05.18.10

Contents

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

GNU/Linux

• SouthEast LinuxFest announce more speakers

• Linuxcare returns with focus in the cloud

  Back in Linux’s early days, Linuxcare emerged as the first important Linux support company. In 1998, the company made headlines not just in the technology press but in mainstream business publications like the Wall Street Journal as the company that would help businesses switch over to Linux. It was not to last. Poor top management decisions led Linuxcare to lose first its way, and, then, years later, to quietly vanish. Now, one of its founders, Arthur F. Tyde III, has brought Linuxcare back from the grave and made it ready for the 21st century.

  [...]

  In a statement, Dr. Scott S. Elliott, Linuxcare CEO, explained that since “Many companies are moving their IT to Cloud computing providers such as Amazon Web Services in order to reduce expenses for capital equipment, buildings, utilities, and supporting manpower.” We have built Linuxcare in the Cloud to provide scalable services such as helping clients set-up, configure and debug their open-source applications, including Linux, Joomla, SugarCRM, and many others.”

• Weekend Project: Transition to IPv6

  The Linux Kernel and Utilities

  The Linux kernel has supported IPv6 since the very beginning, around 1996, and has adapted to keep up with the revisions and enhancements of IPv6-related RFCs over the years. Today, virtually no Linux distribution ships a kernel that does not include the IPv6 module compiled and loaded by default. You can test for its presence in several ways, though. The simplest is to look inside the /proc/net/ directory; if /proc/net/if_inet6 (and other entries) are present, the IPv6 module is loaded. If not, you can load it with modprobe ipv6.

• Desktop

  • Bite the Bullet

    As I have previously mentioned, a friend contacted me Friday morning with a dead laptop – major graphic hardware problems. This was a system that I had worked on before, so I knew the most likely case was that there would be no saving it this time. So I told her to bring it to me, and I would extract her data and prepare another system for her to use while she decided on a new purchase.

    My plan was to prepare my mini-ITX dual Atom 330 desktop system with the latest Ubuntu distribution (10.04, Lucid Lynx). After transfering her documents and data, she would be able to surf the web (Firefox), email (Thunderbird), and work on MS Office documents (OpenOffice.org). From experience I know that loading from scratch, transferring her data, and showing her the high points of using those programs instead of the Windows programs she was accustomed to, would take me about two hours.

  • It Never Rains but it Pours PCs

    I just chatted with a teacher working late. He wants to try GNU/Linux because he is so tired of that other OS making him wait all the time. I will bet one of these new machines will be a rocket with GNU/Linux. I am unwilling to accept the EULA, too. I accidentally got that far into one when I applied power to insert SystemRescueCD instead of using the paper-clip trick. I did some tests:

    * all the hardware works with Linux
    * full disc reads at 110MB/s average, 130 MB/s peak.
    * memory cache runs at 18 gB/s

    I am leaning towards converting these machines for GNU/Linux terminal servers on a per-classroom basis. That will give the teacher total control of the students’ processes and a power-house multimedia station all at the same time. The advantages of the students’ processes running on a 64bit machine with RAID 1 and 3gB RAM are huge. If the teacher already has an application loaded, the students’ windows will pop open in the blink of an eye. I need some network switches soon…

  • Getting a Ubuntu Laptop setup for my Mum

    As sitting in the garden while surfing the internet is way cooler than only having a dedicated computer in an office we decided to get a notebook while at it. As both Thilo and myself are very familiar with Linux, the plan was to get a Linux-compatible netbook, install Ubuntu on it, get wireless up and running, pre-configure the necessary applications and hand it over after a short usage introduction.

    [...]

    For two weeks now mom is now happy user of the Ubuntu netbook edition – step by step learning how to write e-mails, chat and use the internet. As usual first thing we tried out was searching for vacation destinations, but also for at least my name.

  • When Microsoft hardware works more easily on Ubuntu than XP

    How often have you heard the words “it’s difficult to get this software/hardware working on Linux, that’s why it hasn’t caught the mass imagination”?

    On the other hand, how often have you heard that it’s more difficult to get software/hardware working on Windows compared to Linux – but others do it for you so you aren’t exposed to the problem?

    My personal experience is more of the latter and much less of the former. The latest example I have to offer is that of hardware made by Microsoft itself – LifeChat USB audio headphones.

    A bit of background. My children have run through eight pairs of headsets in the last two years, most of them LogiTech, for one reason or the other – the sound fails, parts break, the wires come loose. Each set costs something in the region of $40 so it ain’t cheap stuff.

    Whenever any set which they are using fails, they grab the one sitting on their mother’s PC and behave as though nothing has happened. I have to then buy my wife a new set.

  • eMachines Bring Power Of Linux To India

    Acer has announced the launch of a new notebook, eME730, under its super value brand eMachines. Through its value-driven product offering from eMachines, Acer aims to address the void in the value PC segment.

    eMachines is bringing the most aggressive mobile computing solution that exists in the market today. It enables to make the dream of owning a laptop a reality for the average Indian consumer. This Notebook from eMachines, is one of the most economical Core i3 based laptops available in the market today. eMachines730, with its dual tone refreshing design, is the best option in terms of price-performance ratio, as it offers the most competitive prices in the market for the specifications incorporated.

• Google

  • The New Browser Wars: Will Ubuntu drop Firefox for Google Chrome?

  • Clearing the air around Ubuntu and Chrome

    Reports of the popular Linux distro ditching Firefox get clarified

    Amidst reports that Ubuntu would ditch longtime default browser Firefox for Google’s Chrome browser were put to rest with a resounding “sort of.”

    [...]

    Castro was also quick to dispel any rumors that the potential browser switch was for the desktop build of Ubuntu. If Chromium is chosen, it will only affect the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10.

  • Good Google!

    They have the rising-stars of browsers, OS, and are stronger than ever in search and advertising.

    [...]

    At the moment, this is happening on mobile things, small mobile things. With ARM it can spill over to immobile things, too. How many hundreds of millions of people will have to know GNU/Linux and derivatives work before the monopoly is broken? My estimate is one. Why? Because everyone knows a few people so the contacts the in-folk have are just about everyone.

• Ballnux

  • LG Ally available for preorder from Verizon

  • HTC Evo 4G preorders begin at Best Buy, Radio Shack

  • HTC spins budget Android 2.1 phone with app-sharing feature

    HTC announced a budget-minded Android 2.1 phone for European and Asian markets. Available in the third quarter, the HTC Wildfire will offer a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen, a five-megapixel camera, a 3.5mm audio jack, a microSD card slot, and a new app-sharing feature, says the company.

• Kernel Space

  • Release

    • Linux 2.6.34 Kernel Released! Time For 2.6.35

    • Linux 2.6.34

      Nothing very interesting here, which is just how I like it. Various random fixes all over, nothing really stands out. Pretty much all of it is one- or few-liners, I think the biggest patch in the last week was fixing some semantics for the new SR-IOV VF netlink interface. And even that wasn’t a _big_ patch by any means.

    • What’s new in Linux 2.6.34

      The Nouveau driver for GeForce graphics hardware now includes everything you need to dynamically generate open source firmware for NV50 GPUs on demand, so that 8xxx, 9xxx and GTX2x0 series GeForce graphics chips will now run without the controversial ctxprogs, generated using proprietary graphics drivers.

  • File Systems

    • Linux 2.6.34 Kernel Debuts With New Filesystems

      The Linux 2.6.34 kernel is now available, delivering new filesystems to the open source operating system.

      Among the big new items included in the 2.6.34 release is the Ceph distributed filesystem and LogFS, a filesystem geared toward flash media devices. The update comes as the second major Linux kernel development of 2010 and follows the Linux 2.6.33 kernel release by just under three months.

    • Linux gains flash filesystem

      Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 2.6.34, which is notable for adding two filesystems: Ceph for distributed and cloud-based applications, and LogFS, which is optimized for flash-memory based devices. Other new features include a faster KVM virtualization driver based on Vhost.net technology, says LinuxPlanet.com.

    • Linux kernel 2.6.34 adds scalable Ceph filesystem

      Linus Torvalds announced this week the official release of version 2.6.34 of the Linux kernel. The update introduces two new filesystems and brings a number of other technical improvements and bug fixes.

    • Linux gets jiggy with more filesystems in 2.6.34 kernel release

      But open source software fans and vendors will be happy to see the Ceph distributed filesystem, which supports many petabytes of storage, and flash media-happy LogFS filesystem included in the 2.6.34 release of Linux.

    • A Random Btrfs Experience

      I still look forward to the promise of btrfs. I’m impressed with how far it has come, and it holds great promise. However, I just can’t see this being production-ready quite yet. At least not without heavy backups (which I can’t afford right now – at least not doing it right).

    • Article ZFS data integrity testing and more random ZFS thoughts.

  • LM_Sensors

    • LM_Sensors Finally Gets Better Intel CPU Support

      This Intel Linux sensor work was done by Intel’s Huaxu Wan and Carsten Emde of the Open-Source Automation Development Lab eG. The patches can be found on the LM_Sensors mailing list.

• Applications

  • Reviews Of The Linux Torrent Clients

    Bittorrent is the clear leader when it comes to efficiently distributing large files online. Just about any media site or Linux distribution offers files as torrents, and there are several options when it comes to the client you use to download those files. So many, in fact, that it can quickly become overwhelming when you attempt to find the “best” one. As with most software, “best” can mean different things for different people. Today we’ll round up X of the top clients for Linux and compare features to help you decide the right one for you.

  • Epiphany Browser for Gnome (review)

    Since I love to support gnome and open source (and i don’t think they are secretly gathering my personal info), I have currently set Epiphany as my default browser and encourage you to give it a try.

  • New Experimental AWN build ‘Lucido’ is beautiful, great to use

    The world and its dog knows that I’m a Docky die-hard but even my jaw dropped a little when Ulbadulba sent me a preview of his new experimental AWN build dubbed ‘Lucido’.

  • AWN Lucido: New Avant Window Navigator Style (Ubuntu .deb Download)

  • IDE 101: 5 Open Source Web Development Tools — Vim and Its Kin

    It takes the right tools to do the job right. When it comes to writing code, it’s important to consider both the needs of the job and the preferences of individual developers. Comfort and familiarity make long sessions in front of the screen that much more productive. Tools that work right can make the difference between shipping a product on time or spending all night hunting down a pesky bug.

  • Flash/Lightspark

    • Lightspark Open Source Flash Player enters Beta

      OpenSource Flash player implementation ‘Lightspark’ has entered beta.

      “What’s Lightspark?” the developers describe it as:

      * “…an open source Adobe Flash implementation, designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hopefully) future hardware.”

    • Lightspark, an innovative FLOSS Flash player, reaches Beta Status

      The long term objec­tive of this project is not only to deliver a free as in free­dom flash player, but also to give to the Flash tech­nol­ogy the dig­nity of a real open stan­dard. I really believe Flash is a pow­er­ful tech­nol­ogy, it’s main weak­ness being it’s closed­ness. Lightspark has been entirely designed after Adobe released the SWF file for­mat doc­u­men­ta­tion, so no reverse engi­neer­ing has been done.

  • Instructionals

    • Duplicating subsets of package selections between systems

    • Streamlining Software Installation with PackageKit

    • Using SVG Templates – Design

    • Force SSH Client To Use Given Private Key ( identity file )

    • HowTo: Update Centos Linux 5.4 to 5.5

    • Fixing gnustep-devel in Ubuntu 10.04

    • Working with CAB file on Linux

    • Python: Open the Most Recent Log File

    • GRUB boot menu

    • Have a sleek, simpler Nautilus

    • Perl and the Least Surprised

    • How to find out Active Connections or which Ports are open/listening on Linux

    • How to do USSD queries for 3G modems in Linux ?

    • Install All New Pidgin 2.7 in Ubuntu Lucid, Karmic

    • HowTo: Install Memcached With repcached “Built-In Server Side Replication” On Debian Lenny

    • The Perfect Subversion Server – Debian Lenny [ISPConfig3]

    • How to check if your email server looks like a spam source

    • Email PDFs From the Command Line With Open Source Software uuencode

  • Games

    • The Chzo Mythos Is Coming To GNU/Linux !

      Two weeks ago I’ve officially started the first LGN contest, that with the disappointing results will also probably be the last LGN contest.

    • PipeWalker 0.8.2

    • Porting Osmos to Linux: A Post-Mortem (part 1/3)

      A couple of weeks ago, we announced the release of Osmos on Linux. Even before I had finished the port, we had been invited by a few members of the Linux community to do a post-mortem on our experiences. We were asked, “What would have made the port easier?” It was pointed out to us that while some indie developer forays into Linux had resulted in drama (viz. John Blow’s inquiries into Linux back in August 2008 as he was considering porting Braid to Linux), it was hoped that more indies would “take the plunge” and share their experiences with the Linux community, to work together towards developing Linux into a platform for gaming.

    • Some Awesome Gaming

    • World Wine News Issue 362

    • Epic Games Provides No Hope For UT3 On Linux

      It’s very sad times right now for tier-one commercial games on Linux, which should make it very easy for Valve Software to conquer and control with their Steam software on the Linux desktop and then the game titles running off their very advanced Source Engine.

    • Who Will Show Up to Linux’s Steam-Powered Playground?

      DRM concerns notwithstanding, there seemed to be no doubt in many geeks’ minds that Steam will bring some much-needed fresh blood to the world of Linux gaming. “It’s nice to see Linux finally getting the respect it deserves as a mainstream platform,” said Montreal consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack.

    • Open source can juice the video game market

      Video games, as a market, have always made the Mac look open. Closed platforms are the rule. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is considered a mandate.

      But the good times are no longer rolling. Sales plunged in April, for both hardware and software.

      There is a second trend. Gamers continue to get older, more reflective. My own son is 18, has played all his life, but now finds himself drawn to “ancient” games, games made in the 20th century. He has even messed around a bit with scripting.

      Could open source be the answer? The Humble Indie Bundle, having hit its financial target with the strange idea that people should pay for games what they want, is fulfilling its promise to release the code, under the GPL. (Here’s the code repository.)

• Desktop Environments

  • Blur Effect enabled by default

    I just enabled the blur effect by default for the beta cycle. If your graphics card at least supports the extension GL_ARB_fragment_program (check with glxinfo) you should see the blur behind Plasma tooltips, etc.

  • Is GNOME or KDE Better for New Users?

    One argument I hear is how much KDE 4.x looks like OS X or Windows 7, while GNOME feels more like something from the 90′s. Out of the box, a few years ago, this might have held some truth to it.

    These days however, GNOME is highly customizable and looks very professional out of the box. Taking the experience further, you can even alter the GNOME theme in three easy clicks. Four, if you count the new theme you’ve selected.

    I also appreciate the fact that from the same three clicks, I can download ready-made themes if those provides are simply not cutting it.

  • Someone is *Wrong* On The Internet

    What prompted this thread, you might ask? Well, I was reading Michael Read’s recent KDE4: It hurt, but did it work? article, and was tickled by the fervor of the anti/pro camps surrounding the great KDE vs. Gnome debate. Did the anti-KDE flamers win over any converts to whatever was being claimed as a superior desktop environment? I doubt it. Did it make for entertaining reading? I think so.

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Keynote Speaker at Akademy 2010: Aaron Seigo Interview

      In about 6 weeks the biggest yearly gathering of the KDE community starts in Tampere. To give you all a little taste of Akademy 2010, Guillermo Amaral interviewed Aaron Seigo and asked him about his keynote.

    • Desktop Summit 2011 Extends Deadline for Call for Hosts

    • KMyMoney announces release candidate for KDE platform 4

      After a year of hard work on a version for the KDE platform 4, the KMyMoney team is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate. Unlike previous versions, this one is recommended for general use. The feedback provided by previous beta releases makes us confident that it is as stable and rock-solid as previous stable versions.

    • Clementine is an attractively simple music player and organizer

      Clementine is actually a port of Amarok, one of the better music organizers for KDE and Linux. It’s still early days — they just released version 0.3 — but a core set of features and no bloat is what makes Clementine appealing! It plays music, it organizes music and it streams radio. That’s it! Sure, it also lets you scrobble to Last.fm and, yes, you download missing album art too — but these things happen in the background. It still remains a simple program with just a handful of precious, useful settings that can be changed.

• Distributions

  • The Secret Identities of Linux Distributions

    Of the three, Ubuntu is probably the easiest to identify: most popular desktop Linux distribution. That’s a laudable goal, but right now that strong sense of identity could work against Canonical, which is also trying to position Ubuntu as a strong server platform and a cloud client. Look for a push to build some sort of meta identity for Ubuntu soon, I would expect.

  • Gentoo

    • Help Wanted: The Gentoo Foundation

      We are in the process towards the goal of tax-exempt status with the United States Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit corporation.

    • [going embedded with mGentoo]

  • New Releases

    • ABC GNU/Linux

      This is how the first version of ABC GNU/Linux arose, which was in trial phase by April 2009. It involves a free software-based distribution (Ubuntu), is live as well as installable, and is capable of automatically configuring a cluster of up to 254 computers. Castanos said, “100 PCs are purchased and my DVD is inserted into one of these and booted, either from the DVD or installed in the hard disk itself. This computer and the rest of the machines are connected together by a switch (a device that acts like a router). When the rest of the machines are booted, using a BIOS (basic in/out system) specifying which device is to be booted, they are told what to do by means of the network card. All are booted from the DVD itself — or the hard disk if installed — registered, and connections are created between them.”

    • Arch Linux 2010.05 arrives

      The Arch Linux developers have announced the release of the project’s official 2010.05 installation images. Arch Linux is a simple and lightweight Linux distribution for i686 and x86-64 platforms aimed at Linux users who want to create “their own ideal environment” and install only what they need.

    • Zippy, cloud-based Linux distro off to fast start

      A new fast-booting, cloud-oriented, “Peppermint OS” Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features such as improved KVM virtualization and expanded WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.

  • Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • More On PCLinuxOS 2010

      I am still enjoying the distribution of Linux I have currently on my laptop and it’s stability and solidness.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat’s Worldwide Middleware ISV Ecosystem Expands

      “We are seeing a growing number of customers, who want to leverage the performance and price benefits of open source middleware, request that their application vendors certify against Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware,” said Craig Muzilla, vice president, middleware, Red Hat. “We believe that the growth of our ISV Program reflects a migration away from complex and expensive proprietary platforms towards the leading open source middleware provider, Red Hat.”

    • The End Is In Sight For RHEL 3

      It’s doubtful that anyone really likes having to upgrade, but at some point it has to be done. For those particularly adverse to the upgrade — like enterprise users, with good reason — there are extra-long windows, but eventually even those windows close. Last week, Red Hat announced that the oldest of its supported platforms has officially entered the homestretch.

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 13 – Ready to roll

        Automatic driver installations, better mobile broadband and the end of PowerPC support can be expected from Fedora 13.

        Fedora Linux, the community release of Red Hat, is putting the final touches to its latest release, Fedora 13. Codenamed “Goddard”, Fedora 13 has a number of features that will please end users as well as systems administrators. Fedora 13 also ends the relationship with PowerPC processors and now backs the KVM virtualisation system.

  • Debian Family

    • Debian-Ubuntu relationship: poll summary

      So, I’m now back and with some feedback to share. I’ll first post (in this mail) a summary of the replies I got to this “poll” and later on a more general summary of what I did at UDS.

    • Ubuntu

      • UDS Brussels: Prototype tool helps tracking kernel patches

        Steve Conklin, member of the kernel team at Canonical, wrote the patchtracker during the last couple of months, much of it in the last two weeks. The patchtracker is written in python running on the Django framework. It allows developers to locate all git branches in which a certain kernel patch found its way.

      • Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) Developer Summit

        The community track discussed the usual line-up of events, outreach and advocacy programs, organizational tools, and governance housekeeping for the 10.10 cycle, as well as goals for improving the translation of Ubuntu and related resources into many languages.

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 193

        Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #193 for the week May 9th – May 15th, 2010. In this issue we cover Ubuntu Developer Summit – Ubuntu 10.10 – Maverick Meerkat planned, Ubuntu Developer Summit -M Videos, Unity, and Ubuntu Light, A Case for Modifying the Ubuntu Release Schedule, New Default Applications In Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10?, Ubuntu Stats, Ubuntu DC LoCo InstallFest, Release Party In Uruguay was a Big Hit, Welcome To Ubuntu in Maryland! May 20th, Ubuntu Release Party 10.04 – Alagoas, Ubuntu Hams – Our First UDS Session was Great, Clarifications around Ubuntu using “Google Chrome”, UDS-Maverick recap, BTRFS By Default In Maverick?, Testing Ubuntu Releases, Receive Ubuntu bugs by mail with the Debian PTS, Columbia Areas Linux User Group – Featured speaker Mackenzie Morgan, In The Press, In the Blogoshpere, Canonical’s Ubuntu support scope, Commercial bug-fixes for Ubuntu, Upcoming Meetings and Events, Updates and Security, And much much more…

      • Ubuntu Maverick UDS Group Photo made with the Hugin Panorama Creator

      • Early Release Schedules For Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, 12.04 LTS

        While the release schedules for Ubuntu Linux aren’t exactly a close secret — new releases generally coming in April and October with the version scheme being YY.MM such as Ubuntu 11.04 for the April 2011 release — Canonical’s Robbie Williamson has laid out tentative release schedules for Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu 11.10, and even Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

      • Ubuntu toolbox

        Eye candy. Compiz, which brings all sorts of cool effects to your screen, is already installed with Ubuntu, but to gain greater control over how it behaves, install the settings manager (compizconfig-settings-manager in Synaptic). Also install the Emerald Theme Manager (emerald in Synaptic) so that Compiz can display fancy translucent windows. To activate Emerald after it’s installed, hit F2 and type gksu emerald—replace and hit Enter. I also create a new start-up program using the same command to make sure my fancy windows come up every time.

      • Ubuntu (w/ GNOME) Switching To Single Click For Opening Files And Folders?

      • Variants

        • Linux Mint 9 “Isadora” released!

        • Cloud-ready Peppermint OS blasts off to fast start

          A fast-booting, cloud-oriented, “Peppermint OS” Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, Red Hat clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features including enhanced KVM virtualization and improved WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.

        • Linux and Open Source: A Look at Peppermint OS, a Linux for the Masses

        • Puppy

          • Ubuntu-based Puppy Linux 5.0 arrives

            The major update, also referred to as “Lucid Puppy”, was built using the Woof build system and is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx binary packages. Lucid Puppy features the new Quickpet package manager which allows users to install a number of Linux programs with a single click. Available applications include the Kompozer web authoring system, GIMP for image editing and several browsers, such as Firefox, SeaMonkey, Chromium, and Opera.

          • Distro Hoppin`: Puppy Linux 5.0

            Puppy Linux is on an ever-ascending curve with every new release proving to be a must have for Linux nomads who need an Internet- and Multimedia-ready system wherever they go, without needing to sacrifice precious space on their thumb drives, nor tones of resources on the host machines. Puppy Linux 5, what a great specimen you are…

          • Puppy Linux 5.0

            Puppy Linux, in case you aren’t already familiar with it, is a lightweight version of Linux that is designed for portability.

            The .iso file of Puppy Linux 5.0 weighs in at an incredibly petite 128 MB. It’s much, much smaller than all of the usual desktop heavyweight distros. But don’t let its small size fool you, Puppy Linux 5.0 is anything but an also-ran in terms of functionality and usability.

            Puppy Linux 5.0 is built from Ubuntu Linux 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) binaries, so it’s…er…pet name is Lucid Puppy. Like a lot of other things about Puppy Linux, the name is cute and adorable. I felt like giving Puppy Linux a dog bone and a pat on the head when I started using it.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Linux on the iPhone: Status update

    I know the binaries for the iPhone 3G are taking a while. Everything is basically done and all the code I have is in the source repositories so people are free to build it for themselves. However, I wanted to improve the packaging slightly to ease installation (no longer requiring people to modify ext2 partitions). The release of the binaries (and a how-to) will be sometime within the next week.

  • Workshops tackle Qt, Linux, and i.MX development

    Future Electronics and Nokia will host six full-day, hands-on workshops across the North America on using Linux and Nokia’s Qt development framework to develop user interfaces (UIs) for Freescale’s ARM-based i.MX system-on-chips (SoCs). Starting in Boston on May 18, the workshops will use the Freescale i.MX23 SoC as its sample platform.

  • WebOS

    • Palm’s webOS installed and running on old Dell laptop

      Old used laptops are usually paired with old operating systems like Windows XP or some GNU/Linux variant. But for those of you who want to try out something completely different, check out Palm’s webOS.

      No, I have not gone crazy or fallen victim to a typo of some sort. Palm’s mobile operating system on the Pre and Pixi has been found to be capable of running on an old Dell laptop. See the image below for some introductory proof.

    • webOS up and running on PC hardware

  • Android

    • Rumor: T-Mobile ‘Project Emerald’ is Sidekick-Branded Android Product

      TmoNews and DroidDog are reporting that the phone that’s going to be part of T-Mobile’s latest initiative will actually be a Sidekick. This time around, HTC will be manufacturing the device as opposed to Sharp or Motorola. Rumored specs peg the phone with Android 2.1, a 1 GHz processor (assumed to be Snapdragon), a front-facing camera, 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, and 16 GB of internal storage. Sounds like a pretty grown up Sidekick to us! No firm dates yet, but we’ve learned it should be ‘summer’.

    • Can Froyo 2.2 Save Linux-Based Android From Fragmentation?

      As Google prepares to kick off its annual Google I/O developer conference Wednesday, the wireless industry — including many open source mobile app developers — are anticipating the Android 2.2 release, dubbed Froyo, not only because of its faster processing features but also for its potential to mitigate the nascent OS’s fragmentation issue.

      Handsets powered by Google’s Android are becoming increasingly popular, but the open source smartphone platform is facing a threat that could cause it to self-destruct.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • Dual-core Atom for netbooks?

      Intel will launch its first dual-core Atom processor for netbooks and other mobile devices during the third quarter, Fudzilla claims. The N550 will be clocked at 1.5GHz, have 512KB of second-level cache per core, and offer an 8.5 Watt TDP, Fuad Abazovic writes.

Free Software/Open Source

• Do we need open source vendors?

  One of the biggest misconceptions about open source software (OSS) in the enterprise is that it is software that can be rolled out without the involvement of a vendor. But in reality, in any enterprise software deployment, there will always be someone that needs to play the role that the vendor plays in the commercial software space.

  What I do mean when I say that there will always need to be a vendor? To put it simply, I believe that there will always need to be someone you can count on to provide the support and services that you can’t depend on the open source community to provide.

• New Hampshire Libraries Band Together for their Implementation of Koha

  ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that The Monadnock Library Community of New Hampshire has partnered with them for the installation and support of the community version of the Koha integrated library system.

• Databases

  • 5 of the Best Free Linux MySQL Tools

    MySQL is a relational database management system. It provides a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL is the most popular open source database, and is the database component of the LAMP software stack. LAMP consists of the Apache web server, MySQL and PHP, the essential building blocks to run a general purpose web server. MySQL is used and championed by many large organizations including Google, Facebook, BBC, Intel, Sun, SAP, Dell, AMD, Novell, Veritas and many others.

• Oracle

  • 6 Advanced OpenOffice.org Extensions

    OpenOffice.org (OOo for short) is a powerful open source and multi-platform office suite, and is even comparable to Microsoft Office. However, there’s always room-to-grow, features to improve, and things to customize. Luckily, the open source community provides a great repository of extensions and add-ons. Today, we’ll look at six of them. Now let’s get started!

• CMS

  • Social networking platform eXo Social released

    eXo has announced the release of eXo Social 1.0, an enterprise social networking package which supports OpenSocial, under an AGPL licence. eXo Social is bundled with eXo’s GateIn 3.0 and Tomcat 6.0 to allow users to configure a social network “out of the box”. eXo Social is aimed at enterprises who want to integrate social networking concepts into their existing infrastructure.

  • eXo Social now open source

    eXo Software said its eXo Social 1.0, which follows the Open Social standard, is now available under the Affero GPL License.

    The AGPL makes server enhancements as well as software available to others. It is considered the bottom of the open source incline for online companies, and is staunchly resisted by Google for that reason.

  • Drupal

    • U.S. Department of Commerce using Drupal

      The United States Department of Commerce just relaunched their website on Drupal. Check out their new website at http://commerce.gov.

      According to Wikipedia, the Department of Commerce has more than 140,000 employees, and an annual budget of $14 billion USD. Needless to say this is another great win for Drupal, and for Open Source in government!

    • Forrester Research using Drupal

• Business

  • Diaspora: The Future of Free Software Funding?

    A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Diaspora, a free software project to create a distributed version of Facebook that gives control back to users. Since then, of course, Facebook-bashing and Diaspora-boosting have become somewhat trendy. Indeed, Diaspora has now soared past its initial $10,000 fund-raising target: at the time of writing, it has raised over $170,000, with 15 days to go. That’s amazing, but what’s more interesting is the way in which Diaspora has done it.

    Of course, the sudden interest of mainstream media has helped, but beyond the arithmetical implications of having lots of people looking at your site, what’s important is how the Diaspora team has managed to turn those proverbial eyeballs into practical funds.

• BSD

  • Chatting with OpenBSD’s Stefan Sperling

  • My experience installing FreeBSD 8 using the PC-BSD 8 RC2 installer

  • LLVM Replaces libstdc++ Library With libc++

    The LLVM compiler infrastructure project has Clang as a compiler front-end to compile C, Objective-C, and C++ programs as an alternative to GCC. However, the Low-Level Virtual Machine is now doing more and replacing bigger portions of the GCC tool-chain with new components. The LLVM project has introduced libc++ as a replacement for the GNU libstdc++ standard library.

• Government

  • MT: Government starts open source user group

    The government of Malta has started the Government of Malta Open Source End User Group (Moseug) last month. The group is meant to become a major driving force behind open source initiatives in the country.

    According to an article on the new user group in the Times of Malta newspaper, written by Michel Bugeja, an IT architect at Malta’s governmental Information Technology Agency (MITA), the government wants the group to help to increase the use of open source software in the government. “All stakeholders see the formation of the user group as a commitment from the government to promote open source software on equal play to proprietary software.”

• Openness

  • Trailer For Blender Open Movie Sintel Ready

• Programming

  • Zend Raises Another $9 million – For What?

    They now claim to have more than 1 million registered users for its PHP solutions which include the Zend Studio IDE and Zend Server PHP efforts.

  • Google I/O: What to Expect, What to Hope For

    The folks at Apple have made an art form out of annual conferences with big announcements.

    In recent years we’ve seen the iPhone, MacBook Air, and more recently the iPad unveiled to much fanfare.

    Not to be outdone by Apple, Google has been making some Waves as well with their annual spring conference dubbed Google I/O.

  • Django 1.2 released

    Django 1.2 introduces several large, important new features, including:

    * Support for multiple database connections in a single Django instance.
    * Model validation inspired by Django’s form validation.

    …]

Leftovers

• Verizon gives up on family’s $18,000 bill

  For, in the story of the Massachusetts family that fought for four years against a Verizon bill of some $18,000, a winner has been declared. And it is not, you will be pained to discover, Verizon.

• Bill revealed affair, woman sues Rogers

  A Toronto woman says the billing practices of Rogers Wireless Inc. led to her husband discovering her extramarital affair.

• Exclusive: Seagate confirms 3TB drive

  After a few weeks of rumours, Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig has confirmed to Thinq that “we are announcing a 3TB drive later this year,” but the move to 3TB of storage space apparently involves a lot more work than simply upping the areal density.

  The ancient foundations of the PC’s three-decade legacy has once again reared its DOS-era head, revealing that many of today’s PCs are simply incapable of coping with hard drives that have a larger capacity than 2.1TB.

• Security/Aggression

  • Cars’ Computer Systems Called at Risk to Hackers

    Automobiles, which will be increasingly connected to the Internet in the near future, could be vulnerable to hackers just as computers are now, two teams of computer scientists are warning in a paper to be presented next week.

  • Hack attacks mounted on car control systems

  • Security guard admits he hacked hospital PCs

    Jesse William McGraw, 25, called himself Ghost Exodus in videos such as this one as he wandered the halls of the North Central Medical Plaza in Dallas during the graveyard shift. He used his physical access to the facility’s PCs to install bots so he could launch attacks on a rival hacking gang, prosecutors said. The compromised machines included a nurse’s station computer for tracking patients and one that controlled the HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system.

  • CCTV? Oh yes, it’s a great earner!

    Oh good! If the system makes more money, then there can be even more watching!

  • Ahead of G20 summit, more CCTV cameras go up

    Crews have been hard at work downtown putting up dozens of security cameras, which will be used to monitor streets during the G20 Summit next month.

  • Tim Loughton and ClassWatch

    Loughton You may not have heard of a company called ClassWatch – but if you’ve got a child of school age, the chances are that Classwatch has an eye on your family. They install CCTV in classrooms. Have a look at their website – under “technology” you can see the way they install surveillance (including listening devices) in different classroom layouts.

  • Unpleasant to see you, to see you, unpleasant

    Of course, such schemes have at their heart a “won’t somebody think of the children” nanny state agenda driven by the extreme examples such as Baby P’s sad death. But cases like that are about the clear-cut failure of social services (who had had multiple interactions with that family). Rather than deal with such incompetence, the state’s solution is to dole out much greater powers to the same types of incompetent people, over the lives of a far wider sector of society. The vast law-abiding majority shouldn’t be intruded upon as a consequence of the state’s failure to deal with the tiny minority.

  • Judge Permanently Bans Webcam Spying On Students

  • Scientists Question Safety Of New Airport Scanners

    After the “underwear bomber” incident on Christmas Day, President Obama accelerated the deployment of new airport scanners that look beneath travelers’ clothes to spot any weapons or explosives.

    Fifty-two of these state-of-the-art machines are already scanning passengers at 23 U.S. airports. By the end of 2011, there will be 1,000 machines and two out of every three passengers will be asked to step into one of the new machines for a six-second head-to-toe scan before boarding.

    About half of these machines will be so-called X-ray back-scatter scanners. They use low-energy X-rays to peer beneath passengers’ clothing. That has some scientists worried.

  • Pentagon hacker demands Government payback

    Pentagon hacker, Gary McKinnon has called on the newly-elected British government to put its money where its mouth is and tear up his extradition order.

  • Alasdair Palmer is wrong, wrong, wrong

    I would love to ask Mr Palmer how he thinks ID cards would facilitate crime prevention? Is his ideal world one in which every UK citizen carries identification that the Police can order to see at any time; to paraphrase our new PM’s infamous gaffe – “ver are your papers?” Not even our overbearing previous government were ready to go that far!

  • The Controversy Magnet: PositiveID “Chips” Alzheimer’s Patients, Quite Possibly Without Permission

    When is a medical experiment in which you implant microchips in 200 old people with Alzheimer’s disease not a medical experiment? According to PositiveID (PSID), it’s when you forget to get permission from an institutional review board, which oversees medical experiments on humans.

  • Need a false identity? It’ll cost a couple of quid

    Confused about who was going to end up as prime minister earlier this week? Imagine how the fake identity card company felt which produced documents for The Observer and security company CPP.

    To show how easy it is to obtain fraudulent documents using anyone’s details, CPP applied for four official-looking proofs of ID using David Cameron’s name and Gordon Brown’s photo. As you can see, the results of this unlikely coalition are pretty convincing.

  • West Hull residents asked to shop neighbours for leaving bins out too long

    PEOPLE in a west Hull street are being asked to shop their neighbours if they leave their bins out for too long.

    City council officials are even asking residents to fill in so-called “environmental crime incident diaries”, similar to those used to log violent anti- social behaviour.

  • Pruning twigs leads to £20k fine threat

    When the Highways Agency chopped down dozens of trees shielding his home from the busy M6 last year, pensioner Bryan Wiseman had to simply put up with it.

    But after pruning a couple of branches from a hawthorn tree overhanging his garden in Woodside Way, Short Heath, the 70-year-old has been stunned by the threat of a court fine of up to £20,000.

  • Oh, You Mean Those Quotas

    In March, I wrote a column detailing a number of credible accusations made against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for instituting a quota system for arrests and for stop-and-frisk searches. At the same time, additional allegations charged higher-ups in the department with actively discouraging crime victims from reporting crimes—as well as downgrading felonies to misdemeanors—in order to make the city’s crime statistics look better. Taken together, these allegations painted an ugly picture of New Yorkers being stopped, hassled, and frisked for either petty offenses or for no offense at all, while the victims of acutal crimes faced unsympathetic law enforcement officials.

    [...]

    Unfortunately, the current political class in New York has bought into the idea that these policies are responsible for the drop in crime. It seems odd to say that it will take an unusually conscientious politician to call for a crime policy that doesn’t involve suppressing real crimes, manufacturing fake ones, and harassing the citizenry. But that is precisely what it will take.

• Environment/Health

  • Barack Obama sends nuclear experts to tackle BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil leak

    The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the “catastrophic” flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant’s inability to control the situation.

  • Oil Spill Encounters Loop Current

    Satellite image speaks volumes

    There have been conflicting rumblings across the newswire services and across social media outlets whether the Gulf oil spill has been entrained into the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current.

    The images below from NASA’s MODIS satellite speaks volumes and confirms many people’s worst fears.

  • How Much Oil Is Really Spilling into the Gulf of Mexico?

    At first, right after the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded on April 20, BP and U.S. government officials reported the underwater well was pumping about 1,000 barrels a day into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A few days later, that figure was challenged by the non-profit group SkyTruth, which uses remote sensing and digital mapping to evaluate environmental issues globally. Ten days later, by April 30, some industry experts said the well could be leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels daily — five times the previous estimate, and the one that has been the most widely and persistently used in the media.

  • Gas surge shut well a couple of weeks before Gulf oil spill

    The material paints a chilling image of the violent force of the rig explosions and the chaos that ensued as rig workers tried to escape spewing mud, seawater and methyl hydrates in the form of icy slush. That same type of frozen natural gas blocked BP’s attempts during the weekend to control the well leak with a huge box lowered 5,000 feet to the sea floor.

    Back on April 20, the slush forced its way to the rig, shot 240 feet in the air and heated into a gas that quickly ignited into fireballs, Bea’s witness accounts say. Among those tossed asunder by the explosions were BP officials who were on the rig to celebrate a seven-year spotless safety record.

  • Submerged oil plumes suggest gulf spill is worse than BP claims

    Ocean scientists in the Gulf of Mexico have found giant plumes of oil coagulating at up to 1,300 metres below the surface, raising fears that the BP oil spill may be larger than thought – and that it might create huge “dead zones”.

  • The Right Wing’s Next Target: The Greenlining Institute

    Last year, right-wing activists masqueraded as a pimp and a prostitute and used a phony storyline and a hidden camera to take down the community group ACORN. ACORN was eventually absolved and the unsavory tactics of the right exposed, but that hasn’t stopped the right from moving on to a new target: the Berkeley, California-based Greenlining Institute. Like ACORN, the Greenlining Institute is a progressive organization that advocates for the poor and works for economic justice. It also supports implementation and enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, a federal law passed in 1977 to mitigate deteriorating conditions in low and moderate-income neighborhoods by addressing the practice of redlining — denying credit or insurance to people based on their ethnic background or neighborhood.

  • MIT Team Unveils Airplane that Uses 70 Percent Less Fuel

    Today a team of researchers at MIT unveiled their latest feat of engineering — an airplane that uses 70% less fuel than conventional aircraft.

  • Mixing of poisonous chemicals in Tetra Milk Pack disclosed.

    The NA Standing Committee on Human Rights has constituted a monitoring committee to ensure the supply of quality edibles to consumers after disclosure of harmful ingredients in the preparations of Tetra Milk Pack. The meeting of NA Standing Committee was held at the Parliament House with its Chairman Riaz Fatyana in the chair on Monday.

• Finance

  • Jim’s Mailbox

    Perhaps many intelligent German people studied the history of Weimar hyperinflation that occurred in 1923. The printing presses like those today went out of control sending the price of gold to the stratosphere as paper dollars became useless!

  • Why the SEC Decided to Sue Goldman Sachs

    As you might imagine, the ongoing revelations about the SEC (Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford, and porn, among others) has made things somewhat awkward for the agency’s employees. Children jeer at them on the street. Priests sigh in disgust when they confess the name of their employer through the grate. Their local deli guys are like, “How’s it hangin’, ladyboy?” when they stop in to buy cigarettes. Even old ladies give them a hard time, according to this morning’s Journal.

  • An Updated List of Goldman Sachs Ties to the Obama Government Including Elena Kagan

    III. COMBINED LIST OF GOLDIES TIED TO THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT.

    This lists compiles the names above and those in the prior diary on this. For more detail on names not annotated in this diary, see the earlier diary linked here):

    ALTMAN, ROGER.

    BERKOWITZ, HOWARD P.

    BIDEN, JOE.

    BRAINARD, LAEL.

    BUFFETT, WARREN.

    CLINTON, HILLARY.

    [...]

  • The Government as Identity Thieves

    The spotlight remains on the Greek sovereign debt crisis as the riots continue. The terms of the Greek bailout from the IMF and Eurozone countries remain contentious with citizens on all sides. Europeans hate having their governments throw public money away as much as Americans do. The Greeks are not happy about having their taxes raised while their pensions and salaries are cut. Meanwhile, it is rumored by the Financial Times, AFP and others that Greece may spend more than it saves from austerity measures on arms deals with Germany, France and the US as a potential condition of receiving bailout funds. If true, it is certainly not unprecedented for the global military industrial complex to benefit from deals made by their friends in the central banking community. After all, war is the health of the state. The last thing big government proponents want is for peace to break out in the world.

• AstroTurf

  • “Your Superhero is Smoking?”

    So, I’m new, but I said screw it and I took Gary’s concern up with management and here’s the deal.

    If Supercool Creative gets 500 tweets telling us the logo is no good we’ll change it… on our business cards, letterhead, websites, social networking sites… everything.

  • Death by Tweet?

    Supercool Creative, a social marketing company that tries to shape opinion by making viral videos and posting them on the Web, recently adopted a new Superman-like hero as its logo. So what’s the problem? The guy is shown smoking a cigarette. After the image prompted a man from Prospect, Connecticut to tweet the company letting them know their smoking logo was not cool, Supercool Creative decided to take turn what appeared to be a nascent social effort to oust their logo into a into a viral challenge.

  • Pampers Parents Liars? That’s P&G’s Response to Complaining Consumers

    Parents who’ve complained that reformulated Pampers caused severe diaper rash in their children are liars, a Procter & Gamble executive claims.

    “For a number of weeks, Pampers has been a subject of growing but completely false rumors fueled by social media that its new Dry Max diaper causes rashes and other skin irritations,” said Jodi Allen, P&G Vice President for Pampers. “These rumors are being perpetuated by a small number of parents, some of whom are unhappy that we replaced our older Cruisers and Swaddlers products while others support competitive products and the use of cloth diapers. Some have specifically sought to promote the myth that our product causes ‘chemical burns.’”

    Allen offered no documentation for her allegations, simply labeling the complaints of parents false. But an analysis of complaints filed with ConsumerAffairs.com finds that most come from parents who were loyal Pampers customers until they encountered problems with the reformulated “Dry Max” Pampers.

  • Spin

    • Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns

      US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation

      [...]

      The new curriculum asserts that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

      There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.

      The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous “Atlantic triangular trade”, and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.

    • My Growing Library of Banned Books

      I have never understood people who become justifiably apoplectic when the government bans books at the behest of a political party in power, but then remain silent (or even offer their support) when the same government power bans books at the behest of private corporate interests. The end result is the same. A free mind who wishes to explore creative works and form artistic judgments on them is prevented from doing so by force of law.

  • Fox

    • Jimmy Wales: Fox News Is Wrong, No Shake Up

      Contrary to several reports, Wikipedia’s Founder Jimmy Wales is not relinquishing his editorial control of Wikipedia and its related projects. On Friday, Fox News reported that “a shakeup is underway at the top levels of Wikipedia…Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content, sources say. Essentially, they say, he has gone from having free reign over the content and people involved in the websites to having the same capabilities of a low-level administrator.”

    • Glenn Beck’s war on the FCC (and Satan worshippers)

      Right-wing talker Glenn Beck took to his Fox News TV program last Monday night to deliver a rant about how President Obama has compiled something “almost like an enemies list” and how Obama is into “silencing opponents.” The president’s tool of choice for this censorship? Network neutrality—the principle that ISPs cannot interfere with content.

    • Fox News Dishonest Edit of Obama as Exclusionary?

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • U.S. military using private spy ring overseas despite concerns about operation’s legality

    Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.

    The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. Under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.

  • Personal Data: reclaiming individual control

    The potential rewards are immense. It’s not just that, like BP, we need to stem the toxic leakage, in our case of personal data from government. Nor that we need to cut the cost of maintaining government’s huge data sets, and restore people’s trust in what goervnment does with personal data. The real wins come when public services are driven more directly by more accurate data sets, and can be more closely aligned only to needs which really exist. Imagine the “just in time” revolution of 1970s car manufacturing applied to public services. But the saving we have to make mean we’ll need nothing less than that.

  • EFF: Forget cookies, your browser has fingerprints

    Even without cookies, popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox give Web sites enough information to get a unique picture of their visitors about 94 percent of the time, according to research compiled over the past few months by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

  • Web Browsers Leave ‘Fingerprints’ Behind as You Surf the Net

  • Facebook downplays privacy crisis meeting

  • Welcome to the former Big Brother House

    Finally and perhaps most importantly, data protection simply cannot be enforced while national DP watchdogs are starved of the cash and personnel they need to manage an enormous task of supervision and education and take on the crucial job of leading test and group cases. But proper resourcing needs not more law but political will. That must come from ordinary users making it clear that contrary to whatever Marc Zuckerberg may think, privacy really does matter to them. It’s not ALL about the economy, stupid.

  • Extended Civil Commitment of Sex Offenders Is Upheld

    The 7-to-2 decision touched off a heated debate among the justices on a question that has lately engaged the Tea Party movement and opponents of the new health care law: What limits does the Constitution impose on Congress’s power to legislate on matters not specifically delegated to it in Article I?

  • China’s Web “firewall” should be WTO issue: EU’s Kroes

    Dutch-born Kroes, who is also in charge of Europe’s digital agenda, said the firewall was a trade barrier as long as it blocked communication for Internet users, preventing the free flow of information.

  • AAT upholds EFA link deletion

    We are disappointed but not surprised by this decision, which we feel highlights many issues with the current system. Those who choose to can simply move their content overseas or change the address of the web page in question, leaving those who abide by the spirit of the law to remove their material, or have it removed for them by their provider. From the leak of the blacklist, we saw that many of the sites on there were far from obscene, but contained all manner of harmless, controversial and borderline political material. This raises enormous concerns. Could debate and culture thrive in Australia if all R-rated material was effectively blocked?

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Legal experts: LimeWire likely doomed

    A federal court judge has likely dealt a death blow to LimeWire, one of the most popular and oldest file-sharing systems, according to legal experts.

  • The Pirate Bay Sinks And Swims

  • The Economist looks at “piracy” and internet access

    The problem with that is whether the portion “detected” as a copy is really piracy. The article totally ignores whether fair use would allow the “copy.”

    [...]

    It concludes, “America’s regulatory approach has left much of the country with a cable monopoly for truly fast broadband access. The single largest reason given for failing to purchase broadband access in America is price, and many non-adopters are stymied by hardware fees, a lack of billing transparency and the extra cost of bundled services that providers often add to internet access. The FCC’s current plan to ask last-mile providers to subsidise rural service, and to ensure equal treatment of packets of information is a mild intervention by global standards. America’s modern-day common carriers should count themselves lucky.”

  • Copyrights

    • Time Warner Cable tries to put brakes on massive piracy case

      Time Warner Cable has no intention of complying with thousands of requests asking it to identify copyright infringers.

      Remember the US Copyright Group? They’re the DC legal outfit that is turning P2P copyright infringement into cash, partnering with independent movie studios (the big players are not involved) to sue individual file-swappers in federal court—and ISPs are not pleased with the plan.

    • Over $50 Billion NOT Lost due to Software Piracy

      The main problem with software piracy is that people take software for granted. Software is easy to get, easy to download, and easy to pass around and share with friends. Joe might say to Fred “look at how awesome the new Photoshop is, let me install it on your machine so you can check it out”. Now Joe and Fred both have it, but neither would have purchased Photoshop if it weren’t so easy to get (have you seen the price of it lately?!) and therefore their theft wouldn’t factor in to the Business Softtware Alliance’s statistics.

    • Hollywood’s Passion For Movie Remakes May Run Into Copyright Problems… Created By Hollywood

      The MPAA and Hollywood in general have been very, very strong supporters of stricter and more restrictive copyright laws pretty much as far as they can go. Jack Valenti, for many years the head of the MPAA, has famously declared both that, if it were up to him, copyright would last “forever minus a day” and that fair use was not part of the law. But, of course, time and time again, we see that strongest defenders of copyright law often find that they get a bit upset when it constrains them as well. Eriq Gardner has the story of the rise in lawsuits over Hollywood remakes from the estates (or others who purchased the copyrights later) of authors claiming infringement over movies. The main case that resulted in the article is really quite impressive in the number of layers deep that the whole thing goes.

    • Time Warner Cable Stands Up To Automated Copyright Infringement Filing Factory

      During that time, we noted that US Copyright Group claimed that it had gone from having one ISP cooperating to “75%” of ISPs cooperating. This was a surprise, because years back, ISPs had been reluctant to cooperate with similar efforts. So the numbers seemed questionable. Either way, apparently Time Warner Cable is not at all interested in working with US Copyright Group.

    • Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I’m In

      With bandwidth and storage increasing exponentially, getting cheaper, and consumers becoming more tech-savvy, it’s becoming easier every day to grab free copies of books, movies and albums. This is why Internet users are thrilled. Including me. This is why people in the entertainment industry are terrified. Including me.

    • Princeton Demands Website Remove Elena Kagan’s Thesis; Claiming Copyright Infringement

      Of course, ordering that the document be pulled down pretty much guarantees that it will get spread more widely — and there’s definitely a journalistic reporting defense for posting the document (though, I’m not particularly convinced that anything anyone wrote in college has much meaning once they’ve spent a few decades outside of college). And, of course, in trying to get the document taken down, it’s just going to lead conspiracy-minded folks to think there’s more to the document than there is (in actuality, it’s a rather bland historical analysis, but you wouldn’t know that from what some sites are claiming about it). But from a journalistic standpoint, it seems you could make a decent argument for fair use in distributing the document. In fact, publications like Newsweek are already sharing parts of the thesis as well (mostly to debunk the hysteria around it). It’s difficult to see what Princeton gained in issuing the takedown notice, other than to rile up people.

    • Reinventing Book Publishing: Building Real Communities, And Only Holding Rights For Three Years

      Now there are some things in this description that I think are great, and others that I’m not sure will work, but it definitely is a big and interesting vision, that really does seem to get the basic concept of both connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, while also looking to build out complementary scarcities. My main concern are (as usual) the attempts to use infinite goods as if they were scarce, but given so many other smart aspects to this program, I get the feeling that after some experimentation, things will shake out in a way that works well.

    • James Moore Has Just Made Himself A Big Target

      James Moore now has a big target painted on his back. No matter what he does, someone isn’t going to be happy. In fact he, and the Conservative Government would have been far better served to have ignored the issue. The current Canadian copyright regime has problems, however it’s better than what the United States or Great Britain have implemented, and far, far better than what South Korea has implemented.

      Currently Canada has one of the best copyright systems in the world. It isn’t as flexible as it should be, the copyright term is far too long, it’s corporate friendly features are too strong, and it’s artist friendly features are far too weak. In fact the change that would most help creators could be made easily, would attract the support of a wide spectrum of Canadians, and incidentally bring us closer to the WIPO copyright treaty. That is to make it illegal for a corporation or anyone else to buy a copyright. Oh, they should be allowed to lease copyrights, but for a period of no more than five years, and automatic renewal should be illegal. The only method of changing ownership of a copyright would be through inheritance.

    • Canadian Appeals Court Says Song Previews Can Be Fair Dealing

      While the US entertainment industry continues to insist that Canada’s copyright law is way too “friendly” to would-be infringers, one area where it most certainly is not is in the area of fair use. Up in Canada, they don’t even have fair use, but the much more limited “fair dealing,” which is rigidly defined (unlike fair use) — with one area being “research.” Apparently, the Copyright Board of Canada ruled back in 2007 that the 30-second previews of music found on services like iTunes counted as fair dealing, because it was consumer “research” into whether or not they wanted to purchase the song. In response, the Canadian songwriters group SOCAN disagreed and asked a court to review. According to SOCAN such a broad definition of “research” was not what Canadian copyright law intended. In SOCAN’s view, “research” only meant scientific research (so, only folks in science labs and white lab coats could listen to 30 second previews legally).

    • And Here Comes The Media Campaign About How Spain Needs To Change Its Copyright Laws

      So when Spain finds that a file sharing network doesn’t violate copyright laws because it only points to infringing files, but doesn’t do any of the distribution, the industry spins it as Spain being weak on copyright, rather than just accurate in applying liability.

      Of course, childish threats from Hollywood to leave the market (yeah, that’ll stop file sharing…) has convinced some to put forth new copyright laws that mirror those elsewhere. This, despite the fact that an economic analysis of the new law suggests it would do more harm than good.

    • MPAA Worries About Pirating U.S. Soldiers in Iraq

      While U.S. men and women put their lives at risk in Iraq, the MPAA has queried the military about the pirating habits of the soldiers stationed there. A declassified document from United States Central Command confirms that the MPAA is fighting a war of its own in the Middle East, one against copyright infringing soldiers.