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10.24.10

Links 24/10/2010: Fedora is Fast, Compiz 0.9.2

Posted in News Roundup at 9:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The proliferation of open source software

    Infrastructure and Communications Minister Austin Gatt launched what he called a Vision document yesterday, addressing open source software in government. “We would like to receive feedback from the public and private sectors, as well as citizens on this document which is up for consultation,” he said.

    The government’s position with respect to open source software is different from the position adopted for open standards, where they required that government procures ICT solutions that comply with open standards.

  • Web Browsers

  • Oracle

    • A response to microsoft’s a few perspectives on openoffice.org

      Of course there will always be the spin doctors at Microsoft that are able to make people think that they emanate some sort of heavenly glow. But most techies actually know better then that. If you don’t believe me just notice that in the you tube video they had to turn comments off. Also notice that the video has 236 likes and 2,439 dislikes. Hmm that’s what we call backlash people because guess what opensource and Free Software people pay attention. We are not just going to stand by in idle while you just harass us and defame our community. Even if our only defense is to post nasty comments and to dislike your you tube video a million times.

    • Wind of Change

      this e-mail is to inform you that I hereby, effective immediately, fully step back from all my roles and duties within the OpenOffice.org project, including those as marketing project lead and German marketing contact.

    • Christoph Noack: Resignation from the Community Council

  • CMS

    • Drupal 7.0 Beta 2 released

      Our last Drupal 7 beta version was released about a month ago. Today, we’re proud to announce the release of the second (and possibly final!) beta version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback. The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we’ll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you’ve grown to love!

    • Contributing to Open Source 101 with Diaspora

      The Ruby and Rails ecosystems are built on open source, and on contributions to projects from people like you. Contributing back to the projects you use is good for your resume, your network, and is ultimately what keeps us employed!

      But figuring out where to start can be daunting, so at this meetup we’ll take you through the complete process. We’ll start with finding a project you’re interested in, then walk you through the mechanics of making changes and contributing them back. By the end of the workshop you’ll be an official open source contributor.

      We’ll be using Diaspora, an open-source alternative to facebook, as our project. Several of the Diaspora core team will be around to assist, and to merge your changes back in to the main codebase…as you watch. It’ll definitely be better than Cats.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Google’s Go Has Been Called To Go Into GCC 4.6

      Last year one of the many projects introduced by Google was the Go programming language. Do you remember? It’s reached a state of being a production-ready language, at least within Google’s confines, but this project hasn’t received as much attention and interest by the Linux and open-source communities as some of their other work such as VP8 and their new container format. It’s possible that this could change once the Go programming language is accessible to more developers, which may very well come with GCC 4.6.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • If you care about public sector information in Europe – speak up now!

        The European Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive is intended to make it easier for everyone to find and reuse information produced by public bodies. The European Commission’s recognition of the value of PSI dates back to at least the late 1990s, well before the more recent wave of interest in open government data. The EC is currently asking for feedback on what could be done to improve the Directive, so if you care about PSI in Europe now is your chance to have your say!

      • Transparency must extend to Britain’s “public, private” state

        The spending review, announced this week, promises £81 billion worth of cuts over the next four years. Whilst services face the deepest cutbacks in generations, billions of pounds a year will still need to be found to finance our PFi commitments. Amidst all the talk from government ministers of “efficiency” savings, there has been almost no mention of PFI and its legacy on the public purse.

    • Open Hardware

      • Hackvision, an open-source video game system

        MAKE subscriber James wrote in to share the Hackvision, an open-source video game system based around the Arduino platform. The joypad-shaped circuit board plugs directly into your TV, and provides everything you need to get hacking on your own games. The whole project is open source, and all the source code/schematics/board designs are available at the project website.

  • Programming

    • Perl and Parrot Spread Open Source Love

      The Perl Foundation and the Parrot Foundation took part in Google Summer of Code this year, and as the organization administrator, I am very proud of and humbled by all the students and mentors that I worked with. I am constantly reminded that there are very intelligent developers who are very young, and the Perl and Parrot Foundations are very lucky to attract them and have them in our communities. I firmly believe that the passing Google Summer of Code 2010 projects have had a large positive impact on our codebases and many people will benefit from them for years to come.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Discovery of taste receptors in the lungs could help people with asthma breathe easier

      This is a slide of lung taste receptors through a microscope. Red bands are receptors, blue dots are nuclei. Credit: University of Maryland School of Medicine

      Taste receptors in the lungs? Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore have discovered that bitter taste receptors are not just located in the mouth but also in human lungs. What they learned about the role of the receptors could revolutionize the treatment of asthma and other obstructive lung diseases.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Georgia at a crossroads: after the post-war

      When Russian troops gradually withdrew from Georgia’s towns and villages in September 2008 following the short war between Georgia and Russia the previous month over the enclave of South Ossetia, attention turned to the potential consequences of the war for the career of Georgia’s unpredictable president Mikheil Saakashvili. Many analysts believed that after what proved to be a humiliating military conflict was over, the Georgia’s people would turn against Saakashvili and drive him from power.

    • China blocks UN report on the use of Chinese arms in Darfur

      The Chinese government has attempted to block a United Nations report which claims that Chinese bullets were used in attacks on UN peacekeepers in Darfur. A spokesman from the Chinese foreign ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, said the report was “based on unconfirmed information and made irresponsible accusations.” The report, researched and written by the UN’s panel of experts on Sudan was discussed in the UN committee that monitors sanctions on Sudan on Wednesday.

    • Accused G20 ringleader arrested again

      Alex Hundert, an accused G20 violence ringleader, has been arrested — again.

      This is the third time the 30-year-old activist has been arrested in the past five months. The Crown has been appealing to have his bail revoked.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Ministers plan huge sell-off of Britain’s forests

      Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, is expected to announce plans within days to dispose of about half of the 748,000 hectares of woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission by 2020.

      The controversial decision will pave the way for a huge expansion in the number of Center Parcs-style holiday villages, golf courses, adventure sites and commercial logging operations throughout Britain as land is sold to private companies.

    • Forests sell-off plan by government is ‘asset-stripping our natural heritage’

      Many of England’s best-loved forests and woodlands may be sold to large landowners, housing developers and international power companies in what could be the UK’s greatest change of land ownership since the second world war.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Infringement Is Not Theft

        Theft implies loss; and for loss to occur (whatever the circumstances) there has to be a change in stasis from “having” something to “not having” it. Copying something creates an identical duplicate of something, it does not change the stasis of the original. So let’s work through possible angles to explain “loss”.

        Lost stock? “Copyright infringement is stealing, it’s no different from leaving a store with a physical piece of stock that you haven’t paid for.” Wrong, if you have 10 items of stock and 2 are shoplifted, you’re left with 8 items of stock. This is theft. You’ve lost stock. Instead of being able to sell 10 items, you can now only sell 8. That stock cost you £X per item, you’ve lost £X x 2.

      • Memo: re P2P

        The dramatic appearance of the WikiLeaks Iraq war log documents is about far more than the catastrophic (for the US military) release online of classified material.

        It underscores the new reality that the Powers That Used To Be have lost their ability to tightly control the spread of news and information.

      • It’s All (Hopefully) Coming Back To Me Now

        Now comes news that the family of late country singer Keith Whitley is doing the same. The suit filed by Whitley’s widow and children against Sony Music Entertainment alleges that SME failed to pay certain bonus royalties when Whitley’s album reached various sales thresholds. The suit also claims that SME failed to pay the increased royalty rate for downloads that allegedly should have been considered licensed transactions.

      • The music industry’s new business model

        Something strange has happened to pop music since I began reviewing it in the late 1990s. In the past, how you listened to music played second fiddle to what it sounded like. Only finger-sniffing audiophiles cared whether you listened to Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 on vinyl, cassette or CD. To everyone else the point was the album itself.

        No longer. Nowadays the format of music, the way it’s sold or listened to, overshadows everything else. MP3 players, internet streaming services, MySpace, mobile phones: music is everywhere. Good news for listeners but perplexing for record companies, who are seeing revenues from recorded music dry up as the old ways of doing business crumble.

      • Business Spectator and Creative Commons

        We’re proud and pleased to let you know that from today, February 16th, 2010, we’re rolling out Creative Commons licenses on some of our proprietary content.

      • ACTA

Clip of the Day

Slackware 13.1 Installation


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 24/10/2010: Xorg-server 1.9.1 is Out, Will Canonical Sue Apple?

Posted in News Roundup at 1:57 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Power Users

    The presence or absence of “power users” should be no barrier to general adoption of GNU/Linux. The same advantages seen on the server can be obtained on fast and reliable desktops running GNU/Linux: security, efficiency, uptime, lower cost etc.

  • Three Acres and a Penguin: Why Distributists Should Try Linux

    Have you heard of Linux? Maybe you went to download Firefox (a free web browser), clicked around, and noticed that after “Windows” and “Mac” there was “Linux”, with a little penguin. (His name is Tux.) Maybe you’re periodically forced to interact with your IT department, and you’ve overheard “Linux” as they discuss their arcane secrets. Maybe you’re way ahead of me, and are irritated because I’m probably not going to mention OpenBSD.

    Or maybe you have no clue what I’m talking about. What is Linux? Basically, Linux is a pile of programs that lets you take your computer, strip it down to the bare hardware, and start fresh. Linux is an alternative operating system . If you just download Firefox, you’re still in Microsoft Windows or OS X. When you download Linux, you’re in Linux.

    [...]

    This also should excite distributists. Free software is a unique ecosystem. (I’m going to stop saying “Linux” now; it sounds cooler than “free software,” but it actually has a definite technical meaning, and it isn’t the only free OS in town, either.) A program is not like an apple. If I share my apple with you, we each only get half.

  • Kernel Space

    • RFC: A Preview Of The Phoronix Graphs With Iveland

      Earlier this week I shared part of the vision that Matthew Tippett and I have for OpenBenchmarking.org (the next-generation version of Phoronix Global) and how it will change Linux benchmarking when launched with Phoronix Test Suite 3.0. One of the features of OpenBenchmarking.org / Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 “Iveland” is a major overhaul to the result graphs. Here’s a preview of what’s to come and we welcome your feedback.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Distributions

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical To Sue Apple?

          It will be interesting to see if Canonical will defend the Launchpad trademark and join the “everybody is suing everybody” club. And if so, will Apple sue back like they always do?

        • Using Karma As A Deterrent

          Wouldn’t it be fun if there was a karma element to court decisions? Based on the principle of “do unto others what you will have others do unto you”. Apple announced a new feature the other day called Launchpad. Launchpad is a registered trademark of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux.

          As I understand it; being a trademark, they don’t have any choice but to defend it if they want to keep it. So how would the karma element come into play?

          Apple have a track record of just naming their products or services whatever they like, regardless if the name is already in use, or by whom. If it gets down to a court case, it’s always settled and Apple just buy off the complaints. Many of the iNames weren’t Apple’s before Apple decided to use them. They also viciously attack any names even remotely resembling one of their own. A portable scoop for campers to bury their shit while camping was sued for the name iPood, because the name was too similar.

        • Ubuntu-Rescue-Remix is one of ten essential Linux Admin Tools
        • Cloud on Cloud, UEC on EC2

          So you wanted to play with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), but didn’t have a couple of machines to play with ? Want to start a UEC instance right now, no problem. You can use an Amazon EC2 server instance as your base server to install and run UEC on! Of course the EC2 instance is itself a virtual machine, thus running a VM inside that would require nested virtualization which AFAIK wouldn’t work over EC2. The trick here is that we switch UEC’s hypervisor temporarily to be qemu. Of course this won’t win any performance competitions, in fact it’d be quite slow in production, but for playing, it fits the bill just fine.

        • UDS-N Call for participation

          The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) is the event in which the Ubuntu community discusses and plans the upcoming Ubuntu release. UDS Natty begins Monday, October 25th (this monday) outside of Orlando, FL, USA. If you’re in the Orlando area, this event is free, and open to anyone.

        • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • Gingerbread man signals pending announcement of Android 2.3

          It’s that time again. Another giant treat arrived at the Googleplex today, which means a new version of Android is just around the corner. A video was just uploaded to the Android Developers YouTube account which shows a giant Gingerbread man joining his friends FroYo, Eclair, Donut, and Cupcake.

          As it was pointed out today, Gingerbread will likely become Android 2.3 and Honeycomb is expected to become Android 3.0 when it hits tablets next year. If history repeats itself we could have an official announcement on Android 2.3 features sometime next week. The FroYo statue appeared just one week before Google I/O where Android 2.2 was unveiled.

        • What to Expect from Internet-Enabled Televisions

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Web Browser Supports Time Travel

        For those who use the Mozilla Firefox browser, you now have the option to time travel through the web. MementoFox is a free extension that users can add-on to their browsers.

  • Oracle

    • End of File

      In 1997, I decided to come join the kernel team at Sun Microsystems because I was eager to work on Solaris– the best operating system on the planet. I was very privileged to work on some incredible technology over many years with some of the most talented engineers in the industry. Our work culminated in Solaris 10, the most innovative release of Solaris ever to that point, and what I think will be remembered for all time as a huge leap in operating system technology and the idea of what an OS can do.

      [...]

      I am resigning because my effort on behalf of my team to bring ZFS Storage to maturity and to success and a strong position at its new company in a real storage org is now done: we made it. From outside, as a fan, I will be waiting eagerly to see what the team will accomplish next.

    • Calif. Judge Certifies Class of Oracle Employees in Wage-and-Hour Suit

      An Alameda County, Calif., judge late last week certified a class of an estimated 3,000 Oracle Corp. employees who allege that they were misclassified as exempt and deprived of overtime pay.

    • Dear Oracle, Get a Clue
    • SAP asks for gag order in legal battle with Oracle

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Windsor and Maidenhead publishes linked spending data online

        The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has staked a claim as the first local authority in the UK to publish open and linked data, in support of financial transparency.

        In April, local councils were asked by the Department of Communites and Local Government to reveal details of supplier spending over £500, and then have this same information published to the internet by January 2011. It is a requirement for all local councils to publish details of their spending in an open, CSV file format on a monthly basis from January next year.

  • ODF

    • KLISS: Author/edit sub-systems in legislative environments

      ODT was chosen as it presented the best trade off when all the competing requirements of an author/edit subsystem for legislatures were analyzed. A discussion of the issues on the table when this selection was made are listed here. To that list I would also add that ODT is, to my knowledge, without IP encumberments. Also, the interplay between content and presentation is so important in this domain that it is vital to have free and unfettered access to the rendering algorithms in order to feel fully in possession of the semantics of the documents. I’m not saying that a large corpus of C++ is readily understandable at a deep level but I take great comfort in knowing that I can, in principle, know everything there is to know about how my system has rendered the law by inspecting the rendering algorithms in OpenOffice.

      Next up, long term preservation and authentication of legal materials in KLISS.

    • Here there be Dragons

      Microsoft Write developed into Word and became the world’s most-used word processor. Those that chose a different one could always open and save documents in the almost universal doc format. Most now use ODF, a free-to-use, universal standard devised to guarantee long-term access to data without legal or technical barriers. The data storage is far more sophisticated than earlier formats and the resulting files automatically ZIP compressed. Of course, Microsoft bludgeoned a new ‘standard’ into existence, their semi-proprietary Open XML or docx format.

      My colleagues can be reasonably sure they can open any document made in just about any version of Word currently running, including ODF files. Except that is their new ’standard’ the dreaded docx. Installing their free converters (how many times have I had to do that?) doesn’t necessarily mean the converted docx will look remotely like the original Unlike documents saved as RTF or ODF.

Leftovers

  • Fallacy Debunking: Successful New Business Model Examples Are The ‘Exception’

    I’ve been meaning to start to put together a series of posts that debunk the common “criticisms” we get that are all too often based on logical fallacies. I end up spending way too much time in the comments responding to people posting those same logical fallacies over and over again, and it would be nice to be able to point to posts that “answer” the complaints quickly. I’m still not sure if I’ll ever really get around to it, but sometimes someone else does such a nice job of it, that I might as well highlight it with a post here.

  • Science

    • Scientists: Usable Water Found in Moon Crater

      There’s more water on the moon than on certain places on Earth.

      That’s the conclusion of many scientists who have spent the past year analyzing data from NASA’s LCROSS spacecraft, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, which was intentionally crashed into the south polar region of the moon.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator!

      Reading the NYT’s stories about the Iraq War logs, I was struck by how it could get through such gruesome descriptions — fingers chopped off, chemicals splashed on prisoners — without using the word ‘torture.’ For some reason the word is unavailable when it is literally meaningful, yet is readily tossed around for laughs in contexts where it means nothing at all. It turns out the NYT has a reputation for studiously avoiding the word, to the point of using bizarre bureaucratic alternatives.

    • Why hasn’t the US government crushed Wikileaks? Why hasn’t the US crushed Wikileaks?

      So, Wikileaks has done it again. The largest military data leak in history has revealed grisly truths about the Iraq war that the US and Iraqi governments would surely prefer had never been widely known.

      It was clear that some serious evidence against the US was coming when almost a week ago The Pentagon urged news organisations not to publish the data. As news organisations around the world that had been analysing the war records for weeks released their reports a few hours ago, the US government condemned Wikileaks, saying they “Threatened national security”.

    • US Court Bans Use of Encryption

      On the question of encryption for email, it goes back to the phrase: “shall not use a computer that contains”. It seems to me he can have his email encrypted unknowingly (e.g. as part of a service). More to the point the court should have been more clear with their term “use”. They could have qualified it with terms like “inappropriate”, “malicious”, “harmful”, etc. but instead their terms seem overly broad in leaving it open to ANY and ALL forms of use.

  • Finance

    • Vodafone given $2.5bn Indian tax bill deadline

      Indian tax authorities have given Vodafone 30 days to pay a 112bn rupee ($2.5bn, £1.6bn) tax bill, as part of an ongoing tax dispute.

      The formal demand relates to the mobile phone company’s 2007 purchase of the Indian telephone assets of Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

    • Health Insurance Scam Alleged in California

      The HealthMarkets group of insurance companies uses deceptive and illegal methods to sell “junk insurance,” hiding their policies’ many “exclusions and limitations” behind jargon and double-talk, leaving sick policyholders without coverage, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office says. Prosecutors say co-defendants the Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs bought the companies knowing that they “sell junk insurance products by whatever means it took.”

    • In Clearing Bayou, Quagmire for Goldman

      “Did Sam Israel come to the dinner? Has Bayou ramped it up yet?” asked a top Goldman Sachs executive in a 2004 e-mail.

      The executive, Duncan L. Niederauer, now head of the New York Stock Exchange, was writing to make sure that Goldman would keep the business of Samuel Israel III, whose hedge fund, the Bayou Group, was paying the firm often millions of dollars in fees a year to clear its trades.

      The next year, Bayou collapsed amid fraud investigations. Mr. Israel would later be convicted of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars and was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

      Bayou’s unsecured creditors filed an arbitration contending that Goldman knew for several years that the Connecticut hedge fund was hemorrhaging money even when it was claiming impressive returns.

      Now, newly unsealed court documents — including Goldman e-mail and internal reports — portray a firm that at times seemed to turn a blind eye to its own internal concerns about Bayou as it raked in fees from the hedge fund.

      During the arbitration, Goldman denied allegations it had ignored signs of wrongdoing. “We have asked the court to review the arbitration panel’s decision and believe it is inappropriate to comment.”

      Through a spokesman, Mr. Niederauer declined to comment.

    • Open Letter To The SEC’s Worthless Enforcement Division

      I have a question. Why does the SEC allow high frequency traders/co-location traders/etc., to front run retail orders every day in almost every security? When I say front run, I mean the practice of utilizing sub-penny orders whereby these so called traders step in front of real bids and offers by 1/100th of a penny to get the trade done, knowing there’s a bid or offer right behind them. This has happened to me at least fifty times in the last year. It is particularly a problem on illiquid issues in which the sub-penny order that front runs my orders may be the only business done at that level. And so my order just sits there and never gets filled.

    • Regulators shut down 7 banks

      Bank regulators closed seven banks Friday, bringing the total of number of bank failures for the year to 139, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said.

      Friday marked the largest number of banks closed since July 23, when the FDIC also closed seven banks, according to the FDIC’s website.

      The closed banks are the First Arizona Savings in Scottsdale, Arizona; First Bank of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida; The First National Bank of Barnesville, in Barnesville, Georgia; First Suburban National Bank in Maywood, Illinois; The Gordon Bank in Gordon, Georgia; Hillcrest Bank in Overland Park, Kansas; and Progress Bank of Florida in Tampa, Florida.

    • Proposed S.3898 Amendment to the Electronic Fund Transfer Act Would Shift Risk of Loss to Banks

      Just a step below widows and orphans on the sympathy scale, at least when it comes to ripoffs and theft, sit school districts, boards and local municipalities. And in a era of tight budgets, when school districts are robbed of tax monies from halfway around the world via ACH/wire fraud, state and federal politicians take notice. After the Duanesburg Central School District in upstate New York, a district with 1,000 students and an annual budget of approximately $15 million, suffered a brazen cybertheft of $3 million in December 2009, which eventually left the school district potentially on the hook for over $400K of un-recovered funds (details about the Duanesburg cybertheft here and here and here), the District approached State officials on the issue (here) and then federal representatives, including Senator Schumer.

    • Foreclosure Fraud For Dummies, 2: What is a Note, and Why is it So Important?

      The SEIU has a campaign: Where’s the Note? Demand to see your mortgage note. It’s worth checking out. But first, what is this note? And why would its existence be important to struggling homeowners, homeowners in foreclosure, and investors in mortgage backed securities?

    • Washington Firms Prepare for Boom in Foreclosure Work

      Washington law firms are seeing an uptick in work thanks to the recent furor over mortgage companies’ foreclosure practices. And they’re not expecting it to drop off anytime soon.

      To keep up with demand, K&L Gates has launched a U.S. foreclosure task force designed to aid clients in addressing questions related to potential lawsuits, hearings and foreclosure moratoriums.

    • Niche Lawyers Spawned Housing Fracas

      The paperwork mess muddying home foreclosures erupted last month. But the legal strategy behind it traces to a lawyer’s gambit in 2006 that has helped keep one couple in their home six years beyond their last mortgage payment.

    • Big Problem for Banks: Due Process

      Earlier this week, Bank of America, the nation’s largest consumer bank, reported its third-quarter earnings. It was a very good quarter; putting aside an accounting charge — a very large, $10.4 billion accounting charge, admittedly — the bank reported $3.1 billion in profits. It was the third consecutive quarter that Bank of America had earned more than $3 billion.

      [...]

      The prospect of a second legal assault is more recent. Shortly before the earnings call, Bank of America received a letter from a lawyer representing eight powerful institutional investors, including BlackRock, Pimco and — most amazing of all — the New York Federal Reserve. The letter was a not-so-veiled threat to sue the bank unless it agrees to buy back billions of dollars worth of loans that are in securitized mortgage bonds the investors own.

      Mainly, they are saying that Bank of America was servicing loans in these bonds that the bank knew violated the underwriting standards that the investors had been led to believe the bank was conforming to. What’s more, they said, the bank had never come clean about all the bad loans, as it was required to do. Therefore, say the investors, the bank has a contractual obligation to buy back the bad loans.

    • Homeowners Win Fights Over Mistaken Foreclosures

      Magaly Cervantes and Julio Bermudez started this week in tears. But they ended the week in celebration.

      I met the couple on Tuesday when I visited the Dade County Courthouse to observe the foreclosure court proceedings. The court heard dozens of of cases that day, but Ms. Cervantes stood out immediately: Her eyes were red and puffy from several days of crying.

    • In Goldman, Sachs We Trust \

      One method of increasing the number of stocks, relatively new in the U.S., was the creation of the investment trust. Such companies did not really produce anything or foster new enterprises; instead, they “merely arranged that people could own stock in old companies through the medium of new ones”; that is, the trust’s sole purpose was to invest its funds in the stocks of other companies. The problem, however, was that there was often no relation to the amount of money invested in the trust to the amount of money the trust invested, in turn, in stocks. “The difference,” Galbraith writes, “went into the call market, real estate, or the pockets of the promoters.”

      The investment trusts succeeded largely because the “product” they sold to the average trader was expertise: “One might make money investing directly in Radio, J. I. Case, or Montgomery Ward, but how much safer and wiser to let it be accomplished by the men of peculiar knowledge, and wisdom.” And the trusts were not really new companies; instead, most of them were sponsored by existing companies—for example, J.P. Morgan was behind the investment trust United Corporation. Furthermore, it almost goes without saying, investment trusts would sponsor investment trusts that would, in turn sponsor investment trusts; each of these companies issuing stocks that they would often sell to each other or to other investment trusts. Many of these companies learned quickly that through the “the miracle of leverage” (the degree to which borrowed money is used), they could “swing a second and larger [trust] which enhanced the gains and made possible a third and still bigger trust.”

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Top state court drops mall’s free speech challenge

      The state Supreme Court rejected a shopping mall’s challenge Wednesday to a ruling that allows people at the mall – a pastor, in this case – to approach strangers and talk about subjects other than shopping.

      The court denied review of an appellate decision written by its chief-justice nominee, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who found the mall’s restrictions violated free-speech rights. Justices Marvin Baxter and Ming Chin voted to hear the case, two short of the majority needed for review.

    • Virginia Thomas’ group backs off on calling healthcare law unconstitutional

      A conservative group founded by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, removed references to the “unconstitutional” healthcare law from its website on Thursday and blamed staff errors for statements indicating the group believed the law should be struck down.

      “Liberty Central assiduously avoids taking a position on the constitutionality of this, and other issues, and will continue to do so in the future,” said Sarah Field, the group’s chief operating officer.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Debt collectors may join antipiracy fight

        First it was the lawyers. Then it was the politicians. Now debt collectors may be coming after people accused of film piracy, even before they have their day in court.

      • ACS:Law Still Sending Out Letters, Recipients Not Giving In

        On September 24, 2010, at approximately 10 AM EST, the root directory of the ACS:Law website was exposed. Among the files publicly available was a backup of the site, which was subsequently downloaded by hundreds of curious visitors. Within this backup file was an email database of ACS:Law, containing months worth of all kinds of correspondence between ACS:Law and suspected file-sharers, ISPs, interoffice memos, and personal emails. It has proven to be a treasure-trove of information, providing valuable intelligence on just how weak the copyright trolling business is.

      • ACTA

        • Is the US going to get a free pass in ACTA?

          In the Plenary debate on ACTA on October 20, 2010, the Commission repeated “ACTA will not change the EU acquis”. One day later, the Swedish minister of Justice said ACTA will require changes in Swedish law, increasing the powers of the police to act on its own initiative to enforce intellectual property rights.

          So how can this be true? First you say no changes in EU law, then law in Europe changes??? Well, the EU acquis is not the same as Swedish law, EU directives must be passed by the Swedish Parliament. So the Commission gets away with the “don’t worry”-promises over here in Europe.

Clip of the Day

Linux tutorial. Installing a .deb application on a Slackware based system example Yuuguu.


Credit: TinyOgg

10.23.10

Links 23/10/2010: Wiimote on GNU/Linux, Mint Raves

Posted in News Roundup at 6:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • [CiviCRM:] Amnesty International

    CivicActions has worked with Amnesty International since 2007 both on their Drupal based website, Amnesty.org and their CiviCRM installation. We first implemented version 1.8 with Drupal 5 and earlier this year upgraded the website to Drupal 6 and CiviCRM to version 3.1, they are now running version 3.2.x.

  • Girl Scouts’ Digital Media Class, Day 1 & Day 2

    This evening I taught the second class session of a 9-week program to teach ~14-year old Girl Scouts how to work with digital media using free software tools. Our first class was last Friday. The classes are two-hours long, on Friday nights (these girls are dedicated!), on a weekly basis.

    [...]

    As I did with Red Hat’s earlier Inkscape class, I’m going to try to make a blog post per session to keep you updated on how the class is going, and hopefully to also be a resource to other folks who might be interested in teaching a similar class. I’d like to document any issues we run into and the solutions we come up with as well as the successes we stumble upon to that end.

  • Open Source Skills: The Road to Riches?

    Open source software occupies half of the list. This is very promising for individuals who focus on short-term and project-based work.

    Although, some open source technologies, like Linux and Apache Tomcat, have become so prolific they are now mainstream, most will not. Enthusiasts argue all technologies start as the technology newcomer trying to win converts from a well-established leader. Java was in this position with C++ nearly a decade ago.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Open-Source Vendor Battles VMware Lock-in No One Else Sees

      Open-source developer Cloud.com announced this morning it is now possible to run Microsoft’s hypervisor with an open-source cloud-computing platform in order to combat the homogeneity and vendor lock-in that would go along with cloud solutions from leading virtualization vendor VMware.

      Cloud.com Chief Marketing Officer Peder Ulander said the company started work on an abstraction layer that would allow Hyper-V to work with the OpenStack cloud platform at the request of a user who was concerned that VMware’s vCloud platform would be too limiting for a large corporate IT operation.

  • Oracle

    • Leaving the OpenOffice.org project

      Today is a special day. I feel both sad and relieved, happy and somewhat disgusted. I have officially resigned from all my duties, roles and positions inside the OpenOffice.org project. My resignation is effective immediately and I am leaving the project. I will now be contributing to the Document Foundation, while of course continuing to work at Ars Aperta and at the OASIS as a member of its Board of Director, eGov Steering Committee and ODF Committees.

    • To: JCP Executive Committee Members
    • FireFox FireOffice

      So, I was thinking about this, maybe we need to port openoffice as a firefox plugin, fireoffice. To use firefox as the platform and enable a simple office that runs in the browser.

  • Education

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Alfresco drops LGPL’d Hibernate for iBatis

      He says that this was the “primary reason” for removing Hibernate and would allow the company “more freedom and flexibility to make some decisions”. Once LGPL’d jBPM has been replaced with Activiti, there will be no LGPL components in Alfresco’s ECM platform.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD Will Pay For Some KMS & GEM Love

      Chris Wilson of Intel back in July had written a branch of the Intel X.Org display driver (xf86-video-intel) that added back user-space mode-setting support to their open-source driver that did not need the Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) within the kernel to function. This code was previously stripped away from the driver previously since KMS+GEM is the future they wanted to head in, but for those with vintage Intel i8xx-era graphics hardware using these newer code paths frequently resulted in lock-ups and other problems. Rather than trying to solve the actual problem at hand of GEM and KMS for this old hardware, the easier solution was viewed to just add back non-GEM UMS support.

  • Government

    • End lock-in by suppliers says Government CIO

      EU procurement rules say that public sector buyers cannot specify an ICT product or brand. That means the big suppliers, usually systems integrators, select the products, the brands, and the architecture.

  • Programming

    • Taco Bell Programming

      The more I write code and design systems, the more I understand that many times, you can achieve the desired functionality simply with clever reconfigurations of the basic Unix tool set. After all, functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. This is the opposite of a trend of nonsense called DevOps, where system administrators start writing unit tests and other things to help the developers warm up to them – Taco Bell Programming is about developers knowing enough about Ops (and Unix in general) so that they don’t overthink things, and arrive at simple, scalable solutions.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • W3C updates HTML5, makes math easy

      The W3C has updated its MathML standard for rendering mathematical notation on Web pages to better portray basic math symbols, as well as render mathematic symbols in more languages.

Leftovers

  • Square Enix Sends C&D To Developer Creating OpenCarmageddon

    Whatis42? writes in to let us know that Square Enix has sent a cease and desist letter to a guy who’s been developing an open source version of the game Carmageddon. Now, it’s almost certainly the case that this version does, in fact, violate the original copyrights (and potentially trademarks) of Square Enix, but should it really matter? The game is well over a decade old and not for sale anywhere anymore. The re-creation of the game appears to be a pretty cool learning experience for a developer and fans of the game.

  • Bible.com investor sues company for lack of profit
  • Chief Justice Roberts Admits He Doesn’t Read the Computer Fine Print

    Answering a student question, Roberts admitted he doesn’t usually read the computer jargon that is a condition of accessing websites, and gave another example of fine print: the literature that accompanies medications, the AP story reports.

    It has “the smallest type you can imagine and you unfold it like a map,” he said. “It is a problem,” he added, “because the legal system obviously is to blame for that.” Providing too much information defeats the purpose of disclosure, since no one reads it, he said. “What the answer is,” he said, “I don’t know.”

  • Why IPv6? Vint Cerf keeps blaming himself

    Are you struggling with or dreading the thought of IPv6?

    If so, Vint Cerf, much-decorated “Father of the Internet,” wants you to know that it’s OK to blame him. He certainly does so himself. In fact, he does so time and time and time again.

  • The incredible growth of the Internet since 2000

    It doesn’t feel like 2000 was all that long ago, does it? But on the Internet, a decade is a long time. Ten years ago we were in the era of the dot-com boom (and bust), the Web was strictly 1.0, and Google was just a baby.

  • Laurel L. Russwurm: NaNoWriMo is …

    NaNoWriMo began as a small group of people who wanted to try their hands at writing a novel, but it quickly exploded into an International Internet novel writing extravaganza. Now it is a very large group of people all over the world who want to try their hand at writing a novel. (Love that Internet!)

  • Science

    • Building a Giant Lab to Test Disasters

      The insurance industry is doing its best to create a tempest in a teapot.

    • Synthetic DNA makers warned of bioterrorism threats

      TO MAKE it harder for bioterrorists to build dangerous viruses from scratch, guidelines for firms who supply “custom DNA” are being introduced in the US.

      The US and other countries restrict who can work with certain germs, but it might be possible to build some viruses from their genes. A number of firms supply DNA sequences to order. A 2005 investigation by New Scientist raised alarms when it found that only five out of 12 of these firms in North America and Europe always screened orders for sequences that might be used in bioweapons.

    • Mass Can Be ‘Created’ Inside Graphene, Say Physicists

      The amazing properties of graphene now include the ability to create mass, according to a new prediction.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Consumers Win Important Battle Over How Health Care Reform Will Be Implemented

      The new MLR regulations might indeed cause a few inefficient health plans to either improve the way they do business or close up shop, but why is that a bad thing? Because it will “reduce choice?” One of the main objectives of reform is to reduce waste and ensure Americans get the value they deserve when they send in their premium payments every month. If the health plans that take our money but give us lousy coverage in return are forced out of the marketplace, I say good riddance, even if their departure means that the bigger and more efficient plans that offer better value pick up the customers they leave behind.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • This Week in Review: Hard news’ online value, a small but successful paywall, and the war on WikiLeaks

      Greenwald asserted that part of the reason for the government’s rhetoric is its fear of damage that could be caused by WikiLeaks future leaks, and sure enough, it’s already urging news organizations not to publish information from WikiLeaks’ Iraq documents. At The Link, Nadim Kobeissi wrote an interesting account of the battle over WikiLeaks so far, characterizing it as a struggle between the free, open ethos of the web and the highly structured, hierarchical nature of the U.S. government. “No nation has ever fought, or even imagined, a war with a nation that has no homeland and a people with no identity,” Kobeissi said.

    • WikiLeaks plans ‘major’ announcement in Europe

      The WikiLeaks website appears close to releasing what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history — hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports compiled after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

    • EXCLUSIVE: WikiLeaks Prepares Largest Intel Leak in US History with Release of 400,000 Iraq War Docs

      We speak to the nation’s most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971, just before he heads to London to participate in the WikiLeak press conference.

    • Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture

      A grim picture of the US and Britain’s legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

    • Tibetan student protests spread to Beijing

      Protests by Tibetan students in western China over plans to restrict the use of their language have spread, according to state media and a campaign group.

      A source in Beijing said between 200 and 300 Tibetan students at the capital’s Central University for Nationalities held a peaceful demonstration this afternoon.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Malarial mosquitoes turning into new species

      Two strains of the mosquito responsible for most malaria transmission in Africa are evolving into different species, meaning that techniques to control them may work on one type but not the other.

    • Tea Partiers Hold Fossil Fuel Industry’s Views on Climate Change

      Only 14 percent of Tea Party supporters believe global warming is a real environmental problem compared to 49 percent of the rest of the public, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Global warming skepticism is an article of faith among Tea Party adherents, some of whom say they rely on the teachings of scripture and conservative opinion leaders as sources for their information about climate science. Tea Partiers’ beliefs on global warming agree with those of the fossil fuel industry, which funds the Tea Party movement. Following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry has carried on a longstanding, pervasive campaign to raise doubts about global warming science and undermine policies that to address it.

    • Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith

      At a candidate forum here last week, Representative Baron P. Hill, a threatened Democratic incumbent in a largely conservative southern Indiana district, was endeavoring to explain his unpopular vote for the House cap-and-trade energy bill.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • More Action in America from the Network of Billionaires

      In the Center for Media and Democracy’s break-through article on the American Action Network, we highlighted the resumes of the billionaires, corporate executives, and right-wing political operatives behind the group. Americans have a right to know more about who these guys really are, starting with AAN board member Robert Steel.

      A few weeks ago, we broke the story of the grossly misleading American Action Network attack ad accusing Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of creating the federal deficit. We pointed out how such claims are preposterous considering that those behind AAN and the anti-Feingold ads helped destroy the economy, and that some of AAN’s board members benefited personally from the Wall Street bailout spearheaded by the Bush Administration. The Washington, D.C.-based group, a 501(c) organization that receives anonymous corporate funding, has already spent $750,000 attacking Senator Feingold in television ads. Now, AAN is at it again, airing another misleading attack ad making similar claims.

    • James Bopp’s Committee for Half-Truths in Politics

      But many do not know that one man is particularly responsible for Citizens United and other challenges to fair election rules, and that his ironically-named “Committee for Truth in Politics” is one of the many groups fronting corporate dollars while pretending to be just like ordinary folk.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Take a stand for your freedom on the internet
    • What is Activism?

      Of course, you can’t always believe what you read. Just because something is in print does not necessarily mean it is true or accurate, whether in a book, a newspaper or a web page. Wikipedia is certainly in error in conflating “violent revolutionary activities” with Malcolm X, who was himself non-violent like the majority of activists. It was only after Malcolm X was assasinated that his followers turned to “violent revolutionary activities.”

      I’ve never met Byron Sonne, and only heard about him recently. The publication ban means what I know about it is limited to what has already been published. Which may or may not be true. Still, there is enough there in the public record to cause me concern, which is why I’ve written a couple of blog posts about it.

    • Police Refuse To Speak On Camera After Dropping ALL Charges On More Than 100 G20 Protesters
    • Networks Block Web Programs From Being Viewed on Google TV

      ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google Inc.’s new Web-TV service, exposing the rift that remains between the technology giant and some of the media companies it wants to supply content for its new products.

    • NDP PUSHES FOR FAIR TRADE AND TRANSPARENCY IN EU DEAL

      New Democrat International Trade Critic Peter Julian is criticizing the Harper government’s lack of transparency surrounding the latest round of trade talks on a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU.

    • Creating stronger privacy controls inside Google

      In May we announced that we had mistakenly collected unencrypted WiFi payload data (information sent over networks) using our Street View cars. We work hard at Google to earn your trust, and we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here. So we’ve spent the past several months looking at how to strengthen our internal privacy and security practices, as well as talking to external regulators globally about possible improvements to our policies. Here’s a summary of the changes we’re now making.

    • Tony McNulty and civil liberties

      There was a time in the summer of 2008 when one could barely turn on the television without seeing former Home Office Minister Tony McNulty’s sturdy defences of the Labour Party’s approach to law and order. A stronger supporter of ID cards and ninety day incarceration it was impossible to find.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • China pledges to crack down on pirated software

      Citing comments made at a State Council meeting at which Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided, the Xinhua News Agency reported this week that the goal is to clamp down on both the import and export of phony software, DVDs, publications, and other products that violate trademarks and patents.

    • Statement of the Holy See at the WIPO

      On the part of rich countries there is excessive zeal for protecting knowledge through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care. At the same time, in some poor countries, cultural models and social norms of behaviour persist which hinder the process of development.”

    • The Case for Flexibility in Implementing the WIPO Internet Treaties
    • Rethinking Intellectual Property: History, Theory, and Economics

      Those already convinced by the general argument against IP thus have much to learn in this course, which will deepen and extend their understanding of not only IP theory but also libertarian theory and economics. The course is also ideal for those who are on the fence, or who are confused, about IP; no intellectual conformity is required. Libertarians who think there are good arguments for IP are also welcome — at the least, they can test their arguments against the best we critics have to offer, and perhaps strengthen, modify, or deepen their own views about the nature of ideas, government, and property rights.

    • Copyrights

      • RIAA, Chamber Of Commerce: Censorship Via COICA Is Okay, Because Other Countries Censor Too

        So it’s okay for the US government to censor the web, because other countries censor as well? I recognize that their argument is that this won’t change how other countries view censorship, but even that’s wrong. The US is pressuring other countries not to censor the web by claiming a moral high ground. It seems particularly hypocritical to undermine that moral high ground by blatantly censoring the web as well, and then saying “but it’s okay for us, because it’s about protecting these companies.” That just makes it easy for those other countries to respond, “well, then it’s okay for us, because it’s about protecting our government/way of life/etc.”

      • Piracy domain seizure bill gains support

        Dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) endorsed the bill in a letter to the U.S. Senate. So did Major League Baseball and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

      • Piracy trumps obscurity again
      • If Google TV Has To Pay To Make Hulu Available To Viewers, Will Mozilla Have To Pay To Access Hulu Via Firefox?

        Admittedly, Hulu is apparently getting pressure from the TV companies to do these blocks, but it still makes no sense. All things like Boxee and Google TV are doing is providing a browser. As Danny notes, if I just hooked up my laptop to the same TV, I could watch Hulu just fine. Why is it a problem if it’s using a different piece of hardware? It makes no sense.

      • Message which brought hope now copyright of Chile miner

        The message that announced the trapped Chile miners were alive and well is now the copyright of the man who wrote it.

      • French Anti-Piracy Scheme’s 25,000 Daily Reports

        Three weeks after the first warning messages were sent by email to online infringers, French body HADOPI remains quiet on the process and its results.

        However, Billboard.biz has learned that rights-holders are reporting 25,000 music related copyright infringements to HADOPI every day. HADOPI was launched by the government to handle the three-strikes anti-piracy system.

      • ACTA

        • USTR’s implausible claim that ACTA Article 1.2 is an all purpose loophole, and the ramifications if true

          The October 2010 version of the ACTA text is inconsistent with several areas of U.S. law, and proposals for new laws in the areas of the reform of patent damages and access to orphaned copyrighted works. In particular, the obligations in the ACTA text do not incorporate many of the areas of limitations and exceptions to remedies found in U.S. law, and in the statutes of some other countries.

        • ACTA – outstanding issues (E-8295/2010)

          Observations:

          * The second part of her question goes to the heart of the criminal chapter. The Criminal chapter of ACTA corresponds to the proposed Criminal Enforcement Directive (“IPRED2″) under Art 83 legal base which failed to reach Council consensus. Recently the European Commission has withdrawn the IPRED2 proposal and thus terminated the IPRED2 directive process.
          * Comparison:
          ACTA Criminal Chapter: Negotiated behind closed doors by the Council Presidency with external Trade partners. Parliament(s) may ratify ACTA. No corresponding Acquis existing.
          IPRED2: Legal base Art 83 limits the extent of EU harmonisation. Ordinary Legislative Process. Full democratic scrutiny by Parliament. Adoption would make the act part of the Acquis.
          * Result: Council attempts to circumvent the new Lisbon powers of the European Parliament under Art 83 via Art 207. It is a highly sensitive constitutional question if a circumvention is permissible.
          * No Acquis for criminal enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights is available as the MEPs stress, not even a pending proposal anymore. For clarity, Acquis Communautaire = “body of law accumulated by the European Union”. Acquis is EU level law. Even an identical legal status quo in all EU member states would not constitute the Acquis. Neither does the EU competence under Art 83 qualify as Acquis unless an act is adopted under that legal base.

        • Help to debug the European Commissioner

          The list of directives above indicates what parts of the Acquis (body of adopted EU level law) would be affected by an adoption of ACTA. The Commissioner says that the Acquis won’t be affected at all, no change of the EU legal environement was required. Many civil society and industry groups claim ACTA has effects on the internet. Many Members of Parliament don’t believe the Commission because it would make ACTA pretty baseless. And ironically in other nations they tell the public the same tales, that it won’t change their law. Check the facts!

Clip of the Day

The Digital Prism Screencast – Introduction (learn more)


Credit: TinyOgg

10.22.10

Links 22/10/2010: Linux 2.6.37 Preview, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta

Posted in News Roundup at 10:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • LPI recognized by UK education authorities

    The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization, announced that the LPIC-1 certification program for Linux professionals has been accepted as a nationally recognized IT accreditation for college students at secondary schools and technical colleges in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. LPI’s affiliate, LPI-UK worked in co-operation with e-skills UK to ensure this initiative. In addition, the two organizations are working in partnership with the Scottish Qualifications Authority to recognize LPIC-1 as a nationally accepted award and SCQF Credit within Scotland.

  • From Noob to Ninja – Your Guide to Mastering Linux

    Every Linux user has been new at some point, and unless you’ve got a history of UNIX administration, the transition was likely a bit daunting. Many people began learning Linux before sites like Google and StackExchange made it easy to find answers, and ended up having to figure everything out in their own. While inconvenient, this approach can force you to challenge yourself and learn things about the system that you might otherwise never find out.

  • Is Mac OS Lion More Advanced Than Linux?

    I just wanted to make a point that no, Mac is not the most advanced OS in the world. On the contrary it appears to me like one of the least capable OSes from among Windows, BSD and Linux.

  • The Network is Down, and other things you don’t want to hear in a disaster.

    If you are a Systems Administrator, the refrain the network is down is routine. Depending on the sophistication of your users, it might be a more specific lament, such as the Internet is broken or email is unavailable. If you have really sophisticated users, you might actually get a real error message to work with. And if you work in a large organization, the level of sophistication could be all over the map.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Ballnux

    • Samsung’s Galaxy Tab gets $600 U.S. price, scaled-down Japanese variant

      Verizon Wireless will launch the Samsung Galaxy Tab on Nov. 11 at a steep $600, says eWEEK. Meanwhile, Samsung unveiled a seven-inch “SMT-i9100″ Android tablet aimed at Japan, MSI is postponing a Windows-based tablet in favor of an Android model due in 1Q 2011, and Lenovo is postponing its “LePad” tablet until next summer, waiting for Android’s “Honeycomb” release, say reports.

    • Samsung Blames Canada For Your Monitor Problems

      Miguel writes that his Samsung monitor stopped working, but it has a 3-year warranty. He contacted Samsung to see if they could help him. They could not, but not for any mundane reason. Samsung insists that his monitor is from Canada, and they can’t provide warranty service to Miguel because he doesn’t live in Canada. Where did he buy his monitor? Um, a Sam’s Club store in Missouri.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Kernel 2.6.36 Gets AppArmor

      After years of being outside of the mainline, the AppArmor security system is now finally part of the main Linux kernel.

      Linux founder Linus Torvalds formally released the 2.6.36 kernel this week nearly three months after the release of the 2.6.35 kernel.

    • Three Things That Won’t Be In The Linux 2.6.37 Kernel

      While the Linux 2.6.36 kernel was released yesterday, we already have our eyes towards the Linux 2.6.37 kernel to see what new features this next kernel will bring, any performance changes that may come as a result (we continue to benchmark the kernel everyday), and this will likely be the kernel version used by Ubuntu 11.04 and other early 2011 Linux distributions. While we have already reported on some of the features that should be merged into the Linux 2.6.37 kernel, there’s at least three major features we have been looking forward to that will be sadly missing from this kernel.

    • Linux Kernel Update Adds Brawn Without Bulk
    • OpenLogic Joins The Linux Foundation

      The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that OpenLogic has become its newest member.

    • Graphics Stack

      • AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series Graphics Cards On Linux?

        This evening AMD has officially launched their Radeon HD 6800 series, which currently includes the Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards. These are just two of several next-generation graphics cards to be launched over the coming weeks and months for consumers while next year the FirePro derivatives for professional/workstation customers should come around too based upon this architecture. How though does the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series play with Linux?

      • Intel X-Video Sandybridge Support Arrives

        While Intel has not even rolled out their Sandy Bridge processors yet, their OSTC developers have been working on support for this next-generation micro-architecture with integrated graphics core under Linux for many months. It was back in February when we originally reported on Sandy Bridge GPU support coming to Linux.

      • AMD Radeon HD 6870 & 6850 Graphics Cards Debut
      • Pixman Has Improved Gradients, Is Much Faster

        While Cairo is frequently mentioned on Phoronix, mentioned less but used by Cairo (as well as the X.Org Server) for pixel manipulation is the Pixman library. Soeren Sandmann announced a new release candidate of Pixman 0.19.6 this afternoon and it has a few interesting changes worth noting.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Thomas Fischer on KBibTeX, the KDE Reference Manager

        While they are not busy doing (crazy) research, most scientists do a lot of technical writing: papers, presentations, posters, reports. Such writing is usually accompanied by large number of references; managing them by hand can be tedious and long. That is why scientists use bibliography managers. In the FOSS world, a popular choice is BibTeX, a complement to the LaTeX typesetting system. Along with BibTeX, front-ends are used to simplify addition, modification and removal of bibliography.

      • Using the KDE Netbook Desktop

        In this last (for now) post about the KDE Netbook Desktop, I want to focus on what it is like to actually use it on a typical netbook. I will be using my Samsung N150 Plus, running PCLinuxOS 2010.7. This is a very typical netbook, with an Atom N450 CPU, 1 GB memory, 10″ display, 1024×600 resolution. It is only important to note here that, unlike the Ubuntu Netbook Edition, this is not the only netbook configuration that KDE Netbook will run on. It does not require enhanced graphic support of any kind, and it does a pretty good job of detecting on its own what kind of video capability your netbook has, and adjusting its desktop effects accordingly.

      • Is KWin getting too complicated?

        Want some more fun? Did you know that Special Window Settings are infinitely recursive? You can set Special Window Settings on the Special Window Settings “Special Window Settings” window! It’s do-your-head-in stuff and not particularly useful, but it brings me back to my original question: is KWin getting just too complicated for the average user?

      • 10 KDE tools you need to try

        I’ve been impressed with the advancements the KDE development team has made with version 4.5. Not only is the desktop environment light-years ahead of where I expected it to be (after the abysmal 4.0 release), it’s has turned out to be a desktop that any Linux user would be happy to use. It’s as stable and as responsive as GNOME and as flexible as just about any desktop.

        But beyond the desktop itself, KDE has a number of excellent tools. If you’ve never tried, you don’t know what you’re missing. So I thought I’d highlight some of these tools and maybe pique your interest. These tools vary in topic and task and should appeal to a wide range of user types.

    • GNOME Desktop

  • Distributions

    • TinyMe Linux For The Win

      I was running Unity Linux 2010.2 with KDE 4.5 for around the last month. I really like what has been done there but it seemed a bit heavy for my Gateway M250…the CPU fan was always on which told me it was always in high use.

      I checked out Gnome 2.30 on Unity and found it to be delightful on my resources; however, Gnome doesn’t make me feel warm and tingly when I use it. I find myself frustrated with its lack of configuration options…specifically, right click menu. So I rolled my own using the base install of Unity. That worked quite nicely but lacked much of the polish I became accustomed to when using KDE. What I wanted and needed was a happy medium. I found that happy place with TinyMe Linux.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Close to Support
      • Red Hat Releases Enterprise Linux 6 Beta

        Red Hat took another step closer to the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 with its recent delivery of the release candidate of the operating system.

      • Fedora

        • Fedora Events: OpenRheinRuhr 2010 – Oberhausen, Germany
        • Fedora 13 sailing along

          Even though I’m actively testing Ubuntu 10.10 (installed to a 4 GB USB flash drive) and find it extremely compatible with my current hardware (Lenovo G555), I expect I’ll be sticking with Fedora 13 for at least the next few months.

          Things I’ll be looking for include return of a working open-source ati/radeon driver (not exactly holding my breath, am I), newer kmod-catalyst packages from RPMFusion (who knows when/if this will happen) and seeing how everything involved in this Fedora 13 build works the next time there’s a kernel update (and there hasn’t been one for awhile).

    • Debian Family

      • The secret plan behind the “3.0 (quilt)” Debian source package format

        When I started working on the new source package format, I set out to get rid of all the known limitations and to integrate a patch system in dpkg-source. I wanted to clear up the situation so that learning packaging only requires to learn one patch system and would not require modifying debian/rules to use it. I picked quilt because it was popular, came with a large set of features, and was not suffering from NIH syndrome. This lead to the “3.0 (quilt)” source format.

        I also created “3.0 (native)” as a distinct format. “1.0″ was able to generate two types of source packages (native and non-native) but I did not want to continue with this mistake of mixing both in a single format.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu’s Netbook Edition: Now With More “Unity”!

          In many ways, though, this release is pretty cool. The visual effects are pretty cool, but not so over-the-top that they distract. Click the desktop icon; see all your desktops.

          There are a lot of cool things to this interface; more than I can mention. I love using it, even though I dislike certain things about it. It’s certainly a better interface than Jolicloud’s monstrous HTML5 experiment. I’m not sure whether I’m going to switch back to Ubuntu’s desktop mode anytime soon, but I’ll be sure to let you all know of any quality changes.

          The Ubuntu team is trying out a lot of new things here, and a lot of it works really well. Some of it is pretty slow, which may frustrate those of us with lower-grade netbooks, but overall the design shows a lot of promise. I’m going to use this as long as I can, and am very excited to see how the interface progresses. If you’re interested, head over to Ubuntu.com and download the Netbook version. You might like it.

        • Flavours and Variants

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • Nokia’s First Meego Device Now Confirmed for 2011 Launch?

          MeeGo utilizes the Qt (pronounced “Cute”) application development environment. Nokia has announced that it has streamlined its development environment across multiple device platforms. From now on all development for Symbian and Meego should be based on Qt.

          The most important aspect of this announcement is geared around developers. When you develop an application within the Qt development framework it can easily be deployed to Nokia devices running Symbian and/or Meego. This should lead to many more applications being available for both platforms, richer user interfaces and more visually engaging applications.

        • Nokia’s first MeeGo device will arrive in 2011

      • Android

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source-Friendly Smartphones For the Small Office?
  • FrostWire – Best Free Alternative For Limewire For Windows, Mac, Linux

    Frostwire is a powerful P2P file sharing program which is the supposedly the best free alternative for Limewire for Windows, Mac and Linux OS.

  • Open source keeps fueling global exchange

    We continue to see evidence that open source software is helping vendors expand and grow globally. The latest announcement from
    French BPM vendor BonitaSoft, which is establishing U.S. offices in Boston and San Francisco, is a prime example. We covered BonitaSoft’s expansion and approach in July, which leverages more than 300,000 downloads of the software and presence in more than 20 countries.

    Another example of an open source vendor expansion and growth in North America is OTRS, a help desk and ITIL service management software and support vendor from Germany that is also growing its presence in the U.S. and rest of North America.

  • VMB_ware

    • Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0

      Since Zimbra Desktop supports IMAP, I went ahead and configured it to connect to my Gmail account and put it through its paces. The verdict? It has some improving to do.

    • VMware angles Spring as premier Java development tool

      Oracle may own the Java trademark, but VMware is touting its own Spring framework as the best programming model for enterprise Java developers.

      “In the innovation of the Java programming model, I think Spring really plays a leading role there,” said Rod Johnson, who is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s SpringSource product division, as well as the creator of the first version of Spring.

    • Statement by the ASF Board on recent Java-related events

      As reported recently in the news and elsewhere, there are two issues currently facing the Foundation that merit a response from the ASF.

      At the last JCP Executive Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany, Oracle announced that it will not offer a TCK license for Java SE (for the Apache Harmony project) without the so-called “Field of Use” (FOU) restriction. We believe that this is a final decision from Oracle and that there are no further opportunities for productive discussion on this topic.

      To that end, the Apache Harmony project is evaluating its project goals and future, as Oracle’s decision blocks Harmony from achieving the original community goal of a TCK-tested, spec-compliant, Apache-licensed implementation of Java SE. The ASF fully supports the Apache Harmony community as it moves forward, past this regretful decision on the part of Oracle. With respect to the many other projects in the ASF that implement JSRs, we remain committed to those projects as they are, and any new projects that wish to implement JSRs that have appropriate TCK licensing terms.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chromeless: Build your own Browser UI using HTML, CSS and JS

      The “Chromeless” project experiments with the idea of removing the current browser user interface and replacing it with a flexible platform which allows for the creation of new browser UI using standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

    • Firefox 4.0 beta 7 to get native SVG support

      For those not in the know, SVG is a family of 2D XML-based image formats that can be created as either static or dynamic images, similar to what you can do with GIFs.

    • demo slam opera trophy?

      Why is the Google’s Demo Slam trophy a golden Opera logo?

    • Mozilla

      • are we fast yet?

        Last week we moved ahead of Apple’s Nitro engine and today we move ahead of Google’s V8 engine. That gives Mozilla’s Spidermonkey JavaScript engine (including the Tracemonkey and JägerMonkey JITs) the fastest Sunspider scores on the planet!

  • Databases

    • PostgreSQL vs. MySQL: How to Select the Right Open-Source Database

      To properly evaluate the strengths of PostgreSQL and MySQL, the two leading open-source databases, one must look at the history and pedigree of each, and their feature functionality and performance. By comparing and contrasting PostgreSQL and MySQL here, Knowledge Center contributor Jim Mlodgenski guides you to a more informed decision about which open-source database is right for your enterprise deployment.

  • Oracle

  • CMS

    • Drupal Rises Over the Horizon

      Drupal is a battle-hardened soldier that has faced its enemies, looked them in the eyes, and defeated them with relatively minimal effort. Drupal ranks amongst the elite of the elite, like Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, and Charlie Parker. Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress tower like titans over all other content management systems: does ANYONE still use Mambo? I love Joomla and WordPress, but my favorites CMS, by far, is Drupal. As most of you know, I use it on both of my websites. I am excited by the fact that the upcoming version, Drupal 7, is coming ever closer to becoming a reality. In this article, I will give a brief history of Drupal, and I will relay what I know about the upcoming release.

  • Business

  • BSD

  • Project Releases

    • Asterisk 1.8 Released with Support for Google Voice, Calendaring, and More

      Open source telephony vendor Digium released the newest version of its popular free VoIP software Asterisk today, and it’s packed with more than 200 enhancements, security updates, and new features — including calendar integration and support for Google Voice and Google Talk. Asterisk’s fully- featured PBX includes call waiting, hold and transfer, caller ID, and other useful tools so it’s a great option for small businesses that need to watch costs.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Quixote: Computational chemistry; We made it! Please join us.

      For the last month we have been developing an Open, distributed, automated Knowledgebase for computational chemistry. Millions of valuable data files are created each year – almost none are published. Yet they are amongst the best, the most reproducible science in any discipline. The give believable results about the real world.

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Texas High School Kicks Cheerleader Off Squad For Refusing To Cheer For Her Rapist
  • Liberals will open government to Canadians

    To create a new era of accountability for government spending and to spur innovation and economic growth, a Liberal government will launch the single largest effort of government openness and transparency in Canadian history through the Liberal Open Government Initiative.

  • Court Rejects Probation Rules On Teen That Ban Him From Using Social Networks Or Instant Messaging Programs

    As for the oddities in banning him from using computers with viruses, trojans or keystroke monitors, which he could potentially violate without even knowing it, the court changed the terms to say that he can’t knowingly use a computer with any of those things on it. Unfortunately, they still include “encryption” on the list. I find it troubling that the court is okay with demonizing encryption (and, to a lesser extent, “hacking” tools) when there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do so. Does that mean he can’t even encrypt his email?

  • China unveils state-run online mapping site
  • Libel and the Holy Man

    Let me introduce you to His Holiness Sant Baba Jeet Singh Ji Maharaj.

    His Holiness is the “Third Holy Saint”.

    This is apparently very important.

    He is not the second Holy Saint; not the fourth; and fifth is right out.

    And what does His Holiness do?

    He is suing a journalist for libel.

  • When Bedbugs Became News, the Bedbug Registry Became a Debated Source

    At the beginning of the year, Ceglowski’s website might have had 3,000 visitors a day and 20 reports of bedbug sightings. Now, the site gets up to 40,000 visitors and 100 new reports a day. (That’s down from a peak of 50,000 visitors a day in August.)

    Intended or not, bedbugregistry.com has become a source of news. For some, it’s an example of the potential of crowdsourcing, where thousands of anecdotal reports come together to identify clusters of bedbugs in cities around the country. That relies on the assumption, though, that the information reported is accurate. And that gives some people pause.

  • NY Times Sues Kachingle Over Publicity Stunt… Making Publicity Stunt That Much More Effective

    Last week, we wrote about The NY Times threatening Kachingle, over a silly publicity stunt that Kachingle pulled. As we explained, Kachingle, which is a voluntary micropayment-type solution (somewhat similar to Flattr), for blog and journalism content, had put up a site where it encouraged the NY Times not to set up the paywall it’s planning. To “convince” the NY Times not to bother, it wanted people to contribute to the various NY Times’ bloggers via Kachingle, and Kachingle would use the amount raised to try to let the NY Times know there were alternatives. Of course, no one really believed that the NY Times would stop its paywall because of this. It’s just a silly publicity stunt.

  • UK stops Kernel distribution at stadium

    UK officials have prohibited the Kentucky Kernel from distributing newspapers at Commonwealth Stadium before football games, a move First Amendment lawyers call unconstitutional.

    On Sept. 18, UK Athletics officials stopped eight Kernel advertising staff members who came to the stadium’s parking lot before the game against Akron to distribute issues of the free student publication, Kernel Student Advertising Manager Sarah Geegan said.

  • IPv4 Net addresses now 95 percent used up
  • Washington Post editor: no responding to critics on Twitter

    What happens when a Post staffer uses the official Twitter account to lash out at a critic? A memo.

  • Verizon To Charge You $3.50 To Pay Your Bill

    Starting October 16, all Verizon Communications landline, FiOS, and DSL customers will have to pay a $3.50 fee if they pay their bills by credit or debit card. (Currently there are no plans to apply to same to wireless customers). The only way to get around it is to sign up for auto-billing. Verizon says the new fee is because they have a new vendor for processing credit and debit transactions, and they’re passing on the lack of savings to you.

  • Canadian gov’t scientists protest gag order, go straight to public with own website

    Alan sez, “It looks like the Canadian government is making life harder for scientists who want to talk to the media about their work. Presumably the science is inconvenient for those in power. In response, the scientists’ union has put up a web site to inform the public directly.”

    Canada’s Tory government is notoriously hostile to science (especially climate science, which poses an existential threat to their power base in the planet-killing tar-sands). But a state-imposed gag-order on scientists, putting their ability to communicate to the press in the hands of petty bureaucrats, is beyond the pale even for them. Why is it that so many “small government neocons” love big government solutions to their embarrassing little problems?

  • Cal State Bans Students from Using Online Note-Selling Service

    As an undergraduate at Sacramento State, Ryan Stevens founded NoteUtopia in order to provide a mechanism for students to buy, sell, and share their university course notes. Stevens graduated last spring and NoteUtopia officially launched in August. But less than six weeks into the startup’s history, NoteUtopia has received a cease-and-desist letter from the California State University system, charging that the company violates a provision of the state education code.

  • Science

    • India to build observatory to study neutrino particles

      India’s Department of Atomic Energy has been given clearance to build a multi-million dollar underground facility to study particles called neutrinos.

      The environment and forests ministry gave the go-ahead for the observatory to be built in the Bodi West hills on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu state.

    • Moon Blast Reveals Lunar Surface Rich With Compounds

      There is water on the moon … along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That’s according to a more detailed analysis of the chilled lunar soil near the moon’s South Pole, released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday.

      “We thought the moon was bone dry,” said planetary geologist Peter Schultz of Brown University, lead author of one of the studies. “All the books on the moon say that the moon is dry, and now we have to rewrite that chapter.”

    • How Wet the Moon? Just Damp Enough to Be Interesting
    • China Halts Shipments to U.S. of Tech-Crucial Minerals

      A nasty trade dispute appears to have prompted Chinese customs officials to block shipments of rare earth minerals to the U.S.

      The move underscores a deepening U.S. vulnerability because of its dependence upon China for tech-crucial rare earth minerals (also known as rare earth elements). Small but significant amounts of the minerals go into creating everything from PCs and cellphones to wind turbines and hybrid cars, as well as U.S. military technologies such as missile guidance systems.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Visiting Australia? Make Sure You Tell The Customs Officials About The Porn On Your Hard Drive

      We’ve discussed, a few times, the issues with border patrol/customs officials in the US searching laptops at the border. The reason it doesn’t make much sense is that the purpose of border patrol is to make sure nothing bad gets into a country, but the content on your laptop can easily get into the country via the internet, rather than at the border. And even bigger concern, of course, is that people store everything on their laptops. If you’re packing your suitcase for a trip somewhere, you pack only the things you want to take. Everything you bring is effectively “opt-in.” However, on your laptop, you already have everything. If anything, you might (though I doubt many people do) delete some stuff to avoid having it searched. In other words, unlike your suitcase, the data on your laptop is more of an “opt-out” situation.

    • From “ciggy busters to “eco detectives”

      Rather than simply encouraging a considerate approach to the environment, school children are being actively encouraged to sign up as “eco detectives” in order to identify and personally harrass individuals who have failed to clean up their dog’s mess, dropped litter or such like.

    • What happened when one pilot refused to submit to “naked” backscatter scan

      In an online forum for pilots of the private jet charter service ExpressJet, Houston-based pilot Michael Roberts relates the disturbing tale of what happened when he recently refused to consent to an “Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) system” (aka “backscatter scan,” aka “naked scan” aka “the porn machine”) at the TSA checkpoint. He also refused a manual pat-down from TSA agents, after already going through a metal detector, if I’m reading this correctly.

    • Pilot Not Allowed Through Security After He Refuses ‘Naked’ Backscatter Scan

  • Finance

    • Obama Hires a Hustler

      One day as Wall Street was crashing, President George W. Bush had the temerity to plaintively ask his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson: “How did this happen?” Paulson, who headed Goldman Sachs before taking the Treasury job, remarks in his memoir: “It was a humbling question for someone from the financial sector to be asked—after all, we were the ones responsible.”

    • Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

      Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.

      Google’s income shifting — involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” — helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.

    • Technologically clueless Russian spy hired as ‘IT innovator’ for bank

      Russian spy Anna Chapman is making headlines this week for posing provocatively in a photo spread in the Russian edition of Maxim magazine, but she equally deserves notoriety for landing a job as an IT security official in a Russian bank despite glaring gaps in her technical knowledge.

    • Debt collector broke the law by using MySpace photo to intimidate consumer

      Plaintiff fell behind on her car payments. The lender turned the debt over to a collection agency that used technology and some remarkably poor judgment in an attempt to get paid.

      The first bad decision was to use a caller-ID spoofer to make it look like the collection call was coming from plaintiff’s mother in law. The next not-smart use of technology was to access plaintiff’s MySpace page, learn that plaintiff had a daughter, and to use that fact to intimidate plaintiff. There was evidence in the record to suggest that the collection agency’s “investigator” said to plaintiff, after mentioning plaintiff’s “beautiful daughter,” something to the effect of “wouldn’t it be terrible if something happened to your kids while the sheriff’s department was taking you away?”

    • Norwegian traders convicted for outsmarting US stock broker algorithm

      Two Norwegian day traders who hoodwinked a trading system in the US for their own financial gain, have been handed suspended prison sentences.

      The Norwegian traders, Svend Egil Larsen and Peder Veiby, were handed suspended prison sentences and fines for market manipulation after outsmarting the trading system of Timber Hill, which is a unit of US-based Interactive Brokers.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • You’re doing it wrong: Sending material and calling it embargoed before an agreement doesn’t make it so

      You can probably guess quite easily, but if not: These emails were all from PR people I didn’t know and contained material that was supposedly embargoed.

      Except that I had never agreed to any such embargo.

      If your inbox is anything like mine, it is full of embargoed releases. (So full, in fact, that I have to spend time most days cleaning it out so I don’t exceed my corporate email quota.) Most of them are from journals, societies, institutions, and companies with which I have had some relationship or agreement.

      Then there are emails like the ones above.

      Sorry, folks, but that’s not an embargo that deserves to stick. It happens that we wouldn’t cover any of the stories being pitched in those three emails, but what if we had wanted to? I would have felt no obligation to follow them.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Google Engineer Builds Facebook Disconnect
    • Why Facebook is selling you out — and won’t stop

      Facebook and its developers could bring in as much as $1 billion this year; only a bozo would think that Mark Zuckerberg will give that up to protect the privacy of his users

    • U.S. Government Prepares to Regulate Internet Privacy

      There are at least five U.S. government efforts to regulate data and online privacy, according to a new U.S. government internet policy official, who said that some kind of privacy regulation appears likely.

    • Stop the Internet blacklist

      The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act would create a blacklist of domain names that the government thinks are involved in copyright infringement. Internet service providers and others would be required to block any domains on the list.

    • Google Street View broke Canada’s privacy law with Wi-Fi capture

      Google violated the privacy of thousands of Canadians when it inadvertently collected personal information about them with its Street View mapping cars, the country’s privacy commissioner has ruled.

      In the wake of the finding, influential privacy groups expressed concern that no legal action had yet been taken against the search giant.

    • EU court rules Spain’s “digital copyright tax” illegal

      The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today declared illegal any digital canon which is being imposed indiscriminately on all equipment and materials used for reproduction and not only that which presumably can only be used for private copying , as applied in Spain. Spain imposes a “canón digital”, a small tax on all digital media (CD’s, tapes, DVD’s and associated equipment) which is given to the General Society of Authors for copyright payment in case the media is used to copy work.

    • Former model gets court to order Google to reveal identity info on nasty YouTube commenters YouTube ordered to reveal commenter info

      A Supreme Court judge in New York City has given Google 15 days to provide the court with whatever identity information it has on commenter(s) that left a defamatory comments on YouTube videos of Columbia Business School grad and former actress and model Carla Franklin, including the word “whore”.

    • Tyranny Goes Global

      The plight of Iranian “blogfather” Hossein Derakhshan, known by his online handle Hoder, is a chilling reminder that there are still places where the exercise of one’s freedom of expression could be a capital offense. According to officials in Iran, Canada is one of those places.

      Derakhshan, an Iranian-born Canadian citizen, has been in prison in Iran for the past 22 months, after being arrested shortly after returning to his country of birth under suspicious circumstances in 2008. Late last month, it was reported that Derakhshan had been sentenced to 19 years in prison. One activist who wished to remain anonymous told me that this is the longest prison sentence given in Iran for a speech-crime since the post-election crackdown that began in June 2009. But the sentence is still a victory of sorts: There were credible rumors that prosecutors had been pushing for the death penalty.

    • EOF – Waving Goodbye to Facebook

      The company is far more interested in making you into better bait for advertisers and visitors who click on ads. A side benefit is “a smarter, personalized Web” that is not the Web at all, but rather an indoor commercial habitat with some nice conveniences.

    • EFF’s Cohn fights copyright’s ‘underbelly’ (Q&A)

      An unmistakable strain of compassion runs through Cindy Cohn’s voice when she talks about the plight of Internet users she says are wrongly accused of copyright violations or tech companies she believes are being abused by large entertainment conglomerates.

    • Facebook games maker sued in privacy flap

      The lawsuit alleges that Zynga, maker of six of the top 10 Facebook games, collected and shared the IDs of 218 million users, in violation of federal law and terms of service. It seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction preventing the alleged practice from continuing. The suit was filed in US District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Nancy Graf of St. Paul, Minnesota. It seeks class action status so other Facebook users may also be represented.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Google testing high-speed fiber network at Stanford

      Google has reached an agreement to build its first ultra-high-speed broadband network near Stanford University, the search giant announced on Thursday.

    • In Defence of ISPs

      Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Britain are having a bad year. First, the Digital Economy Act passed into law requiring ISPs to monitor and pay for part of the illegal downloading prosecuting process. Then, Net Neutrality is gaining steam and if an expected decision is made by the EU shortly it will require ISPs to fundamentally change the way they do business. And now, as of yesterday, ISPs will be forced to retain all of our digital data on behalf of the Coalition Government.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Why Would Attorney General Eric Holder Cite Debunked Stats About ‘Piracy’?

      As part of the latest effort by the US to get China to respect US patent, copyright and trademark laws, it’s apparently sent Attorney General Eric Holder to Asia to make speeches that are blatantly ridiculous. You can read the text of the speech that Holder recently gave in Hong Kong, and try not to gag at the claims he makes that are either blatantly misleading or simply outright falsehoods. The Attorney General is supposed to enforce the law — not lie to protect the interests of a few companies.

      After kicking it off with (yet another) conflation of serious counterfeiting issues (that actually put people’s lives in danger) with file sharing of music, movies and software, he simply parrots the totally debunked BSA’s stats on unauthorized software…

    • Twitter Hands @NFLLockout Handle Over To NFL Union, Despite No Trademark

      Case in point, Elan Arbitsman points us to the news that Twitter simply handed over the username @NFLLockout to the NFL Players Association. Some other folks had registered the name and used it to discuss a possible NFL lockout. After they had done so, the NFLPA had registered the domain name NFLLockout.com, and then sought to get the Twitter handle from the guys. They offered to give them some stuff (apparently a life-sized poster or something). When the guys turned this down, the NFLPA went to Twitter, and Twitter just handed them the username. Even worse, Twitter implied that one of the reasons they did so was because the guys tried to “sell” the username — though they say they didn’t try to sell it, they just listened to offers from the NFLPA.

    • How Intellectual Property Hampers Capitalism (Transcript)

      State ownership of natural resources. Is that capitalist? That’s what we have in America. On state lands—and I used to be an oil and gas lawyer before I went to the dark side—unlike anywhere else in the world that I’m aware of, minerals underneath land are privately owned, as it should be. In every other country, and even outside the states in America, like offshore where the BP accident happened, the MMS, the Minerals Management Service, the federal government basically claims ownership of the minerals under the ground. Then they grant leases and they take a cut. So actually the landlord of the BP disaster was the federal government, but you don’t see them taking the blame for it.

    • List-makers battle to keep football fixture lists protection

      Everyone thought the question of what rights exist in football fixture lists was settled back in 2004 when the European Court of Justice concluded that the then-new database right did not protect football fixture lists. But a judge has just ruled that they are protected. What now?

      As many in the gambling industry will know, this decision did not stop Football Dataco Limited (and others) from sending out demands for payment for use of football fixture lists.

    • Blizzard Sues Starcraft II Cheat Creators Under Dubious Copyright Theory

      Video game company Blizzard often appears to be a study in contrasts. At times, it seems to recognize the changing nature of the technology landscape, embracing scarcities, giving people reasons to buy and even coming out against DRM. But, at the same time, it tried to retroactively ban anonymity in its forums, and has been notoriously litigious, even going after organizations who promote its games.

    • When A Humor Site Understands The Implications Of Abundance Better Than The ‘Experts’…

      A whole bunch of you* sent over the article from humor site Cracked, all about scarcity and abundance in economics. Wait, what? A humor site? Yeah, a humor site. Of course, they don’t officially claim it’s an article about scarcity and abundance in economics (though, they come close). Instead, in true linkbait-fashion it’s called “5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.” Nicely done. Then, it focuses on the idea that the future can be described as FARTS: Forced ARTificial Scarcity.

    • Copyrights

      • Comic Book ‘Pirated’ On 4Chan, Author Joins Discussion… Watches Sales Soar

        The basic details are that comic book artist Steve Lieber discovered that folks at 4chan had scanned in and uploaded every page of his graphic novel Underground. Now, the typical reaction is to freak out, scream “piracy,” whine about “losses” and demand that “something must be done.” But, in a world where obscurity is really a much bigger issue than “piracy,” another option is to actually engage with those fans who liked his work so much that they put in the effort to share it with the world.

      • Pirate Parties Plan to Shoot Torrent Site Into Orbit

        It is almost four years ago that The Pirate Bay announced they wanted to buy the micronation of Sealand, so they could host their site without having to bother about copyright law – an ambitious plan that turned out to be unaffordable. This week, Pirate Parties worldwide started brainstorming about a similarly ambitious plan. Instead of founding their own nation, they want to shoot a torrent site into orbit.

      • Righthaven Loses First Lawsuit; Judge Says Copying Was Fair Use

        We’ve been following, with great interest, the antics of Righthaven, the company funded by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which has been suing all sorts of random websites for copyright infringement after posting articles (or even snippets of articles) on their sites, often with a link back. A variety of different defenses have been raised by those sued, with almost all of them claiming fair use — which seemed like a credible claim to us (though, of course, others have disagreed).

        Now, in a pretty big setback for Righthaven’s entire strategy, the first ruling on this question has been made, and… the judge dismissed the case, claiming that it was fair use. As Eric Goldman notes in the article linked here, it’s a bit surprising that the judge ruled fair use so early in the process: “Because the case so clearly lacked merit, the judge prudently is trying to end the case early rather than letting it drag on for months and years, wasting lots of time and money in the process.”

      • Ad Firm Pays Up To Studios, Promises Not To Work With ‘Pirate’ Sites Any More

        Earlier this year, we wrote about a lawsuit filed by Disney and Warner Bros. against Triton Media, an ad firm that apparently helped place ads on sites that linked to infringing content (hosted elsewhere). We noted that the lawsuit seemed like a huge reach for a variety of reasons. Nothing in the complaint seemed to indicate that what Triton had done had violated copyright law. Instead, it focused on the various sites for which it provided ads. And, even those sites seemed like a stretch on claims of copyright infringement. The sites didn’t host any infringing content. They just allowed people to post links to content (authorized or not) that was hosted elsewhere. To go after the ad provider for a few of those sites, claiming some fourth or fifth party form of contributory infringement seemed pretty crazy.

      • ECJ outlaws private copying levy

        Private copying levies on blank CDs, MP3 players and other digital media are allowed under EU copyright law but only when charged on goods sold to individuals and not those sold to companies, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said.

        Some European countries allow the unauthorised copying of material that a person legitimately owns, as long as that is for private use. The European Copyright Directive says that this is permitted as long as there is ‘fair compensation’ to the copyright holders.

      • Belle And Sebastian’s Business Plan: Open A Taqueria In Glasgow

        I have some ideas that I might have to act upon. One of them is to open a taqueria in Glasgow. There’s no decent Mexican food in Glasgow. And I’ve had this idea for a while, to open a Belle & Sebastian taqueria. You’re laughing, but I’m about to get serious about this. Because this could be the thing that allows me to carry on doing music — to serve a decent taco.

      • MPAA Urges Japan to Adopt “Three-Strikes”

        Motion Picture Association of American President Bob Pisano refers to rising online copyright infringement as an “epidemic,” and that only by disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet can countries “slow the spread of the disease.”

        I always find it fascinating when the MPAA stands before a crowd of bright, intelligent, and critically thinking individuals and proceeds to try and convince them that a wildly successful industry is under immediate threat, and that without decisive and robust action it may be gone forever.

      • Golan Appealed To The Supreme Court; Important Case About The Extent Of Copyright & The Public Domain

        We’ve been covering the Golan case for a while now. It’s an important case in determining the contours of copyright and the public domain. Many details of the case involve a lot of legal specifics, but the general point was to question whether or not taking works out of the public domain, and putting them under copyright violated the First Amendment. Now, there’s a lot more to it than that, and it would take way too much time to get into all the details. But, basically, due to a trade agreement, certain works that had been considered in the public domain in the US, were put back under copyright. Whether or not that, alone, is that big of a deal wasn’t the key point. Realistically, the point of the case was to get a court to finally admit that there were ways in which Congress could change copyright law that violated the First Amendment.

      • RIAA, Chamber Of Commerce: Censorship Via COICA Is Okay, Because Other Countries Censor Too

        While the COICA bill introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch was initially designed to be rushed through Congress, after people pointed out that it pretty clearly violated due process and prohibitions against prior restraint, the Senators realized they needed to hold off for a bit. Everyone has expected that it will be back on the agenda after the midterm elections, and now a bunch of companies and organizations, including the RIAA and the Chamber of Commerce have asked Leahy to move forward with the bill, immediately following the elections.

      • Attorney Engelberg blocks Yale publisher’s use of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe photos

        More than a decade after Joe DiMaggio’s death, his friend and attorney Morris Engelberg is still playing hardball with anyone seeking to exploit the Yankee Clipper’s love for Marilyn Monroe.

      • Gene Simmons Directly Threatens Anonymous With Legal Action, Jail Time

        Gene Simmons, frontman of the band KISS, is hardly impressed with the DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on GeneSimmons.com – and indirectly – SimmonsRecords.com. In fact, according to a news post made to his site yesterday, Gene is threatening legal action against the perpetrators, along with posting their names and pictures online.

      • Understanding the legal sleaze behind the bulk copyright lawsuits
      • English Heritage claims it owns every single image of Stonehenge, ever

        SteveMars sez, “Every photo image library got this by email today. ‘We are sending you an email regarding images of Stonehenge in your fotoLibra website. Please be aware that any images of Stonehenge can not be used for any commercial interest, all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.’ Here is one image library’s response:”…

      • Are F.B.I. Warnings on DVDs Really Necessary?

        Why, why, why is it still necessary for every single DVD that I buy to have the F.B.I. warning at the beginning? Why can’t they just put the warning on the DVD box? Oh wait— they already do. So why, EVERY TIME I want to watch a movie or TV show that I legitimately purchased, do I have to spend 30 seconds being told yet again that, if I choose to copy the DVD, the F.B.I. is going to come after me?

        It’s an odd way of saying, “Thanks for buying this DVD.”

      • Choruss Goes From Vaporware To Nowhere

        Well, well. Back in 2008, we noted that Warner Music had hired Jim Griffin to put together a sort of skunkworks project to create what sounded like a mandatory ISP tax to allow file sharing, which was eventually dubbed Choruss. We say “sounded like,” because (as you will see), any time we tried to describe the project, we started getting angry emails from Griffin about how we were wrong. Later that year, someone sent us a presentation that Jim was pushing on universities, asking them to sign up for a “voluntary blanket license” that would let students share files. Initially, upon seeing the presentation, my problem was the fact that (from the details presented) this did not sound particularly “voluntary” for the students — and it felt like yet another situation where the real stakeholders were being left out of the discussion.

      • Authors Do Not Create Content In A Vacuum… So It’s Too Bad Copyright Often Pretends They Do

        That line: “Authors do not create value in a vacuum,” is a good one, and deserves to be repeated. So much of the debates we have on copyright and related issues seems to center on this belief that they do. In that patent realm, it’s the whole “flash of genius” concept, but it certainly applies in copyright as well.

      • Digital overhaul hatched

        The Associated Press is overseeing the creation of an organization to help newspapers and broadcasters make more money as more people get their news from mobile phones and other wireless devices.

        [...]

        In creating the clearinghouse, the AP is drawing upon research that began in 2007 to establish an enforcement and payment system loosely modeled after the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. ASCAP collects and distributes royalties for more than 390,000 songwriters and others involved in the creation of music.

      • ACTA

        • Article 207 TFEU

          The legal base for the Commission’s DG Trade negotiations of ACTA is Article 207 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

        • Filip Kaczmarek asked the Commission about a digital impact

          Consequently, the Commission can assure the Honourable Member that the EU’s position is that ACTA should not create new requirements for telecommunication operators, such as the obligation to remove Internet access from customers without judicial process or the obligation to monitor the information they transmit.

Clip of the Day

Obtener WEP con ubuntu 9.10 (aircrack-ng)-imagen con comandos en la descripcion


Credit: TinyOgg

10.21.10

Links 21/10/2010: Launchpad Conflict, FossAlliance Debut

Posted in News Roundup at 3:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Intel broaches fresh barrel-o-Linux

    Intel is not just a chip maker, but also a peddler of Linux and VxWorks operating systems for embedded devices thanks to its $884m acquisition last year of Wind River. This week, the semiconductor giant’s Wind River subsidiary rolled out Wind River Linux, which has a Linux kernel that is so fresh that the heat from Linus Torvald’s fingertips can still be felt on its bits.

    Well, almost. Wind River Linux 4 is based on the Linux 2.6.34+ kernel, which is a variant of the kernel created by Wind River that sits between the 2.6.34 kernel that came out in May and the 2.6.35 kernel that Torvalds approved in August. Wind River Linux 4 runs on x86/x64 chips from Intel as well as ARM, Power, and MIPS processors and supports the GNU GCC 4.4 compiler set and GDB 7 source-level debugger and the EGLIBC 2.11 compiler, which is a variant of the above-mentioned GNU C that has been tuned for embedded system and which offers better support for cross-platform compiling.

  • The Ever-changing Face of Dell.com

    I think this is a huge improvement in variety of products and search. It pays to advertise and to do so without annoying the customers.

  • Ballnux

  • Kernel Space

    • What’s new in Linux 2.6.36

      The new kernel version is notable because it hasn’t grown in size – yet it contains hundreds of advancements which will be obvious to end users, who don’t often notice changes in their Linux distribution’s kernel.

      After 80 days of development Linus Torvalds has released Linux version 2.6.36. It got the name “Flesh-Eating Bats with Fangs” with the eight pre-release; Torvalds was inspired by a bat that recently found its way into his house. The new Linux kernel is no larger than its immediate predecessor – a rarity, as over the past few years the kernel sources have grown by several hundred thousand lines of code with every new version released in the main development branch.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Dark Themes for OpenBox

      Funny how time seems to just fly by. Below is a list of themes for OpenBox that I created nearly a year ago and I’ve been meaning to post them on Box-Look.org all this time. The one called “Studio-2″ is the theme that I primarily use on a daily basis, and “Sage” comes in as my second favorite. The other themes are not ones that I use much (if ever…), but perhaps someone might like them.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Here’s The First GNOME 3.0 Development Release

        Back in 2008 it was decided GNOME 2.32 would turn into GNOME 3.0, but earlier this year it was changed to delay GNOME 3.0 to March of 2011 while letting GNOME 2.32 live on. With GNOME 2.32 having arrived last month, it’s now time to get all excited for GNOME 3.0 and this morning the first development release of this desktop has arrived.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Eclipse Fedora Packager: Call for Testers and Contributors
        • Fedora 14 Reflects Evolution of Leading-Edge Open Source

          The stated mission of the Fedora Project is to advance the state of free software. To meet this challenge, Fedora incubates open source technology projects in which anyone in the community can participate. To support this participation, Fedora offers a feature process to alert contributors to new technology, connect them to community test days where they can try out the feature and report issues, and track progress of the technology into the latest release.

    • Debian Family

      • what can Debian learn from its competitors
      • Work Towards The Debian 3.0 Quilt Source Format

        For quite a while now there has been work towards bettering the Debian source package format, in particular with more effective handling of Debian packaging files, and this resulted in a new source format coming about: 3.0 Quilt.

        This new system integrates a patch system into dpkg-source, which ended up being based upon Quilt. Besides the 3.0 Quilt format there is also a 3.0 Native format being worked on that is more similar to the original 1.0 source package format.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • The Performance Impact Of Ubuntu’s Wubi Windows Installer

          Installing Ubuntu via the Windows Wubi installer sure is convenient if you are just thinking about toying with an Ubuntu Linux desktop for the first time, but if you plan to use this Linux desktop on a routine basis or the file-system performance and integrity is of any importance to you, the best path is to just perform an Ubuntu installation to a true disk partition. The disk performance via this disk image on the NTFS file-system was not affected in all benchmarks, like with IOzone, but when it came to running Gzip compression or PostMark there certainly was a slowdown. With SQLite, PostgreSQL, and FS-Mark the Wubi setup was dramatically faster, which does raise concerns over data integrity with some operations likely being carried out a-synchronously or batched. The state of our Wubi installation was also rather ideal with the testing having been done on a clean Microsoft Windows 7 installation where the NTFS file-system was not fragmented, which would further slow down the Ubuntu Wubi-ized installation.

        • Looking forward to UDS for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)

          For some time now, we’ve been gearing up to begin development on Ubuntu 11.04. While some folks have been putting the finishing touches on the 10.10 release, and bootstrapping the infrastructure for 11.04, others have been meeting with Canonical stakeholders, coordinating community brainstorm sessions, and otherwise collecting information about what our priorities should be in the next cycle.

        • Blessed Unity: Ars reviews Ubuntu 10.10

          Ubuntu 10.10 is an incremental improvement that continues to bring Ubuntu into alignment with Canonical’s long-term design vision. The new Unity environment is a particularly striking manifestation of that vision, though it still lacks the maturity it needs in order to make it a truly compelling environment for day-to-day use.

          The solid enhancements to the Software Center and the installation process reflect the efficacy of Canonical’s ongoing efforts to bring competitive usability to the Linux desktop. The Software Center is particularly impressive, and it sets a new standard for usability in package management tools. It’s one of the clear differentiators that sets Ubuntu apart from some of the alternatives.

        • On Launchpad and Mission Control
        • Launchpad…gate?

          Lion is where the interesting part lies, in that one of the new features is named ‘launchpad’ or ‘the launchpad’. Now what does this mean for Launchpad, the web application by Canonical? I don’t know…probably nothing. What I have seen is a lot of people commenting on what Canonical may or may not do.

        • An Ubuntu 10.10 upgrade double-whammy

          Having already previewed the Ubuntu 10.10 beta with good results on more than one system, I felt safe upgrading my primary desktop system from v10.04 to v10.10 once the new version went gold. To my astonishment, neither my keyboard, mouse, nor display were functioning following the upgrade.

        • The secrets to success with Ubuntu OS

          Ubuntu is an impressive operating system and can be incredibly rewarding once you’re comfortable using it. People keep asking me for suggestions on how to get started with this OS so I’ve decided to write up my suggestions, which will hopefully ease a few more people towards adoption.

        • One week, three distributions (Day 4: Ubuntu 10.10)

          This release of Ubuntu is a solid one and deserves much praise. While I could give or take on some of the default included software, but then again who couldn’t, I do think that this release has an overall polish that simply hasn’t been as strong in previous releases. This is what Ubuntu 10.04 should have been from the start and makes me look forward to what is still yet to come.

        • 5 Tools And Tips For A Sexier Ubuntu Interface

          Linux is probably the most customizable of all mainstream operating systems. There’s an incredible amount of options, tools, themes and steps you can take to make the time you spend in the company of your PC more aesthetically pleasing.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Android

        • F-Droid Repository Alpha

          Following on from the earlier post (read first if you don’t know what this is about), you can now try an alpha release of the software. There’s a lot of planned functionality still missing, but it’s fully functional and useful.

        • Winamp for Android is here, and it rocks

          Winamp is an immensely popular and widespread Windows music player that was released by Justin Frankel in 1997. It was one of the first great MP3 players for Microsoft’s OS, and I’ve personally used it devotedly ever since its release. Yesterday, Winamp dropped an official Android app in the Market – and it’s good. In fact, after trying the mobile version for a while, I’m pretty sure Winamp will be my only music player for Android, as well as for my desktop.

        • Winamp for Android: Now in Beta

    • Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • FossAlliance is born: More than expertise, better than a network

    In the midst of the announcements and the media storm surrounding the Document Foundation, I forgot to elaborate on a quite different type of news : The birth of FossAlliance. What’s FossAlliance ?
    FossAlliance is a strategic partnership between several consultancies and practitioners in the fields of Free & Open Source Software and Open Standards. This alliance allows each of our customers to benefit from the range of expertise of the entire network, and not just the one from one company.

  • FossAlliance is landing!

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Bringing another Chrome release to you, right on time

      Not long ago, we mentioned that we’d be releasing a new stable version of Google Chrome approximately every six weeks to get bug fixes, improvements, and new features in the hands of our users quickly in the spirit of speedy innovation. With that in mind, we’re happy to bring you a new stable version of Google Chrome today.

  • Oracle/LibreOffice

    • Oracle kicks LibreOffice supporters out of OpenOffice

      Of course, this is all a piece of Oracle’s “my way or the highway” approach to all the open-source programs it inherited from Sun. Oracle may support open source in general, but it’s doing a lousy job of doing what’s best for the its own open-source programs.

    • Libre Office Talk in the University of Limerick
    • Oracle, OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice

      There has been a lot of commentary in recent days about the OpenOffice.org community council decision to ask people who have aligned themselves with The Document Foundation (TDF) to resign their seats on the council. So, of course, what we need is a little bit more commentary.

      First, when reading the minutes, it’s worth noting that this was not a voted decision. At 21:50, Louis Suarez-Potts proposed “that the TDF members of the CC consider the points those of us who have not joined TDF have made about conflict of interest and confusion [and] resign their offices, so as to remove the apparent conflict of interest their current representational roles produce”. He then proposed a deadline of Tuesday “to deal with this” – by emergency meeting of the council. So there was no decision to expel anyone, Louis made a proposal which did not obtain a consensus decision. That said, reading the minutes, there is clear alignment between supporters of TDF on one side and the rest of the council on the other side. And “the rest of the council” is Louis Suarez-Potts, Andreas Bartel, Eike Rathke, Juergen Schmidt, Matthias Huetsch and Martin Hollmichel on behalf of Stefan Taxhet – all Oracle employees.

  • Government

    • Liberals To Launch Major Open Government Policy Initiative

      The open government/open data commitment is particularly noteworthy since it will apparently include a direction to all federal departments and agencies to adopt an open government principle where the default position is to provide information to the public. The plans for access to information would also be enormously helpful, including restoring the CAIRS database and following the recent UK lead by making all documents released under ATI available online.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Why Transiki?

        What is the basic idea? Well, transit data is in 1,000 weird proprietary formats held by 1,000 different organizations with about 1,000 different attitudes to opening it up. And that’s very boring. So above that there exists a tier of companies who’ll harmonize it and sell it to you along with stacks of software for doing interesting things with it. Like route across it.

        And as you’ve seen, the data is imperfect (like maps), badly licensed (like maps) and you’re not able to change it (like maps).

        Google made at least some headway here by throwing out GTFS, a format for them to suck in your transit data. It’s kind of a funny format, but that’s a side issue. Like MapMaker, Google’s copy of openstreetmap, Google transit is essentially closed in all meaningful senses. You can’t pull the data out, you can’t build your own services. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to have multiple companies building stacks out there each slurping up, harmonizing and then serving out all that data.

Leftovers

  • Media

    • Virginia school AP History class bans curiousity, independent study, Internet

      That was not all. Students could not use anything they found on the Internet. They were not permitted even to discuss their assignments with friends, classmates, neighbors, parents, relatives or siblings.

    • Federal scientists go public in face of restrictive media rules

      The union that represents federal government scientists has created a website – PublicScience.ca – to give a voice to the work of its members.

      The move comes weeks after it was revealed that new restrictive rules have been placed on scientists at the Natural Resources department requiring them to clear a number of hoops, including approval from the minister’s director of communications, before they may speak with the press about their work.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Bill Clinton ‘lost vital White House nuclear codes’

      For several months during Bill Clinton’s administration, a former top military officer says the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing the codes for a nuclear attack.

    • Is it time to take Anonymous seriously?

      Anyone who has ever heard me speak about Internet regulation will know of my barely contained scepticism with regards to Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, and all that it represents. In fact, the Declaration speaks of a more innocent time in Internet history, and it is usually considered to be one of the best-known examples of cyber-libertarianism.

    • Every email and website to be stored

      It will allow security services and the police to spy on the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.

      Moves to make every communications provider store details for at least a year will be unveiled later this year sparking fresh fears over a return of the surveillance state.

    • Eight Epic Failures of Regulating Cryptography

      As noted in late September, the FBI is on a charm offensive, seeking to ease its ability to spy on Americans by expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • New study puts the ‘hell’ in Hell and High Water

      Must-read NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path

    • 8 Most Overlooked Endangered Species Candidates

      Think of endangered species, and you probably think of Florida panthers or blue whales or California golden condors — big, charismatic animals that easily move the heart.

      But endangered species can be small, odd and unappealing, too. These animals are no less special; they’re still one-of-a kind works of evolutionary art, sculpted over millions of years.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Resumption of the crypto wars?

      The Telegraph and Guardian reported yesterday that the government plans to install deep packet inspection kit at ISPs, a move considered and then apparently rejected by the previous government (our Database State report last year found their Interception Modernisation Programme to be almost certainly illegal). An article in the New York Times on comparable FBI/NSA proposals makes you wonder whether policy is being coordinated between Britain and America.

    • Facebook Should Give Up on Privacy

      After watching Facebook make so many missteps when it comes to privacy over the past couple of years, including how some leading game developers passed along user data to marketers, I’ve come to the conclusion it should just throw in the towel.

      Forget about tweaking privacy settings so they’re easier to control, manipulate, configure or understand. Forget about having to worry if new services make more personal data public so that search engines can discover it so Facebook can serve up more pages to display more ads. Forget privacy settings altogether.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Amazon app store for Android welcomes DRM

      In 2007, Amazon announced their music store. It would, they promised, deliver DRM-free music to U.S. Amazon users. And they did just that. With much fanfare, they rolled out Amazon MP3, touting music downloads for any device. On their website, they explain what’s special about their music sales. “DRM-free means that the MP3 files you purchase from Amazon.com do not contain any software that will restrict your use of the file.”

    • Born digital

      Another issue is ensuring that the data is stored in a format that makes it available in centuries to come. Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all. The IIPC has set a single format, making it more likely that future historians will be able to find a machine to read the data. But a single solution cannot capture all content. Web publishers increasingly serve up content-rich pages based on complex data sets. Audio and video programmes based on proprietary formats such as Windows Media Player are another challenge. What happens if Microsoft is bankrupt and forgotten in 2210?

    • Net Neutrality – Comments to the FCC

      The FCC recently asked for additional comments in its ongoing proceeding regarding Open Internet Principles. In particular, the FCC sought specific input on whether the openness principles should apply to both wireline and wireless networks.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • The Rise Of A New Intellectual Property Category, Ripe For Trolling: Publicity Rights

      Recently, we’ve been highlighting more and more publicity rights lawsuits, because they’re becoming quite popular these days. Eriq Gardner has an excellent, long and detailed article all about publicity rights, going over the history of it: which involved some common law/case law rulings, and now (more and more) is being driven by state laws (which are often pushed and passed by the industries who are cashing in on these claims). Basically, these are a form of “intellectual property rights” on almost any aspect of a person — their likeness, appearance, voice, mannerisms, gestures, etc. — used for “commercial use,” (which we’ve noted recently is such an ambiguous term these days).

    • What’s in a Name?

      Few people know more than Indiana attorney Jonathan Faber about the actual worth of being famous these days. He’s certainly been committed to the field work. He’s played guitar in the living room of rock ’n’ roll legend Chuck Berry, dodged paparazzi to meet with representatives of Princess Diana’s estate, and given a presentation to an audience of four- and five-star generals after the U.S. military received an inquiry about putting the image of Gen. George S. Patton in a commercial.

      Faber, whose office is in Shelbyville, outside of Indianapolis, has been involved in making licensing deals on behalf of celebrity clients and their estates that have paved the way to many of the most memorable advertisements in recent years.

      He did the licensing work that led to a Lipton Iced Tea commercial featuring an animated Reggie Jackson, a Johns Hopkins spot with a reanimated Ella Fitzgerald (through existing footage and digital alteration) performing with a modern-day jazz band, and a Chevrolet Silverado commercial featuring Rosa Parks.

      He has also stepped in when celebrity images are used without permission. Faber used to send out a legal warning when someone used images of Marilyn Monroe or James Dean without the permission of their estates. On occasion, he’s also asked to testify as an expert witness in cases where a defendant, usually a company, has used a celebrity in some manner—often in a promotional campaign—and the plaintiff is attempting to collect damages. Faber will give the jury a dollar figure.

    • Sarkozy Exports Repressive Internet

      Sarkozy is “pirating” an international conference on online freedom of expression organized by French minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner. Sarkozy is trying to use the conference as a showcase to promote the French repressive schemes and to avoid turning it into a strong statement that online freedom of expression is a condition of democracy. This instrumentalisation of French diplomacy is a coarse attempt to export approaches detrimental to fundamental freedoms, thus despising both republican values and French constitutional jurisprudence2.

    • Understanding IP: An Interview with Stephan Kinsella

      Mises said something I’ve always loved. (Everyone focuses on a few of his statements that other people don’t see, because he has so many great aphorisms and things.) He pointed out that in his view economics is purely deductive reasoning from a priori categories. Plus, then you explicitly introduce certain assumptions to make it interesting. [See my post Mises: Keep It Interesting.] “Interesting” was something I always focused on. So, in other words, we could talk hypothetically about a barter society forever, but it won’t get us that far. So let’s introduce the assumption that there is money in society. It’s not a priori that there is money, but there could be money and, if there is, then certain things follow from it.

      I think that likewise in libertarian theory certain things become interesting at a certain point. In the past, as you mentioned in your talk yesterday here at the Supporters’ Summit, it was not as easy as it is now to replicate information. There was sort of a tie in previous times between a good that was produced, like a book, and the information in it. The information in the book was in the physical copy of the book, so you could easily find a way to sell that. Now, with information being so easy to copy —

      And, of course, as Cory Doctorow mentions in one of his articles and speeches, do we think we are going to get to a point where it is going to get harder to copy and to spread information? No, it’s only going to get easier.

      These things have made people confront the issue of the morality and the politics of sharing information.

    • Copyrights

      • Jammie Thomas’ third P2P trial looms; RIAA complains about cost

        The recording industry has deep pockets, but even RIAA largesse has its limits. Case in point: the Jammie Thomas-Rasset peer-to-peer trial in Minnesota, the first of the file-sharing cases to make it all the way to a verdict. In two weeks, Thomas-Rasset will have an extraordinary third trial, and the recording industry is sick of the expenses it’s ringing up to prosecute someone who (let’s face it) is just never going to cough up much money.

      • Why I am not ashamed of Emmanuel Nimley

        And then he did a silly thing. Something he shouldn’t have done, but was easy to do with a gadget he already had in his pocket. After paying for a cinema ticket and taking his seat in the auditorium, Emmanuel Nimley held up his mobile phone and videoed the movie.

      • ACTA

        • De Gucht 2nd Plenary intervention on ACTA

          Observations

          1. Border control: A known distraction, the issue of individual border searches plays a minor role in the criticism of ACTA. Instead of answering the questions of MEPs De Gucht focusses on border searches. Contrary to what he claims MEPs didn’t express particular interest in the issue.
          2. Does not require: The statement is deceptive. While ACTA does not require the contracting parties to enact these mesaures it leaves them the opportunity to opt-out and recognises the right of other parties to carry out such border searches. Read the agreed text. There are different options how to word an exclusion of border searches and the contracting parties chose the worst variant: “Parties may exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travelers’ personal luggage.”
          3. The provisions far go beyond the current EU regime. In the case of penal sanctions there is no existing EU acquis and the Commission recently pulled her proposal for an Criminal IPR Enforcement directive due to lack of consensus from EU member states.
          4. As indicated above there are other, more common ways to word an exclusion e.g. by not making such cases subject to the agreement.
          5. Of course that is not true. The most obvious violation of the acquis is the inclusion of penal sanctions.
          6. De Gucht disputes the obvious, that despite at least four requests from the plenary the Commission was unwilling to adhere to Art 15 TFUE openness requirements, and it did hide between an confidentiality agreement with third nations (for which no parliament approval was sought) and the “international relations” exemption of Art 4 1049/2001/EC
          7. The ombudsman answered to a complaint by the FFII.
          8. De Gucht defends his lack of transparency by arrogance without any merits.
          9. In other words, the final version of ACTA is no final text.
          10. With the Art 207 procedure (formerly 133 procedure) the Council formally authorises negotiations but even the authorisation text is prepared by the Commission. The Art 207 is a procedure for international trade agreements (tariffs&quota), not international legislation.
          11. De Gucht misinforms Parliament about the Acquis. His statement “The acquis communautaire is about substantive law and we are not changing that” is blatantly false. The Acquis comprises adopted EU level substantive and enforcement laws.
          12. Improvement of “legal standards” is no objective of trade agreement. The formal objective underlying the WTO TRIPs precedent was not to improve international legal standards but reduce regulatory, non-tarriff trade barriers.
          13. The Commissioner does not tell the truth. For instance there is no Acquis for penal sanctions and such penal sanctions, for which the EU has formal competence, would be adopted according to the “ordinary legislative” process.
          14. The Commissioner refers to existing EU laws which differ from the ACTA negotiation results.
          15. It is not upon a Commissioner to criticize Parliament. The wording “nebulous liberty” demonstrates the degree of arrogance and hypocrisy. The MEP Schaake asked de Gucht for an “impact assessment” on fundamental rights.

Clip of the Day

Pandora – Quick Overview


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 21/10/2010: Tinycore 3.2, WebOS 2.0

Posted in News Roundup at 7:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Member of largest supermarket chain in Italy hosts Linux presentation

    This is just what will happen next Saturday in Bologna, Italy.

    The Linux Day is the largest Italian event for the promotion of Linux and Free Software in General (as you may read in my reports on the 2005 and 2006 editions). This year it will consists of more than 130 simultaneous events all across the country. Coop is “a system of Italian consumers’ cooperatives which operates the largest supermarket chain in Italy” (from Wikipedia).

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • Joyent adds Windows, Linux support

      The move may put Joyent in direct competition with market leaders like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, which also support applications built on Windows and Linux. But customers that are primarily looking for a service that hosts Web applications will find that Joyent is less expensive because of its SmartOS, Ludwig said. Also, Joyent has optimized its offering for Web applications so can better serve customers looking to host Web apps, he said.

  • Kernel Space

    • The VMFS-3 Virtual Blockade

      Filesystem block size rarely enters the sparkling dialog at your noontime geekfest where movie one-liners and song lyrics replace actual conversation but today is different. The ticking of thumbs halts in mid-text when someone at the table opens up an intellectual volley with, “Have you ever seen the error that there isn’t enough space on the filesystem for the selected operation in Virtual Center?” The puzzled faces stare back as if someone had just announced that iPads are on sale for half price. But, before you, or they, have a chance to react to this obviously simple problem of insufficient disk space, the problem isn’t insufficient disk space.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Looks like Clementine might just win the MVP on my Desktop

        For as long as I can remember my number one music player on Linux (or in fact anywhere) has been amarok. Although, I took a little break from it during its shaky transition from 1.4 to 2.x. I came back when things got stable enough and I have not looked back ever since. Well, until recently when rave of a certain fork of Amarok 1.4 called Clementine started to proof too much to ignore. Couple of times I previously tried Clementine I went back to amarok like 5 minutes later. I found it (then) very unstable, and lacked many of amarok features like lyrics fetching etc.

  • Distributions

    • Applying for Use of the Open Xtreemos Test Bed and Requirements

      The XtreemOS partners are pleased to provide access to their open test bed for interested developers and users. It is a distributed test bed spread across several participating institutions.

    • New Releases

    • Debian Family

      • Trying Debian for ARM on QEMU

        Many Linux developers in these years are working on porting Linux software on ARM architectures. Debian in particular offers the full distribution to be installed on supported devices, and I wanted to try it out. There are already images prepared for the Versatile platform (thanks to Aurélien Jarno), and with them it is possible to try Debian for ARM without owning an ARM platform, using QEMU.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Maverick Meerkat, aka Ubuntu 10.10 Review

          I consider the latest version of Ubuntu to be the best version ever. The new font makes it cooler than any other operating system. It is extremely secure, resource and cost effective. It is updated every six months thus keeping my machine updated with latest technologies. What else should I ask for?

        • Ubuntu One adds audio streaming

          Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu Linux operating system is quickly moving from being a niche player in the market to an environment which caters for a broad range of users.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Fourth-gen Wind River Linux adds multi-team tools

      Wind River announced the fourth-generation of its commercial embedded Linux distribution, adding 95 packages. Based on Linux 2.6.34+ kernel, Wind River Linux 4 offers GCC 4.4, EGLIBC 2.11, and GDB 7 cross-compiling toolchains, and provides multiple virtualization options, PREEMPT RT real-time Linux, multi-team collaboration features, a new native x86 build environment, and support for the upcoming CGL 5.0, says the company.

    • Wind River Advances Embedded Linux

      Intel’s Wind River software division is out this week with a new embedded Linux release that adds new carrier grade and workflow capabilities to the platform.

      Wind River entered the Linux space in 2004 as an optional alternative embedded operating system to its own VxWorks embedded system. With Wind River Linux 4.0, the company is building on some of its past systems by extending real-time Linux capabilities. One such real-time capability comes in the form of the preempt_rt Linux kernel.

    • Phones

      • HP Palm officially announces webOS 2.0

        HP has officially announced the launch of version 2.0 of its webOS mobile operating system, considered to be Palm’s response to Apple’s iOS 4 and Google’s Android 2.2. The latest version of the proprietary-but-Linux-based mobile OS features built-in support for Adobe Flash 10.1 for viewing web content in the included browser and improved multi-tasking support, which the company calls “true multitasking”. Users can easily switch between open applications without needing to close current apps by viewing running programs using a “card stacks” view that displays open apps in the order they were last used.

      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • MeeGo devices in 2011

          There was a lot of excitement when Intel and Nokia joined forces earlier this year to create MeeGo, a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. The blending of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin operating systems had all the signs of being a big player in the mobile market, not only because of the backing of two industry heavyweights but also because the open nature of the OS opened up opportunities.

      • Android

        • Rock-a-droid

          Your editor’s iRiver H340 music player attracts stares in the crowded confines of the economy class cabin; it is rather larger than many newer, more capable devices, contains a rotating disk drive, and looks like it should have a smokestack as well. But your editor has continued to nurse this gadget for a simple reason: it is no longer possible to buy anything else like it. The device is open, has a reasonable storage capacity, and is able to run Rockbox. It is, thus, not just running free software; it is far more functional and usable than any other music player your editor has ever encountered. These are not advantages to be given up lightly.

        • Android 3.0 said to offer video chat, Google TV support

          Android 3.0 (“Gingerbread”) will feature video chat support, SIP support for Google Voice on Android devices, and a major graphical redesign, says an industry report. Due this fall, Gingerbread will also provide support for Google TV and its “Youtube Leanback” feature, says the story.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Clouds for Google Chrome 8

      Google this week rolled out the first development versions of Chrome 8, the latest vein of its development browser. The primary focus for Chrome 8 is on cloud-based services, probably with Google’s Chrome OS imminent release in mind.

    • New Google Chrome For Ubuntu

      Google has released the latest version of its web browser Google Chrome. The version 7.0.517.41 has been released to the stable and beta channels for Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuse, Windows and Mac.

      The version mainly fixes hundreds of bugs and inlcudes an updated HTML5 parser. Google releases a new stable version of Google Chrome approximately every six weeks to get bug fixes, improvements, and new features.

    • Mozilla

      • Use Mozilla Prism to add web apps to your desktop

        Mozilla Prism lets you run web apps in their own desktop window allowing a certain degree of freedom compared to running the app in a web browser, while restricting crashes to the app’s window. Follow Sukrit’s step-by-step guide to find out just how easy it is…

  • Databases

    • Ingres Announces Database 10

      Ingres has announced the availability of Ingres Database 10, the latest version of the company’s flagship open source database product.

  • Oracle

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • 2286 public websites advertise non-free software

      During Free Software Foundation Europe’s pdfreaders.org campaign, Free Software activists from 41 countries have reported 2286 public sector institutions which advertise non-free PDF readers on their websites. FSFE will now contact these institutions, trying to get as many advertisements for non-free PDF readers as possible removed before the end of the year. Progress will be documented on the list of reported institutions.

  • Project Releases

  • Programming

    • “Split the JCP” proposal

      Stephen Colebourne has proposed that Oracle split the Java Community Process into core and ecosystem organisations with Oracle retaining control of the core parts of Java while the surrounding JSR (Java Specification Requests) are handled by a newly independent body.

Leftovers

  • Inside ThinkGeek, Where Mythical Meat Can Make Millions

    It’s a weighty question for such a silly product, but it illustrates perfectly why ThinkGeek has become so popular. The company makes toys for adults, novelties designed to appeal to both your inner child and your inner grad student. These dorks have been retrofitting classic novelty items with a veneer of obsessive dorkiness for more than a decade, lavishing so much care and imagination and wit on their products that they sometimes seem more like conceptual art than cubicle kitsch.

  • State CIOs Head For The Exits

  • Science

    • China’s Rare-Earth Monopoly

      For three weeks, China has blocked shipments of rare-earth minerals to Japan, a move that has boosted the urgency of efforts to break Beijing’s control of these minerals. China now produces nearly all of the world’s supply of rare earths, which are crucial for a wide range of technologies, including hard drives, solar panels, and motors for hybrid vehicles.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • UnitedHealth’s Big Announcement: Just What the Doctor Ordered?

      United’s announcement is cause for joy because maybe, just maybe, the nation’s state insurance commissioners — whom Congress gave the responsibility of determining how major parts of the new law will be implemented — will finally realize that they don’t need to give the big insurers the truck-sized loopholes they have been lobbying so hard for over the past several weeks.

  • Security

    • Top 10 Worst Captchas
    • Root privileges through vulnerability in GNU C loader
    • Chertoff advocates cyber Cold War

      Governments should formulate a doctrine to stave off cyberattacks similar to the Cold War-era principle of nuclear deterrence, according to former US Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff.

      ‘Rules of the road’ for dealing with cyberattacks should include agreed principles on how to react to sustained cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure, Chertoff told a press conference at RSA Conference Europe on Thursday. “[President Eisenhower's workshopping exercise] Project Solarium gave us the theory of deterrence, where rules of the road were clearly understood,” he said. “An attack on the US or its allies with a nuclear weapon would be responded to with overwhelming force.”

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • US pilot refused permission to board plane after he declines to be body scanned

      We reproduce here in full the account of Michael Roberts, an American pilot whose life and career has seemingly been ruined by his principled opposition to body scanners.

    • Genital prints?

      Speaking in a live interview on France’s LCI television channel, Hortefeux confused the terms for fingerprints (“empreintes digitales”) with that for “genital prints” (“empreintes genitales”).

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Automakers push ahead on plug-ins despite unknowns

      People in the auto industry are opening up a new chapter in its history by transitioning to electric vehicles but they’re writing the book as they go along.

      The technology to make fun-to-drive, well connected plug-in vehicles is already here. Now, auto and utility companies are grappling with how to make these electric vehicles a commercial success, speakers at the Business of Plugging In conference said here today.

  • Finance

    • Ask Your Bank to Produce the Note!

      Every day the financial crisis continues to hit home for families being foreclosed upon. Last month, there were 347,420 foreclosure filings across America, and the rate shows no signs of slowing. The unemployment rate is now driving these tragic foreclosures and 11 million Americans are at risk of losing their homes.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Glenn Beck Not A Fan Of Fair Use; Claims US Gov’t Paying Remixers To Create Anti-Beck Propaganda

      One of the good things about intellectual property issues is that it’s really a non-partisan debate. While, in practicality, this seems to mean that both of the major political parties support bad copyright and patent law, at the very least, it leaves ridiculous political rhetoric out of the debates on things like copyright. But, sometimes, weird things happen. Such as when Glenn Beck seems to think that “fair use” is a choice of some sort. Apparently, in political circles, there was a lot of attention paid recently to a video mashup showing Donald Duck being influenced by Glenn Beck — created by Jonathan McIntosh, who I saw speak earlier this year at the first Fair Use Day in DC. The video, which I had not seen until this, apparently made the rounds in political circles.

    • A Lot of Corporate Money, and Very Little Honesty

      The latest demonstration of the impact that Citizens United is having on this election season is a $50 million corporate-funded ad blitz to support Republican House congressional candidates. While some Republican leaders are finally acknowledging the role of anonymous corporate money in buying influence, the ads funded by those dollars remain misleading.

    • Chamber Ads Distort Truth, Contain Falsehoods

      Ads being run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce contain demonstrably false distortions of truth and statements that fact-checkers have repeatedly exposed as false. The Chamber’s “cookie-cutter” ads running across the U.S. target numerous Democratic representatives and candidates and claim the Democrats in question supported “gutting Medicare by $500 billion,” a reference to their support for the health reform bill.

    • Many Chamber ads attacking House Dems contain debunked falsehoods, distortions
    • Fox News’ Five-Minute Terrorist Attack (VIDEO)

      In the space of about five minutes this morning, Fox News turned a shutdown of the Brooklyn Bridge over a suspicious flashlight into an international terrorist threat before dismissing the whole thing like it never happened. It’s a classic example of Fox News fear-mongering — in this case, based on Fox’s own fear-mongery “scoop” that’s been a central narrative of the network’s broadcast day.

    • Fox News’ Fear Mongering

      Fox News Channel turned a brief investigation of a flashlight found on the Brooklyn Bridge into a potential terrorist attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and then later dismissed the whole affair as though it didn’t happen.

    • Ad Urging Latinos Not to Vote Angers Democrats

      The Nevada Democratic Party is lashing out at a conservative Hispanic group over an ad the group is launching that urges Latinos — a critical Democratic voting bloc in the state — to stay home on Election Day.

    • Anonymous Funds and The Founding Fathers

      The 2010 midterm elections have been marked not only by unprecedented amounts of anonymous corporate spending, but also piously patriotic defenses of these potentially corrupting expenditures. What would the Constitution’s framers have really thought about unlimited amounts of anonymous corporate dollars influencing American elections?

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • More Questions for Facebook

      Two House members asked Facebook Inc. for more details about the way applications on the social network handle user information, following revelations of new privacy concerns.

    • Facebook Takes App Privacy Breaches in Stride

      Facebook doesn’t seem very disconcerted that its top 10 apps are among those reportedly sharing user IDs with advertisers in clear violation of its privacy policies. The sharing was inadvertent, suggested engineer Mike Vernal, and the press reports exaggerated its importance. Users may be steamed about the breaches and the company’s yawning response, but they’re not likely to do anything other than complain.

    • New Facebook privacy breach involves apps leaking user data

      Results of a Wall Street Journal investigation published today show that many of the most popular Facebook applications have been transmitting personally identifying information—in some cases, even your friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.

    • In resurrecting the Intercept Modernisation Programme, the Government breaks a clear, basic and fundamental promise
    • Applying for Citizenship? U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Wants to Be Your “Friend”

      EFF recently received new documents as a result of our FOIA lawsuit on social network surveillance, filed with the help of UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Clinic, that reveal two ways the government has been tracking people online: surveillance of social networks to investigate citizenship petitions and the Department of Homeland Security’s use of a “Social Networking Monitoring Center” to collect and analyze online public communication during President Obama’s inauguration. This is the first of two posts describing these documents and some of their implications. (Read part one.)

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Net neutrality legislation in the US stalls – for now

      So, what does this all mean for the Net Neutrality debate in the US? No matter how you view each and every stakeholder and their issue, negotiations are stalled and nothing will be happening before the November 2nd elections. Chances are that the FCC will make a declaration or ruling during either their November or December meeting, but with a new Congress coming in January it is likely that nothing will be done in great detail on this issue over the next several years. All of this means that we here in the UK will have a little more breathing room on this issue before our American cousins make a definitive decision. Hopefully, the UK can lead its own debate before the US has any impact on the issue.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • NY Times Sends Cease & Desist Letter To Kachingle For Trying To Show Them Alternatives To Paywalls

        Back in August, we wrote about two companies Flattr and Kachingle that were trying to create a very easy to use form of micropayments, that do away with the mental transaction costs, as a method of getting people to voluntarily support content they enjoy monetarily. Since then we’ve been experimenting with Flattr (you can see the widget to the left) and it’s been quite interesting, especially since Flattr finally opened its doors to anyone, rather than being invite only, as it was when we first started. We’ll have a more complete report about our Flattr experiment sometime soon…

        That said, Flattr’s competitor, Kachingle (which is similar, but with a few key differences) recently put together an amusing publicity stunt. Knowing that the NY Times paywall is fast approaching, it put together a “Stop the Paywall!” campaign for Kachingle uses, letting them designate which NY Times’ columnists they want a piece of their monthly contributions to go to.

      • French ISP Relents, Will Send “Three-Strikes” After All

        Free bows to govt decree, and will begin sending out “three-strikes” email warnings to its customers on the govt’s behalf sometime later today.

        Last week I first mentioned how the French ISP Free was refusing to submit electronic “three-strikes” warning letters to its customers on the govt’s behalf as part of the “Creation and Internet” law, the controversial “three-strikes” measure to fight P2P that was formally passed last September. It cited Article L331-25 of the Code of Intellectual Property which says that warning letters shall be submitted by the Commission for the Protection of Rights “under its seal and on its behalf, electronically and “through” ISPs.

      • Should Copyright be Treated Like Property?

        Many critics of current copyright doctrine believe its problems stem largely from an infusion of “property talk” into policy discussions. William Patry writes in Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, “By describing copyright as a private property right, proponents of the description hope to get policy makers and courts to believe that only private, and not public rights are implicated.”1 Later, he adds, “The effort to describe copyright as property is intended to invoke ancient entitlement to powerful rights of exclusion, rights granted automatically as a member of the oldest families.”2

      • Victory Records Provides Worst Argument For Anti-Piracy

        Victory Records hired Gilbert Gottfried of all people to star in an anti-piracy PSA, which you can see above. I think Gilbert Gottfried is hilarious, and he did make me chuckle a bit in this video. The problem that I have with this video is that old Gilby’s argument is that you shouldn’t steal because you are taking money from the artists.

Clip of the Day

Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04 Beta 2 19/04/2010


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 21/10/2010: Linux 2.6.36 is Out, Red Hat’s CEO Says Software Vendor Model is Broken

Posted in News Roundup at 3:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Linux Outlaws 170 – Ask Jez

      In this very special episode we interview LO community member, hacker, tinkerer and GIMP-master Jezra Lickter about the projects he does, facial hair and all kinds of random shit. It’s an epic interview!

  • Kernel Space

    • How Linux Benchmarking Will Change With Iveland & OpenBenchmarking.org

      Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 (codenamed “Iveland”) has been under heavy development for more than a month and there is still at least three more months left of work before this major release will be christened. Today though it is time to publicly share the first details (aside from those that learned about it in the Augustiner tent at Oktoberfest) for one of the new components to be making up a critical piece of the Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 platform: OpenBenchmarking.org.

    • The Linux 2.6.36 Kernel Is Now Out There

      The Linux 2.6.36 kernel is now out there on the Internet. After an unexpected delay and some other slowdowns in the 2.6.36 development cycle, Linus tagged the 2.6.36 kernel this afternoon.

      The Linux 2.6.36 kernel features Fanotiy (a new file notification interface), kernel debuging with KMS support, improved Intel power management for Core i3/i5 CPUs, AppArmor integration, and many other features. A more exhaustive list can be found at KernelNewbies.org.

    • The 2.6.36 kernel is out

      Linus has released the 2.6.36 kernel with only a small number of changes since the 2.6.36-rc8 prepatch. Headline features in this release include the AppArmor security module, the LIRC infrared controller driver subsystem, and the new Tile architecture. The fanotify notification mechanism for anti-malware applications was disabled at the last minute due to ABI concerns. See the KernelNewbies 2.6.36 page for lots of information.

    • At last a cheap Negative film scanner which works with Linux

      I’ve done the research and finally I found a negative film scanner which works with gnu/Linux (ubuntu). Its the Maplins Film and Slide Digital Scanner. It works exactly how I would expect it to. You scan the slides into the memory of the machine or even on to a SD card then you connect the whole device to a pc via usb port to transfer the images out of the device.

      [...]

      The device is great…

    • Graphics Stack

      • Here’s Another Intel Poulsbo Linux Driver…

        Even with MeeGo, Intel’s mobile Linux OS formed out of marrying Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo, the Poulsbo support still sucks with Intel not even being allowed to ship their own driver and they even admitting there are too many Poulsbo drivers with none of them being that good. The situation with Intel’s newer Moorestown GMA 600 graphics is the same. While there’s already enough incomplete Poulsbo Linux drivers out there, another one is available today.

      • [ANNOUNCE] pixman release candidate 0.19.6 is now available

        A new pixman release 0.19.6 is now available. This is a release candidate for a stable 0.20.0 release.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Will KPresenter and Gnumeric Please Come Forward?

      So what does KPresenter have to do with all this? Well, it’s just that in my experience, KPresenter does a whole lot better in terms of usability and ability to create high-quality presentations than either OpenOffice.org Impress or Microsoft Office Powerpoint. That’s because the whole KOffice suite is geared towards desktop publishing as opposed to traditional document creation.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Use KDE Activities to Create Different Desktops for Work and Personal Use

        Short of fully creating a new profile, there is no easy way to create a completely different desktop experience using most desktop environments. If you use KDE, you can easily create one setup for work, and one setup for personal use.

        This is how I setup two desktop environments on my Ubuntu 10.10 computer (with KDE 4.5.1), using Activities.

      • Advanced KDE Administration

        For general use, it is sufficient to configure KDE using the options provided in System Settings and in individual application settings. Nevertheless, to unlock the full power of KDE, you should learn some of the system administration tools that it provides.

  • Distributions

    • SELinux, De-mystified

      Are you in a habit of disabling SELinux, because it seems to break things? That seems to be the first reaction, as the first impression of SELinux is that it’s just a troublemaker that stops tasks and causes access denied errors. However, recently I had the pleasure of digging in to SELinux to see just what it is all about. After figuring out how it works, I am making sure it’s enabled on systems in the future. Why? Because it’s an extra layer of security, and when you look at it, SELinux is actually a very smart way to prohibit attacks on a Linux system, mainly servers. If a system is compromised, SELinux greatly limits the damage that can be done.

    • Extinct Linux Distros…Is GNU/Linux Headed to Extinction?

      As I was checking about 10 Linux Distros that are now gone, I noticed a pattern (at least on the ones I checked…there are many more that have been discontinued): Most of them had price tags attached. With the exception of Feather Linux (United Kingdom), Arabbix (United Arab Emirates), and Linux Loco (Argentina), the other discontinued Linux distros I happened to check had prices that went from $14 (Spanish Aslinux) to $100 (Canadian Xandros).

    • Donate Your Bandwidth to Support Ubuntu Downloads

      To tap into BitTorrent’s magic, first download a BitTorrent client program to your computer. The one I recommend is called Transmission, available as a free download for Linux, Mac, and Windows computers. You’ll need a broadband connection to proceed.

    • Reviews

      • Parted Magic review

        Parted Magic is one of the best standalone partition management Linux solutions out there. Sukrit explains why…

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva makes the headline!

        Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring is the most advanced Linux operating system to date, a genuine concentration of technologies and innovations. Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring combines simplicity with conviviality in an intuitive, high performing environment. It is the ideal distribution for all users, from the beginner to the most advanced.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat CEO: Software Vendor Model is Broken

        The current model of selling commercial enterprise software is broken, charged the CEO for Red Hat. It is too expensive, doesn’t address user needs and, worst of all, it leaves chief information officers holding all the risk of implementing new systems.

        “The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken,” said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. “Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for.”

      • Interop: Red Hat CEO Says Software Industry Broken
      • Red Hat Launches New Certification

        Red Hat has launched a new certification for virtualization called the Red Hat Certified Virtualization Administrator (RHCVA).

      • Fedora

        • Spotlight Feature: Get Mobile with Fedora 14

          The release of Fedora 14 is just around the corner, and one of the areas of active development for this release is mobile devices, such as netbooks. Fedora community members have integrated several different mobile development platforms for use with Fedora, including Sugar on a Stick and software from the MeeGo project. Fedora members also work to bring Fedora to new hardware platforms.

          “Fedora Mobility is a group of Fedora contributors that are interested in Fedora on small devices,” said Peter Robinson, leader of the Fedora Mobility team. “Our initial aim is to ensure that the hardware used in devices such as Netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) work out of the box with Fedora.”

    • Debian Family

      • Debian to officially welcome non-packaging contributors

        Today, the Debian Project has overwhelmingly decided in a General Resolution to formally acknowlege the contribution made by many people who help Debian in ways other than maintaining packages – by opening up the process of becoming an officially recognised Debian Developer.

      • Manhattan OS Rebranded As Jupiter OS; Ditches Ubuntu For Debian

        Manhattan OS was a great Ubuntu remaster you might remember reading about on WebUpd8. I say “was” because it doesn’t exist anymore – you can’t download it and there won’t be any new versions, not under the “Manhattan OS” name. That’s because Kevin wanted to go with Debian instead of Ubuntu and as a result, he is currently working on a new Linux distribution called Jupiter OS.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu and Qt

          It is in this spirit that I have been thinking about Qt recently. We want to make it fast, easy and painless to develop applications for Ubuntu, and Qt is an option worth exploring for application developers. In thinking about this, I’ve realized that there is quite a bit of commonality between the strengths of Qt and some of the new directions in Ubuntu:

          * Qt has a long history of use on ARM as well as x86, by virtue of being popular on embedded devices. Consumer products have been built using Qt on ARM for over 10 years. We’ve been making Ubuntu products available for ARM for nearly two years now, and 10.10 supports more ARM boards than ever, including reference boards from Freescale, Marvell and TI. Qt is adding ARMv7 optimizations to benefit the latest ARM chips. We do this in order to offer OEMs a choice of hardware, without sacrificing software choice. Qt preserves this same choice for application developers.
          * Qt is a cross-platform application framework, with official ports for Windows, MacOS and more, and experimental community ports to Android, the iPhone and WebOS. Strong cross-platform support was one of the original principles of Qt, and it shows in the maturity of the official ports. With Ubuntu Light being installed on computers with Windows, and Ubuntu One landing on Android and the iPhone, we need interoperability with other platforms. There is also a large population of developers who already know how to target Windows, who can reach Ubuntu users as well by choosing Qt.
          * Qt has a fairly mature touch input system, which now has support for multi-touch and gestures (including QML), though it’s only complete on Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6. Meanwhile, Canonical has been working with the community to develop a low-level multi-touch framework for Linux and X11, for the benefit of Qt and other toolkits. These efforts will eventually meet in the middle.

        • Open Letter: Adopt RMS’ CAA/CLA Suggested Texts

          I was glad to read today that Sam Varghese is reporting that Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t want Canonical, Ltd. to engage in business models that abuse proprietary relicensing powers in a negative way. I wrote below a brief open letter to Mark for him to read when he returns from UDS (since the article said he would handle this in detail upon his return from there). It’s fortunate that there is a simple test to see if Mark’s words are a genuine commitment for change by Canonical, Ltd.

        • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat – Makes daddy proud

          Overall, I’m extremely pleased with Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. It fixes some of the old ill, but does not introduce any new ones. This is good. Now, the installation procedure is the big star of the autumn release. It is smarter and smoother than ever before, plus it lets the user have updates and popular stuff. For anyone who’s ever installed Ubuntu in the past, the changes will be refreshing and encouraging. For new users, it’s instant usability out of the box. Compare this to a typical Windows setup, please.

        • Unity Coming to the Desktop in 11.04!

          Next week, Ubuntu developers will be discussing the possibility of adding a desktop focused version of the new Unity interface to the normal build of Ubuntu. This edition would have these changes among other possible improvements:

          -Would be movable to any edge of the screen per user preference.

          -Normal style floating windows, with window controls in the windows.

          -Home screen turned into a drop down menu with search and program access.

        • Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: One Hit, One Miss

          Finally, this release is sloooow compared to 10.04. I’ve been reading other reviews of UNE 10.10, and they all pretty much agree that this one is not completely baked yet. Unless you have some compelling reason to change, you should stay with UNE 10.04 until this one cooks a bit more.

        • Ubuntu 10.10: Ten Days In

          Other than these relatively negligible annoyances, I can’t say there’s anything I’d change about Ubuntu 10.10. I won’t go so far as to call it “perfect,” because experience has shown that to be a word which usually leads to regret later on. But I would describe it as pretty great, and definitely worth trying out. After all, with the installation process so quick and easy, what excuse is there not to?

        • Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10

          I feel pretty comfortable using Ubuntu, considering it’s my OS of choice on my main laptop. I realize most people aren’t like that, but the netbook market has sold people on the idea of devices that are just a little bit different from your usual portable computer, so maybe more folks will be willing to give it a shot.

          It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing with that random dependency error, but once that was taken care of I didn’t have any other hiccups to speak of. Overall I think I enjoy the interface of UNR more than Starter, if for no other reason than it’s something different.

          I intend to continue playing with both Ubuntu Netbook Remix and the included Windows 7 Starter for a while before I decide which one I prefer. The relative freedom and spiffy interface of UNR is certainly poised to win me over at this point. I also like the idea of having a full-featured (and free-of-charge) office suite at my disposal rather than just WordPad to do my writing. Only time will tell. I’ll post back if anything particularly monumental happens over the next month or so.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Kubuntu 10.10 review

            Kubuntu is the community developed, KDE-based version of Ubuntu. The latest edition, Kubuntu 10.10, was released on 10.10.2010, the same day that Ubuntu 10.10 was released. This article offers a detailed review of this KDE-based distribution, and also marks its first listing on this website.

            [...]

            Final Thoughts and Suggestions: Writing this review gave me the opportunity to use Kubuntu for the very first time. And I like it. Though KPackageKit’s interface is not as slick as the Software Center in Ubuntu, I found it a lot easier to use. The only suggestion I have for the Kubuntu team is about rekonq, the default browser. It is a decent browser, but it is not fully production ready. Until rekonq is fully ready for prime time, I think it is best to install Firefox as the default and have rekonq as the alternate.

          • Quick Look: Lubuntu 10.10

            Lubuntu 10.10 will certainly be appreciated by most current Lubuntu users. It’s worth considering as an upgrade.

            However, its minimalistic appeal is rivaled by Xubuntu 10.10 and Xubuntu has the advantage of offering the Ubuntu Software Center as part of its desktop. Which one would I recommend? I’d have to lean slightly toward Xubuntu right now; it seems every bit as fast as Lubuntu and it offers better software management.

            On the other hand, Lubuntu does ship with Chromium as its browser. I prefer Chromium to Firefox; it’s performed faster and more reliably for me. So bear that in mind if Chromium matters to you.

            Don’t be afraid to give both distros a spin though; both of them are Live CD distros so you can simply boot off the CD and try them out without having to install them. I’m definitely curious to hear from those who have tried both distros; please tell me which one you prefer and why in the comments below.

          • LinuxMint 10 Julia screenshots Tour

            Few days ago LinuxMint 10 Julia RC1 was released, this release comes with updated software and brings refinements and new features to make your linux-mintdesktop even more comfortable to use.

          • UberStudent: Custom Operating System For Students [Linux]

            Bringing together the best the open source world has to offer to students, Linux distribution UberStudent is a great starting point for the college-attending geek wanting to give Linux a try. It may not be as straight-forward as Ubuntu, but it does aim to bring together a number of needs students have: links to cheap textbooks, simple citation and various media editing tools.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • New Member Spotlight: Aava Mobile Goes All Open

      Nygard: Aava Mobile was founded in 2009 by a team of engineering wizards with a strong background in mobile phone development who wanted to build an open source mobile device platform for the OEM/ODM market. Aava Mobile’s open devices harness the creativity of developer communities and provide the flexibility to OEMs/ODMs and mobile operators to incorporate their own user interface, content and services to differentiate their devices from competitors.

    • We can have Help from Always Innovating !

      Tada ! Everythnig is now open to find a way to mix Openmoko V4 project
      with the base of the A.I.’s MID.

    • Phones

      • Android

        • [Exclusive] First Android Gingerbread Details

          We’ve heard countless reports that it’s out there. We know it’s still in development and we know some Googlers have it loaded onto their Nexus Ones. I’m talking about the Android Gingerbread update, of course, and we can finally bring you the first details regarding the next iteration courtesy of our trusted source close to Google. The biggest change – outside of built-in video chat support (more on that later) – that many have been wondering about has been a possible graphical overhaul. The acquisition of ex-Palm user interface expert Matias Duarte – the guy that designed the still-pretty webOS – implied that Google would be looking to pretty Android up against criticism that it was noticably “uglier” than the competition (they may have an argument up against iOS, but I don’t think Symbian, Windows Mobile (6.5) and Blackberry OS are any prettier. No offense to those respective design teams.)

        • Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “Open”

          In Silicon Valley, there are few developers more respected than Joe Hewitt — he helped create Firefox, he built the indispensible development tool FireBug, and he was also responsible for both Facebook’s ‘Touch’ mobile website and the first few versions of its incredibly popular native iPhone application (which he’s rumored to have built singlehandedly). And Hewitt, who is still a prominent Facebook employee, isn’t shy about voicing his opinions when it comes to technology.

          This evening Hewitt has tweeted an hour-long stream of criticism directed at Google’s definition of “Open” when it comes to Android — a topic that was brought up by Steve Jobs during his tirade against Google during Apple’s earnings call yesterday. Android chief Andy Rubin responded to Jobs with his first tweet, which contained his definition of open: a terminal command that can be used to download the source code of the current version of Android. But Hewitt obviously isn’t satisfied.

          Hewitt kicked off his series of tweets with a question: “How does Android get away with the “open” claim when the source isn’t public until major releases, and no one outside Google can check in?”

        • Engineer samples of Android 3.0 tablets to be ready in December

          Digitimes is reporting that Google has notified its partners that the next version of Android is nearing completion, and that tablet PC engineer samples are set to show up in December.

        • HTC Desire Z available via Bell Canada

          Great news for Canadians people! Bell Mobility, one of the top wireless carrier announced the release of the HTC Desire Z for November 3. Known on T-Mobile USA as the HTC G2, the device will be the first smartphone in Canada to operate on Bell’s HSPA+network and support incredible speeds.

        • Does open matter?

          Much has been made of Steve Jobs’ presence on the earnings call yesterday. In particular, there’s a little nerd slapfight going on between Apple and Google around the “openness” of their platforms. As Steve said yesterday, “open doesn’t always win.” Andy Rubin, the father of Android at Google, later reportedly tweeted the code needed to compile Android, thus jabbing at Apple by illustrating that anyone could freely download and compile the Android OS. Yeah, and how many “average” people do you know that’ll do that? Exactly none.

        • Apple, Google, and the open vs. closed positioning war

          Think back to 2009 and the state of the smartphone industry. The iPhone had completely redefined the entire market, while Google was just beginning to see traction with Android and looking at a long struggle to catch up with Apple.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Apache Maven now backs parallelism

    The Apache Software Foundation on Wednesday is officially announcing its open source Maven 3.0 software build system for Java projects, which supports multicore processors.

  • Funambol Launches Open Source Framework for Smartphones

    The company will make the system available to all people. For more information, visit its project page on the Funambol Forge website. Funambol is working with the developer community to enhance CAPRI and invites interested parties to participate in the project.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Prototype of an Open Web App Ecosystem

        The open Web is a great platform for rich applications. It would be even better if it had additional capabilities to ease discovery, acquisition, installation and use of apps, while also enabling monetization for developers. We designed and built a prototype of a system for open Web apps: Apps built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript that work both on computers and mobile phones, have many of the characteristics that users find compelling about native apps and provide developers with open and flexible distribution options.

      • Mozilla announces prototype of web app store

        Having announced its plans for a “open web app ecosystem” in late May, Mozilla has now released a prototype. This may be an attempt by Mozilla to pre-empt Google’s announcement of the Chrome Web Store.

        In the May post on the Mozilla blog, Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Products, writes “Supporting the needs of Web developers in their efforts to develop web sites and apps that aren’t bound to a specific browser and work across the Web is core to Mozilla’s public benefit mission.”

      • A Bushel of Resources for Mozilla Firefox

        The resources collected range from free documentation and tutorials that you may not be aware of, to guides to working with open source tools for multimedia and graphics. Our collections of resources for the Firefox browser have been among our most popular, and in this post, you’ll find the latest updated collection for Firefox.

  • Oracle

    • OpenOffice Compatibility

      Ninthchamber asked the Office & Business Software forum why OpenOffice files don’t always open in Microsoft Office.

      The free OpenOffice suite is relatively compatible with Microsoft Office, but not perfectly. It’s best to understand what will work with what.

      For simplicity’s sake, I’m sticking to word processing files here. But the basic rules apply to other office formats, as well.

  • CMS

    • WordPress Founder on the Key to Open Source Success [INTERVIEW]

      We love the freedom afforded by being an independent company and plan to stay that way for the foreseeable future. In that scenario, being publicly held is one of the obvious liquidity options for shareholders, but in an environment where even companies with massive revenues like Zynga and Facebook aren’t public, I think for Automattic it’s many years off and not something that influences our decisions day-to-day.

      4. How do you balance your commitment to open source with your capitalistic ambitions?

      I don’t balance them — they’re both out in full force. The more money Automattic makes, the more we invest into Free and Open Source software that belongs to everybody and services to make that software sing. The more I make, the more I donate to non-profits spreading Open Source to the world.

  • Business

  • Project Releases

    • Latest Open-Xchange Groupware Improves Usability and Extends Mobility Support

      Open-Xchange, a provider of business-class open source collaboration software, today announced the latest update for Open-Xchange Server providing users with significant usability enhancement and mobility support for HTC, Android 2.1 and 2.2.

      Open-Xchange provides users with a more intuitive layout of the AJAX-based web interface. A new folder tree design and additional features make the interface of the Open-Xchange web client easier to use and more appealing. Users can switch between e-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, document management and settings with a single click.

    • Lotus Symphony 3 to be released tomorrow!
    • ReactOS 0.3.12 Released
    • Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 – developer version available

      Finally, we have a development version of Qt 4.7 that can be installed to Symbian^3 devices like N8 and C7. It’s meant explicitly for development purposes only and cannot be used deploy Qt 4.7 based applications to Symbian^3 devices. This is the real Qt version and it will actually replace Qt libraries on your device (don’t worry, we will provide also a package so that you can revert to Qt 4.6.3 which actually ships on N8 and friends).

    • Maps and Semantic Maps 0.7.1 released

      Maps 0.7.1 and Semantic Maps 0.7.1 are now available for download. The main new feature in this release is the long awaited images as layers.

    • Lotus Symphony 3 to be released tomorrow!

      We have just had word that the GA release of Lotus Symphony 3 will be available tomorrow, that’s 21st October 2010, from the Symphony website.

  • Government

    • EU: Legal experts to discuss laws and procurements on open source

      A group of European lawyers interested in open source and open standards will discuss if countries can pass laws that favour open source software, at their annual meeting next month. The group will also look at how to write calls for tenders in order to not discriminate against this type of software.

      The European Open Source & Free Software Law Event (EOLE) recently posted the draft programme for the conference.

    • Angus Tables Motion in Support of Open Source Software

      NDP MP Charlie Angus has tabled a motion before the House of Commons focusing on the need for the government to support open source software, particularly through public tendering processes.

    • Opening up council accounts… and open procurement

      The thing is, such a thing does exist, and it’s sent by councils to central Government (the Department for Communities and Local Government to be precise) for them to use in their own figures. It’s a fairly hellishly complex spreadsheet called the Revenue Outturn form that must be filled in by the council (to get an idea have a look at the template here).

    • The EU’s digital agenda (part I): What is at stake?

      This article is the first of a two-part report on the Digital Agenda Stakeholders Day, an event held by the European Commission in Brussels on 25 October 2010.

      Part one of The EU’s digital agenda: What is at stake? looks at some of the overarching issues that most areas of information and communication technology (ICT) have in common.

      Part two (published Wednesday 27 October, 2010) will put the EU’s Digital Agenda into its political context, and will include a review of the actual Stakeholders Day event.

    • NYC Pays to Go To Jail

      If they have something like 90000 PCs, they could be getting stuff for free. We don’t know the details of the deal but they could get stuff for free using GNU/Linux. I wonder if they considered that.

    • Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.

      On the other side, the Federal government is putting its toe deeper in the Open Source waters, recently making agreements with SourceForge and other web-based developer services. The GSA has announced its intention to launch “forge.gov”, inspired by forge.mil. The VA is exploring how to open source their VistA electronic health record system. The list goes on.

  • Licensing

    • License Compliance: Not An Open Source Issue

      License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the license involved in that case is an End User License Agreement (EULA), not a source license delivering extensive liberties. When we compare like-for-like, we discover open source software has no such issues. End-users do not need to have a license management server, do not need to hold audits, do not need to fear BSA raids. Open source is so much easier!

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Profitable digital content: It’s all about the value

      In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should tell you straight away that I don’t own a television. I sold mine seven years ago, after the year 2003 saw the debut of Nashville Star, The O.C., Fame, and some train-wreck reality show starring Jessica Simpson and her then-husband Nick Lachey.

      These days, my knowledge of television programming comes from disparate half-hours spent on the treadmill at the gym. I catch bits and pieces of shows like Law & Order, Hannah Montana, The Dr. Oz Show, One Tree Hill, The Doctors, and The Dr. Phil Show. (Who hired all the doctors, and am I the only one who wonders how many drinks the talent scout had when he signed Miley Cyrus?)

    • Micki Krimmel: NeighborGoods, community building, and open source dating

      A few years ago, I experimented with what I called The Open Source Dating Project.

    • Open Access/Content

      • Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies

        Implementing open access is a tough job. Legitimate authority, sufficient resources and the right timing are crucial. Pioneers, role models and flagship institutions all have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving a recognized success. Professionals charged with implementing policy typically need several years to accomplish significant progress. Many institutions adopting open access policies probably need to do more, much more, if the commitment to open access is to be meaningful.

      • How much bibliography can we liberate in a month? Please help. Yes, you!

        The goal is fairly simple. We now have 3 million records from the British Library catalogue. We are grateful to them for not only making them available but also making them CC0. Only CC0 or PDDL is really useful for Open Bibliography. CC-NC creates enormous downstream problems. Avoid it like the plague.

      • Improving Access to the Public Domain: the Public Domain Mark

        Today, Creative Commons announces the release of its Public Domain Mark, a tool that enables works free of known copyright restrictions to be labeled in a way that allows them to be easily discovered over the Internet. The Public Domain Mark, to be used for marking works already free of copyright, complements Creative Commons’ CC0 public domain dedication, which enables authors to relinquish their rights prior to the expiration of copyright.

      • Ask GYST: Public Domain Images Get a Mark

        Creative Commons has announced the release of the Public Domain Mark. Artists and others are using multiple images from the web for just about every conceivable purpose including making artwork. Now, the new mark can be attached to images that are free of copyright and are a part of the public domain.

      • Greg Pak Talks About Giving Away His ‘Vision Machine’ Comic for Free in Digital AND Print [Exclusive Interview]

        When a fan on Twitter who enjoyed it asked where he could purchase the print version, Pak responded by saying “Digital only at the moment. We’re printing a trade later in the year and distributing for FREE at fests/conventions.”

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • I Want to Publish My Book. Now What?

    This post is for all those people out there who don’t know ANYTHING about the publishing industry.

  • Construction On Walkie-Talkie Tower To Begin
  • Why I Got Fired From Teaching American History

    My students were most troubled by the evidence that the “good” enemies of “bad” freedoms were not just traditional icons like presidents and business leaders, but that many of the most revered abolitionists, progressives, and leaders of the feminist, labor, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the cultures of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the flamboyant gays who brought homosexuality out of the closet.

  • 5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.
  • Something stinks in the province of BC

    Two criminals, Dave Basi (right) and Bob Virk, “wasted millions in public money by clinging for years to their claims of innocence” says the Vancouver Sun.

    But yesterday, they abruptly changed their tunes, finally admitting they’d in effect sold confidential government information centering on the BC Rail bidding process in 2003.

  • eBay Pulls The Plug On Retro Thing

    Retro Thing has been a member of the eBay Partner Network for years. It’s a program that helps websites earn money by linking to eBay auctions, and we’ve used the income to pay some of the costs of running the site.

    We got an email from eBay last week telling us that our account was under review. They demanded a “detailed explanation of how you are driving traffic to eBay, or you risk the termination of your account and 100% reversal of commissions.” They even wanted server logs.

  • Why Facebook Apps Story Is Problem For Entire Web

    Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal, in its continuing series of excellent articles about online privacy, released a controversial story about Facebook apps transmitting identification information to outside advertisers — in clear violation of Facebook policies. In response, a number of other media outfits have collectively shrugged their shoulders, maintaining that sending this information happens all the time and no one should be particularly concerned. Did the Journal overreact? Or are others missing the point?

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • “Identity fraud costs UK £2.7billion every year” – unsubstantiated propaganda from the “National Fraud Authority” quango

      We have always been, rightly, sceptical about the various propaganda claims about the annual figures for the financial value of alleged “identity theft / fraud” in the UK.

      These were abused by the previous Labour government in their farcical attempts to “justify” their repressive, mandatory, centralised biometric database National Identity Register scheme (which, as planned, would have been useless against online web or phone based frauds).

    • Green light for spooks’ net snoop plan

      The coalition government has approved a multibillion-pound plan by the intelligence agencies to store details of every online conversation.

      The reemerging Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) means internet providers will be forced to install interception equipment in their networks to capture details of who contacts whom, when, where and how via services such as Facebook, Skype, webmail, and online games.

    • Silencing Online Activism: From “Officer Bubbles” to “Free Byron”

      Will the courts allow citizens to be stripped of the right to comment anonymously? If you make an anonymous comment expressing your disagreement with a situation like this, can you be sued? Is an opinion slander? Or since it’s published online libel?

      Anonymity can be a powerful tool for good. Whistleblowers can leak information that their consciences dictate ought to be public which often serves the public good.

    • Free Byron
    • Are you a Social Network Freak? US “Homeland Security” may be watching you.

      EFF recently received new documents as a result of our FOIA lawsuit on social network surveillance, filed with the help of UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Clinic, that reveal two ways the government has been tracking people online: surveillance of social networks to investigate citizenship petitions and the Department of Homeland Security’s use of a “Social Networking Monitoring Center” to collect and analyze online public communication during President Obama’s inauguration. This is the first of two posts describing these documents and some of their implications.

    • Answers…

      7. What are Ben’s views on prison charities or other organisations supposed to represent those in custody? Which ones does he think have their interests at heart and which are just a cash cow for the employees? In other words, who is worth donating to from a prisoners perspective? (Anon)

      A: Oh, come on, that question is just an invitation to upset a lot of organisations!! That I have reservations about the aims and operations of many prison reform groups is something I have written about for many years. Each has their strengths and weaknesses.

      Almost universally, though, they have no impact at all on the lives of prisoners. As originators of researcher or as policy campaigners they may have some influence on a political-policy level, but their connections with prisoners and our interests are pretty tangential.

    • Feds forced to admit that it’s legal to take pictures of federal buildings

      The New York Civil Liberties Union and Libertarian activist Antonio Musumeci just won a court case that affirms the right of photographers to take pictures and record video out front of federal courthouses. The US federal government settled the case by apologizing to Musumeci for his arrest, acknowledging that it is legal to record at courthouses, and promising to issue guidelines to federal officers explaining this fact to them.

    • Fight terror, defend freedom

      Based on the compelling evidence that Dominic has put together, the result of all the liberty-infringing anti-terrorism legislation that has been pushed through in the UK is that we are now, as he put it, “less free and no safer”. This benefits no-one: indeed, it runs the danger of producing the opposite outcome of that intended by alienating the very elements in society that we need to ensure feel an integral and welcome part of our community.

    • Book launch this evening: ‘Fight Terror, Defend Freedom’ by Dominic Raab MP
    • Guest post: My ill-fated evening in Southampton – Britain’s big brother capital

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

    • Florida foreclosure mill owner who chucked out 70,000 families in 2009 is unspeakably rich

      David J. Stern is a Florida lawyer who operates a foreclosure mill, a firm that foreclosed on more than 70,000 homes last year. According to a deposition from Tammie Mae Kapusta, a former employee, Stern’s firm cut many corners, foreclosing on homes without serving notice, ignoring mortgage payments that would have prevented foreclosure, and “yelling at” employees who talked to homeowners on the phone, because that was “giving them too much time.”

    • U.S. Tries to Ease Wider Worries Over Foreclosures

      Mr. Donovan, speaking at a White House news conference, also sought to shift the focus of public concerns about the foreclosure process. He said the administration was more interested in making sure that mortgage companies helped homeowners avoid foreclosure by modifying or replacing unaffordable loans.

    • Dean Baker: Foreclosure Moratorium: Cracking Down on Liar Liens

      As we all know, there is a major philosophical divide in US politics.

    • Republican Rep. Ryan’s Social Security plan would cut benefits for high earners

      A Republican plan to rein in the rising cost of Social Security would dramatically reduce retirement benefits for middle- and upper-income Americans, especially those now younger than 25, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the program’s chief actuary.

    • NY to hold lawyers accountable on foreclosures

      The chief judge of New York’s courts on Wednesday imposed a new rule requiring lawyers handling foreclosures to verify that all paperwork is accurate.

    • Fed survey points to uneven growth across US

      The U.S. economy grew unevenly in early fall, with more than half the regions of the country expanding modestly while others struggled to grow.

      A survey by the Federal Reserve released Wednesday found that seven of the Fed’s 12 regions reported moderate improvements in business activity. Three regions – Philadelphia, Richmond and Cleveland – described economic activity as mixed or steady. Only two regions – Atlanta and Dallas – suggested economic growth was slow.

    • Global bank rules expected to be ‘minimum’ standard, Basel group says

      Investors around the world are likely to regard new banking rules proposed by an international group of central bankers as a “minimum” standard and will probably force banks to set aside even more capital than required as a buffer against losses, according to one of the regulations’ main authors.

    • Three options for the mortgage mess

      The news that the largest bond fund in the world, the largest money manager in the world and the New York Federal Reserve are demanding that Bank of America repurchase $47 billion in mortgage bonds is scary stuff. As Daniel Indiviglio says, “these investors aren’t exactly Moe, Larry, and Curly. This is serious.”

    • Rioters rampage, protesters block French airports

      Workers opposed to a higher retirement age blocked roads to airports around France on Wednesday, leaving passengers in Paris dragging suitcases on foot along an emergency breakdown lane.

      Outside the capital, hooded youths smashed store windows amid clouds of tear gas.

    • Wells Fargo dismisses foreclosure problems as analysts warn of paperwork issues

      Banking giant Wells Fargo said Wednesday that its business shows no signs of the looming crisis some analysts fear the industry faces from shoddy lending and foreclosure practices.

      “We are confident that our practices, procedures and documentation for both foreclosures and mortgage securitizations are sound and accurate,” chairman and chief executive John Stumpf said in a news release as the bank announced a third-quarter profit of $3.3 billion.

    • Seeking loan modifications shouldn’t make homeowners target of scorn

      And yet to hear many people tell it, Radosta – whose home in metro Atlanta is scheduled for foreclosure by Bank of America – is making out like a bandit because there’s a possibility he might get a loan modification.

    • “It’s massive, it’s criminal, it’s wrong…” says Ticktin Law Group

      The fraud I wrote about then and have continued to write about in this blog will take the banking system and those we bailed out to their knees albeit by the back door. Yes, they committed fraud when originating the loans, they committed fraud when they securitized those loans and committed fraud when they sold those securities to the public. In other words they have been operating what I have consistently called an “organized crime” which should have been – and I hoep will be prosecuted under RICO – The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

    • Janet Tavakoli & Dave Fry on Financial Reform & Goldman Sachs Lawsuit
    • With enough government help, I’ m really good at this game

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • ‘Officer Bubbles’ Sues YouTube Commenters Over Mockery
    • Transparency Activist, Public Domain Scholar, Legal Blogger, and Imprisoned E-Voting Researcher Win Pioneer Awards

      The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pleased to announce four winners of its 2010 Pioneer Awards: transparency activist Steven Aftergood; public domain scholar James Boyle; legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website Groklaw; and e-voting researcher Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru, who was recently released on bail after being imprisoned for his security work in India.

    • Geotag, You’re It! What Your Smartphone Might Be Saying Behind Your Back

      Snap a photo of a sunset with your iPhone and you can upload it to Twitter with a few clicks. But your smartphone might be transmitting more than a pretty photograph. It could be collecting and storing data about your real-time location – and then broadcasting that information when you upload photos onto the Internet.

    • Guidelines for more rigorous respect of the Fundamental Rights Charter

      The European Commission has adopted a strategy which is aimed at ensuring that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is respected at every stage of the EU legislative process. At the initiative of Commissioner Reding, the intention is to create a template to make it easier for the Commission to measure its own respect for the Charter and, by extension, to give the public a clearer yardstick by which to measure the actions of the Commission.

    • Information Commissioner rules against healthcare firm

      The case of Healthcare Locums is sadly not alone with many firms sharing the company’s apparently slap-dash attitude to ensuring the safety of data relating to their customers and employees. While the company has, on this occasion, escaped a large fine for their infrigement of the Data Protection Act this case should serve as an example to all firms of the absolute need for solid data protection policies.

    • Digital photos can reveal your location, raise privacy fears

      Skim through the photos on Flickr or Photobucket, and you’ll find pictures of cats pawing at living-room sofas, children playing in backyards and mothers gardening at home.

      Dig a little deeper, and you can unearth the exact locations of many of those homes, embedded in data within the pictures.

    • Privacy and 192.com
    • Trial and error: online comments court attention

      The UK Attorney General has said that operators of websites should be responsible for comments made by visitors to their sites that prejudice trials. Dominic Grieve said that he wants “further discussions” on site owners’ liability.

      Speaking to the Criminal Bar Association, Grieve, a Conservative MP, said that protecting the fairness of trials was growing increasingly difficult as news outlets proliferated.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • New ACLU Report Calls On FCC To Take Action To Protect Openness On The Internet

      Protecting the Internet against content discrimination by broadband carriers is crucial to protecting First Amendment rights in the age of modern technology, the American Civil Liberties Union said today in a new report on network neutrality. In the report, “Net Neutrality 101,” the ACLU urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create strong policies that prevent Internet gatekeepers from exploiting their role for private gain. The report characterizes the need for “net neutrality” as a leading free speech issue of our time.

    • European Law and Regulation of Mobile Net Neutrality

      Mobile is a rapidly growing and potentially major element of the future Internet, and its environment cannot be sensibly considered in isolation from fixed networks [2]. A note on terminology: Europe uses the term Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) while the United States uses ‘wireless’ Internet Service Providers (ISPs) [3]. ‘Wireless’ is somewhat more open in the United States. In Europe, mobile has always made special pleading for forms of self-regulation, as we will see. The article introduces mobile broadband, then considers net neutrality in the fixed environment including the new laws passed in November 2009 in the European Parliament, before considering the mobile net neutrality debate, the degree of price control regulation exerted on European mobiles and the MNOs’ vigorous rear-guard anti-regulation defence. Finally, I look at the effects of this regulatory asymmetry and whether MNO calls for mobile to be treated differently from other ISPs can be justified. I conclude by examining what the effect of price and content control on mobile is likely to be for incentives for fixed ISPs and produce a result that I describe as the ‘fixed’ strategy.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Minister: India Anticipates European Fix To Law Delaying Generics Shipment

      Europe has promised at the “highest levels” to fix laws that caused generic medicine seizures in the Netherlands, the Indian Minister of Commerce and Industry said today. The minister is in Geneva for meetings on the ongoing Doha Round trade liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organization.

      “The actions that were taken were not only TRIPS plus but TRIPS illegal,” Minister Anand Sharma told journalists at the WTO, referring to the 1994 WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement, as well as to delays in generic drug shipments in 2008 (IPW, WHO, 5 June 2009)

    • The Case for Flexibility in Implementing the WIPO Internet Treaties

      Over the next few weeks, I’ll be placing the spotlight on the many contributions in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digital Agenda. My substantive contribution focuses on the legal requirements to comply with the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. With the treaties dating back to the 1990s the issue may seem dated, yet it still resonates today. Within a domestic context, the government has identified ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties as one of Bill C-32’s chief goals. Internationally, the 1990s WIPO debate was re-enacted this year during the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations, with the U.S. again failing to convince its negotiating partners to adopt its implementation approach for anti-circumvention.

      My article examines the issue from four perspectives: the plain language of the statutory requirements, the legislative history behind the inclusion of anti-circumvention provisions within the treaty, state practice in implementing those requirements, and scholarly analysis of the treaty obligations.

    • Copyrights

      • Pirate Parties International Mulling Airborne P2P Site

        Pirate Parties International reportedly discussing plans for a high-altitude balloon that would host an airborne file-sharing site, placing it well above the reach of copyright laws and enforcement groups.

        File-sharers have always had a flair for the dramatic, and the latest effort by Pirate Parties International (PPI) lives up to this longtime characterization. For yesterday a group of PPI’s members began discussing plans for a high-altitude balloon that would host an airborne file-sharing site, placing it well above the reach of pesky copyright laws and enforcement groups.

      • Creative Commons’ Branding Confusion

        Anyone introduced to the word “Copyleft” in that film won’t understand what Copyleft actually means in terms of licenses.

      • Irish ISP Praises Defeat of “Three-Strikes for File-Sharers

        Entanet says it thinks disconnecting people from the Internet is not a “proportionate punishment” for illegal file-sharing, and points out that an IP address is not an accurate way of identifying whose responsible.

        Last week Ireland’s High Court sided with Irish ISP UPC in its battle with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), Justice Peter Charleton ruling that Irish law doesn’t require ISPs to identify and disconnect illegal file-sharers from the Internet as the IRMA had demanded.

      • Right Haven v Realty One Group Dismissal
      • Brazilian librarians

        One sign of this: The question of copyright seems to weigh heavily on just about everyone’s mind. (Keep in mind, of course, the self-selection of those with whom I have talked.) Copyright is only perceived as an obstacle if you are intent on maximizing access to the works of human intellect and creativity. If you are afraid of what open access means, then copyright looks like a bulwark. But, if you are confident that we together — with the invaluable aid of librarians, among others — can overall steer ourselves right, then the current copyright regime looks like a fear-based reaction.

      • Righthaven defendant wins first lawsuit dismissal motion

        The Las Vegas Review-Journal online copyright infringement lawsuit campaign sustained a setback Tuesday when a judge granted a real estate agent’s motion for dismissal, ruling his posting of part of a Review-Journal story on his website amounted to fair use under copyright law.

        But in another case involving a Review-Journal story on Wednesday, copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC received a boost when a second judge denied a motion to dismiss and authorized the parties to engage in evidence-gathering through discovery.

      • If Fair Use Protects Free Speech, Shouldn’t It Be Seen As Default Until Proven Otherwise?

        Copyright and fair use expert Peter Friedman has grappled with this in the past as well, saying that there are some cases where fair use is easy to determine… a statement he later had to backtrack on when the example he used in that original article — a case where he insisted the fair use call was an easy one went the other way.

        Michael Scott recently pointed us to the latest draft of a paper by law professor Ned Snow on how fair use should be viewed in the legal system. He’s written similar papers before, but he focuses in on two key points. The first is that until the mid-80s to early-90s, it “fair use” was considered mostly a “matter of fact” rather than a “matter of law.” As such, it was often for juries to decide, rather than judges. However, in the last few decades that’s flipped almost entirely, and it’s exceedingly rare to find a court that views fair use as a matter of fact, rather than a matter of law. That is, the judge will decide, not the jury.

      • Common law vs Statutory law

        John Bennett post links to an interesting article on copyright as a way of infringing upon free speech. While I agree on the substantive conclusion (the power attributed to copyright holders does infringe on free speech nowadays) I am not sure that the issue can be addressed in a satisfactory way by simply advocating a Common Law (CL) approach instead of a Statutory one (SL). At the end, this seems the eternal debate between CL and SL and both evidence and logic leave the issue quite open. Until a judge does not exceed the established boundaries the CL approach tends to leave more to to fair use and less to its opposite. But once a judge rules otherwise … well, we are up the old creek that John Belushi made so famous (did he have a copyright on the joke?)

      • Creative Commons’ Branding Confusion

        About a year and a half ago I released my film Sita Sings the Blues under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. That license allows truly free distribution, including commercial use, as long as the free license remains in place. But my experience is that most people see the words “Creative Commons” and simply assume the license is Non-Commercial – because the majority of Creative Commons licenses they’ve seen elsewhere have been Non-Commercial.

      • Copyright and endogenous market structure: a glimpse from the journal-publishing market

        This article explores the journal publishing industry in order to shed light on the overall economic consequences of copyright in markets. Since the rationale for copyright is among others to promise some market power to the holder of the successful copyrighted item, it also provides incentives to preserve and extend market power. A regular trait of copyright industries is high concentration and the creation of large catalogues of copyrights in the hands of incumbents. This outcome can be observed as the aggregation of rights and is one of the pivotal strategies for obtaining or extending market power, consistently with findings in other cases. Journal publishing is no different in this respect from other copyright industries, and in the last decade has experienced a similar trajectory, leading to a highly concentrated industry in which a handful of large firms increasingly control a substantial part of the market. It also provides a clear example of the effect of copyright dynamics on market structure, suggesting that a different attitude should be taken in lawmaking and law enforcement.

      • ACTA

        • Anti-ACTA rap

          Copyfighting rapper Dan Bull (he of Dear Lily Allen fame) has just released a new track, “Death of ACTA,” about the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a privately negotiated super-copyright treaty.

        • Dan Bull is back – with an anti-ACTA video

          Dan says that the “terrifying implications” of ACTA inspired him to write the song. ACTA has been negotiated behind closed doors, with no involvement of our elected representatives.

        • Death Of ACTA
        • All you want to know about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

          The ACTA negotiations were launched in June 2008, based on a concept introduced by Japan in the preparation of the 2006 G8 Summit and later endorsed by the US. There were 11 rounds of negotiations.

          Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are a key asset of the EU, ensuring its leading role in the “knowledge economy”. The EU can only remain competitive, if it can rely on innovation, creativity, quality, and brand exclusivity. These are some of our main comparative advantages on the world market, and they are all protected by intellectual property rights. Only, the means of adequately enforcing those rights in our main export markets to date are limited.

        • Access to Orphan Works, and ACTA provisions on damages

          Copyright is a term that in the United States describes the laws that regulate the use and distribution of “original works of authorship.” The types of activities and expressions protected by copyright have expanded over the years, particularly due to technology, but also due to the lobbying by various interested parties. The current systems of registration of copyrighted works in the United includes the following catagories:

          1. literary works
          2. musical works, including any accompanying words
          3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music
          4. pantomimes and choreographic works
          5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
          6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works
          7. sound recordings
          8. architectural works

        • Senators Sanders and Brown write to Kappos at USPTO, ask if ACTA is consistent with US law

          On October 19, 2010, Senators Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have written to David Kappos, the Director of the USPTO, asking for an assessment of conflicts between the October 2010 ACTA text, and U.S. law.

        • Senators Sanders and Brown write to Kappos at USPTO, ask if ACTA is consistent with US law

          On October 19, 2010, Senators Bernard Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have written to David Kappos, the Director of the USPTO, asking for an assessment of conflicts between the October 2010 ACTA text, and U.S. law.

        • European Greens/EFA enter the technical voodoo game

          The MEPs from the Green Group in the European Parliament ask crucial technical questions about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as “priority questions”. These questions address the tip of an iceberg concerning technical issues with the ACTA, there is much more that can be raised. Any Member of the European Parliament is entitled to ask written and oral questions to the institutions which have to be answered. MEPs are more restricted towards filing priority questions which have to be answered on short notice by the institutions.

        • 20 October Priority Questions
        • Marietje Schaake’s (D66, NL) plenary intervention

Clip of the Day

Nokia N900: Unboxing


Credit: TinyOgg

10.20.10

Links 20/10/2010: Groklaw and Linus Torvalds Win Awards, London Stock Exchange Breaks Record With GNU/Linux

Posted in News Roundup at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux’s Brilliant Business Career

    Fans of FOSS already know that Linux is one of the best technologies out there for business servers, but it’s always nice to see that point of view validated by good, hard data.

    Thanks to a recent survey by the Linux Foundation, that’s just what we got last week. A new report from the group found, in fact, that large businesses have very big plans for our favorite operating system.

    Not only will they be buying more Linux servers than Windows servers in the coming years — they’ll also be using Linux for an increasing number of mission-critical tasks in their organizations, the report found. And a full 36 percent are even using Linux on the desktop!

    Any of that sound surprising? Not really — but that doesn’t mean Linux bloggers couldn’t find plenty to argue about.

  • The Social Network: The loneliness of the Linux-based programmer

    Many reviewers have generously suggested that the filmmakers are letting the audience decide, that in real life there are no heroes or villains. But so little evidence is offered, and that which is is so clearly labelled ‘possibly fictitious (therefore not libellous)’, any conclusions that might be drawn are so ludicrously pointless as to negate the entire process. That’s not to say that the film is not engaging, the script not well-written and the performances not compelling. But like the website it portrays, after spending two enjoyable hours on this film you get the sneaking suspicion that your time might have been better spent on something else.

  • Linux users: why you should watch The Wire

    What bothers me though is when there are elements of snobbery involved. One of the most pointless debates I’ve seen come up from time to time in all the while I’ve had an interest in Linux is its name. I have absolute respect for GNU, for the work it did in establishing the foundations on which the Linux kernel was built, and for its vision in pushing a free open source operating system when most of the market was heading in the opposite direction. I also appreciate that the proper name for Linux, if you go by the book, is GNU/Linux. Sadly, I can’t recall a point where I’ve called it that in my life.

  • AsbestOS: Run Linux on your PS3 without OtherOS

    Hector Martin aka marcan42 has just posted to his blog the launch of AsbestOS, a way to run Linux on your jailbroken PS3 without OtherOS. Martin has been working on AsbestOS for over a month.

  • Desktop

  • Server

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Eight Reasons to give E17 a Try

      If you are new to Linux you may never have tried any desktop environments beyond Gnome and KDE. If you have been in the Linux world for awhile odds are you are aware of the fact that several other desktop environments exists.

    • E17 Basics – An FAQ

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE Commit-Digest for 10th October 2010

        In this week’s KDE Commit-Digest: Return of the KDE Commit-Digest! Route Guidance mode (with automatic route recalculation based on position) in Marble. A basic UDev backend added in Solid. KFormula “Formula” shape becomes compatible with OpenOffice.org.

  • Distributions

    • Sabayon

      • Why Free Software doesn’t always fly

        To make our philosophy successful, we need to find a good mixture of business and openness.

      • Why do we bump just to bump?

        In my daily maintenance routine I tend to throw an emerge -uav world against the sabayon trees and see what packages can be bumped. I also check http://www.gentoo-portage.com to see what is new. In this routine 90% off all things I bump for Entropy it is done manually writing each emerge -av command by hand.
        Since I trust Gentoo developers for doing a good job within their own little expertise and interest, I kinda trust each package bump makes sense. If it is either some revision bump because there was some LD flags to respect, a fix for –as-needed or simple another minor thing I just bump them. Even though on the binary end this would not make any difference for the user experience I just do it.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Release Candidate Available to Partners

        Back in April, we began talking about the development road toward the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 when we delivered the first beta of the platform, with noteworthy improvements spanning performance enhancements to new security features to expanded virtualization capabilities. With the introduction of the first beta, we began working with our customers, partners and the community to test and further develop the release into an ambitious and robust operating platform. Since then, we have continued the momentum of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 development with the delivery of a second beta in June with additional updates and technologies. We also recently announced an agreement to certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 under Common Criteria at Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 4+ in August.

      • Red Hat Launches First Red Hat Academy in the Middle East

        The Red Hat Academy at AASTMT allows the university to train undergraduate or postgraduate engineering students on Red Hat Enterprise Linux courses, and offer certification up to the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) level on successful completion. The Red Hat Academy will support the web-based course curriculum that prepares students with hands-on, performance-based learning and testing. Courses will be immediately available to AASTMT’s 5,500 students through its facilities in Cairo and Alexandria, including the College of Computing and Information Technology (CCIT) and the Academy Company for Communications and Information Technology (ACCIT).

      • American Tobacco plays host to Red Hat visit

        Red Hat’s search for new digs has taken the Raleigh company to the other end of the Triangle. The American Tobacco Campus, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, hosted the company for an event on Monday. Greg Behr, a spokesman for American Tobacco, said Red Hat officials were in Durham to discuss possibly leasing space.

      • GBM earns Red Hat partner status

        Bahrain-based Gulf Business Machines (GBM), the region’s leading IT solutions and service provider, has earned Red Hat premier business partner status in the GCC region.

        GBM already shares a longstanding relationship with Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and offers its full range of products and services.
        The enhanced partnership will allow a fresh focus on developing complex, high-end open source solutions for customers in the region.

      • Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst to Deliver Keynote at Interop New York

      • Fedora

        • The Fedora RPG

          A couple of weeks ago at the weekly meeting of the Fedora Design Team Mo brought an idea floating for a while inside the community: a Fedora RPG, which got a good part of the team hooked. The “game” is supposed to take the form of a badge or banner available for inclusion in web pages and being played by contributing to Fedora: creating tickets, submitting patches, building packages, helping people…

    • Debian Family

      • Neuroimaging research in Debian

        “Debian 6.0 “squeeze” will be the first GNU/Linux distribution release ever to offer comprehensive support for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based neuroimaging research. It comes with up-to-date software for structural image analysis (e.g. ants), diffusion imaging and tractography (e.g. mrtrix), stimulus delivery (e.g. psychopy), MRI sequence development (e.g. odin), as well as a number of versatile data processing and analysis suites (e.g. nipype). Moreover, this release will have built-in support for all major neuroimaging data formats.”

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Do the evolution baby, did you remember Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog

          It will be 6 years since the first Ubuntu released in the October 20th.

        • Shuttleworth denies move toward Open Core

          Kuhn later admitted that the headline he had used was something of an exaggeration. “I agree my title was a bit of an exaggeration. I’d change it, but I am not sure that would clarify things, and probably would look strange,” he said.

          “Based on feedback, I did add a note at the bottom of the post making it clear that this reading of these events is my opinion, not fact,” he wrote in a response to readers’ comments on the Linux Weekly News website which had linked to his article.

        • Ubuntu Netbook 10.10: Usability vs. Constraints

          From KDE’s Plasma Netbook to EasyPeasy, every Linux desktop for netbooks that I’ve seen are designed with the same assumptions. Each assumes that, because of the smaller screen, the desktop must be simpler than a workstation’s, and will be used mainly for light computing in general and social networking in particular.

          Released at the same time as the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) general version, the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook Edition does not question these assumptions. This conventionality may be questionable to many: workstation versions of GNOME, KDE, and Xfce work perfectly well on the smaller screens of netbooks for anyone with regular vision, and netbooks — especially the latest generation, with their extra memory — are capable of more than light computing. In addition, though, Ubuntu Netbook also has some design quirks that can make it less than ideal.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Not so Minty fresh

            This sums up my reasons for writing the original post. There are very few genuine flaws I can point to in Mint; it’s just that in the areas where Mint and Ubuntu differ, I mostly prefer Ubuntu. So I’m going back to Ubuntu, not because Mint is bad (it isn’t) but because Ubuntu suits me better.

          • Quick Look: Xubuntu 10.10

            Last week I reviewed Kubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.10 over on Desktop Linux Reviews. This week I wanted to look at Xubuntu 10.10. I decided to do a quick look rather than a full-blown DLR review because less has changed in Xubuntu than in the other two distro releases.

            If you aren’t familiar with Xubuntu, it’s essentially a combination of Ubuntu and the Xfce desktop environment. Xubuntu is designed to provide a lighter-weight desktop experience than GNOME (Ubuntu’s default desktop). Xfce is set up to conserve system resources while still providing a great range of desktop functionality. Xubuntu is a good to Ubuntu alternative for older hardware or underpowered hardware.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • HP announces Palm Pre 2 with WebOS 2.0

        HP announced a faster, 1GHz Palm Pre 2, as well as a major WebOS 2.0 update that features “true multitasking,” improved “Synergy” sync, and a “Just Type” feature that enables text entry before an app fully opens. The Pre 2 debuts on Friday in France on SFR, and will appear on Verizon Wireless in “the coming months,” says HP.

      • Mobile Linux enters world of the app store

        LiMo Foundation has joined the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) to encourage the development of mobile applications to run on the mobile Linux operating system.

        The hope will be to match the application developer communities which have grown up around Google’s Android platform and Apple’s app store.

        All future releases of the LiMo mobile Linux platform will support the WAC runtime, which will allow developers to distribute their applications across multiple WAC compliant stores.

      • Android

        • Caveat emptor: Custom Android handsets all the rage in Germany?

          This isn’t the first customizable phone we’ve laid our eyes on, and we’ve always been a fan of the concept — even if the execution sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. Apparently there’s a small startup residing in Germany called Synapse that will sell you a custom Android 2.2 handset, complete with 4-inch multitouch touchscreen, with prices starting around €434 ($600).

        • Why ‘Fragmentation’ Isn’t a Problem for Android or Linux

          “Fragmentation,” as I suggest above, is simply a derogatory term for “choice,” something not only valued but expected in most product categories. It’s a well-known fact that one-size-fits-all rarely fits anyone well; multiple competing choices, by contrast, offer consumers a way to get something that’s as close to what they want as possible.

          Of course, specific choices don’t tend to survive if nobody wants them–that, too, is part of a competitive marketplace. If there isn’t demand for them, individual choices will disappear.

          Now, Android phones are not as different as Jobs made out–most of the differences, rather, are fairly superficial. But why would it ever be a problem that there are numerous Android phones available? There’s clearly a small segment of consumers who like Apple’s restrictive “walled garden” approach, but I can’t imagine any kind of majority will ever prefer the iPhone’s one-size-fits-all model in the mobile world any more than they have the Mac on the desktop.

          It’s a similar situation when it comes to Linux. Yes, there are many competing distributions, but again, that can only be a good thing for users because it means they can get what they want. I’ll agree it might be something of a marketing and branding challenge for Linux, but it’s certainly not a problem for users.

    • Tablets

      • Awesome Ubuntu Multitouch Demo in Dell Tablet

        Ubuntu uTouch multitouch support was one the most striking inclusion into the just released Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. We had demo videos showcasing Ubuntu’s new found multitouch capabilities before. But following is the best I have seen so far. Watch this beautiful Ubuntu 10.10 multitouch demo in an unknown Dell tablet.

      • The Quiet Rise of Linux Tablets

        And even “traditional” Linux interfaces are getting into the mix. Last Thursday, Canonical’s Gerry Carr was pretty excited about the new multi-touch gesture library the Unity team has developed for Ubuntu Netbook Edition. There’s a nice one-minute video on Carr’s blog entry that highlights these early features of Unity.

        Of course, this is just one Linux distro–and a smaller flavor of that distro to boot, so is that enough to get excited about?

        The pragmatist in me says not really, since Linux interface developers experiment with cool new stuff all of the time.

      • Android 3.0 due to start hitting tablets in December ahead of January launch

        A holiday tradition? Making things out of gingerbread, and Google is doing its part to keep that practice alive according to a report stating Android 3.0 Gingerbread is set to hit some tablets this December.

Free Software/Open Source

  • 6 Open Source Social Networking Projects

    Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn have taken off. They are now among the top sites visited among the entire World Wide Web. As you might have guessed, the open source community has some involvement in the social networking space.

  • Open source moves into the enterprise at NZ organisations

    There was a time when open source software was almost inseparable from the image of altruistic, community-loving developers, coding away in command line interfaces in a darkened room. But those days are long gone. Sleek open source applications have made their way into the enterprise and sometimes give the proprietary giants a run for their money. In this feature, three local organisations share their open source stories.

  • The choice engine is an Italian job

    For any enterprise, the decision to depend on an open source project is a serious commitment of resources. You don’t want to get halfway down the road and find you have taken a wrong turn. I did that on the way to lunch and it took a $14 cab ride to find my way back. For a scaled enterprise, the loss can be millions.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Open Web Applications

        In the architecture we propose, applications are part of the web. Directories and stores can provide ratings, reviews, approval processes, and proof-of-purchase services, but applications can also be self-published by developers.

      • New releases of Firefox and Thunderbird
      • Firefox 3.6.11 and 3.5.14 security updates now available

        Firefox 3.6.11 and Firefox 3.5.14 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.11.

      • Mozilla preempts Google with ‘open’ web app store prototype

        Free whitepaper – Trying to keep smartphones off your network?

        Mozilla has released a prototype for what it calls an “open web app ecosystem,” a browser-agnostic answer to Google’s upcoming Chrome Web App Store.

        The open source outfit proposes a store that works with any “modern” desktop or mobile browser, offering both free and for-pay apps based on standard web technologies.

  • SaaS

    • US Government app store in action

      Cloud storage, virtual machines and web hosting should soon be available to US government agencies via the Government Services Agency’s recently opened apps.gov site.

      The US government’s cloud service, officially launched last month, allowed federal agencies to buy cloud computing services direct from the GSA.

      All social media apps, which included WordPress, Yammer, Bing and Google Analytics, were free.

  • Oracle

    • Oracle’s OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 RC1 Makes It Out

      As mentioned in the 3.3.0 RC1 release notes, this development milestone of OpenOffice.org incorporates several fixes and other features. Among the improvements to be found with OpenOffice.org 3.3 include an improved extension manager, spreadsheet improvements, initial integration with the Renaissance Project, printing restructuring, and improved Calc spreadsheet performance.

    • New: OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1 (build OOO330m11) available

      OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available on the download website.

    • Oracle issues first OpenOffice.org 3.3.0 release candidate

      Two months after the first beta arrived, the OpenOffice.org developers have issued the first release candidate (RC1) of OpenOffice.org 3.3.0, the next release of the Oracle owned open source office suite. According to the OpenOffice.org Wiki, the RC1 development version will be followed by a second release candidate and a quality assurance (QA) build prior to the final product release. Dates for the RC2, QA and Final version have yet to be confirmed.

  • Semi-Open Source

    • Does “Open Core” Actually Differ from Proprietary Relicensing?

      That practice is one that RMS’ himself began calling “barely legitimate” in the early 2000s. RMS specifically and carefully coined his own term for it: selling exceptions to the GPL. This practice is a form of proprietary relicensing that never permits the seller to create their own proprietary fork of the code and always releases all improvements done by the sole proprietary licensee itself to the general public. If this practice is barely legitimate, it stands to reason that anything that goes even just a little bit further crosses the line into illegitimacy.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Pledge for funding to the Gnash project to get AVM2 support

      The Gnash project is the most promising solution for a Free Software Flash implementation. It has done great so far, but there is still far to go, and recently its funding has dried up. I believe AVM2 support in Gnash is vital to the continued progress of the project, as more and more sites show up with AVM2 flash files.

  • Openness/Sharing

Leftovers

  • First-Sale Doctrine Under Fire
    Email This Entry

    A notice of filing an amicus brief from the EFF reminded me that I had also meant to blog about Vernor v Autodesk, another crucial case that has received far too little mass-media press attention.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Lawsuits Say Pharma Illegally Paid Doctors to Push Their Drugs

      Drug companies say the millions of dollars they pay physicians for speaking and consulting justly compensates them for the laudable work of educating their colleagues.

      But a series of lawsuits brought by former employees of those companies allege the money often was used for illegal purposes — financially rewarding doctors for prescribing their brand-name medications.

  • Security

    • I’ll come back to it soon though

      A vulnerability in the library loader of the GNU C library can be exploited to obtain root privileges under Linux and other systems. Attackers could exploit the hole, for instance, to gain full control of a system by escalating their privileges after breaking into a web server with restricted access rights. Various distributors are already working on updates.

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble… G8/G20

      Over and over again, the peaceful protests against the G8/G20 summit were met with over-reaction and unmerited violence by the authorities. I assume the well paid security forces were operating on the theory that the best defense is a strong offense.

      If you smash opposition mercilessly beneath your jackboots, perhaps protesters can be frightened away.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Stop Republicans from impeaching President Obama

      If Republicans control the House of Representatives after the November elections, writes Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, they will impeach Barack Hussein Obama, as many on the right call our president.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Stop Republicans from impeaching President Obama

      Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

    • Popular Facebook apps found to be collecting, selling user info

      If you use Facebook but don’t want your personal information leaked all over the Web, you had better make sure you don’t use any of Facebook’s most popular apps. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, “tens of millions” of apps on Facebook transmit varying amounts of identifying information to their own personal ad servers, even in cases when users’ profiles were set to completely private.

      On the most benign level, many Facebook apps gather a user’s Facebook ID if that user installs the app on his or her profile. The ID itself doesn’t necessarily give anyone access to a user’s protected profile, though if the person in question has a public profile, then all of that information could be (and undoubtedly is being) scraped.

    • 4 EFF Pioneer Awards Winners for 2010 Announced – I am one of them

      The Electric Frontier Foundation has announced four winners of their EFF Pioneer Awards for 2010. I am a winner this year.

      When I heard the news, I got goosebumps. Previous winners of the EFF Pioneer Awards include Tim Berners-Lee, Linus and Richard Stallman. This is a day I’ll remember. I never ever thought this was something that would happen. I feel the acknowledgment for me and our body of work here on Groklaw, and it feels very good. Thank you, EFF.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • True to type

      Such protection is complicated, and requires an infrastructure and agreements that often prevent use across systems. It also has precious little effect in deterring piracy. DRM may actually push potential buyers into pirates’ arms because out of a desire for simplicity and portability rather than out of an unwillingness to pay.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Stonewalling Stonehenge

      These are mainly rights managed. Rights managed images are essentially designed for a specific and time limited usage, and they’re more controlled and controllable than RF images.

    • Copyrights

      • Filmmaker Schools Pirates On Correct Way To Rip His DVD

        Most days the news surrounding torrent sites, the scene and piracy is dominated by lawsuits, busts and other negative stories. But every now and then there is a ray of light that brightens the day. Today we bring you the story of a filmmaker who didn’t complain when he saw that his film was being pirated. Instead he helped a scene release group to improve the ripped copy of his DVD.

      • Your time is up, publishers. Book piracy is about to arrive on a massive scale

        But why would the average person not pirate eBooks? Like Cory Doctorow says, it’s not going to become any harder to type in ‘Toy Story 3 bittorrent’ in the future – and ‘Twilight ePub’ is even easier to type, and much faster to download to boot.

Clip of the Day

Dan Bull – Death of ACTA


Credit: TinyOgg

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