Boren has announced the arrival of a first release candidate (RC1) for version 3.3 of WordPress. Boren says that "Release Candidate stage means we think we're done and are about ready to launch this version, but are doing one last check before we officially call it".
The term open core is poison for an open source project today isn't it?
More often than not, the term open core refers to some crippled piece of open source software that only really works when paired with some type of proprietary shell that make the software usable.
Yet, the open core model – is still what many open source software firms (or at least, those that have raised venture funds) are embracing.
There is another way.
To see how the GCC 4.7 release is shaping up, for your viewing pleasure today are benchmarks of GCC 4.2 through a recent GCC 4.7 development snapshot. GCC 4.7 will be released next March/April with many significant changes, so here's some numbers to find out if you can expect to see any broad performance improvements. Making things more interesting, the benchmarks are being done from an AMD FX-8150 to allow you to see how the performance of this latest-generation AMD processor architecture is affected going back by GNU Compiler Collection releases long before this open-source compiler had any optimizations in place.
The father of free software philosophy spoke to RT on evil developers, spying social networks, the almost-legitimacy of Anonymous hacks and the condition under which he would take a proprietary program and a million dollars.
Stallman is the man behind the concept that every computer program must be free for users to study and modify as they want. This is the only way to ensure that by using the software users do not compromise their human rights, he says.
Adobe has released version 4.6 of the open source Flex SDK and proprietary Flash Builder development environment. This is apparently the last release of the Flash application framework under Adobe's remit; in November, Adobe announced its intention to hand development of Flex over to an open source foundation, later clarifying that it did, in fact, mean the Apache Software Foundation.
Following four release candidates, the QEMU project has announced the arrival of version 1.0 of its open source system emulator. QEMU can be used as a stand-alone desktop virtualisation product or be used to emulate guest hardware, such as an ARM-based board on a standard x86 PC.
I am pleased to announce that GNU gv 3.7.3 has just been released. It is available for download in the GNU ftp, ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gv
The European Commission unveiled the Horizon 2020 funding plan on Wednesday, including €13.7 billion (US$18.3 billion) for innovation in key areas such as information and communication technologies, nanotechnologies, biotechnology and space.
However, the proposal effectively states that any resulting product must be promoted in Europe first. Article 41 of the proposal states that "with regard to results which are generated by participants that have received E.U. funding, the Commission may object to transfers of ownership or to grants of an exclusive licence, to third parties established in a third country not associated to Horizon 2020."
This renders open source licensing impossible, said Member of the European Parliament Christian Engstrom.
When it comes to treating, curing, and preventing cancer, modern medicine has largely failed. You could argue that cancer is far too complicated to unravel in the few millenia we have been documenting it. Or that the billions we spend annually on research is far too little. Established incentives and policies that perpetuate research silos certainly seem to slow success.
Medical researchers have been trained in a professional culture where secrecy reigns, where they must protect their own interests. The dominant culture discourages sharing research findings and collaborating on projects. It has become more important to protect vested interests than to take advantage of the huge collaborative network that is available in academia.
Netflix has taken the wraps off of its ZooKeeper library and has given some insight to coming open source projects as well. The company announced four projects in its pipeline, and a portal on GitHub for its projects.
Sometimes when this old earth is spinning around and around, just for a moment it stops at just the right place.
And so it is that Judge Clark Waddoups has set a hearing for oral argument on SCO's motion to restart parts of SCO v. IBM, a motion IBM opposes. Guess when he scheduled it for? April!
Nexenta Core Platform is an OpenSolaris-based system with a Ubuntu application base and the flexible and powerful APT package management. Sounds like a marvelous idea. But then, I have already tested another such system, with little success. Well, a man must never lose hope. Let's see what Nexenta 3.0 can or can't do. Expectations are high, the fear even higher.
The Obama Administration will be making some important decisions over the coming weeks that will determine to a large extent whether consumers or health insurers will be the biggest beneficiaries of health care reform.
When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act last year, it included a controversial provision that insurers insisted on, but which is undoubtedly the most unpopular part of the law: a requirement that all Americans not eligible for a public program like Medicare or Medicaid must buy coverage from a private insurance company.
After a lot of research over the past month I have come to the conclusion that costly Unix, OS X and Linux anti-malware programs, such as Norton anti-virus on OS X, are a waste of money. It is not that unix-like systems are invulnerable to attack, but that the types of attacks I have seen mentioned over this month will get right through most anti-malware software on systems that are vulnerable. All these anti-malware solutions seem able to do is protect your Microsoft using friends and clients to whom you might forward an infected e-mail sent to you from someone else using an infected Microsoft Windows system.
I finally got home Thursday afternoon after spending two nights in jail, and have had a hard time getting my bearings. On top of severe dehydration and sleep deprivation, I’ve got one hell of pounding migraine. So I’ll have to keep this brief for now. But I wanted to write down a few things that I witnessed and heard while locked up by LA’s finest…
[...]
While people are now beginning to learn that the police attack on Occupy LA was much more violent than previously reported, few actually realize that much—if not most—of the abuse happened while the protesters were in police custody, completely outside the range of the press and news media. And the disgraceful truth is that a lot of the abuse was police sadism, pure and simple:
* I heard from two different sources that at least one busload of protesters (around 40 people) was forced to spend seven excruciating hours locked in tiny cages on a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept. prison bus, denied food, water and access to bathroom facilities. Both men and women were forced to urinate in their seats. Meanwhile, the cops in charge of the bus took an extended Starbucks coffee break.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)
Now, Bloomberg's Richard Teitelbaum chronicles how then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson mislead NYT and then tipped off hedge fund managers as to how the government was about to deal with the crisis at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
What a pleasure it is to see Bank of America running from its fees program and everyone’s favorite investment bankers facing $15.8 billion in lawsuits over the sub-prime mortgage hocus pocus they helped pioneer and from which they derived great wealth even after the 2008 implosion.
The article is entitled, “Hank Paulson’s inside jobs,” emphasizing the fact that this wasn’t some one-off lapse of ethics on Paulson’s part, but instead a disturbingly regular practice.
PHOENIX--The American Legislative Exchange Council opens its annual conference to set the agenda for the coming year in Arizona this week, on the heels of the stunning defeat of one its long-standing legislative leaders, Senator Russell Pierce, who was recalled by voters earlier this month.ALEC plans to feature other alumni, including Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, at a conference underwritten by global corporations at the posh Westin Kierland resort in Scottsdale. ALEC has previously denied press credentials to organizations whose reporting has been critical of ALEC, such as the Center for Media and Democracy, Think Progress, and others.
Comments
mcinsand
2011-12-06 17:42:16
There have been more articles like this appearing lately, and I first thought that we must have a wave of people waking from 10-15 year comas. Sure, Linux and BSD give tremendous flexibility and versatility, as well as allowing a user full access under the hood... okay, these are only true as long as Apple is kept away from FOSS. Anyway, there are options for a user to tweak, optimize, and configure endlessly, and the user is actually welcomed to do this (I think I hear the sound of Apple and MS fanboies fainting in the background at the thought). However, the beauty of distributions as of 7-8 years ago is FOSS frees the user from having to build technical mental muscle, especially with Fedora, the 'buntu's, and PC-BSD.
FOSS doesn't ask more of your technical abilities, it asks less, far less. And, you get the reliability of a Macintoy without having to give up hardware support* or flexibility, while getting the broad hardware support* of Windows without giving up the ability to depend on your PC. Not only that, but the ease of finding applications is far easier for FOSS than Cupertino or Redmond can even think of offering (yumex and synaptic are amazing!).
(*Let's face it, by the standard of the term 'hardware support' that we normally use, Apple has zero. You can't go to TigerDirect, the local PC shop, or whereever to pick up a motherboard, hard drive, wireless card, etc. and expect it to work. Pieces have to be the from the pitifully limited, obscenely overpriced offerings of Cupertino, or your out of luck. On the other hand, I was being generous to MS; my experiences over the past few years have been that they have fallen way behind FOSS, whether it comes to legacy or cutting edge hardware support and (of course) reliability.)
What kept me from trying FOSS earlier was this type of daming_with_faint_praise FUD. This does keep the average user at bay by making them think that the devil they know is less of an aggravation than the new one they're hearing about. This keeps MS' and Apple's dangers at bay, for a while, because the last thing they need is for the average user to wake up. The duo have maintained each other for a while, by keeping choices so limited. In the main market view, for maximum hardware and software versatility, there has been MS. Then, for the well-heeled users that don't need the options and just want to ditch MS' headaches, there has been Apple... or for those with more money than sense that just want something to cuddle up with their egos, of course.
Again, though, these articles seem to be more frequent. At first, I was suspicious about my suspicions, but I am suspecting intent in this pattern. It's hard to forget the Comes exhibits but, for anyone marginally aware, planting FUD like this does fit a long-running pattern. It is also a perfect way to scare away new users. And, it is also quite false. If FOSS hadn't been easier, I know I would have ditched it, but adjusting to a new interface was no more trouble than jumping from one version of Windows to another, but without the headaches of having to learn to keep Windows propped up.
Regards, mc