• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

China Is A Major Linux Market, Contributor

In recent years, China has played an increasingly important role in Linux. Chinese developers have contributed to Linux kernel development, and Linux has been widely used in commerce and education in China. According to a research report jointly issued by Springboard Research and Spiceworks, the utilization rate of Linux servers among SMEs in the Asia Pacific region now exceeds 25 percent, which is higher than the world average.

Updated Windows Vs. Ubuntu hardware requirements

I have updated the Ubuntu vs Windows Hardware requirements to include Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 10.04, memory requirements still remains a humble 256MB which hasn’t changed in the last 10 releases

New Linux software targeted at schools

Based on Ubuntu, Userful MultiSeat offers the ability to turn one Linux computer into 11 independent computer stations, while providing users with the same set of features as Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server 2010.

Desktop

• Why can’t we get Linux on the desktop right?

  To be honest, I think the problem with Linux at the moment is that it’s a desktop operating system solution looking for a problem. Most users are happy either with the stability and style of Mac OS X, or Windows 7 with its vastly improved stability and its top-level application compatibility. There really isn’t much reason to switch at the moment.

Applications

• MusicGuru – Music management utility

  musicGuru is a music management utility for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. With musicGuru, you can rename, move, copy, record to CD your songs without getting your collection disorganized.

• 7 Best User-Made Screenlets For Linux

  If you’ve never tried desktop screenlets, you’re missing out. We’ve previously discussed how to set up your screenlets, but we’ve never put together a showcase of the best ones. Today we’ve gathered seven of the best from Screenlets.org, and they cover everything from audio eye candy to steampunk system monitors. If you’re finding your desktop lacking in flash or functionality, look no further.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • How to use USB devices in VirtualBox – Tutorial

  • Attribute Clash for The GIMP

  • Managing LDAP from the Command Line on Linux

  • The Perfect Desktop – Linux Mint Debian 201009

  • mount-cifs is replace by samba in gentoo

• Games

  • Diaspora Trailer

    Rock, Paper, Shotgun has pointed out a new FreeSpace 2-based game inspired by the Battlestar Galactica television series: Diaspora.

  • Zoop To The Future – Point-N-Click Adventure !

    Using the same animation techniques as the animated web series, you can literally play the show!

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • Activities

    Activities

    So, work on activities has been so overwhelming that I’ve had no time to do anything else lately (KDE-related).

    Service

    First, the kded module and the nepomuk service that were present in KDE SC 4.5 are no more – they are now merged into one application called kactivitymanagerd (KDE ActivityManager Dæmon). The reason behind this rewrite was to have a more stable system (no crashing kded on dbus locks etc.) and to make it easier to maintain.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Red Hat not worried about Ubuntu Unity for Linux

    As far as Ubuntu’s decision to abandon GNOME Shell, Smith sees it as a matter of choice.

    “Different distributions will do different things and I think that’s a healthy part of the open source way – people get lots of choice,” Smith said. “That may influence some people not to participate in GNOME Shell and it may encourage others to step up and do more.”

Distributions

• Top 5 Best Popular Linux Distributions

  Interestingly, a large number of Linux distributions are available, may be cause it comes free of cost and there are a lot of unique reasons to like them. Well, why not try reading this and figure out for yourself as to which open-source operating systems inspired our readers to provide our biggest Hive Five response to date.

• New Releases

  • Finnix 100 Has Been Released

  • Sabayon OSD, 2.6.36? Spins

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat (RHT) Approaches New Upside Target of $43.37

  • Above Resistance – Red Hat

  • Trading Alert for Red Hat

  • Hilal Computers hosts Red Hat seminar

    Guest speakers from Red Hat in Dubai and Europe delivered keynote presentations on topics including the operational and cost benefits of Red Hat Linux; and Red Hat Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware solutions.

  • Linux software offers advantages to users

    Top IT professionals from large enterprises in Bahrain gathered yesterday at an exclusive high-level seminar to hear the latest updates of Red Hat Enterprise Linux open source software.

  • Fedora

    • What’s new in Fedora 14

      For virtualisation of desktop PCs, Fedora 14 includes SPICE, originally developed by Qumranet, the company behind KVM. “Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments” offers numerous functions for efficient communication between virtualised systems and computers displaying guest system desktops. This should allow thin clients to display GUIs for virtualised RHEL and Windows systems sufficiently quickly to allow HD videos to be replayed fluently and to allow bi-directional audio and video communication. It should also permit the use of multiple screens and of client-side USB devices in the guest system. This is know as Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and is a component of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) for Desktops 2.3.

    • Linux users excited about Fedora 14 features

      The Fedora Project announced the release of Fedora 14, codenamed Laughlin, on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. A week later than originally scheduled, the release is packed with bleeding edge features that have Linux users pretty excited. You can download the live CD now.

    • At Work with Linux: VirtualBox 3.2.10 and Fedora 14

      The only nit I have with the distribution so far is that it came with Firefox 3.6.10. I need to update to 3.6.12 due to a security issue.

      Other than that, Fedora 14 runs just fine, without any drama. And that’s the way it should be.

    • My First Experiences With Fedora 14 and LibreOffice

      I upgraded my IBM T40 laptop to Fedora 14 today using the “preupgrade” command. I may post an article a little bit later with more of the technical details of the upgrade. Today, I just want to share some of my first impressions. I also tried to unsuccessfully run Libreoffice. I was able to get Libreoffice installed, but it will not run. It crashes every time. I will look for solutions to this problem because I REALLY want to switch to Libreoffice as soon as possible. I am even willing to run a beta version of Libreoffice once I can get it to run reliably.

    • Fedora 14

      Pros: Solid desktop; relatively easy to install; stable and reasonably fast.
      Cons: Software manager needs to be updated to match the Ubuntu Software Center and Linux Mint’s Software Manager. Installer needs to be tweaked just a bit to be more intuitive.
      Suitable For: Intermediate and advanced Linux users.
      Summary: Fedora 14 remains a solid choice for those with prior Linux experience. Newbies would be better off with a more consumer-oriented distribution.
      Rating: 3.5/5

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu 11.04 alpha 43% slower than 10.10

    • Weathering the Ubuntu brainstorm

    • Ubuntu Bug Reporting

    • Ask Ubuntu Review

    • Natty free culture showcase to have theme, gets schedule

    • Am I going to have to abandon Ubuntu?

      I see in the news that Canonical has decided to ship the next version of Ubuntu with the Unity desktop instead of Gnome.

    • Comparing Netbook Desktops – Part 1, Ubuntu Unity

      At this point I was just about ready to send my beloved Samsung netbook out the window, so I decided to stop. I would summarize my investigation of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 Unity desktop by saying it is maddeningly inconsistent to use, amazingly inflexible and un-configurable, it does not make the best use of the limited screen space on a netbook, and in fact seems to specifically waste quite a bit of space, and it still seems to have quite a lot of bugs in it. I honestly could not use it as a notebook desktop at this time, and I would not recommend it or install it for anyone else. I hope that they are able to make a lot more progress with it over the next six months, not only in fixing the bugs that I came across but more importantly in making it more consistent, more intuitive and a lot easier to use.

    • Don’t Underestimate Ubuntu

      I see users who dismiss Ubuntu as a lightweight distro for newbies only. I see them disrespecting its leader and founder. It has become a bit of a pastime for some.

    • Unity on Wayland

      The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.

Devices/Embedded

• Linx offers a wallet friendly Android tablet

  The Linx Commtiva N700 touchscreen tablet has 512MB of RAM and a 4GB microSD card and comes with the Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ mobile operating system. Although relatively cheap at £329 it is “cutting edge and chic”, according to the firm.

• OLPC’s $75 tablet debut delayed by 45 days

  Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop Per Child said that the XO-3 tablet computer will debut sometime in February 2011, about 45 days later than originally planned.

  Negroponte said that he wants the screen to be flexible so that it is more resistant to breaking, but that it doesn’t need to roll up.

• Sub-notebooks

  • Toshiba AC100 Android smartbook

    And here is the archetypal ARM-based “smartbook” so many of us have been waiting for for more than a year now. Other vendors’ efforts stumbled at the first, iPad-shaped hurdle, but here we have, at last, an Android-running netbook.

Comparing open source and proprietary software markets

So there you have it. My initial estimate of a generic FOSS Intangible Market Factor (FIMF) is 21. To be accurate you’d need to estimate the FIMF for each open source offering within a given market.

Then again, I’m a code jockey, not an analyst. Maybe they can estimate each of these factors more accurately.

Multimedia, Education, and Free Software

I was surprised today. A colleague showed me a CD that someone gave her in a course related to the Ministry of Education of my country. According to her, the CD contained “software for audio activities.”

November Project of the Month: Gutenprint

Control and Community – and the future of commercial open source strategies

In comparison, the formation of vendors using the strategies associated with multi-participant open source projects has been increasing since 2002 (non-copyleft licences, distributed copyright ownership), 2004 (single open source licensing), 2006 (community development model), and 2007 (bazaar development model).

Events

• Linux Plumbers Conference In Cambridge

  Plumbers conference consists of two plenary opening and closing keynotes, with the rest of the time being divided amongst three concurrent tracks: One track of traditional presentations and two tracks of MicroConferences.

Oracle

• Scott McNealy defends Oracle CEO from criticism

  Asked about Oracle’s patent infringement lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in Android, McNealy said he finds it ironic that Oracle used to ask Sun to loosen its licensing terms for Java. But he said he’s also a “raging capitalist” and defended Oracle’s right to protect its intellectual property. “I’m giving Larry a little grief but there are copyright laws, there are patents and I believe in patents,” McNealy said.

BSD

• First PC-BSD 9.0 Alpha Snapshot Available for Testing

  Kris Moore has just announced that the first testing snapshot is available for download (both 32 and 64 bit versions). You can help us make 9.0 an awesome release by trying out the snapshots (there will be many between now and the first beta some time next spring) and providing feedback about any bugs you find. Since these are testing snapshots, it is recommended that you try them out on a spare system or using a virtual environment such as VirtualBox. If you’re planning on trying out all of the new desktop environments, you should use a virtual machine of at least 20 GB.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• Anti-FSF Sentiment: Truth Not Relevant

  I find the current VLC in the App Store discussion quite interesting on a number of different fronts, but there is a specific one I’d like to point out here for the Gentle Reader’s edification:

  Anti-FSF People Don’t Care About The Truth

  Bold claim? Not really, because there are 2 ways we can come to this unassailable conclusion. People that are interested in finding the truth of the matter, and then acting accordingly do NOT:

  1. Resort to illogical arguments
  2. Come right out and say “this is not about the correctness” of the situation

  You see, people that DO resort to illogical arguments and people that DO attempt to put aside the question of “correctness” have already come to a conclusion – they are simply attempting to rationalize their position.

  In fact, one can see by the embrace of falacy and rejection of “correctness”, not only are they not interested in changing their position – but the position itself must be founded in illogic and incorrectness. It is a doubly bad position to be in, which brings to mind one of my favorite quotes: “you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”

  The best one can hope for in such cases is to point out the illogic of the position, and hope to innoculate the innocent.

• GCC 4.6 Leaves Stage 1 With New Features

  Novell’s Richard Guenther has just announced that GCC 4.6.0 has now left stage one of development and has immediately entered the third stage. This means no new features or other major work aside from bug-fixes will be accepted into this next major release of the GNU Compiler Collection.

Project Releases

• Spokify – v0.9

Openness/Sharing

• Homeland Security Giving Extra Political Scrutiny To ‘Activist’ Groups FOIA Requests, Singles Out EFF

  When President Obama first came into office, one of the things he pledged was greater transparency, including in responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As we’ve seen with things like ACTA, where the USTR refused FOIA requests with a totally bogus claim of “national security,” the administration has regularly failed to live up to that promise and at times appears to be even worse than previous administrations.

• Government Withholds Records on Need for Expanded Surveillance Law

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against three agencies of the Department of Justice (DOJ) today, demanding records about problems or limitations that hamper electronic surveillance and potentially justify or undermine the Administration’s new calls for expanded surveillance powers.

• Contribute your expertise to an open source textbook

  The textbook itself is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license, and needs contributions compatible with that license. If you are an open source software development expert, or at least a decent writer who is good at researching instructional materials distributed under permissive licenses, this could be a good way to get your name into the credits for a book and “give something back” to the open source communities that provide the software you use.

Vans drive themselves across the world

Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 13,000-kilometre test drive from Italy to China which mirrored the journey from East to West carried out by Marco Polo in the Middle Ages.

The four vans, packed with navigation gear and other computer software drove themselves Across Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Gobi Desert without getting lost.

Geeky Songs

UK

• Cameron ‘red carpet’ offer to foreign entrepreneurs

  In Thursday’s speech, Mr Cameron also promised to work to help London’s East End become a “world-leading technology city” to rival Silicon Valley in California, announcing that Google, Facebook and Intel were among the firms investing in the area.

• NY Company Threatens 800Notes Via UK In Legal Comedy Of Threats & Errors

  We’ve recently had our own run-in with a ridiculous threat of a libel lawsuit from the UK, in what appeared to be a clear attempt to intimidate us, rather than an action with any serious legal basis. As we mentioned in that post, thankfully, the US recently passed an important and broad anti-libel tourism law that protects US websites against overreaching foreign libel claims that go against US laws, such as Section 230 safe harbors for service providers.

Health/Nutrition

• Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack: study

  Alcohol is even worse than heroin and crack on the list of “most harmful” drugs, according to a new study published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

Security

• Adobe Reader browse-and-get-pwned 0day under attack

• The unvarnished truth about unsecured Wi-Fi

• Cybersecurity and National Policy

  Those with either an engineering or management background are aware that one cannot optimize everything at once ­ that requirements are balanced by constraints. I am not aware of another domain where this is as true as it is in cybersecurity and the question of a policy response to cyber insecurity at the national level. In engineering, this is said as “Fast, Cheap, Reliable: Choose Two.” In the public policy arena, we must first remember the definition of a free country: a place where that which is not forbidden is permitted. As we consider the pursuit of cybersecurity, we will return to that idea time and time again; I believe that we are now faced with “Freedom, Security, Convenience: Choose Two.”

• Russian-Armenian botnet suspect raked in €100,000 a month

  Avanesov allegedly rented and sold part of his botnet, a common business model for those who run the networks. Other cybercriminals can rent the hacked machines for a specific time for their own purposes, such as sending a spam run or mining the PCs for personal details and files, among other nefarious actions.

  Dutch prosecutors believe that Avanesov made up to €100,000 ($139,000) a month from renting and selling his botnet just for spam, said Wim De Bruin, spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service in Rotterdam. Avanesov was able to sell parts of the botnet off “because it was very easy for him to extend the botnet again,” by infecting more PCs, he said.

• Russian spammer is in the slammer

  Igor Gusev, the general director of Despmedia is being accused of sending out emails advertising Viagra. Despmedia is a partner of the Russian pill pusher Glavmed, which authorities allege managed to rake in $120 million over the last three and a half years by flogging pills over the Internet.

• Palin email hacker asks judge for leniency

  The man convicted of breaching then vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account has asked a federal judge to spare him a prison sentence and instead put him on probation.

  David C. Kernell’s request for a downward departure comes six months after a federal jury found him guilty of felony obstruction of justice and a misdemeanor count of unauthorized access to a computer. The same jury acquitted Kernell on a felony charge of wire fraud and deadlocked on a charge of identity theft.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• 419ers threaten terrorism charges

  Advance-fee fraudsters have joined the fight against international terrorism, worried Reg reader Guy reports.

• Silver Tail Systems Receives Strategic Investment from CIA’s Venture Capital Arm

  Silver Tail Systems, a provider of fraud prevention solutions for Web sites, received solid validation of its products and business model this week. The company has entered into a strategic investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the not-for-profit, venture capital arm of the CIA.

• The Online Threat

  The Navy’s experts didn’t believe that China was capable of reverse-engineering the plane’s N.S.A.-supplied operating system, estimated at between thirty and fifty million lines of computer code, according to a former senior intelligence official.

• How The Defense Department And NSA Is Hyping Cyberwar To Better Spy On You

• Despite Scare Talk, Attacks on Pentagon Networks Drop

• Privatized prisons in Arizona helped draft laws to send people to prison

  The story of industries paying lobbyists to influence legislation that benefits their business is nothing new—but what about when that industry is a privately-owned and operated prison system?

• For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance

  This past Wednesday, I showed up at Baltimore-Washington International for a flight to Providence, R.I. I had a choice of two TSA screening checkpoints. I picked mine based on the number of people waiting in line, not because I am impatient, but because the coiled, closely packed lines at TSA screening sites are the most dangerous places in airports, completely unprotected from a terrorist attack — a terrorist attack that would serve the same purpose (shutting down air travel) as an attack on board an aircraft.

• Season of the Regulator

  Nonetheless, authorities around the country have fought the phantom threat in a variety of ways, up to and including rounding up all the sex offenders in one Texas county and storing them in the Adult Probation Office for the evening. In Maryland, offenders have been required to post a paper pumpkin on the door with the message “NO CANDY AT THIS RESIDENCE.” More frequently, jurisdictions have told offenders not to put up anything Halloween-related at all.

• When, not if, will full-body “naked scans” become mandatory in the USA?

  Travel blogger Christopher Elliot has an informed post up about the odd timing of the latest terror scare, and a theory that this might be “just another cleverly-timed event that pushes us toward mandatory full-body scans at the airport,” just like the underwear failbomber conveniently ended a lively debate about the privacy issues posed by “strip-search machines.”

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• The importance of Indonesia

  As a result, Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and many of its species – the ones that Wallace studied – are losing their territories and even habitats terrifyingly quickly. Some – the Sumatra tiger and the orang-utan, for instance – are at risk of extinction. That’s not to mention the tens of millions of Indonesian people who depend on these disappearing forests for their livelihoods, including indigenous communities who rely on the forests for everything: food, shelter, medicine and identity.

• Japanese Government Lagging at UN Biodiversity Summit

  I briefed the journalists on the Japanese government’s role, as chair of this enormous meeting, and how biodiversity conservation is a huge challenge for them at the moment. Just recently, the Japanese Ministry of Environment announced that they will make a list of endangered marine species, a step forward, yes, but not yet action to save said endangered species.

• A win on Trident?

  Yesterday’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) gave us the welcome news that plans to replace Trident have been put on hold and reductions will be made to our existing nuclear weapons. “Five year delay” shouted the papers who widely interpreted the move as a compromise to keep the coalition government together.

  The reality is that in the face of military cuts and a National Security Review (which concluded the threats we face are cyber crime, terrorism, a foreign crisis “drawing in Britain”, and natural disasters) it’s hard to imagine how David Cameron could have ticked the yes box on spending £97bn replacing Trident. Particularly as there was already a joker in the SDSR pack in the shape of the aircraft carriers.

• Game for Change: Fate of the World

  A British company has developed a new computer game that allows players to save the planet from the effects of global warming — at least in a simulated setting.

• Energy Past, Energy Future

  That low price per watt scares the crap out of BP and will change the geopolitical balance in the world within a decade, making the Middle East maybe a little less important.

• Gold, Energy, and the Problem of Capital Storage

  One of the reasons that gold retains its competitiveness as a capital-storage unit is the rather slow and plodding rate at which supply is brought to market. Since 1900, compound annual growth of world gold production comes in at 1.098%. That is below the increase for a number of other natural resources but in particular it’s well, well below the rate of credit production–the “resource” which now plagues the developed world. Indeed, the over-production of credit the past twenty-five years has once again driven capital back into hard assets such as gold.

• Food and Energy Clarion Call from India

Finance

• Obama Economic Team Passes Out the Kool-Aid

  In case they had not noticed, Democrats across the country were getting hammered on the charge of exporting jobs to China via the stimulus package. It does not matter that the charge is false and that Democrats jumped into action to block U.S. companies who were considering ordering wind turbines from their subsidiaries in China. The Republican ads, which ran in key races nationwide, cleverly turned a Democratic advantage on fair trade for some candidates into a Republican advantage nationwide.

Hacking

• Rebellious Coders Home In on Apple TV Hacks, App Store

  Apple calls the Apple TV a “hobby” because it isn’t a big seller. But for a bustling community of hackers, jailbreaking and tinkering with the set-top box is the real hobby.

• Canadian teen charged with school board hack

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• “Secret Money from God Knows Where”

  Democratic donors are catching up. The biggest special interest donors on the Democratic side have long been public sector unions. While the National Education Association has dominated the Democratic donor list for years, in this cycle the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) blew past the teachers, giving a total of $87.5 million so far, including taking out a loan to give another $2 million as the race barrels toward the finish line. That total makes AFSCME the biggest outside spender of this election cycle. And no matter what Obama and Pelosi imply, those millions aren’t going to Republicans.

• The Incumbent Protection Racket

  California exemplifies the disconnect between voters who want to exercise authentic self-government and elected officials who prefer not to let a little thing like democracy deprive them of their livelihood. The latter group is very good at stifling competition at the polls.

• Corporate campaign ads haven’t followed Supreme Court’s prediction

  Reporting from Washington —
  The Supreme Court sent a wave of corporate and union money flooding into campaign ads this year, but it did so with the promise that the public would know — almost instantly — who was paying for them.

  “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in January. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

• Can We Really Call the AFSCME the “Big Dog?”

  First, although AFSCME may be the single biggest spender, the “big dog” title is a little disingenuous, as the corporate-funded interest groups supposedly outspent by the union are numerous and coordinated. Karl Rove’s organization, American Crossroads, is spending $65 million, and it shares office space and harmonizes its activities with American Action Network, which is spending $25 million.

• The Illicit Action Network

  Our past articles have suggested that AAN is attacking Russ Feingold as revenge for his votes for financial reform, and against TARP and the Wall Street bailout. We have demonstrated that some of AAN’s board members benefited personally from TARP and the Wall Street bailout, and are trying to convince voters to support corporatist candidates who will do their bidding and stall needed financial reforms. We’ve also noted how the Washington, D.C.-based AAN operates under a veil of secrecy, collecting over $25 million from anonymous corporate donors. American Action Network Chair Fred Malek is well versed in punishing those considered “disloyal” and carrying out acts of deception.

• Voter Intimidation in Wisconsin

  The progressive advocacy group One Wisconsin Now has uncovered a plan by the Wisconsin Republican Party, Americans for Prosperity, and local Tea Party groups to engage in what One Wisconsin Now is calling a “voter suppression” scheme. The GOP and Tea Party groups have denied the existence of such a plan, instead claiming that their efforts are aimed at preventing alleged “voter fraud.”

• Juan Williams: Busted

• Malicious RoboCalls Aim at Suppressing Election Day Turnout

  Nefarious operatives apparently intent on deterring certain voters from casting their ballots on Tuesday have distributed flyers and robocalls disseminating misinformation about the date of the election and how they should cast their ballot.

  According to the Election Protection Coalition, which has received more than 10,000 calls to its national election hotline, Latino voters in the Los Angeles area have been targeted by so-called robocalls — recorded messages — reminding them to vote Nov. 3, instead of the real date, Nov. 2.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

• Your Rooms Smell, and I Hate Them

  24grille isn’t alone in pursuing legal action. According to the Times, hundreds of hotels are planning to sue TripAdvisor over negative reviews. They say the site—which hosts millions of reviews of hotels and restaurants around the world—has failed to aggressively police potentially libelous reviews that accuse hotel staff of serious criminal activities. Chris Emmins, a founder of the British “reputation management” company that is organizing one lawsuit, tells the paper that “the world of the Internet and particularly social media has pretty much outstripped ethical guidelines, and some legal ones as well.”

• Judge Halts Massachusetts “Harmful to Minors” Law

  A federal judge today halted the implementation of a Massachusetts law that would ban certain works from the Internet and punish distributors of works deemed to be “harmful to minors,” deeming it overly broad and in violation of the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Rya W. Zobel said the law, Chapter 74 of the Acts of 2010, was too broadly written because it did not require that materials in question be “purposefully sent to a person the sender knew to be a minor.” Signed into law this past April, the statute made anyone who operates a Web site or communicates through an electronic listserv criminally liable for nudity or sexually related material deemed harmful to minors, and subjected violators to a $10,000 and to up to five years in prison.

• Facebook app developers sold user info

• Free speech battle over ‘Girls Gone Wild’ lawsuit

  A lawsuit filed by four women against Joe Francis, producer of the “Girls Gone Wild” videos, has prompted an unusual free speech battle over whether the identities of the four should be kept under wraps.

  Attorneys for the women, who were between 13 and 17 years old when the footage was shot, asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday to allow them to press their civil suit against the Girls Gone Wild chief executive without being named.

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

• [Canada] Where The Parties Stand on C-32′s Digital Lock Provisions

  Yesterday’s opening debate on Bill C-32 gave each party the opportunity to outline its specific concerns and perspectives on the copyright reform proposal. The comments from the lead critic on digital locks provides a good sense of the broad opposition to the current C-32 approach to the issue…

• Linux and borrowing library ebooks

  This was the most difficult part, for you can’t download the acsm file using Linux, since you get the whole Unix-Dos text file incompatibility thing. For those that want to download to their reader (for me Sony PRS700), you are again screwed since DE can’t handle the DRM crap right to the sony. You have to do something Linuxy! I don’t want to tell, but it’s quite simple, involving installing Python 2.7 on wine, installing the xp binary for Pycrypto, and running 2 magic ‘inept’ scripts to ‘D-DRM’ the epub file. Then just use your standard sony usb disk connection to put it in the ‘books’ folder. Nobody’s out of pocket since you are just reading the book! Don’t put the clean epub on the internet, since I like it for authors to eat and write new stuff! and erase the book after the lending period.

  The principle of the drm is fascinating in its stupidity. DE requires you to ‘register’ with your email and password. You are only allowed to do this on 6 machines (or OS versions), and if you screwed up a lot, you can’t read old books you bought. From this registration, DE creates a powerful RSA encryption key, which on the surface seems unbreakable. It communicates with the library, which pays big bucks for a DE server. But, the program must have the ability to store the key, and de-en-crypt. This is held sloppily, and the scripts extract it.

  When you buy books, the same drm works, and you can lose the key, so you can’t access them anymore, even though you paid for it! So, I would always clean the epub for bought books for archival purpose, and you can put them on any reader, since the epub standard is common and open.

• Comcast Redefines ‘Cord Cutter’ So Trend Is Easier To Ignore

  As we noted this morning, Comcast lost 275,000 video subscribers during the third quarter. It’s further evidence of the more statistically relevant TV cord cutting trend we began to see last quarter, when cable providers collectively lost 711,000 subscribers, and six out of the top ten cable operators saw their biggest subscriber drop ever. Why? High cable prices and bi-annual rate hikes during a recession. Comcast’s 275k lost subscribers was higher than Wall Street analysts estimated, forcing Comcast to try and argue that people dropping cable due to cost aren’t cord cutters…

• Verizon Strikes $25 Million FCC Settlement Over Bogus Fee

  For years we’ve been tracking how Verizon socks wireless customers with a bogus $1.99 per MB data access fee — incurred even if the user’s phone is off or the battery was dead. Even users who had data access on their phones blocked were socked by the fee — given that the message sent to users to tell them they couldn’t get data consumed 0.06 kilobytes of data — resulting in a $1.99 data fee.

• UPD UK Government Wants to Make ISPs Responsible for Third Party Content Online

  The UK governments Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey, has ominously proposed that broadband ISPs could introduce a new Mediation Service that would allow them the freedom to censor third party content on the internet, without court intervention, in response to little more than a public complaint.

• Publisher sells DRM-free ebooks to libraries

  German publisher Springer Verlag decided not to infect the 40,000 ebook titles it sells to libraries with DRM — though the booksellers that carry Springer titles still insist on DRM for their proprietary stores. As a result, “once libraries have paid for the content, the e-books are available without charge to everyone at these institutions, so there’s no need to repost or redistribute it online. Once the e-book is downloaded from the library, no return is necessary.”

Intellectual Monopolies

• Study with the Leader of the Resistance

  I am very happy that Stephan Kinsella is finally teaching a class on intellectual property, which is surely one of the most important issues of our time. We need desperately to spread education about this topic, which is a difficult one. It is not one of the “armchair” issues that you can solve without much thought or serious study.

• Etsy’s crafty balance: Fans vs. trademark holders

  For legal reasons, Etsy’s Feingold declined to comment on these reports or on which specific brands’ trademark holders have called up the company with takedown notices, and Summit representatives did not respond to a request for comment. But considering Summit’s history of filing suit against unofficial Twilight media, it’s not surprising.

• One Congressional Loss That Hurts: Rick Boucher

  This is bad news for copyright and for consumers. Not that he was all that successful in passing the laws that mattered on that subject, but he was one of the few who would ask the key questions, and actually try to fix those broken laws — such as his repeated attempts to fix the DMCA and support fair use, as well as more recent attempts to stop the massive boondoggle that is the Universal Service Fund.

• EXCLUSIVE: Fox Sued Over Upcoming Celebrity Prank Show

  Now, however, the Morabito Picture Company has stepped up claiming that the new show rips off a format from its Italian show entitled Indovina Chi Viene Cena (Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner), which premiered in 2001. That show also features people bringing home celebrity boyfriends and girlfriends to their family’s surprise.

• Copyrights

  • No NZers will have internet access terminated in Copyright Bill

    Let’s be very clear about this. If Labour and the National Government had not agreed on a compromise around the temination clause in the Copyright Bill, we would have a piece of legislation coming back to the House which could cut off NZers internet accounts for six months.

    Labour would have opposed the Bill. It might have been a high moral stand but it would have resulted in a bad law.

  • The Bill C-32 Debate Begins: Locks, Levies & Misinformation on Fair Dealing

    Second reading of Bill C-32 kicked off yesterday with hours of discussion from MPs from all political parties. Six months after the bill was first introduced, the debate offered the first opportunity to get a sense of where the various parties stand and which issues will be most contentious when the committee tasked with review the bill begins hearings within the next couple of weeks (coverage from PostMedia).

  • Zaptunes Gets Killed, Claims Site Wasn’t A Fraud

    After three short months, Zaptunes, a site claiming to offer users unlimited music downloads, died. Their take on these events are quite amusing. Apparently, many of their users thought the site was “the best service” they had ever used. It gets even better. Their PR agent claims that angry music bloggers despised all the attention the site received and went as far as accusing the site to be a fraud – without any “proper evidence”. Why would they do such a thing? Because, they argue, we were determined to “ruin Zaptunes popularity.”

  • The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits

    Call it ingenious, call it evil or call it a little of both: Copyright troll Righthaven is exploiting a loophole in intellectual property law, suing websites that might have avoided any trace of civil liability had they spent a mere $105.

    That’s the fee for a blog or other website to register a DMCA takedown agent with the U.S. Copyright Office, an obscure bureaucratic prerequisite to enjoying a legal “safe harbor” from copyright lawsuits over third-party posts, such as reader comments.

  • Elastic Wristband Maker Sues Walmart For Copyright Infringement

    You know those silly elastic wristbands that kids wear? Yeah, well, apparently the company BCP Imports makes the (apparently?) popular brand of them called Silly Bandz, and has somehow copyrighted some aspect of the bands.

  • Oprah Sued For Copyright Infringement After Quoting A Book On TV Without Credit

  • Irony: Book About Recording Industry’s Mishandling Of Digital Priced Higher As Ebook Than Physical Book

    A few weeks back, we noted that book publishers apparently simply did not learn from the mistakes of the recording industry — specifically pointing to DRM and (more importantly) the fact that they’ve started pricing ebooks higher than physical books. Now, in a moment of supreme irony, Copycense (who has been highlighting various ebooks priced over corresponding physical books) is noting that Steve Knopper’s excellent book Appetite for Self-Destruction (subtitled “The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age”) is one of those books. Indeed, Amazon shows the ebook priced at $17.99, while the paperback is $11.53 from Amazon (and available new from others at $7.50 or used at $4.42).

  • Thank Copyright Infringers For Still Being Able To Hear Great Moments In World Series History

  • Good Morning to Happy Birthday for All

    One of the English language’s most recognized and performed songs is Happy Birthday to You (HBTY), which likely first appeared between 1893 and 1912 as new age-grading standards in American schools increased the need for a common celebratory song.

    [...]

    “Good Morning to All” sheet music

    Good Morning to All sheet music

    Today, after a series of mergers and acquisitions the Warner Music Group claims copyright on HBTY, and current law states it will remain rightful owner in the U.S. Until 2030.

  • EFF Defends Former Prosecutor From Righthaven Copyright Suit

    In September, the EFF decided to defend Democratic Underground, which Righthaven is suing for a user of the site posting four paragraphs and a link to a 34-paragraph Review-Journal story. In both cases, EFF has counter sued.

    What’s more, EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl said the group is fighting Righthhaven’s bid to require forfeiture of its targets’ domains.

  • YouTube Star VenetianPrincess Silenced By Music Publishers Claiming Parody Isn’t Fair Use

    Danny points us to yet another story of copyright being used to stifle creativity, rather than enhance it. It’s the story of Jodie Rivera, better known as VenetianPrincess, for years “the most subscribed to female on YouTube.” She creates video parodies of famous pop songs, such as the Lady Gaga parody below, which has nearly three million views…

  • DMCA: Restricting college radio without benefit

  • Colgate accused of toothpaste recipe theft

    A LEGAL dispute between the US and India over a herbal toothpaste is leaving a bitter aftertaste between the two countries, with Colgate Palmolive accused of filing a bogus patent.

    Colgate, the world’s largest producer of toothpaste, patented a toothcleaning powder in the hope that it would take the multibillion-dollar Indian oral hygiene market by storm.

  • Sharron Angle Gets Cease And Desist Letter From Hasbro Over ‘Harry Reid’s Amnesty Game’

    Toymaker Hasbro has sent Sharron Angle’s Senate campaign a cease and desist letter, saying the Nevada Republican never received permission to use the rights to Monopoly for its “Harry Reid Amnesty Game” website.

    “The MONOPOLY image that you are referring to was used without permission — and our legal department sent a cease and desist letter via fax to Ms. Angle’s offices on Friday,” said Hasbro spokesman Pat Riso in a statement to The Huffington Post on Monday.

  • ACTA

    • How ACTA Turns Limited Secondary Liability In Copyright Into Broad Criminal Aiding & Abetting

      We’ve noted that one of the serious problems with ACTA is the fact that it locks in this idea of secondary liability in copyright law, making it such that third parties can be liable for actions of their users’ infringement in certain cases. Secondary liability in copryight law is caselaw driven. Congress had a chance a few years back to put “inducement” into copyright law with the INDUCE Act, but chose not to. So I find it strange that the courts have simply interpreted copyright law to include such an inducement standard anyway. One of the problems with ACTA is that it takes this highly dynamic part of the law, and effectively locks it in, such that Congress cannot tell the courts it made a mistake, should it decide to do so.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Daily Giveaways the Entire Month of November

What does a Recompute DIY kit, a Brain Machine, and an Ice Tube Clock all have in common? The question is, Alex, What Are Things You Can Win From Linux Journal This Month. That’s right, we’re celebrating 200 issues in a big way this November and have rounded up some pretty cool prizes to give away each and every day.

I am a Linux Geek (and Proud of it!)

But then, I don’t think many of us do. It is 2011, Linux users come in all shapes and sizes today. If anyone asks me I will tell them:

I am a Linux Geek – and I am proud of it!

Have you ever come to this same realization about yourself? If so, what caused it?

Talking Point: Could Linux Abandon Directories In Favour Of Tagging?

For a fairly scruffy looking guy, I have a surprisingly healthy approach to organising my files. However, I’m constantly pushing up against the limitations of a system that is based around directories. I’m convinced that Linux needs to make greater use of tagging, but I’m also beginning to wonder if desktop Linux could abandon the hierarchical directory structure entirely.

Desktop

• A Tale of Two Computers

  My wife and I bought two computers at the same time. Hers was a laptop and mine was a desktop computer. Both came with Windows XP pre-installed. She uses Windows every day and I never use Windows, but instead have run a version of Kubuntu or Ubuntu since the day that I bought it, almost five years ago. Those are the facts.

  In all of that time I have but one problem with my desktop computer; I had to replace the power supply and bumped up the RAM to run VMs. I have had no software issues. I have re-installed Ubuntu every six months or gone the upgrade route once or twice. I have run alpha versions to final releases of many distributions including the above mentioned.

  My wife has had problems with several viruses, trojans and the like. She has used anti-virus software from all of the major distributors, Symantic, AVG, Panda, Avast, Kaspersky, and Trend. In addition, she runs anti-malware and anti-hijacking software that detects changes to the registry. She does not indulge in any risky practices. She uses lots of email and clicks on links that people send her. In short, she is a typical user with average skills.

  Her computer slows down to a crawl much to her frustration every month or two and it needs to be defragmented, the system tray needs to be cleaned out, her desktop needs tidying, her menu need to be cleaned up, her temporary files need to be wiped, and her registry tidied up. I am not making that up. She cannot do these things herself, so I do it.

  In comparison, my computer which runs Linux needs none of that. I run no anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-torjan, anti hijacking software in the background. My system tray has no applications running in memory that did not come with the OS. My desktop is clean of shortcuts. My menu does not need to be re-ordered. My computer runs as fast as it did when I got it almost five years ago.

• 2D musings

  QML fundamentally changes the way we create interfaces and it’s very neat. From the api perspective it’s not much different from JavaFX and one could argue which one is neater/better but QML allows us to almost completely get rid of the old 2D rendering model and that’s why I love it! A side-effect of moving to QML is likely the most significant change we’ve done to accelerated 2D in a long time. The new Qt scene graph is a very important project that can make a huge difference to the performance, look and feel of 2D interfaces.
  Give it a try. If you don’t have OpenGL working, no worries it will work fine with Mesa3D on top of llvmpipe.

• Toshiba NB250 review

  It’s fast and responsive for realistic netbook usage and the six-cell battery boasts a good seven or so hours of life, but the shoddy materials, weak keyboard layout and appalling aesthetics are enough to send us looking elsewhere. In short then: solid performance, brick-like appeal.

• Acer Aspire One D260 review

  Verdict: 5/5
  The Acer Aspire One D260 is the best netbook we’ve reviewed in some time. Its chassis is TARDIS-like in design, managing to house a competitive array of netbook hardware in a thin, light and supremely attractive package. Definitely the benchmark against which the next round of netbook releases will be scored.

Server

• Turquoise trading shutdown may have been sabotage, LSE says

  By tonight, the LSE admitted the problem may have been caused deliberately. A spokeswoman said: “Preliminary investigations indicate that this human error may have occurred in suspicious circumstances. The LSE takes this matter very seriously and a full internal investigation has now begun. The relevant authorities have been informed.”

  The problems at Turquoise, known in the City as a “dark pool” which allows participants to trade anonymously with each another, had major repercussions for the LSE which had been planning to transfer its entire share trading business, known as the main market, to a new system today.

  The LSE had been under pressure from its customers to delay the introduction of the new computer system to allow further network upgrades even before the latest problems but has now been forced to abandon any updates until next year.

• London Stock Exchange halts Linux migration after network hit in ‘suspicious circumstances’

  The London Stock Exchange has put the brakes on its cash markets migration to a Linux-based system after human error in “suspicious circumstances” floored the network on its Turquoise alternative trading venue.

  Turquoise, a dark pool or anonymous trading platform, uses the same system, and this morning took trading offline for two hours after a “network issue”.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Linux Audio Blog #1

  Been experimenting with a dynamic microphone (the Shure SM-58) and so here is the first in a series of audio blog entries.

Kernel Space

• Five Years Of Linux Kernel Benchmarks: 2.6.12 Through 2.6.37

  Benchmarking 26 kernels was no easy feat with running nearly two dozen tests each time and each test being run multiple times (usually three to five times as a minimum). Fortunately, with the Phoronix Test Suite combined with an Intel Core i7 “Gulftown” made this process much faster, easier, and more reliable than what would otherwise have been possible. A huge thank you goes out to Intel for supplying Phoronix with the Intel Core i7 970, which is their 32nm Gulftown processor with six physical cores plus Hyper Threading to provide a total of 12 threads. The Core i7 970 has 12MB of L3 cache and is clocked at 3.20GHz while having a maximum turbo frequency of 3.46GHz. This is one very fast desktop processor as shown in our Intel Core i7 970 Linux review and more recently within our LLVMpipe Scaling On Gulftown article where the performance of this Intel LGA-1366 CPU was looked at when running Gallium3D’s LLVMpipe when enabling 1/2/3/4/5/6/12-threads. While the i7-970 is very fast, it’s also very expensive at approximately $900 USD (NewEgg.com and Amazon.com), but it allowed this major Linux kernel comparison to happen in just under a week of constant testing, which is significantly less time than it would have required if using one of the less powerful Intel or AMD CPUs.

Applications

• 3 Media Conversion Apps That Will Make You a True Believer

  Dealing with the mind-numbing array of formats present in digital media can be intimidating for a user of any platform, and users considering Linux may be hesitant to switch if they think certain types of files simply cannot be made to play on an open source OS. There’s really nothing to fear, though — here are three applications that can transform common and obscure media types into ones easily digested by Linux.

• 10 obscure Linux office applications you need to try

  If you’ve ever checked out the list of applications available for the Linux operating system, you know there are tons of them out there. The only problem is determining which ones are worth trying. This is especially true of the office applications. You could dig through those apps for hours just to come up with a handful of gems. So I thought I would do the grunt work for you and highlight 10 of the more obscure applications that actually have valid use in your workplace. These tools range in scope and purpose, but each one of them offers an obvious business value.

• Proprietary

  • The 7 Best Extensions For Opera 11 Alpha

  • New Opera 11 snapshot: Extensions fixes, smaller winstaller, and *nix work

    Hi, we are working hard on making our new extensions feature better, more functional and more stable. This build is the result of more than a week of our work on extensions, and also contains a small Unite surprise, fixes for the new Windows installer, and a nice set of *nix bug fixes.

    From now on, Unite Application will no longer be delivered with the browser installer. Instead, they will be downloaded when launched for the first time. This noticeably reduces the installer size.

    There’s a new feature which involves an autoupdate feature for Opera Extensions and Unite Applications as well. It is not fully functional yet, as we are still working over server farm configuration.

• Instructionals/Technical

  • 7 Uncommon uses of Iptables

  • Face Detection in JavaScript via HTML5 Canvas

  • The Ubuntu Khaaaaaaaaaaan Denial of Service

  • Cool Linux command tricks

  • 7 Uncommon uses of Iptables

  • Linux Strings Command Examples (Search Text in UNIX Binary Files)

  • Vim Plugins: CMake Lint

  • Free Tutorials and Resources Abound for the Powerful Inkscape Graphics App

  • How to work with csv files in Linux

  • MultiBoot – Create a MultiBoot USB from Linux

  • Using UNetbootin to create a Linux USB from Linux

  • How to install Photoshop CS5 in Ubuntu Maverick 10.10

  • How to Limit network access by user / group using iptables – Owner Match

  • How to join Ubuntu to a Windows Workgroup

  • Access remote Ubuntu using Shellinabox,A Web Based Terminal Emulator

  • Building ffmpeg in Debian (Lenny)

  • enabling TRIM for your SSD on Ubuntu 10.10

  • Dealing with bash history

  • How to add Broadcom 43xx wireless to Fedora 14

  • Rar Unrar Support For Fedora 14 Laughlin

  • Perfect Desktop Fedora 14 Laughlin: Post Install Guide

  • CentOS LVM Resizing Guide

  • Logos in Inkscape

  • Spruce Up Your Linux Desktop With Screenlets

  • How-To: Remaster Debian 6 “Squeeze”

  • Programming Using Glade and Perl

  • How to enable btrfs on Fedora 14

  • Linux File Permissions, Groups, and Users

  • How-to: Program PICs using Linux

  • Easily Change Splash Theme Without Going To The Command Line [Ubuntu]

  • Getting Drupal and mod_security to Play Nicely Together on Red Hat 5.x Servers

  • Howto bake Persistent Live USB – Debian Way (live-build)

  • Howto bake Persistent Live USB – Debian Way (live-build)

• Games

  • NAEV – A 2D space trading and combat game for linux

    NAEV is a 2D space trading and combat game, in a similar vein to Escape Velocity. NAEV is played from a top-down perspective, featuring fast-paced combat, many ships, a large variety of equipment and a large galaxy to explore. The game is highly open-ended, letting you proceed at your own pace.

  • Coldest

    Thanks to a reader for pointing out Coldest, an open-source multiplayer mech combat game. The project is also looking for contributors, so check it out if you’re interested!

  • What Makes You Tick : A Stitch in Time – Released !

    The two man indie game company Lassie Games released the 2d classic adventure game “What Makes You Tick : A Stitch in Time” which is a sequel to their previous freeware game “What Makes You Tick ?” (which is not available for GNU/Linux yet).

  • Linux Game Review: Sun Blast

    Sun Blast is very polished graphically, and the gameplay immerses you in the experience, even providing Wii remote force feedback at the appropriate impacts and explosions. While the lack of a save feature keeps it from being a casual “little bit at a time” game, the unlockable challenges add value and longevity.

    The Wii remote feature is definitely one of Sun Blast’s strongest assets, and the $9.95 price is the best feature of all. The one-time purchase gives you access to all OS versions of the game, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and PC-BSD. A demo version is also available and you can play it first before you make a purchase. Sun Blast gets four galactic star explosions out of five.

  • 5 Casual Linux Games You Probably Don’t Know About

    The sheer amount of software you can find in your average Linux package manager is astounding. For example, Ubuntu offers 502 free game downloads, all a single click away in the software center. Other Linux distributions, including Fedora and Suse, offer just as many choices.

    With that many games it’s hard to know what’s worth playing and what’s not. It wasn’t easy, but I spent a couple of days trying various games out. Keep reading to hear about five simple Linux games I personally enjoyed but think many Linux users may not be aware of, and feel free to suggest more in the comments below!

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • KDE Ships November Updates: 4.5.3

    Today, KDE has made available 4.5.3, the November updates to the Plasma workspaces, the applications built on top of KDE’s platform, and the platform itself. This release, as all x.y.z updates, contains bugfixes, performance improvements and localization updates only. As such, it’s a safe upgrade and recommended for everyone running 4.5.2 or earlier. The update contains a number of fixes in Okular, Dolphin and a series of KDE games. Also, the new shared data cache continues to mature.

• GNOME Desktop

  • Using Unity – Day 7

    Unity is still very fresh – if you do an online search for it you find very little about it. In fact, Day Four is the only proper result Google returns for giving Unity a custom Skin.

    Will I switch back to regular Gnome now that this series is done? No. I will stick to Unity whenever using Ubuntu – I kinda enjoy the newness of it. It is quite a fun interface to use.

  • Split – Beautiful New Theme from Bisigi

  • GNOME 3′s new theme lands & Mutter gets ace

    A new default GTK and Metacity* theme for Gnome 3 landed in the Gnome Shell git a few days back. Called Adwaita it looks very similar to the design mock-ups displayed at GUADEC earlier this year.

Distributions

• Reviews

  • Slackware review

    Slackware is a great Linux Distribution, and often called the one you need to work with if you want to learn Linux, people usually say:

    If you learn RHEL, you know RHEL, if you learn Slackware you know Linux.

    — Disclaimer:

    I am new to Slackware, please let me know if I’m wrong in anything of the above said. Once again, I am new to Slackware but I’m already in love with it.

• Red Hat Family

  • Fedora

    • Fedora 14 installation guide

      Fedora 14 is the latest update to the Red Hat-sponsored, Linux distribution. It is one of a handful of Linux distributions that use LVM, the Linux Logical Volume Manager, as the default disk partitioning scheme. The installer creates three logical volumes by default, besides the non-LVM /boot partition. The three logical volumes, for /home, /, and swap, are the minimum recommended for a desktop installation. The problem with the default installation is that all available disk space is allocated to the logical volumes, living none for future use when it might be needed to grow a partition, or create a new logical volume. This installation guide takes you through the process of editing each logical volume to free up disk space, space that is not needed for the system to run. At the end (of this tutorial), I will show an example of how to resize (grow) a logical volumes, a basic LVM management task.

    • Fedora14 ‘Laughlin’ screenshots tour

      Fedora 14 linux distribution code named ‘Laughlin’ is out. This new release comes with many new features and improvements for developers, system administrators and open source enthusiasts. if you are already a fedora user and you want to upgrade to this new release, please check our previous post. Find in this post screenshots for Fedora14, also installation steps for newbies(screenshots).

    • Fedora 14 (Laughlin) Released

      If you like Fedora, or if you prefer to get your Linux distribution from a large organization with a lot of resources behind it, the Fedora 14 release is very good news. It is solid, stable, it works well on everything I have tried it on, and it includes pretty much the latest versions of everything. My only reservation about it is that it does not include some of the things that I always want installed (Java, Flash and OpenOffice.org for example). None of these are hard to install, but my recent experience with PCLinuxOS has made me prefer that. So perhaps it really comes down to a choice based on the size and character of the organization behind the distribution. As far as I am concerned, either way you win.

    • Fedora 14 vs Ubuntu 10.10: Comparative Review

      In my meetings with Red Hat executives, I found the company had no intention of making Fedora a competitor to Windows or Mac at home user end. Enterprise or business customers were the company’s target.

    • Review: Fedora 14 (Laughlin)

      Honestly I think the Fusion beta 14 I reviewed ealier was a bit more stable in some ways, as I noticed the Desktop screen would “crackle” and flash when opening apps or menus. I would say it’s probably the old mx4000 nVidia card in this old testbed PC, a AMD AthlonXP 2400+ with 768mb RAM, but the Fusion beta 14 did not have these issues. Overall Fedora 14 is a sharp, beautiful, and well supported full-featured linux distribution with a reputation for providing an easy to use system that’s always up-to-date.

    • Fedora 14: haven for Ubuntu’s homeless GNOMEs

      While it may lack some of the flashier “everyday user” features Ubuntu has been focusing on, Fedora is still a very user-friendly distro, especially for those just looking to get work done without the bells and whistles of Ubuntu.

      In the end both are great desktop releases, the main difference is that Fedora has more to offer once you scrape below the glossy surface.

    • [Adam Williamson:] Board elections: vote Adam to revise the Fedora release process! Also, hot dogs.

      I’ve been thinking about this for the last week or two, and I’ve decided to run for the Fedora Board elections. I felt a bit reluctant to do this since I’m a Red Hat employee and I’d like to see more non-RHers on the Board and other committees, but in the end I decided it was the best way to move forward with my idea.

    • Fedora 14 Laughlin Desktop Gnome Quick LOOK Screenshots | Screencast

      Used the live session for Fedora 14 Laughlin Desktop edition ” Gnome “, looks really good, Fedora Art team work did a great job on new backgrounds, and many great enhancements will talk about it in another post, for now we will take a quick look to Fedora 14 with screenshots and quick screencast.

    • Pick me up, no. 9247.

      So anyhow, we watched TS3 and greatly enjoyed it for the second time (having seen it in 3D in the theater with our kids this past summer). But then I got an extra bonus when I popped in Disc 2 of the set, the disc that includes a bunch of supplements. During the supplements, the filmmakers and crew at Pixar show off a lot of the work that goes into making one of these groundbreaking films. And thanks to the exceptional resolution of the Blu-ray format, you can pick out a lot of detail in the material they show.

      Including the fact that the animators were running Fedora on a number of their systems!

    • Fedora 15 Just Received Lovelock As Its Codename

      It’s official: “Lovelock” is the Fedora 15 codename.

      After the community proposed a variety of codenames, the choices were narrowed down to Asturias, Lovelock, Pushcart, Sturgis, and Blarney. My pick was on Blarney or Pushcart, but in fact winning by 28 votes was the Lovelock name.

• Debian Family

  • Mini-DebConf in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam during FOSSASIA 2010

    FOSSASIA 2010, one of the top Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) events for developers, enterprises, governments, and users in Vietnam, will take place in Ho Chi Minh City on November 12-14, 2010.

    The event will feature the first mini-DebConf in Vietnam. After Beijing, China (2005), Taipei, Taiwan (2009), Khon Kaen, Thailand (March 2010), and Pune, India (August, 2010) this will be the fifth mini-DebConf in Asia.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • It’s official, over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!

      We’ve known for a couple weeks that one more woman becoming an Ubuntu Member would cause the Ubuntu Member statistics to to go from 4.98% and nudge us over that 5% mark – and it happened today!

    • It’s official, over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!

    • Over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women. Rock and Roll.

      I am delighted to see that over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women. That is 5% of active contributors who have performed significant and sustained contributions are women. For the full scoop, read Lyz’s post.

      I just want to offer my congratulations to the awesome Ubuntu Women team for all their hard work. It was also great to see the team’s continued hard work and participation at the most recent Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida.

    • Your Ideal Workstation

    • Unity: Ubuntu’s Descent Into Madness!

      Canonical’s decision opens the door for Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint and others to gain more users, at Ubuntu’s expense. I suspect that many faithful Ubuntu users will be casting around for alternatives the minute they see what Unity looks like on their computer screens.

      We are blessed with choices in Linux, and switching away from generic Ubuntu to one of its derivatives or a completely non-Ubuntu distro is probably going to happen once long-time Ubuntu users experience Unity.

      If you are unhappy about Canonical’s foolish decision to make Unity its default interface, I recommend that you consider Linux Mint Debian Edition instead. LMDE gives you all of the advantages of Debian (and the excellent Linux Mint tools & utilities) without any of Canonical’s poor choices and silly design decisions.

    • From Arch to Ubuntu

      I just wished Ubuntu would give a bit more back to a community it takes so much from.

    • UDS-N Poll: Why are you working on Ubuntu?

      One of my goals of UDS was to do a little survey on the floor to get a feel for why participants were contributing to Ubuntu and how they see the reason for doing all this work. I set out a simple 5 questions and asked attendees one after another and recorded them on my phone. The Data Source was then compiled into the following statistics with some answers folded into each other since spellings and meanings of difference words meant the same thing.

    • Flavours and Variants

      • Tired Of Tweaking Ubuntu? Try Pinguy OS 10.10 Beta 2! [Ubuntu Remaster]

        The remastered “Ubuntu after a week of customizations” Pinguy OS 10.10 beta 2 has just been released. For those of you who are not familiar with Pinguy: it’s an Ubuntu remaster with a lot of useful default applications “built to have eye candy (Gloobus Preview, GNOME Do, Docky, Elementary*) and for every part of it to be user-friendly”.

Devices/Embedded

• Automotive infotainment middleware debuts

  Jungo Ltd. announced a Linux-ready middleware stack for automotive infotainment applications. The Automotive Connectivity Middleware offers a complete media and networking infrastructure, including wireless connectivity, phone management, and integration with mapping and telematics functionality, says the company.

• Tablets

  • Hands on: MeeGo-based WeTab tablet is no iPad killer—yet

    Unlike Android and iOS, the WeTab software environment uses a conventional window manager that allows the user to resize windows, drag them around the screen, and view multiple overlapping windows at the same time. Due to this capability and the performance characteristics of the device’s Atom processor, the WeTab software experience feels more like a netbook than a tablet. It has a lot of rough edges and doesn’t come with much out of the box, but it’s very open and quite conducive to running ported desktop Linux applications, which could make it appealing to enthusiasts who are looking for a more flexible device than the iPad or Android-based tablets.

Do open-source projects need strong leaders?

How important our “leaders” to open-source projects? We tend to think of open-source projects being lead by top developers. Sometimes that’s true. Without Linus Torvalds, the top developer, would we have Linux, the major operating system or, as is the case the BSD Unix family, a handful of relatively minor operating systems? I don’t think so.

Oracle

• Oracle kills low-priced MySQL support

  Oracle has hiked up the price of MySQL, killing low-priced support options and more than doubling what it charges for the commercial versions of the database.

• Oracle’s War on Open Source Is the Tip of a Bigger Management Problem

  There is no inherent reason to think that open source software is free. And there is no reason that software source shouldn’t be available, should a company decide to make it so. But getting stuck in between the two camps can be sticky, and that’s exactly what has happened at Oracle. The company asked almost three dozen developers to leave OpenOffice.org, the open source office application product line that came along with all of Sun Microsystem’s other belongings. Set aside who’s right and who’s wrong here for a moment, and the situation brings two important management lessons into clear relief.

  The developers, disappointed with how Oracle managed the OpenOffice project, split off the open source code into a new version, free of the database company, called LibreOffice. This made Oracle management none too happy, particularly as one of the big supporters of LibreOffice is Google (GOOG), which Oracle is currently suing for patent and copyright infringement over its Java implementation on Android. (It must be the season for legal arm twisting as Google, whose own Apps are a LibreOffice competitor, has sued the Interior Department over alleged favoritism toward Microsoft (MSFT) in a search for a new email system.)

• The Unsaid Document Foundation

  TDF Fast Start, not without complications.

  The TDF Steering Committee (SC) invited Oracle to join, asking them to give away the OpenOffice.org mark. Inviting a corporation to join a will-be foundation without a document describing a draft legal and governance structure sounds a bit naïve, though.

  Why the SC gave such a short notice is unclear. OpenOffice.org community members have been treated like second citizens, while TDF first-hour supporters have been giving all the time to provide feedback and quotes.

  As a long time member of the OpenOffice.org community and as a founding member of one the oldiest OpenOffice.org associations ( PLIO), I found odd myself being noticed only two days in advance. Knowing about the decision to go without Oracle, some of us would have asked time for a second thought, maybe coming up with better alternatives.

• Why Oracle Wants LibreOffice to Succeed

  The thought has occurred to me, though, that this may be about much more than Oracle not sharing its community. In fact, given the past history of how Oracle treats open source projects in general, I believe any strengthening of the LibreOffice community, whether through new developers or from developers migrating from OpenOffice.org, will ultimately benefit OpenOffice.org far more than a weaker LibreOffice.

  An outcome, by the way, I believe Oracle planned all along.

  Here’s my thought process: Oracle is trying to keep OpenOffice.org going, but only in a certain direction. No one if quite sure what that direction is right now, but I think it’s fair to assume there is a definite plan.

  LibreOffice, for whatever reason, does not fit in that plan. Or Oracle is worried that LibreOffice is in sync now, but won’t be later.

• Office Clones: It’s About to Get Complicated

  This is about to get more complicated as a slew of OpenOffice developers have abandoned ship to create the Document Foundation where they are using the OpenOffice open-source code to produce a fork development effort called LibreOffice. You can download the current version of LibreOffice and give it a try.

CMS

• Drupal 7 nears release candidate stage

  Compared to Drupal 6, Drupal 7 is easier to use and scales better on large sites, such as those getting 30 to 40 million page views per month.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• End non-free advertisement: stamp out the ads!

  One month, one campaign, one goal: getting rid of non-free software advertisements on public websites. In four weeks, FSFE received reports concerning 2162 European institutions who advertise non-free PDF readers. Apart from the 305 activists who participated to the search, 1500 individuals, 46 businesses and 38 organisations signed our Petition For The Removal Of Proprietary Software Advertising On Public Websites. Now that the hunt is over, it’s time to chase up those websites which encourage visitors to jeopardise their freedom. It’s time to stamp out the ads!

• Model letter to contact the institutions

Project Releases

• MyPaint hits 0.9 and is looking good

  MyPaint is an easy to use paint program. It supports several popular image formats, comes with a load of brushes, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. After 5 years of development, version 0.9.0 was released on November 2 with some nice new features.

Government

• Should governments promote open source software?

  Discussing the optimal mix between open-source software (OSS) and closed-source software, Andreas Freytag, Stephen M. Maurer and Sebastian von Engelhardt argue that “pro-OSS [government] interventions make very little sense if there are too many OSS firms already”.

  [...]

  Almost every company, not just software editors, relies on software. But companies are not at all homogeneous as is implied here. Using the same OSS software will not cut it in an environment of diversified business models. Companies will have to write (or have someone write) modifications to the software, or even brand new software, to fit the business process.

  Then, if they release as open-source, will every competitor immediately benefit for free? It seems like a long shot. It is one thing to have access to the code, another thing to adapt it to the specificities of your business, teach it to your employees, etc.

  If however you choose to adopt the newly released OSS, you will probably need to have some “integration” work done to combine the software with your specific needs and practices. Being forced to release this additional code as open-source as well, you contribute to the innovative iterations. It doesn’t mean, however, that you will immediately ruin your competitive edge.

Licensing

• A Look at the Linux Foundation Self Assessment Checklist

  The checklist is available from the Linux Foundation site, with a list of more than 100 guidelines to follow. The items are comprehensive but not overly detailed. The PDF weighs in at just 22 pages, and the idea is that it’s a starting point for organizations to help develop their own internal processes. For companies that are new to the open source community, or simply feel they’d like to have expert assistance in developing policies, the Linux Foundation is also offering several training options to help organizations come up to speed.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Data

  • Simple UK Train Times App – Still Dead and I’m Not Supposed to Talk About It

    Consensus is that train times are best disseminated as widely and openly as possible. The more chance us folks have of finding a train the likelier we are to ride on it. Keeping the details of train times a secret or charging people for non-profitmaking uses is perverse and a retrograde step from when they were supplied freely to the public through an API.

• Open Access/Content

  • Politically selective calls for open access

    What should we think about politically selective calls for OA? For now, put aside those that are yoked to general calls for OA and framed as politically realistic first steps. What about those that are not yoked to general calls for OA, and whose narrowness suggests political opportunism more than political realism? Here are five quick examples from the US to show what I have in mind.

Standards/Consortia

• ODF Wallpaper

  I’ve spend a lot of time on the past years trying to make a wallpaper with the ODF logo for my smartphone, but as I don’t have the necessary graphical skills, I never got anything that could be useful…

  Few weeks ago, I was searching the Internet to find some cool ODF logos, and finally found one very well done on a site andy.fitzsimon.com.au. I contacted Andy and asked his permission to use the logo. He authorize me and even send me an SVG file with other ideas…

  Based on this file I created the wallpaper below, in two versions: BlackBerry (which also fits on desktops and other smartphones with keyboards) and Android (which by the size of the screen had the main logo reduced).

The Times UK Lost 4 Million Readers To Its Paywall Experiment

Back in June, News Corp put two more of its newspapers, other than the Wall Street Journal, behind a paywall: The Times of London and the Sunday Times. We kind of expected it to be a disaster, but now we actually have some results. The company announced that it signed up 105,000 paying subscribers, plus another 100,000 who were already subscribers to the print newspaper.

But what did the Times lose? According to comScore, the Times UK website saw its online readership decline by 4 million unique visitors a month worldwide to 2.4 million, or a 62 percent drop. Pageviews fell off an even steeper cliff, plummeting 90 percent from an estimated 41 million in May, 2010 to 4 million in September, 2010. People did what you’d expect them to do when faced with a paywall at a news site. They said, “No, thanks” and clicked away to another site.

Exploring Software—Free Shared Libraries!

It is time that package-management applications free shared libraries from artificial shackles, and create a more dynamic and versatile distribution.

The first time I came across UNIX shared libraries was with UNIX SVR3.2. The ability to work with multiple versions of libraries concurrently seemed impressive; as I recollect, the shared libraries we were using on mainframes did not offer such capabilities.
After about a year of using Linux, I found that I required that capability: we were using the Slackware distribution, and needed to install an additional package. We could get a binary version; however, it needed a lower version of a shared library. It was fairly simple to install the alternate version of the library as well, and get on with the work.

Science

• The Honey Bee Epigenomes: Differential Methylation of Brain DNA in Queens and Workers

  Our study describes a level of molecular diversity previously unknown in honey bees that might be important for generating phenotypic flexibility not only during development but also in the adult post-mitotic brain.

Security

• Security update for ProFTPD FTP server

• Firesheep, a week later: Ethics and Legality

  While the answer to this question is likely dependent on many variables and will almost certainly be debated for months or years to come, it should not matter to anyone reading this. It goes without saying that harassing or attacking people is a terrible thing to do. To suggest Firesheep was created for this purpose is completely false; Firesheep was created to raise awareness about an existing and frequently ignored problem. As I’ve said before, I reject the notion that something like Firesheep turns otherwise innocent people evil.

  Reports have been trickling in that Microsoft’s anti-virus software is now detecting Firesheep as a threat, despite the fact that Firesheep poses absolutely no threat to the integrity of the system it’s installed on, and as mentioned earlier, has many legitimate uses.

Finance

• Ferris: Government is being advised by the bond holders

  The Sinn Féin Spokesperson on Workers Rights, Martin Ferris TD has claimed that the Government’s austerity programme is not only designed to pay for failed bondholders and speculators but is being advised by them. He referred to the fact that the Chairperson of Goldman Sachs Peter Sutherland whose Asset Management section holds Anglo Bonds has been advising the Government on the cuts.

  Deputy Ferris said: “Apart from the economic and financial issues that we have discussed here for the past few days there is the whole moral and ethical aspect of the situation.

• Power Shift in U.S. Stirs Economic Worries Overseas

  As Republicans prepare to assert new authority in Congress, America’s overseas trading partners worry that Washington’s political upheaval may pose fresh challenges to the global economy.

• Americans likely took retail breather in October

  After a last-minute back-to-school buying spree, Americans appeared to have taken a shopping pause in October, resulting in a mixed retail sales picture.

  That lull could continue until the day after Thanksgiving, the unofficial start of the Christmas season, as shoppers wait for big bargains, many analysts say.

• The Fed’s big gamble: Here’s what could go wrong

  The Federal Reserve is making a high-stakes bet in the hope of getting the economy steaming along again. Nobody is sure the Fed’s best efforts will work, and they may actually backfire.

  The Fed announced a plan to buy $600 billion in government debt, aimed at driving already low long-term interest rates even lower. The central bank would buy the debt in chunks of $75 billion a month through June of next year.

• SKorea: G20 leaders need ‘concrete agreements’

  Group of 20 leaders know they must achieve “concrete agreements” including goals for reducing current account and trade gaps at next week’s summit or risk having their leadership of the world economy called into question, South Korea’s president said Wednesday.

  Finance ministers and central bank governors from the group of leading rich and developing nations met last month in South Korea ahead of the summit scheduled for Nov. 11-12. They vowed to avoid using their currencies as trade weapons and promised to come up with a way to measure the reduction of destabilizing trade gaps.

• The Failure of Mortgage Modification

  The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program for reducing mortgages of homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth has fallen far short of its objectives. Officials seem surprised by that outcome and blame the result on administrative problems. But, all along, the program’s bad economics doomed it to failure.

• The White House Needs Elizabeth Warren, Now More Than Ever

  The White House today is under pressure, with insiders asking: After the strong showing of the Republicans in the midterm elections, should the president move to the right or to the left?

  This is entirely the wrong way to think about the problem – the administration needs to get beyond its mental framework of early 2009, which led it sadly astray with regard to the financial sector. The President needs to find people and themes capable of cutting across the political spectrum; specifically he needs to promote strongly the ideas of Elizabeth Warren – what we need in financial services, above all else, is much more transparency.

• What’s next for President Obama?

  Obama has since led a relatively charmed political life, savoring a series of thrilling victories. His election nights have largely lacked the sting of defeat his opponents know well, and the words “record landslide” and “historic and decisive” have accompanied his successes.

• Fed poised to unveil new program to aid economy

  The Federal Reserve is poised to adopt a new plan to jolt the economy. It’s a high-stakes gamble that could shape Chairman Ben Bernanke’s legacy.

  The Fed is all but certain to detail its plan for buying more government bonds when it wraps up its two-day meeting Wednesday. Those purchases should further lower interest rates on mortgages and other loans. Cheaper loans could lead people and companies to borrow and spend. That might help invigorate the economy, and lead companies to step up hiring.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Chomsky: 10 steps every day to manipulate the truth

  Another trick, the fourth, the strategy of delay. “Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as” painful and necessary, “gaining public acceptance, in time, for future application.” It ‘s easier to accept a sacrifice but a sacrifice immediate future, Chomsky argues, because the effort is not used immediately, and because the public, mass, always has a tendency to naively hope that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • Opposition threatens to unplug digital copyright legislation

    The federal government’s proposal to make consumers liable for legal damages of up to $5,000 if they break digital locks to copy movies, video games and electronic books for their own personal use appears dead on arrival — with all three opposition parties on Tuesday speaking out against this key provision of the Conservative’s copyright bill.

    The controversial legislation to modernize Canada’s copyright law is expected to clear a key parliamentary hurdle as early as this week when MPs vote to send it to a House of Commons committee for closer scrutiny. Critics for the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrats all stood up in the House of Commons Tuesday to support updating the law, but said they will be proposing amendments to the digital encryption provisions before a final vote.

  • Making of Sintel Open Movie – Documentary Video

    Sintel Open Movie was released last month and it was an instant hit among developers and movie lovers alike. Now it’s time for some real learning. If those awesome blender tutorials were not enough for you, may be you should watch this making of Sintel Open Movie documentary video as a first step.

  • 3 Strikes Still On Agenda, But Only If Kiwis Keep On Pirating

    New Zealand’s Parliament Commerce Committee has reported back on the Copyright Infringing File Sharing Bill and it will now move to parliament for its second reading. The controversial 3 strikes provision is still included, but will now only be implemented if a letter writing scheme to educate citizens fails, and people continue to share illicit files during the next two years.

  • “It is Groundhog Day”: Third Jammie Thomas P2P trial begins

    Michael J. Davis, Chief Judge for the District of Minnesota, opened the remarkable third trial of peer-to-peer file-swapper Jammie Thomas-Rasset today with a quip. “It is Groundhog Day,” he said, looking out over the lawyers gathered before him.

  • Belgian Court recognises CC licences

    This is an extremely interesting ruling for various reasons. Firstly, it helps to eliminate the typical FUD that tries to undermine Creative Commons as licences that are not valid because they lack case law. Secondly, it will also serve to answer another common piece of FUD, which tries to imply that CC licences are American-centric documents that are not valid and/or enforceable in Civil Law jurisdictions. Finally, it is interesting to see how a court may consider the fact that a licence is non-commercial when calculating damages, a solution which I tend to agree with.