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04.30.11

Links 30/4/2011: Systemd and a Lot of Ubuntu Coverage

Posted in News Roundup at 9:47 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The naming of parts: Time for “Linux Inside”?

    Names matter in free software. Just think of the number of electrons that have been spilt arguing over whether it’s “Linux” or “GNU/Linux”.

  • Linux, a slice of heaven for programmers.

    I have just read among one of the pc news articles which I browse every day, that gartner has finally, officially, stated that Linux is one of the fastest growing operating systems available today. Faster than microsoft even. According to gartner, Linux is rising while windows is falling.

    What this means is that more and more programmers will be attracted to the Linux platform as another revenue stream for their programs. When they do decide to stick their toe into Linux waters they will be very pleasantly surprised.

  • 4 Great Sources of Information About Linux and Open Source

    If you’re new to Linux and free/Open Source software, or even if you’re a more seasoned user, then you’re often looking for more information. Not just documentation, but also useful tips and tricks.

    The team here at Make Tech Easier works hard to provide as much quality information as we can. But we can’t write about everything (though we’re trying!).

  • Linux on a Fingernail

    This issue of Linux Journal is all about how to get Linux in your pocket. In this article, I go one better and tell you how to get Linux on your fingernail. Now, before you get too excited, I won’t be discussing some new nano-computer being used by James Bond, unfortunately. Instead, I discuss how to put Linux on a micro-SD card (or any other USB drive, for that matter). Using this, you can run Linux on any machine that can boot off a USB device.

  • Desktop

    • Linux Needs To Change! So They Tell Me

      Everyone’s heard of the year of the desktop, right? At least every new year a 100 or more people write about it too, no? Know why? Because someone did once and every other person has copied them since. It’s like a catch-phrase, it takes one person to say it so one person can hear it. Next thing you know the whole world is saying the same thing. It’s no different for all the people who think we need to do this or that to get people from other operating systems over to using a Linux Kernel based one. Someone wrote that once and everyone has run around saying the same thing since. You can see it in almost every comment area, forums, mailing list. People in the media within our community love it when they don’t have something else to talk about, it’s a good source for page hits. You can even see it from developers, even ones from well known professional projects. I look on in awe.

    • Life in a Linux-less World

      Linux has been with us for two decades now, but what would the technology world be like if Linus Torvalds had never gone about creating it? It’s impossible to know for sure, but lots of scenarios do come to mind: Microsoft may actually have been weaker, Apple may have ruled the smartphone world unopposed, and the enterprise would likely look very, very different.

    • What If Prince William And Kate Middleton Were Linux Fans

      Today is great day in the UK. Day of another Royal Wedding.
      Not only because this is just another Bank Holiday in this country. But also because this day continues monarchy. Hopefully Prince William and Kate Middleton will have baby soon, who can inherit British throne.
      I actually don’t know if William and Kate are Linux fans or not. Maybe they even have not heard about this great operation system.

  • Server

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • The 2.6.35.13 longterm Linux kernel is released
    • Response to “Why systemd?”

      So I read Lennart’s blog post entitled Why systemd?. In it, he makes a number of comparisons between systemd and the two other Linux init systems that are still in widespread use (this being the third init system some distributions have adopted within the last few years). Overall, he makes a good argument that systemd has many nice and exciting features, and I’m sure they are of interest to various people who want their init system to be SYSV on steroids. Here are some of them…

    • Graphics Stack

      • Open-Source AMD Fusion Graphics Still Mixed

        While AMD was very fast to provide open-source Fusion graphics driver support under Linux (along with official support in their proprietary Catalyst driver), the support has not ended up working out too well for us. It has regressed since the November push. As mentioned in March, the E-350 Fusion Linux support took a dive in terms of its graphics support with some outstanding bugs. Since then, the support has improved and is now largely usable, but there are still some big issues.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • A new Linux desktop appeal

      With Gnome and Ubuntu shaking up the Linux desktop market it might be time to look at an alternative desktop interface

      With the Gnome project radically overhauling its desktop environment with Gnome3 and Ubuntu switching to the Unity environment, many Linux desktop users could be looking for alternatives this month. Here, then, are a few viable alternatives it you’re not sold on Gnome3 or Unity.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Fire Up Your Electrons!

        The scripting system is still powered by QtScript, but is now handled in such a way that it is able to control many more aspects of the game engine, and generally much more consistent.

      • tokamak 5 begins
      • Tokamak 5, Day 2

        Yesterday, in defiance of the weather reports, the day was sunny and reasonably warm and set the stage for a very productive day 2 here at Tokamak in the Netherlands. We held four design sessions in the morning: 2 on libplasma2 (specifically the dual topics of isolating QGraphicsView from the core code and using Qt Components), one on plasma-desktop defaults (a button to show the activities, an auto-hiding pager when virtual desktops drop to one, some default launchers that track the default file manager and web browser, and much more) and one on a new first-boot screen designed with OEM style installs in mind.

      • a typical day at Tokamak 5

        We just finished our daily progress meeting here at Tokamak 5 where we take turns moving our (self-)assigned sticky notes on the kanban window into the “Done” category. We each share what we’ve done the previous day, what we’re working on now and what (if any) blockers we’ve encountered.

      • KDE Commit Digest for 24 April 2011

    • GNOME Desktop

      • The Board 0.1.3

        Time for a new development snapshot release of The Board! I’ve just uploaded the 0.1.3 tarball. Get it while it’s hot! So, what are user-visible changes?

        The main feature of this release is the webcam support in photo elements with Cheese. It’s fun, it’s magic! A couple of useful key shortcuts were added: Ctrl+N to add a new page and Delete key to remove selected elements. An important crasher fix—caused by an update in gobject-introspection—is also included.

      • The crazy Zeitgeist week…

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Dual-core panel PC’s for hospital patients

      Advantech announced an “infotainment terminal” for hospital patients that includes a 15.6-inch touchscreen and a single- or dual-core Intel Atom processor. The PIT-1502W offers a resistive touchscreen with 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, a two megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, RFID, and a smart card reader, according to the company.

    • Rugged, Atom-powered handheld runs Linux

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

        • Nokia Kills MeeGo and Symbian- Finally

          Nokia has finally nailed the coffin for Symbian and MeeGo by announcing it will cut R&D staff dedicated to those two platforms, with some being transferred to Accenture, obviously to get them out of sight till Symbian dies a slow death.

        • LG working on MeeGo Linux tablets, phones, and more?

          LG is holding a session at the MeeGo Conference next month where the company will show off devices running MeeGo, including tablets, phones, and in-vehicle entertainment systems. It’s not clear at the moment if this means that LG will definitely be bringing these devices to market, but it at least shows that the company is putting some of its research dollars into MeeGo.

      • Android

        • Why Midrange Android Phones Aren’t Worth the Sacrifice

          While these phone’s list prices blow the competition out of the water (as they range from $100 to free with a new contract), you can still find high-end phones on Amazon for just as cheap. Instead of grabbing a $100 phone, for example, you might be better off snatching up the slightly-old-but-still-awesome Droid Incredible, for example, a mere $80 on Amazon or the slightly less old HTC G2 for $100.—and it’s probably a better phone than even the $100 midrange phones. These deals aren’t permanent, but every few months Amazon seems to have a slew of steep discounts on high-end phones that make buying midrange phones unnecessary.

          If you don’t want to be beholden to when Amazon or other outlets have deals on certain phones, or you want to get a phone for free, the lower-end phones are probably a fine buy, as Tested notes. But with a bit of patience and hunting around, you can almost certainly get just as good a deal on a higher-end phone—thus avoiding the sacrifice of a slow processor or the latest version of Android. Hit the link to Tested’s article on midrange phones, and share your thoughts on the subject in the comments.

        • Manage Your Photo Gallery from Android Using ReGalAndroid
        • Xoom sales still flag as developers rethink Android tablets

          Verizon says it is happy with Motorola Xoom tablet sales, despite a Global Equities estimate that only 25,000 to 120,000 units — a small fraction of the 500,000 to 800,000 units said to have been manufactured — have actually sold. Meanwhile, increasing frustration with Android fragmentation, as well as a rough-edged Android 3.0 (“Honeycomb”) release, has tipped mobile developer interest back toward the Apple iPad, claims an Appcelerator/IDC survey.

        • MIPS Honeycomb port in progress

          MIPS Technologies says it’s working on a port of Android 3.0 (“Honeycomb”) to the MIPS architecture, and also announced a 15 percent year-to-year increase in revenues for its fiscal third quarter. Meanwhile, MIPS and new licensee Ali Corp. of Taiwan announced Ali’s Linux-compatible, MIPS32-based “M3701G” chipset, designed for triple-play set-top boxes.

        • Dear Google: Here’s your roadmap out of Android Honeycomb hell

Free Software/Open Source

  • Dropbox snuffs open code that bypassed file-sharing controls

    Dropbox – the San Francisco startup that offers a free service for sharing files over the net – has suppressed a fledgling open source project that lets anyone use the service outside of its control, saying the project exposed Dropbox’s proprietary protocol and could be used for piracy.

    The open source project is called Dropship, and it provides a means of sharing files via Dropbox using only their hashes. It saves hashes of a file in JSON format, and anyone can then use the hashes to load the file into their Dropbox account. This could be used to share, yes, copyrighted content, which is officially barred by the company. “Dropship is a tool that attempts to access the Dropbox servers in an unauthorized manner,” a Dropbox spokesman tells The Register.

  • [VIDEO] Free and Open Source Software in Developing Countries
  • Dropbox Attempts To Kill Open Source Project

    Yesterday morning I woke up much earlier than I wanted. Instead of lying in bed, wishing I was asleep, I decided to get up and check out Hacker News. Better to waste my time reading industry news than lying around. One headline in particular caught my attention: “Dropship — successor to torrents?“. The name was an obvious reference to Dropbox and the suggestion it could replace torrents was enticing. Data storage and distribution has been a long time interest of mine and I can’t resist reading about the industry. I had no idea that by the end of the day I’d have received a fake DMCA takedown notice, correspondence with Dropbox’s CTO, and witness the near killing of an open source project.

  • 2600hz Launches First-Ever Distributed, Open-Source Communications Software

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Benchmark The Browsers! Which One Is The Best?

      Every article presented here about browsers always generates some controversy about which browser is the best? With the arrival of new browsers market leaders, a series of 14 tests held to know the most comprehensive and impartial browser as possible.

    • Chrome

      • Chrome 11: Google’s web browser learns to listen

        Google has released the stable version of Chrome 11. After the update, users will have version 11.0.696.57 of Google’s web browser. As previously reported, Chrome 11 features the addition of a new logo that drops the previous 3D bubble look for a flatter and more simple look.

      • Latest Google Chrome Build Now Supports Speech Input

        The latest stable release of Google’s Chrome browser features speech input through HTML. What this simply means is that you can now translate your voice input into other languages using Google Translate right in the browser.

      • Google Chrome Patches Net Bug Hunters $16,500

        Google paid out a record $16,500 to developers for plugging 27 Chrome Web browser vulnerabilities, paving the way for the launch of the Chrome 11.

    • Mozilla

      • 10 Must-Have Free Firefox 4 Add-Ons

        As appealing as Firefox 4 is, it could be better at searching, keeping information secure, and performing other important tasks. Each of these freebies adds to the browser’s functionality and ease of use.

      • Mozilla Fixes Vulnerabilities in Firefox 4
      • Firefox 4.0.1 fixes several security issues
      • Firefox gets faster on Linux

        Linux users have always been a big part of Firefox‘s vocal fan base, and today a group of Mozilla developers has repaid their devotion with some good news. Mozilla’s Mike Hommey reported this morning that his team of coders finally managed to get both 32 and 64-bit Firefox builds for Linux to compile with GCC 4.5. The updated compiler has been available since April 2010, but Hommey’s team tried twice last year without success to make the switch. Now that they’ve been able to pull it off, Firefox on Linux should perform every bit as well as it does on Windows — with the possible exception of hardware acceleration, where Firefox’s utilization of Direct2D still gives Windows Vista and 7 a performance edge.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • What’s New in Upcoming CUBRID Manager 8.4.0

      CUBRID 8.4.0 is coming out very soon, so is the CUBRID Manager. In this article I would like to explain briefly how we gathered the user requests for the CM 8.4.0 and which of them have been implemented.

    • Database Sharding with CUBRID

      Our development team has just released the User Specs for the Sharding feature which we are going to implement this year in CUBRID. In this blog I will explain the overall plan and how the database sharding will work in CUBRID.

    • Will the 2011 MySQL Conference Be the Last One?: A Q&A

      This year marked my fifth year at the MySQL Conference. With some distance between the Oracle acquisition, this year’s show provided an interesting glimpse into the status of MySQL, both the project and the ecosystem. Let’s get to the questions.

      Q: Before we begin, do you have anything to disclose?
      A: Yes. Prior to its acquisition by Oracle, Sun was a RedMonk client. And prior to its acquisition by Sun, MySQL was a RedMonk client. In addition, multiple entities that compete directly or indirectly with MySQL are RedMonk clients, including Akiban, Basho, IBM, Lucid Imagination, Membase, and Microsoft.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice development on track after Oracle move

      The Document Foundation on Friday announced a second beta for LibreOffice 3.4, the offshoot of the OpenOffice.org codebase, one week after Oracle said it would no longer sell a commercial version of the productivity suite.

      “Please be aware that LibreOffice 3.4 Beta2 is not yet ready for production use,” the Document Foundation said on its website. “You should continue to use LibreOffice 3.3.2 for that.” Release 3.4.0 is currently scheduled for delivery on May 31, according to the site.

    • Another LibreOffice Developmental Release Emerges

      The Document Foundation today announced another developmental release on the way to LibreOffice 3.4. Release candidates will be delivered throughout May with the final expected May 31.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GNU Guile 2.0.1 released

      We are pleased to announce GNU Guile 2.0.1, the first and overdue maintenance release of the brand new 2.0.x stable series.

    • GNU Chess 6 released

      Version 6 is a major change of GNU Chess, because it is based on Fruit v2.1, a completely different chess engine. Fruit was written by Fabien Letouzey, thus he is the primary author of GNU Chess v6.

    • Volunteers needed to convert pages from a proprietary wiki to MoinMoin

      We are looking for volunteers to help write code to convert a free software project’s documentation wiki pages and associated history from a proprietary format to MoinMoin, a free software wiki written in Python.

  • Licensing

    • Free Art License 1.3

      The Free Art License grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without infringing the author’s rights.

      The Free Art License recognizes and protects these rights. Their implementation has been reformulated in order to allow everyone to use creations of the human mind in a creative manner, regardless of their types and ways of expression.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • ARM processor shipments — and profits — are booming

        Buoyed by sales of smartphones and tablets, ARM Holdings reported a 35 percent increase in year-over-year profits. The company added that shipments of processors based on its designs were up 33 percent, while 39 different licensees signed up during the first quarter of its financial year.

  • Programming

Leftovers

  • Why We Need An Open Wireless Movement

    If you sometimes find yourself needing an open wireless network in order to check your email from a car, a street corner, or a park, you may have noticed that they’re getting harder to find.

    Stories like the one over the weekend about a bunch of police breaking down an innocent man’s door because he happened to leave his network open, as well as general fears about slow networks and online privacy, are convincing many people to password-lock their WiFi routers.

  • The Possibilian

    When David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof.

  • Ian Hislop attacks Andrew Marr over super injunction

    Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has accused the BBC’s Andrew Marr of hypocrisy after he admitted taking out a controversial super-injunction while working as a journalist.

  • Buying computers in multiple languages

    Very interesting petition from a French citizen. What strikes me is that the petitioner asked for regulatory changes while the Commission in its answer restricts itself to positive law, positive competition law.

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Discrete Geometry Viewer – Quantum fun!

      Discrete Geometry Viewer may not be useful to everyone, but it will surely delight geeks and geek artists, who have gained a powerful new tool for image manipulation. Apart from its immediate scientific value, DGV also has educational aspects and can be used for stunning visualization effects that are otherwise virtually impossible to achieve.

      Personally, I think DGV is a great project. Whether it’s ever going to hatch from its infant phase depends mainly on the interest of the author, who could be pursuing other ideas once he completes his PhD. One thing is sure, this can be a smart ice breaker for all those terrified physics students, expecting years of boredom at the university. Lure them in, make them feel safe and comfy, thinking they are going to enjoy themselves. Well, they might actually get amused pasting pictures of Stalin and Mark together, even if they fail at the solid state physics exams.

  • Finance

    • Microsoft Stuck as Near-Record Discount Fails to Win Investors

      Yet the stock is stuck, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its May 2 edition. It closed at $26.38 yesterday versus its average of about $27 since the start of 2001. The shares, which first surpassed $26 in 1998, have lost about 7.1 percent including dividends in the past decade while the S&P 500 returned 30 percent.

    • Former SAC Manager Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading

      As the jury continued to deliberate in the trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the government notched another guilty plea in its investigation of insider trading at hedge funds.

      Donald Longueuil, a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud before Judge Jed S. Rakoff in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

    • The Post Is on Another Planet: Job Growth in the First Quarter Was Not Strong

      The calls for the bankruptcy of the Washington Post (a.k.a. Fox on 15th Street) are getting louder. The post told readers that:

      “The job market was a bright spot in the first quarter … with the unemployment rate falling and job growth coming in strong.”

    • EU targets 16 major banks in swaps market probes

      The European Union’s competition watchdog is investigating the practices of some of the world’s largest banks, as well as a clearing house and a financial data firm, in the market for credit default swaps.

      The two probes home in on a market that has come under fire for lacking transparency and allegedly worsening market turmoil during the financial crisis.

    • Profit Jumps at Exxon and Shell

      Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported huge increases in their first-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by higher oil prices and earnings from refining.

      Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, said net income rose 69 percent to $10.7 billion, or $2.14 a share, in the first three months of this year, from $6.3 billion, or $1.33 a share, in the same period last year.

    • Gas prices jump to $3.91 a gallon, heading to $4

      The average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. is now within a dime of $4.

      Drivers in 22 states are paying more than the national average of $3.91 per gallon. In Alaska, California and Connecticut they’re paying $4.20 or more.

      With one day left in April, gas prices are up 30 cents for the month. On average, the increase has been slightly more than a penny per day. At that rate, the national average for gas would reach $4 on Sunday, May 8. In 2008, when gas hit a record of $4.11 per gallon in July, it didn’t cost $4 until June 8.

  • Wisconsin/PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Madison’s Battle of the Brats

      The “World’s Largest Brat Fest,” which will take place over Memorial Day weekend at Willow Island at the Alliant Energy Center, will serve brats donated by Johnsonville Sausage of Sheboygan Falls, WI. Johnsonville owners (the Stayer and Stayer-Maloney families) and other principals of Johnsonville Sausage contributed a total of $48,450 to Scott Walker’s gubernatorial and other 2010 Republican state campaigns, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Campaign Finance Database.This prompted Madison activists such as Sam Hokin to call for a boycott of Johnsonville and other corporations that contributed to Scott Walker. Tim Metcalfe, president and co-owner of Metcalfe’s Market and organizer of the “World’s Largest Brat Fest,” issued a statement on March 20th that “Brat Fest has, and continues to be, truly apolitical… My hope is that these traditions and civil accord can continue.”

    • Could Michigan-style “Martial Law” Be On Its Way to Wisconsin?

      Rumors have been circulating about a little-known initiative to subject Wisconsin local governments to “stress tests” and other new constraints. Many believe the proposal resembles the “martial law” bill that was recently passed in Michigan, which allows the state government to dissolve local governments in a “fiscal emergency,” and worry that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or his friends in the legislature could be cooking up a similar plan.

    • Governor Walker’s Self-Managed Medicaid Mishaps

      Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s op-ed in the New York Times last week advocated for a Medicaid that promotes innovative, self-managed and flexible care that would allow individuals to stay in their own homes. Despite these statements, Governor Walker is eliminating a Wisconsin Medicaid innovation that worked toward these stated principles, a newly-created and relatively inexpensive statewide registry that helps vulnerable people with disabilities stay out of assisted living facilities and control their home healthcare.

  • Privacy

    • Sony’s security breach raises questions around data protection

      The Sony security breach is serious. Obviously it is hugely distressing if you are one of the huge number of people affected but it also raises questions on when should we, the public, be told about a serious security breach? Also what constitutes a security breach?

      In most US states, companies are required to report data breaches as soon as they happen. Let me be clear, I have no doubt whatsoever that Sony would have acted as quickly as possible once the full extent of the security breach was known, but the fact that it appears that a whole week went by before a public announcement was made has raised a few eyebrows. We do know that the EU is already looking in detail at a Data Protection Directive which will potentially introduce a mandatory reporting process for all organ

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Embryo patent row could dash Europe’s stem cell future

      Europe’s highest court has been urged to declare stem cell patents immoral and therefore illegal. Researchers warn this will destroy prospects for stem cell treatments in Europe, driving potential investors to patent-friendly China, Japan and the US. New Scientist explores what is at stake.

    • This is self-explanatory

      We find it extraordinary that Hong is apparently unaware of the IEEE publication. Although Hong does cite Phillips’s paper, we find that he does so in a somewhat misleading way and makes only cursory references to Bose. In particular, he does not refer to the crucial papers of Bose cited above.

      We hope you find these observations useful. We believe that they not only serve to debunk the claims of Marconi’s priority, but also to provide another illustration of the fact that inventions do occur without the protection of intellectual property.

    • Copyrights

      • Righthaven Suffers Blow in Copyright Crusade

        A federal judge blasted Righthaven’s copyright-collection business model in a ruling that says an Oregon nonprofit was justified through fair use to post an article by the Las Vegas Review Journal.

        “[Righthaven's] litigation strategy has a chilling effect on potential fair uses of Righthaven-owned articles, diminishes public access to the facts contained therein, and does nothing to advance the Copyright Act’s purpose of promoting artistic creation,” U.S. District Judge James Mahan ruled Friday.

      • IPR FILESHARING APPEAL: RIGHTS-HOLDERS LOST A
      • CERTAIN CANADIAN INDUSTRIES’ INPUT ON POSSIBLE WTO

      • ACTA

      • Digital Economy (UK)/HADOPI

        • BT and TalkTalk lose challenge to Digital Economy Act

          As no doubt you have heard by now, four out of the five judicial review claims on the Digital Economy Act brought to court by BT and TalkTalk have been dismissed. BT and TalkTalk argued that the Digital Economy Act was illegal under privacy and e-commerce laws, that the impact on business was disproportionate, and that the UK failed to notify the EU of the impending implementation of the law. Mr Justice Parker ruled today that all of these issues were not feasible reasons to deem the Digital Economy Act illegal except for the cost order which mandates that ISPs pay 25% of the charges incurred in implementation. A review of this cost order will now take place.

          We at Big Brother Watch are disappointed in this ruling. Our very own Dan Hamilton said today,

        • Judgment in the Digital Economy Act Judicial Review

          After only three weeks, Mr Justice Kenneth Parker has handed down his judgment in the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act. In summarising thousands of pages of evidence and submissions and the four-day hearing, the judge rejected nearly all of the grounds for the review, only allowing the challenge to part of the allocation of costs. The full text of the judgment can be found here and summaries of the hearings here.

          The first point to note is the number of parties. While the case was between BT, TalkTalk and the government, there were thirteen interested parties involved, including six notorious pro-copyright lobby groups and four unions. This gives an indication of the intense lobbying pressure behind the Digital Economy Act, and why the previous government felt compelled to act the way they did.

Clip of the Day

How Apple Genius Bar Works – South Park


Credit: TinyOgg

04.29.11

Links 29/4/2011: Linux 2.6.39 RC 5, Slackware 13.37

Posted in News Roundup at 3:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Ten places Linux and open source can thrive

    Some people might be surprised at the numbers of organisations that are now employing open source, says Jack Wallen. But which areas of activity could most benefit from its greater adoption?

    Some industries with few outward signs of open source are already taking advantage of it, while in others it has no presence whatsoever. What is certain is that they could all benefit — in ways ranging from cost-effectiveness to reliability.

  • Kernel Space

    • Linux 2.6.39-rc5
    • Why systemd?

      systemd is still a young project, but it is not a baby anymore. The initial announcement I posted precisely a year ago. Since then most of the big distributions have decided to adopt it in one way or another, many smaller distributions have already switched. The first big distribution with systemd by default will be Fedora 15, due end of May. It is expected that the others will follow the lead a bit later (with one exception). Many embedded developers have already adopted it too, and there’s even a company specializing on engineering and consulting services for systemd. In short: within one year systemd became a really successful project.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • New Kdenlive Released, Gets Rotoscope

        The Kdenlive Team has announced the release of version 0.8. The latest version of the popular film-editing software has some cool features which include: Multi track editing; Realtime effects and transitions; Image, color, titles, video and audio clips; customizable layout and ability to export to various formats.

      • User experience, one pixel at a time

        A couple of weeks ago, I’ve been attending 2011 user experience Sprint, in Berlin. That was interesting and nice and productive and everything, and above all it was my first live encounter with other KDE people, including Nuno.

        There’s been (notably) quite some discussions about how information and functionality should be presented to users, organized and formulated, in order to be complete but not overwhelming, sexy, gratifying, and elegant.

        [...]

        Things one notices:

        * more visible pressed tool buttons at the top
        * new slider at the bottom
        * and new folder icons (quite unrelated with this post actually), on which Nuno has been working lately (and I’m sure he would blog better than I about it).

        Things one does not notice (but with which we are happy):

        * improved holes for the scrollbars, progressbars, and main view (note notably how the main view bottom corners are better rounded)
        * improved (well, bug fixed) rendering of the capacity bar at the bottom.

        To give proper credit to whom it belongs, some of the improvements above have been primarily instigated by Peter Penz, Dolphin dev.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Tablets

      • Convert Your NOOk Color Into An Android Tablet

        Barnes & Nobel announced that NOOK Color’s update to Android OS 2.2/Froyo offers system improvements, enhanced browser performance and a more complete Web experience giving customers access to enjoy even more video, interactive and animated content.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Modo Labs Launches Open-Source Mobile Development Framework

    Modo Labs, a provider of open-source content-delivery solutions for mobile, has debuted its Kurogo Mobile Framework for developers.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Google Releases Chrome 11 Stable for Linux

        The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced last evening (April 27th) the stable release and immediate availability for download of the Google Chrome 11.0.696.57 web browser for Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Chrome Frame platforms.

    • Mozilla

      • Iceweasel/Firefox 4 in Debian Squeeze – I make the leap

        I contend that it’s not necessary nor even desirable to upgrade an entire Linux distribution or BSD installation just to get some shiny newness like Firefox 4.

      • New Flamerobin snapshot revision 2100 in #debian

        The main change is that now it requires firebird2.5-dev instead of firebird3.0 headers and decided that is better to have a flamerobin 0.9.3 in the distros released for the next 1-2 years with a stable firebird 2.5.x and add firebird 3.0 requirement when is ready and stable ~1-2 years

      • Firefox AwesomeBar HD, Nothing That I Want

        Different teams and individuals are working on the Firefox web browser. Some are improving the web browser’s core, others are working on the interface or experimental extensions that may one day be added to the web browser’s core.

        One of those experimental spin-offs is the AwesomeBar HD which is now available as a beta release for Firefox 4 and newer versions of the web browser. As the name suggests, it has something to do with Firefox’s address bar.

      • Mozilla overhauling Firefox graphics, JavaScript

        In the quest for better browser speed, Mozilla has begun work on new Firefox engines for running JavaScript programs and displaying graphics.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle May Cease Support of Popular Linux Distributives Too.

      In a bid to further consolidate its server business in general and mission-critical server in particular, Oracle may in future cease support of popular Red Hat and SUSE Linux operating systems, according to an analyst. This currently seems to be a problem for a lot of customers using Intel Corp.’s Itanium-based systems from HP, who are unsure about the future of Itanium in general and HP-UX in particular.

  • BSD

    • Did You Know You Can Try BSD With VirtualBSD?

      A while ago back in January I came across this announcement on OSNews.com and made a mental note that this was something I had to try.
      VirtualBSD 8.1 was released on or around 4/01/2011 and it basically gives you a pre-defined FreeBSD 8.1 installation with Xfce 4.6 and a range of applications in a virtual machine. It is a desktop ready FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE in the form of a VMware appliance but can also in a few steps be made to run with VirtualBox. Read the instructions for that here.
      As I already had VMware Player installed I went for using it as intended. Most of what I’m going to write you can also read on the VirtualBSD site so feel free to skip over.

Leftovers

  • US Supremes deal death blow to class action lawsuits

    The US Supreme Court has granted a whopping victory to AT&T, the US Chamber of Commerce, and supportive corporations, by reversing previous court decisions that had prevented corporations from requiring individual arbitration of customers’ complaint.

    By issuing its 5-4 decision on Wednesday, the Court has essentially stripped away individuals’ rights to band together in class-action lawsuits should a corporation choose to include an arbitration requirement in its contracts or licensing agreements.

  • Finance

    • How Wall Street Thieves, Led by Goldman Sachs, Took Down the Global Economy — Their Outsized Influence Must be Stopped

      The Senate report calls for tighter regulations so that banks can’t play these games ever again. It calls for more effective regulatory agencies and rules, and it wants major reforms on the way the rating agencies work — much of this already contained in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. But in addition, the subcommittee obviously wants more federal prosecution of Goldman Sachs and others as it asks that “Federal regulators…. identify any violations of law…” (p 638).

    • As Wall St. Firms Grow, Their Reputations Are Dying

      Reputation is dead on Wall Street.

      This is not to say that financiers and financial institutions still do not commit foolish misdeeds. Rather, so long as the authorities do not find law-breaking, the penalties are few.

      The list of examples is long.

    • Don’t Let Goldman off the Hook

      With crises mounting daily—wars, deficits, debt limits, natural disasters—it’s tempting to forget the cataclysms of the past. In particular, America seems to have amnesia about the Wall Street-induced catastrophe that destroyed so much of our economy. We still haven’t learned its lessons, and if we don’t pay attention, we’re soon going to pay again for its perpetrators’ callous disregard for the public interest.

    • Taking on Wall Street

      Lorin Reisner ’83 and Kenneth Lench ’84 were about to take on perhaps the most important lawsuit in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

      It was April 2010, and Reisner, the deputy director of the SEC’s enforcement division in Washington, D.C., and Lench, head of a key unit in the division, were preparing a civil fraud suit against Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs.

      The Brandeis graduates had helped successfully convince the SEC’s five commissioners to vote for the suit, arguing that 
Goldman misled investors about complex securities at the heart of the mortgage meltdown. But opposition within the agency was so fierce that it led to a nonunanimous vote to pursue the suit.

    • A.I.G. to Sue 2 Firms to Recover Some Losses

      The American International Group, the giant insurer rescued by the federal government during the financial crisis, on Thursday will file the first of what could be a series of lawsuits against Wall Street firms, contending that it was the victim of fraud.

    • Report: Republicans’ Hidden $34 Trillion Tax On Seniors

      A new report by economists at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research looks at House Republicans’ plan for privatizing Medicare from a new angle, and finds that it could increase Health Care costs for beneficiaries by a staggering $34 Trillion over 75 years.

    • U.S. Economic Growth Slows to 1.8% Rate in Quarter

      Total output grew at an annual pace of 1.8 percent from January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday, after having expanded at an annual rate of 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

      When the year first began, economists had been expecting a much more robust growth rate of about 4 percent, only to be barraged by bad report after bad report as the days wore on. Turmoil in the Middle East set off a jump in oil prices. Winter blizzards shuttered businesses and delayed construction, causing investments in nonresidential structures like office buildings to fall by 21.7 percent compared with an increase of 7.6 percent at the end of 2010. Imports, which are subtracted from output, surged, and military spending sank.

    • ExxonMobil earnings up 69 percent
    • More people applied for unemployment benefits

      More people sought unemployment benefits last week, the second rise in three weeks, a sign of the slow and uneven jobs recovery.

      Applications for unemployment benefits jumped 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000 for the week ending April 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the highest total since late January.

    • Sokol Is Accused of Misleading Buffett on Trades

      Berkshire Hathaway directors have accused David L. Sokol, once considered a possible successor to Warren E. Buffett, of misleading the company about his personal stake in a specialty chemicals manufacturer that Berkshire recently agreed to acquire.

      Mr. Sokol, who resigned in March, never told Mr. Buffett that he had bought his stake in Lubrizol after Citigroup bankers had pitched the company as a potential takeover target, according to a report by the audit committee of the Berkshire board that was released on Wednesday.

    • Wonkbook: The Fed chooses a side

      Ben Bernanke’s first press conference wasn’t much for pomp and circumstance. Bernanke sat, he didn’t stand. The few cameras in the room didn’t hunt for the dramatic angles or work to heighten the tension between the chairman and his interrogators. Very few jokes were cracked, and Bernanke made no major missteps. It looked like what it was: an economist talking to econowonks about the economy. But tucked inside the talk of “anchoring inflation expectations” and “the economy’s central tendency” was perhaps the most important economic policy statement that Americans will hear this year: the Fed, Bernanke admitted, has chosen a side.

    • The FDIC’s Resolution Problem

      Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (Title II of that Act), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is granted expanded powers to intervene and manage the closure of any failing bank or other financial institution. There are two strongly-held views of this legal authority: it substantially solves the problem of how to handle failing megabanks and therefore serves as an effective constraint on their future behavior; or it is largely irrelevant.

      Both views are expressed by well-informed people at the top of regulatory structures on both sides of the Atlantic (at least in private conversations). Which is right? In terms of legal process, the resolution authority could make a difference. But as a matter of practical politics and actual business practices, it means very little for our biggest financial institutions.

    • Economy slowed by high gas prices, bad weather

      The economy slowed sharply in the first three months of the year. High gas prices cut into consumer spending, bad weather delayed construction projects and the federal government slashed defense spending by the most in six years.

      The 1.8 percent annual growth rate in the January-March quarter was weaker than the 3.1 percent growth in the previous quarter, the Commerce Department reported. And it was the worst showing since last spring when the European debt crisis slowed growth to a 1.7 percent pace.

    • Profit Jumps at Exxon and Shell

      Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell reported hefty increases in their first-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by higher oil prices and earnings from refining.

      Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, said net income rose 69 percent to $10.7 billion, or $2.14 a share, in the first three months of this year, from $6.3 billion, or $1.33 a share, in the same period last year.

      The earnings beat some analysts’ expectations, and marked the fifth quarter in a row that Exxon reported an earnings increase.

  • Privacy

    • Jobs Says Apple Made Mistakes With iPhone Data

      Hoping to put to rest a growing controversy over privacy, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, took the unusual step of personally explaining that while Apple had made mistakes in how it handled location data on its mobile devices, it had not used the iPhone and iPad to keep tabs on the whereabouts of its customers.

  • DRM

    • Sony, Security, and Bovine Waste

      You see, another really annoying feature of the PS3 is Sony’s removal of the Other OS option, which made it possible for people who bought a PS3 to install Linux if they were so inclined. The removal of this option was something that happend basically as soon as I got my PS3. Shame on your Sony for telling people they could use your device for a specific purpose then taking that feature away from your paying customers. To make matters worse on this front, Sony thinks it’s okay to harras, sue, and otherwise make their customers’ lives a living hell for trying to return the functionality customers paid for. Ask George Hotz how reasonable Sony is when their legal thugs come knocking. In case you haven’t been following this, George Hotz, aka geohotz, figured out a way to jailbreak the PS3 and got sued for doing so.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • Steve Jobs’ Android jabs may cost him App Store trademark

        Quick: When you hear the phrase “app store,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

        That’s the question a couple of tech’s biggest players — Apple and Amazon — are fighting over right now. Apple says “app store” is synonymous with its iOS App Store alone; Amazon says the term is generic and can be used by anyone.

        You’ve heard about this battle, right? Apple is suing Amazon for using the term “app store” (or, more specifically, “Appstore”) in the name of its new Android application store. Apple claims it owns the trademark and has exclusive rights to the term.

      • Apple’s App Store lawsuit gets a response from Amazon

        Apple had filed a lawsuit in March against Amazon’s use of “App Store” in their newly launched Amazon AppStore. Apple had informed Amazon that using the term “App Store” was unlawful because they owned the rights to the term itself. In the lawsuit Amazon indicates that the term “App Store” is too generic for Apple to lay claim to the name itself.

    • Copyrights

      • Wikileaks Cable Confirms Public Pressure Forced Delay of Canadian Copyright Bill in 2008

        A new Wikileaks cable confirms that the Conservative government delayed introducing copyright legislation in early 2008 due to public opposition. The delay – which followed the decision in December 2007 to hold off introducing a bill after it was placed on the order paper (and the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group took off) – lasted until June 2008. The U.S. cable notes confirmation came directly from then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice, who told U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins that cabinet colleagues and Conservative MPs were worried about the electoral implications of copyright reform…

      • The Massive Treasure Trove Of Historic Jazz Recordings That Almost No One Has Heard… Thanks To Copyright

        The museum is rushing to digitize the collection (much of which has deteriorated or was destroyed), but the only way to hear it is to make an appointment at the museum. They insist they’re going to try to tackle the copyright issues to release the music, but it’s clear that’s going to be an incredibly difficult task. What’s really unfortunate is how all of these works should be in the public domain, if we just went by what the law said when they were made. Yet, thanks to copyright maximalism, the world and our culture suffers completely unnecessarily.

      • ACTA

        • When DHS Questioned ACTA
        • Homeland Security’s 2008 letter to USTR: ACTA is a threat to national security

          On August 7, 2008, Stewart Baker, the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security, sent a one page letter and a three page “Policy Position on Border Measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

          Stewart Baker was the General Counsel of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1994, and was appointed the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by George W Bush.

Clip of the Day

HTC Desire Z running Gingerbread/Cyanogenmod 7 (And debian linux with lxde)


Credit: TinyOgg

04.28.11

Links 28/4/2011: AMD (ATI) Catalyst 11.4, Red Hat GNU/Linux Growth

Posted in News Roundup at 6:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Germans stick Linux on 10,000 PCs

    While most of the world has been ignoring Linux on the desktop, it appears that the makers of Ubuntu have managed to score a lucrative deal with German insurance giant LVM Versicherungen.

    Canonical, which makes Ubuntu, will convert 10,000 PCs to use Ubuntu Linux across the entire company.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Ballnux

    • Pricey Droid Charge phone unveiled by Verizon, Samsung

      Verizon Wireless will begin selling a 4G LTE-ready 4.3-inch “Droid Charge by Samsung” Android phone on April 28 for a whopping $300 plus contract. Meanwhile, Verizon says the 4G- and Android-ready HTC Thunderbolt has been a hot seller, and Motorola has confifmed that the Verizon launch of its Droid Bionic phone will be delayed until summer.

    • LG plays catch-up via ARM Cortex license

      For example, the Optimus 2X (right) — claimed on its December 2010 launch to be the world’s first dual-core smartphone — and Optimus Pad tablet both employ Nvidia Tegra 2 processors, as does the LG-manufactured G-Slate (below) promised by T-Mobile. Meanwhile, the similarly Android-based Optimus 3D phone uses a Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor, likely the OMAP4430.

    • become a hacking ninja in a matter of seconds

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • On platforms

      At some stage the seminal KDE vs Gnome paper vanished from its original home, and while it’s still available in a few places (such as here) it set me thinking. What are the fundamental differences between Gnome and KDE development? There’s lots of little differences (2006: Gnome parties on a beach. Akademy has melted ice cream in the rain) but they’re both basically communities made up of people who are interested in developing a functional and interesting desktop experience. So why do the end results have so little in common?

      Then I read this and something that had been floating around in my mind began to solidify. KDE assumes a platform and attempts to work around its shortcomings. Gnome helps define the platform and works on fixing its shortcomings.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE-Telepathy – A Vision for Integration

        The first preview release for KDE-Telepathy is getting closer. Our release-tracker bug now only has 9 bugs blocking it and many of these already have patches on reviewboard. Our first release will be made separately from the KDE Software Compilation, and should be compatible with installs of 4.6.x or trunk. It will be suitable only for people who like to try out new technologies before they are ready for the mainstream. It will not be feature complete (although we hope many of the basic features will be implemented). It will not be polished (although we do want to know about any bugs or issues you find – that’s why we’re making this release). It will also not be especially deeply integrated with the rest of the KDE S.C. or the Plasma workspaces. There will be a plasma applet for bringing accounts on and offline, but the rest of it is much like a traditional Instant Messaging application.

      • Pimping my Desktop: have KWin Desktop Effects improved in KDE 4.6.2?

        KWin Desktop Effects in past releases of KDE 4 were lacking in comparison to Compiz. After installing KDE 4.6.2 recently I decided to see if there has been any progress, and was pleasantly surprised. Although KWin is still not quite up to the standard of Compiz in all areas (the behaviour of 3D windows, especially around the corners of the Desktop Cube, being one example), KWin’s Desktop Effects are now very pleasant and a viable alternative to Compiz. I’ll talk you though my Desktop-pimping exercise using KWin on my main laptop running KDE 4.6.2, and then I’ll describe briefly a similar exercise using Compiz on the same machine.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • ‘Nautilus Facebook Uploader’ for Linux adds video uploads, description editing, more
      • A look at GNOME Shell

        GNOME 3 and GNOME Shell were finally released, after years of development, just a few days ago. Their release was obviously raising enormous expectation, so it should come as no surprise that so shortly after it took place there are already tons of material both positive and negative about it. Exciting times, if you ask me.

      • Gnome Announces New GSoC and Outreach Program for Women Interns

        The Gnome project announced that the Gnome 3.0 release included more contributions by women than any previous release, an increase the project attributes its new internship program. The Outreach Program for Women, which ran from December 2010 until March 2011, paired eight interns with Gnome project mentors. The Gnome project also announced that it accepted seven women to participate in the Google Summer of Code. Check out the press release for a complete list of the new outreach program and female GSoC participants, mentors, and projects.

        The Gnome project announced that the Gnome 3.0 release included more contributions by women than any previous release, an increase the project attributes its new internship program. The Outreach Program for Women, which ran from December 2010 until March 2011, paired eight interns with Gnome project mentors. The Gnome project also announced that it accepted seven women to participate in the Google Summer of Code. Check out the press release for a complete list of the new outreach program and female GSoC participants, mentors, and projects.

      • GNOME Outreach Program for Women Attracts Many New Contributors

        With 15 female interns accepted for the Outreach Program for Women and Google Summer of Code, GNOME 3.2 will be in a good position to beat this record.

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

        • LG possibly looking at MeeGo for smartphones
        • Qt 4.7 and KDE 4.6 going stable, finally!

          After a lot of bug-wrangling both by upstream and by our Qt and KDE teams, we now feel confident that Qt 4.7.2 and KDE 4.6.2 are ready for stabilization. If you are a stable tree user (amd64, ppc, x86), the upgrade from current Qt 4.6.3 and KDE 4.4.5 will arrive at your machine soon, with lots of new features. (The KDEPIM applications such as kmail, kontact, or akregator will stay at trusty version 4.4 since development there is still ongoing.)

      • Android

        • Android: Data Shows Consumers Prefer It–But Those Are Consumers

          Recently, many reports have arrived showing the open source Android mobile OS beating Apple’s iPhone and iOS in market share terms, with some over-enthusiastic observers pronouncing the iPhone “dead in the water.” We’ve already cautioned that some of the market share numbers for Android should be taken with a grain of salt, because Android is becoming hugely popular as a consumer smartphone OS, but is not accepted as secure or standardized by many businesses and organizations. Furthermore, in Apple’s recent quarterly financial report, the iPhone was shown to have gigantic momentum. In the latest Nielsen survey, Android once again comes out on top in terms of being the “most wanted” smartphone platform, but that–again–is among consumers.

        • Verizon tips Droid Incredible 2, plus rugged Casio Commando phone

          Verizon Wireless announced two new Android 2.2 phones, led by HTC’s four-inch, global-roaming Droid Incredible 2 phone, which features dual cameras, including an eight-megapixel model. The ruggedized Casio G’zOne Commando, meanwhile, offers a 3.6-inch WVGA display, a five-megapixel camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, as well as special field-ready apps linked to the phone’s sensors.

        • Android Apps for Photographers

          Your Android device is not only good for snapping photos and sharing them with others. Using the right apps, you can turn it into a handy photographic companion which can handle a wide range of photography-related tasks. And the best part is that some of the best photography-related apps won’t cost you a dime.

        • Android now most desired smartphone OS in U.S., study says

          Nielsen reports that 31 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers said they would prefer Android for their next phone, compared to 30 percent for the iPhone. Overall, Nielsen estimates that 37 percent of smartphone subscribers and 50 percent of recent subscribers use Android phones, up sharply from January.

    • Sub-notebooks

    • Tablets

      • Lenovo preps Honeycomb tablet with keyboard dock

        Lenovo is readying an Android 3.0 tablet that offers a pen option and plugs into a keyboard dock, says and industry report. Meanwhile, Archos announced its seven-inch, Android-based 7c Home Tablet, and Samsung is rumored to be building Amazon’s first Android tablet.

      • Right tablet for the job: iPad alternatives

        One of the major hardware players that have been quiet until now is Acer. The company jumped feet first into the netbook market with its Aspire range and got some good traction in that area. Now Acer is reportedly ready with its first real tablet device: the Acer Iconia Tab A500. The Iconia will run Android Honeycomb and sports a 10.1-inch screen. Official pricing and release dates for South Africa have not been announced yet.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Credativ’s Open Source Support Is An Answer To FOSS Support Woes

    Ask many IT managers and business owners why they don’t adopt open source software, and a common answer will be “lack of support.” After all, many projects don’t offer formal support, relying on wikis and forums for answering questions. That’s why it was big news in 2009 that Credativ, Europe’s largest service and support company focused on open source, was expanding its operations in the United States. Its Open Source Support Center is positioned as a one-stop shop for support for almost all significant open source applications and platforms, including the many flavors of Linux distros, development languages, and databases. Credativ has expanded its efforts to provide comprehensive open source support around the world since 2009, and its efforts appear to be working.

  • Google Puts $6 Million Into Open Source Summer

    I’ve been writing about the Google Summer of Code since 2005 when the program debuted. It’s a program that I’ve seen grow and excel every year since.

    The Summer of Code is an effort to bring students into the open source world, matching them up with mentoring open source organizations. The students work on a project with the open source group, helping both the project as well as themselves.

  • Dropbox fends off open source file-sharing application

    Dropbox is not getting much in the way of good news lately. First the company was caught out over changes to its terms of service (TOS), now the company is fending off a open source project called Dropship.

    According to Dan DeFelippi, Dropbox is trying to deep-six Dropship. What’s Dropship? It’s an application, under the MIT license, that makes it possible to use Dropbox sort of like a file-sharing network. If you have a hash of a file that’s stored in a public folder on Dropbox, anybody can copy the file into their own folder. So if you have, say, a couple of MP3s by Jukebox the Ghost, you could provide the hashes and suddenly Dropbox is automagically propagating the MP3s to a bunch of accounts.

  • The Next Best Thing to Open Source?

    According to Notch, Minecraft is moving to an Android-like model for its mods development. You will be able to sign up for free, accept a license, and get access to the complete source code via SVN (one can tell these aren’t F/OSS people… SVN, seriously?) to develop mods.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

  • Sun/Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • CMS

    • Drupal at Warp Speed

      Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when you’re asked to do a week’s work in twelve hours or less? It should. It should give you a warmer feeling when you can do it in far less time. Give your C-Level suitors this one in under an hour and they’ll think you’re as magical as Mr. Scott aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Mr. Scott often surprised the always demanding Captain Kirk with his ability to fix just about anything within the very tight time constraints placed on him. Instead of dilithium crystals and altered phaser electronics, you’ll have to work with Ubuntu and Drupal.

      As of this writing, the latest version of Drupal is 7.0 and the version that installs to your system via the default Ubuntu repositories is 6.18. The speed of setup should sufficiently offset the fact that the software isn’t the latest available.

    • Making money in open source: Drupal future looks bright

      Who says there’s no money in open source? Demand for Drupal talent is growing, and opportunities abound for developers, designers and artists, and related disciplines such as database and system administration. Let’s take a look at what some Drupal consulting firms are doing, and get an inside view from a Drupal core maintainer.

  • Education

    • Open Source Group Seeks Support from Higher Ed for Mobile Initiative

      Jasig is launching a new open source project called uMobile and is calling on colleges and universities to contribute to the effort.

      Jasig is a consortium of higher education institutions and commercial organizations from around the world dedicated to the development and promotion of open source software to benefit colleges and universities. It also holds an annual conference spotlighting open source in education. This year’s spring conference will be held May 23 to 25 in Westminster, CO.

  • Healthcare

    • VA Calls for Open Source Health Record Proposals

      The Veterans Affairs Department released last Friday its request for proposals for an outfit it calls a Custodial Agent to manage an “open source ecosystem” for development of its next generation electronic health record.

      VA said it plans to use the Custodial Agent to set up and manage a code repository that will be used to update its current Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) health as well as provide software to the entire health care community.

    • OpenClinica Hosts Global Conference in Boston

  • BSD

  • Project Releases

    • First Blender 2.57 bug fix update released

      Over the next two months the developers will “keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets”, noting that if all goes well, the upcoming 2.58 release will be the final in the 2.5 series. After that, development on the 2.6x cycle will begin, targeting new updates every 2 months.

  • Government

    • EU: Free software advocates want procurement rules improved

      Europe’s rules on public procurement should be improved to allow better access to free and open source software applications, according to advocacy groups and the OSOR project. They responded to a public consultation by the European Commission. The groups want the rules to request free and open source licencing terms.

  • Programming

    • Python for Android

      Mobile app development for smartphones is hot. This is no more prevalent than in the Android space where the activity level oftentimes is frenzied. However, when it comes to building a “real” Android app, it seems there’s only one programming choice: Java (although it is possible with a lot more work to use C/C++ with Android’s Native Development Kit). That said, Google wisely chose the popular Java programming technology upon which to base its Android SDK, which runs a customized VM.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Change Tracking: Why?

      As some of my past posts have mentioned, the OASIS group is currently working out how it wishes to extend support for change tracking in ODF. The change tracking feature allows you to have an office application remember what changes you have made and associate them with one or more revisions. There are many examples where governments might want such traceability, but small businesses are likely to find this functionality valuable too.

      Late last year there was an ODF plugfest held in Brussels where it was decided that an Advanced Document Collaboration subcommittee should be formed to work out how to serialize tracked changes into ODF.

Leftovers

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Taming Brussels lobby

      The European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs committee approved a report by Italian centre-right MEP Carlo Casini, which demands a single register of lobbyists, shared between the European Commission and parliament.

      There has been a parliamentary register for many years, as lobbyists have to sign up to gain an access pass to the building.
      The Commission introduced a ‘Register of Interest Representatives’ in 2008, under the guidance on then Administrative Affairs Commissioner, Siim Kallas, who remained adamant that the register be voluntary. The move was controversial as transparency campaigners wanted a mandatory register.

  • Privacy

    • TomTom user data sold to Dutch police, used to determine ideal locations for speed traps

      We like it when the accumulated speed data from GPS devices helps us avoid traffic incidents and school zones. As it turns out, though, there are some other uses for the same stats. Dutch news outlet AD is reporting that such data captured by TomTom navigation devices has been purchased by the country’s police force and is being used to determine where speed traps and cameras should be placed. TomTom was reportedly unaware its data was being used in such a way, but if the police would only agree to sell the data on the location of its speed cameras and traps back to TomTom, why, this could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Is It Rude To Link To Someone Without First Asking Permission?

        Earlier this week, I wrote an analysis of some silly claims from Canadian IP lawyer James Gannon’s sarcastic suggestion that copying money is just like copying content. Gannon stopped by in our comments… and oddly did not respond to a single point that I raised about his faulty analysis. Instead, he only commented to claim that it was somehow rude or discourteous of me to link to his piece and to discuss it without first asking for permission. I found this somewhat shocking. I’ve never heard that it’s common courtesy to ask before you link to someone. Yet Gannon insisted that most people who link to him first ask his permission and he suggests, snidely, that his readership has higher “standards” in regards to how they view content.

      • ACTA

        • Senator Wyden releases redacted version of October 29, 2010 CRS report on ACTA

          On April 26, 2011, Senator Wyden released a redacted version of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on ACTA that has been the subject to an ongoing Freedom of Information ACT (FOIA) dispute with USTR.

          (More context here, here and here).

          This is a link to the report that USTR claimed they could not release because of restrictions on its use by Senator Wyden.

Clip of the Day

SARKOZY : COUP de BOULE du pêcheur


Credit: TinyOgg

04.27.11

Links 27/4/2011: Mageia 1 Beta 2, Sony Data Breach

Posted in News Roundup at 6:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What does Disney, PS3 and Kindle have in common?

    Disney & DreamWorks on Linux

    To say that Hollywood dream studios are Linux playgrounds today, is most definitely not an understatement. Linux has won hands down on server technology as well as pure artwork. Believe it or not, entire renderfarms and artist desktops in these studios are Linux ecosystems.

    Linux offers end-to-end graphic solutions, in most challenging and competitive of environments in these studios and has finally emerged a winner. It gives an opportunity for technologists, system engineers to delve into creative art using the most scalable, reliable and most importantly free software solution called Linux.

  • ‘PC User’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Windows User’

    First off, the term “PC” includes Macs, so that’s a poor term to use for distinction.

    Second, given the diversity of computing environments today, it is no longer accurate to assume that someone on a non-Mac PC is using Windows. Linux users are growing rapidly in number, and I doubt most would categorize themselves in the same group as Windows users.

    That, indeed, is probably at least part of the reason a full 23 percent of respondents to the Hunch study didn’t classify themselves in either the PC (Windows) or Mac camps: the two camps are neither well-defined nor comprehensive, since they leave out Linux users altogether.

  • Can’t pick an OS? Always Innovating pushes triple-boot Android, Chrome, Ubuntu platform

    Always Innovating, the company that brought us a tablet/netbook hybrid that you could stick to a refrigerator is back. But this time instead of focusing on its own hardware, this time the company is showcasing software it’s developed which can run on the $149 BeagleBoard compact computing platform.

    The software is called Super-Jumbo, and for good reason. Basically it’s a single disk image which combines four operating systems: Google Android 2.3, Ubuntu 10.10, Google Chromium OS, and AIOS, a custom operating system developed by Always Innovating.

  • AI runs Android, Chrome OS, Ubuntu & more on Beagleboard simultaneously [Video]
  • The GNU/Linux Adventurer’s Backpack
  • This We Can Fix Now…

    Six years and over 1200 computers later, I believe that HeliOS has gained some significant insight into how people react to the Linux Desktop.

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.39 (Part 2) – Storage and file systems

      Various internal changes to the block layer that were specifically mentioned by Linus Torvalds are designed to enhance performance and scalability. The Ext4 file system is also said to offer improvements in this respect. Still classified as experimental, Btrfs now offers Batched Discard functionality, and LIO (Linux-Iscsi.org) includes a loop-back function.

    • How Hardware Companies Determine Their Linux Base

      Landing in the Phoronix e-mail inbox last night was a question by a reader asking how hardware vendors determine the operating systems used by their customers and their respective market-share since there isn’t anything to “phone home” and report usage statistics. In other words, this reader had just purchased four desktop processors and he was wondering how to inform AMD that he’s a Linux user. This is in hopes of going towards their Linux tally and eventually increasing their Linux level of support.

      [...]

      Petition lists are also common for Linux users, such as OpenTheBlob.com for NVIDIA, but those tend to have little effect as well.

    • 2011 Linux.com Store T-shirt Design Contest: 20 Years of Linux

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Google Summer of Code Projects Accepted & the Return of Season of KDE

        The KDE community is excited to accept 51 students into the Google Summer of Code program this year. Their projects will touch KDE on almost every level, and integrate the students into our community. Some are likely to become longtime KDE contributors. The next month will be spent on community bonding, getting to know the people and the code behind the project they’ll be working on. From May 23rd until the end of August, they’ll be working with their mentors to complete their own projects.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3: Seven Pros and Cons

        Switching to GNOME 3 is both an opportunity and a distraction. On the one hand, it is the opportunity to put aside some annoying behaviors in earlier GNOME releases. On the other hand, GNOME 3 is a distraction because its changes can get in the way of long-established work methods.

        As a result, you need to weigh GNOME 3′s pros and cons carefully before deciding to make the new desktop part of your everyday computing — unless, of course, you are the sort who automatically rejects or embraces change simply because it is new.

      • Gnome users are revolting

        There are claims that Gnome 3 is too dumbed down for Linux users. I have to admit I’m a little frustrated at not being able to test Gnome 3 properly, because my CD drive is failing, causing my Fedora 15 beta live Gnome 3 session to crash regularly.
        One of the main objections to Gnome 3 seems to be the lack of minimise and maximise buttons on windows. However, I have been able to try out the way Gnome 3 handles windows, and it seems intuitive and more efficient in a minimalist way than the previous method. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,”* said Einstein, and to my mind the Gnome team have done this: “Made of easy” indeed.
        Of course there is no bottom panel to minimise windows to. Grabbing a window and bumping it up to the top panel will automatically maximise the window; grabbing it again and pulling it down will minimise it to the desktop.
        Simple. And elegant.

      • Equinox Adds 3 More Themes, PPA for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Updated

        Faenza icon theme for Natty PPA has already been updated and now its the turn of Equinox themes for Ubuntu 11.04 to be released. And the latest Equinox theme pack, created by Tiheum(who also created beautiful Faenza icon theme) comes with 3 brand new themes – Equinox Dawn, Equinox Dusk and Equinox Midnight respectively.

      • GNOME Login Screen Mockups, Videos

        Linux desktop is on a roll. First came the revamped KDE 4.0 which took the level of User Interface(UI) fit and finish of Linux desktops to another level. Then came the GNOME Shell and Ubuntu Unity desktop interfaces. But one thing they all lack, especially GNOME Shell and Unity, are good looking and user friendly login screens. And here are some very interesting login screen mockups for GNOME.

  • Distributions

    • Spotlight on Linux: Toorox

      Toorox is a Gentoo-based installable live CD that features your choice of KDE or GNOME desktops. It comes with lots of useful applications including system configuration tools, easy package management, and proprietary code installers.

    • New Releases

      • MEPIS 11 almost Here! Testing RC3

        MEPIS 11 RC3 comes with Firefox 4 and Konqueror as its browsers, K3b for burning media, Amarok to play sound files and several video players (KMplayer and GNOME Mplayer.) It also has the GIMP to edit images and for its office suit, it includes LibreOffice 3.3.2. KDE partition manager has substituted GParted since MEPIS 8.5. Faithful to its tradition, MEPIS 11 can be used as a rescue CD or as a live OS should you decide not to install it.

        [...]

        Desktop effects are deactivated by default, but they work once enabled.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia 1 Beta 2 Released

        oday the second beta of the inaugural release of Mageia was released. This release has received lots of bug fixes and software updates as well as a nice theme change. The development branch is now frozen until after final which is due in little over a month.

        [...]

        Overall, Mageia is looking good. Other than the package manager, all other software and tools seem to work fine – not that I tested everything for this quick look. I’m certainly looking forward to final release.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Measuring Unity Usability for Ubuntu 11.04
        • Ubuntu 11.04: Pre Installation Requirements

          Before you proceed to download and install Ubuntu you need to check few things.

          1. Your PC must have a working CD/DVD drive for installation through CD/DVD
          2. If you have a netbook please check that there is a USB port which can be used to install Ubuntu 11.04.
          3. Check if your PC (especiallay desktop) supports USB boot. Majority of laptops and netbooks support boot from USB. However, desktops usually don’t support USB boot. In case you have a desktop PC, we recommend using CD/DVD method.

        • An Ubuntu Adventure: The Unboxing of the DELL 2120

          The first step is to make some space in the system to install Ubuntu. So I booted Windows 7 and from the “computer management – disk management”, I managed to shrink the windows partition to 60 GB.

        • Switching to Ubuntu Part One: Basic Apps

          Continuing our series of articles on the benefits of open source software and how computing for free is a very real possibility that many users are engaging in right now around the world, it’s time to take on board the full implications of migrating from Windows to Linux, in this case the Ubuntu platform.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Peppermint Two Plans Publicized
          • Goodbye Linux Mint 5 LTS

            Clement Lefebvre and the community behind the Linux Mint project announced yesterday, April 25th, on their official blog that Linux Mint 5 LTS (Elyssa) operating system will reach end-of-life on April 28th, 2011.

            Today we are sorry to announce that starting with April 28th, 2011, the Linux Mint 5 LTS (Elyssa) operating system will no longer be supported with security or critical fixes, and software updates. This comes right after the EOL (end-of-life) announcement for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), issued by Canonical two weeks ago, on April 11th.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

    • OLPC

      • M.I.T. Media Lab Names a New Director

        That makes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s decision to name a 44-year old Japanese venture capitalist who attended, but did not graduate, from two American colleges as the director of one of the world’s top computing science laboratories an unusual choice.

        On Tuesday, the university plans to announce that Joichi Ito, known as Joi, will become the fourth director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, which was originally founded by the architect Nicholas Negroponte in 1985 and has since become recognized for its willingness to take risks in developing technologies that are at the edge of the computing frontier.

    • Tablets

      • HP CEO: Microsoft still our BFF (but no Windows on webOS tablets)

        APOTHEKER Well, there is the app store, for which we will get something, there are some additional services for which we probably will be able to charge something for. And if we add additional features on top of WebOS, it’s a little bit early to talk about them right now, we might be able to charge something for that as well.

        FORTUNE: If you’re going to enable your PCs to do more, yet you said your tablets and your smartphones will be purely WebOS, why not make that a heterogeneous experience as well?

      • Review: Barnes & Nobles’ Nook Color goes Android Tablet

        If you must have a great tablet, and you’re willing to pay the price for it, Apple’s iPad 2 is still the one to get. But, if you’d like a good tablet at half-the-price, the newly firmware renovated Barnes & Noble Nook Color may be all the tablet you need.

        Today, April 25th, as has long been expected, the Nook Color got its 1.2 update. This transforms the Nook Color from being an e-reader to being a low-end Android tablet by replacing its operating system with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and adding an App Store.

      • Sony’s Android tablet pair includes dual-screen model

        Sony announced a pair of Android 3.0 tablets that integrate Sony’s Qriocity video and audio, Sony Reader ebook content, and Playstation Suite games. Due to arrive this fall, the Sony Tablet S1 is a 9.4-inch model with a wedge-shaped design, while the S2 offers a folding clamshell format with dual 5.5-inch screens that can be viewed as a single display.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Top 50 Portable Open Source Apps

    If you travel frequently, it can be frustrating to have to use a system that doesn’t have your favorite open source software already installed. Fortunately, many of the most popular open source applications come in portable versions that you can take with you on a USB thumb drive or other portable media.

    What makes an application portable? These apps can run from any portable device (a thumb drive, CD, DVD, portable hard drive or other device) without needing to be installed directly on the hard drive of the system you’re using. They also don’t leave behind any files on the host system, and they don’t interfere with other software installed on that system.

  • Free software and redundancy as a marketing benefit

    Outsiders often criticize free software because it offers too much choice. Choice confuses people, they say, and free software would be more efficient if everyone concentrated on improving the best application in each category instead of developing alternatives. To me, this argument has always seemed conditioned by monopoly, but recently I found reason to believe that it couldn’t be more wrong.

    [...]

    This contrast shows the practical value of redundancy. Superficially, redundancy seems wasteful, and a common short-sighted view is that you can improve efficiency by getting rid of the redundancy. When all is well, that view may even have some validity.

  • IRPF-Livre 2011: Death and Taxes

    Brazil, April 25, 2011—Last week, billions of people around the world celebrated their faith on a Nazarene liberator and his miraculous victory over death. On the 21st, Brazil also remembered the death of Tiradentes, martyr for the country’s independence, who survived only in memories and in history books. Our gift, hereby announced, doesn’t contain Easter Eggs, that symbolize rebirth, resurrection or the creativity of computer programmers, but it has to do with one of the two certainties in life. Although it doesn’t avoid death, it enables escaping from an unfair tax charged by the Brazilian government in the form of freedom. We offer IRPF-Livre, 2011 version, a Free alternative to the illegally privative software imposed on Brazilian taxpayers to prepare their annual Income Tax returns (IRPF).

    http://www.fsfla.org/~lxoliva/snapshots/irpf-livre/2011/

    IRPF-Livre, that we have maintained since 2007 as part of our campaign against the deprivation of freedom by governments through Imposed/Tax Software, was updated in accordance with changes in legislation and the undocumented file formats required by Receita Federal do Brasil (RFB).

  • Web Browsers

    • Browser wars, 2011

      It wasn’t that long ago that things were as dull as used dishwater when it came to Web browsers. Then, along came Firefox and suddenly it wasn’t just an Internet Explorer world anymore. Today, in 2011, Google’s Chrome Web browser, not to mention Apple’s Safari and Opera Software’s Opera, are all good choices for your Web browser.

    • Mozilla

      • FireFox 4 Scaling Well

        There is always a period of time after you requisition hardware that you are a little nervous about performance. Very happy to report that Firefox is scaling very well and we have jumped over the magic number of 100 concurrent users in FF.

        The only open issue right now in regards to Firefox is that it still is having an occasional oddity in regards to NFS. From watching patterns, it seems like if you are downloading a big (1GB+) file and writing it over NFS, the server get’s sluggish. It never comes to a crawl, but has a noticeable slowdown. I was able to make this work better by downgrading from NFS4 to NFS3. I’ll see if I can figure it out and submit a proper bug report.

        [...]

        I believe this server could easily handle another 100 users, and can easily be upgraded in terms of RAM.

      • Note to Mozilla: Guilt is not a business model

        I doubt if many people will be convinced to use Firefox because it somehow makes the world a better place. Consumers and companies are far more pragmatic in their decision processes. We want something to work, and hope to get it at the lowest possible cost.

      • Firefox Speed Tweaks
      • Thunderbird and external notification sounds
      • Introducing ecryptfs-recover-private — Recover your Encrypted Private Directory!

  • Healthcare

    • Important Information on the Biological Effects of Cell Phones and Wireless Technologies

      On the site linked below, you can listen to an interview with Dr. Karl Maret. Dr. Maret is the president of the Dove Health Alliance, a nonprofit foundation that focuses on the creation and promotion of global research and education networks in Energy Medicine.

      Dr. Maret trained in both electrical and biomedical engineering before his medical studies. He has recently begun educating physician groups specifically on the biological impacts of communication technologies, such as cell phones and wireless technologies.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • Decoding Human Genes is Goal of New Open-Source Encyclopedia

        A massive database cataloging the human genome’s functional elements — including genes, RNA transcripts and other products — is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers and the public, thanks to an international team of researchers. In a paper published in the journal PLoS Biology on April 19, the project — called ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements) — provides an overview of the team’s ongoing efforts to interpret the human genome sequence, as well as a guide for using the vast amounts of data and resources produced so far by the project.

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Samsung, LG & Cisco Throw Their Support Behind WebM

      Google is announcing a new community cross-licensing initiative for its WebM open source video format this morning, which includes backing from major CE makers like Samsung, LG Electronics and Cisco. Google open-sourced WebM about a year ago, hoping to establish an open and royalty-free video format for the web that could eventually replace today’s de facto web video standard, H.264. The cross-licensing initiative is meant to ensure that companies interested in using WebM aren’t scared off by threats of patent litigation.

Leftovers

  • Security

  • Privacy

    • Apple Accused in Suit of Tracking IPad, IPhone User Location

      Apple Inc. (AAPL) was accused of invasion of privacy and computer fraud by two customers who claim in a lawsuit that the company is secretly recording movements of iPhone and iPad users.

      Vikram Ajjampur, an iPhone user in Florida, and William Devito, a New York iPad customer, sued April 22 in federal court in Tampa, Florida, seeking a judge’s order barring the alleged data collection.

    • Sony PlayStation suffers massive data breach

      Sony suffered a massive breach in its video game online network that led to the theft of names, addresses and possibly credit card data belonging to 77 million user accounts in what is one of the largest-ever Internet security break-ins.

      Sony learned that user information had been stolen from its PlayStation Network seven days ago, prompting it to shut down the network immediately. But Sony did not tell the public until Tuesday.

    • Hacker Got PlayStation Network Users’ Info

      Sony Corp. (SNE, 6758.TO) said Tuesday a hacker had obtained customer information, possibly including credit-card numbers, of members of its online PlayStation Network, a potential problem for the quickly growing field of online gaming.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Lessig: Copyright isn’t just hurting creativity: it’s killing science (video)

        Copyleft crusader and Harvard professor Larry Lessig gave a new talk at CERN last week about copyright and how it has affected open access to academic or scientific information, with a bit of commentary about YouTube Copyright School. As usual, it’s blistering commentary. “It’s time to recognize that free access – as in ‘free’ as in speech access – is no fad, and it’s time to push this non-fad war broadly in the context of science,” says Lessig.

        Whereas copyright tends to focus on protecting artists’ ability to make money from their work, scientists don’t use similar incentives. And yet, her work is often kept within the gates of the ivory tower, reserved for those whose universities or institutions have purchased access, often at high costs. And for science in the age of the internet, which wants ideas to spread as widely as possible to encourage more creativity and development, this isn’t just bad: it’s immoral.

Clip of the Day

Colbert Vs. Wikipedia


Credit: TinyOgg

04.26.11

Links 26/4/2011: Focus on Fedora 15 and Imminent Ubuntu Release

Posted in News Roundup at 1:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Smart Book

    While following some links that I had received from a conversation on Diaspora* Alpha, I ran across the Smart Book, a great product from Always Innovating. While they offer them for sale, they do not yet have a shipping date. Reading their press release, it does not look like they plan to sell them in mass quantities. Imaging having a hand held Internet device, a tablet, a netbook, and screen that can be plugged into another computer, all in one device. Along with all of those features it runs multiple operating systems all at the same time. On top of everything else it is Open Hardware and Open Software.

  • Hack the D-Link DNS-323 to get an array of Linux server options

    There are a number of products currently available aimed to meet home storage needs. Rather than purchasing an entire computer to act as a file sever, these NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are cheap, and you can typically stuff them in a corner and forget about them, using them to store backups or files that you want to share with other systems. They can be used to share files with those outside of the home network, or strictly for those inside.

    One such device is the D-Link DNS-323, a two-bay NAS system that runs Linux. It is a small box, but large enough to store two 3.5″ SATA drives, so it can be stored nearly anywhere. By itself, the DNS-323 has a web-based administrative console, has multiple disk options (JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, or individual disks), gigabit Ethernet, allows for SMB (Windows file sharing) and FTP access. It has one USB port for a printer to allow it to be a print server as well, and it can also be an iTunes media server out of the box. All of this is available for roughly $200.

  • OS-Less notebook LDLC recommends the Joli OS

    This is one of those very few manufacturers recommending the OS together with the Jolibook that has the JoliCloud preloaded already on the system.

  • Seven Keys to Success with Linux
  • Linux Wins Big in Three Coups
  • A (Finally) Winning Linux Hand

    And try as Microsoft might, the public cloud computing services are increasing their dependence on Linux operating systems that don’t require them to pay licensing fees to Microsoft.

  • Desktop

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Google

  • Kernel Space

    • Instituting ‘Defense in Depth’ for PCI Compliance on a Linux Platform
    • Linux Kernel Power Bug Now High Importance In Ubuntu

      There is also this Launchpad bug report from a Canonical software engineer that was created earlier this month but now with the attention of Phoronix, 33 others have officially confirmed being ‘affected’ by this bug in its entry. This morning, the Ubuntu Kernel Team has now confirmed it as being a bug of high importance for Natty (11.04) and Oneiric (11.10). It should also be acknowledged in the Ubuntu 11.04 release notes that there is a power issue.

      It doesn’t appear that they are devoting any resources to getting the issue resolved but it looks like they will be waiting for a fix to appear upstream in the stable series or in 2.6.39 and then to have that back-ported into an Ubuntu 11.04 SRU update.

    • Another Major Linux Power Regression Spotted

      Since Friday there’s been a number of Phoronix articles about a very bad power regression in the mainline Linux kernel, which is widespread, Ubuntu 11.04 is one of the affected distributions, and has been deemed a bug of high importance. This yet-to-be-resolved issue is affected Linux 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 kernels and for many desktop and notebook systems is causing a 10~30% increase in power consumption. Nevertheless, this is not the only major outstanding power regression in the mainline tree, there is another dramatic regression now spotted as well that is yet-to-be-fixed.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Will NVIDIA Optimus Inevitably Come To Linux?

        Aside from political issues surrounding open vs. closed-source (graphics) drivers on Linux, the proprietary NVIDIA Linux driver is widely liked. The proprietary NVIDIA Linux driver is relatively bug/trouble-free, has a performance parity to the Windows driver, supports new hardware right away, and has a near feature parity to the Windows driver. There’s not much more you could ask for from a closed-source driver, aside from a few missing features. One of the missing features that’s been widely talked about as of late has been Optimus.

      • Wayland Can Now Use Gallium3D Software Rendering

        Besides the obvious requirements and demands of needing to design a display server that can fully replace the needs of the long-standing X Server, and making all the tool-kits and major software support running natively on Wayland, another inhibitor to Wayland’s adoption has been its graphics driver requirements. In particular, Wayland requires kernel mode-setting, EGL (in place of a DRI2 requirement), in-kernel memory management (GEM), and 3D acceleration.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • undertow

        # Contour continues to develop, and the OS image track is similarly moving; so these will follow on nicely after the Active App announcement.

        # Plasmate has seen renewed development and is polishing up nicely. We have a new contributor who has popped up recently, and both Sebastian K. and myself have been plonking away on it. I need to do a screencast soon! :)

      • Kate’s Tab Bar Plugins
      • announcing Season of KDE 2011

        I’m super happy that KDE could accept 51 student for GSoC this year. It’s an impressive number and they’ll make a difference in KDE this year. But this number also means that we had to say no to many students. A lot of tough choices had to be made. Now I can’t magically make more GSoC slot appear unfortunately. But I can do something else. I can run another Season of KDE together with an awesome team of mentors and co-admins.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • A revelation of an idea for GNOME3′s Shell

        I’ve made heavy use of the revelation-applet on my gnome 2 desktop panel to search for passwords inside my revelation password file. I’d like to restore that sort of quick password search inside the preferred mechanics of GNOME3 shell.

      • Diodon – GTK+ clipboard manager

        Diodon is a simple clipboard manager for GNOME with application indicator support. Aiming to be the best integrated clipboard manager for the Gnome/GTK+ desktop.

      • One week with GNOME3

        I’ve installed GNOME 3 ppa on my ubuntu natty last week, and have been using it exclusively since then. To be honest I’ve been ranting a lot against GNOME3 before using it for my day to day activities, so I feel I should share my observations now that I really know it. Here are all the good and bad things I’ve seen, with no particular order. I’ll try not being too polemic (that’s hard exercise for me), please keep in mind I’m not pretending being a normal user; I’m a developer so my needs probably are different.

        [...]

        GNOME3 is a good base for upcoming releases.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews

    • New Releases

      • Elastix 1.6.2
      • ALT 5.9.9-20110401
      • Kalumbata Rev 4 released

        The Bayanihan Linux 5 Revision 4 is now available for download! The newest Kalumbata revision now features LibreOffice by The Document Foundation, an Open Source office productivity suite greatly derived from OpenOffice.org. However, OpenOffice.org 3.3, the latest version, is still bundled in the installer. Also packed in the new ISOs is the latest release of BL5′s default web browser, Mozilla Firefox 4. Tons of security updates are also added.

      • 1+1 = Calculate Linux

        Another Monday, another review. This week it’s Calculate Linux 11.3 Gnome Edition! Get ready for another wild and crazy ride into the ever changing landscape known as FLOSS! (Free Libre Open Source Software)

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Fedora dons the new Gnome
        • Fusion Linux 14 Thorium – Fedora Plus Plus

          Comparing to Fedora, Fusion Linux is a clear winner, as it only builds upon the existing without taking away.

        • Ubuntu to the Rescue: A Tale of Broadcom Wifi Drivers, Prerelease Software, and a new Acer Aspire One Netbook

          Let me say, however, that this is a STRONG argument for Fedora to have something like the restricted drivers menu. Sure, I know they want to have a freedom-only desktop. But I see nothing wrong with looking for certain hardware and telling people they may get better performance in the non-free repos. They aren’t doing anyone any favors by making them thing their computer doesn’t work with Fedora. And they’re losing potential users.

        • From Ubuntu to Fedora – Landing on foreign soil (the good, the bad and the ugly)

          During the past weeks I noticed how difficult it was to hack on a desktop environment that I am not using myself. And since most of my work now is about GNOME (and KDE) I came to the conclusion I have to use bleeding edge GNOME 3. Sadly Ubuntu 11.04 with GNOME 3 is pretty shaky for my taste.

          I am a very impatient developer who really does not enjoy compiling stuff and playing with packages a lot. Mutter gave me some hard time on a Virtual Machine. So I chose to move to Fedora, luckily though this has given me a new perspective as I have been a long time Ubuntu user.

        • Moving to Fedora

          Except for the apparently broken Eclipse in F15—couldn’t get the Android ADT plugin to install—and a few glitches and rough edges here and there, the experience has been quite good so far.

        • Fedora Talk: First static, then silence (talk.fedoraproject.org closing up 2011-05-05)

          For many years Fedora infrastructure has been running a talk.fedoraproject.org asterisk server. This allows contributors to talk to each other, or send voice mails, etc.

          However, it gets very very little usage and also has no one really maintaining it or fixing issues with it. In the last 130days there have been a total of 95 calls using the server. There are a number of outstanding infrastructure tickets on the service that no one has dealt with. The server running it is running an outdated OS version and asterisk version.

    • Debian Family

      • Ubuntu Unity Keyboard Shortcuts Wallpapers

        Can’t remember all the Unity keyboard shortcuts? Then check out the AskUbuntu keyboard shortcuts thread – you’ll find two wallpapers (one is also available in German) with most of the Unity mouse tricks / keyboard shortcuts:

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Is Canonical Attacking Its Own Ubuntu Communities?

          Ubuntu is growing big – bigger than ever. And there is a price you have to pay when you grow big. The dust of Ubuntu vs Banshee just settled and here is another storm, in a tea cup.

          Anthony Papillion, a blogger and quite a good writer, stirred the bee’s hive by posting an emotional blog about the shut-down of Sounder.

        • Why I love Unity

          In GNOME 3 it was closer to an inch and three-quarters ( or close to 44.5mm), with close to half an inch(12.5-13mm) dedicated to the title bar. I know there are plenty of deeper differences between the two interfaces (which plan to get int in a later post), but given the minor superficial differences, I would take Unity any day just because of screen real estate.

        • Why Is Ubuntu’s Unity Squeezing out GNOME 3?

          Not too long ago, I wrote about Ubuntu’s embrace of the Unity desktop and what that would mean for Ubuntu users who might prefer a traditional GNOME shell.

          At the time, I was called out by some readers regarding my belief that Ubuntu was limiting itself with its choice in relying on Unity. Now as we approach Ubuntu 11.04, it looks as if I might have been right all along.

          While users can certainly select the older GNOME shell, the move to the Unity desktop has clearly not been greeted with unanimous applause.

          Unity is not GNOME 3

          One fact that ought to be made clear from the start is that in the name of Ubuntu seeking to make Unity their default desktop experience, the development team has indeed locked some users into a singular desktop experience. “But Matt, that’s nonsense! Users can install any desktop they choose! Besides, if they want GNOME 3 instead, users can just add the PPA repository for it!”

          The above statement is what I feel makes this entire thing surrounding Unity so amusing. In the Ubuntu development team’s desire to make Ubuntu more “accessible,” they’re actually assuming new users even realize other desktop environments are possible.

        • One more step for Ubuntu Natty

          Final beta release paves the way for this week’s final release of Ubuntu 11.04

          It’s just a few days to go until the next major release of Ubuntu and the developers have issued a final testing version. Released late last week the second Ubuntu Natty Narwhal Beta will be the final pre-release ahead of a planned 28 April final release.

        • Deployment Ease, Experimentation Highlights of Ubuntu 11.04

          The latest and greatest release of Ubuntu — 11.04, or “Natty Narwhal” — is nearly upon us. To get a sense of how the new version situates Ubuntu and the rest of the open source community going forward, I recently spoke with Canonical VP Steve George. Here’s what he had to say about the new release and more:

          For starters, anyone who reads Linux blogs at least once in a while knows by now that Natty’s major claim to fame is the Unity desktop interface, which will become the default in new installations. Traditional GNOME will remain available as an option, at least for this release cycle, as will a 2D version of Unity catered to users whose hardware doesn’t support the video acceleration demanded by the default interface.

        • Ubuntu Transforms Your PC Experience
        • Latest Ubuntu Offers Business-Added Cloud Features and Sleek New Desktop Interface
        • Ubuntu 11.04(Natty) installation screenshots Gallery

          The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the open source community has to offer.

        • How Ubuntu Unity can help Linux really succeed

          What the Linux operating system needs, is for Canonical to really step it up, with the upcoming release of 11.04, and get that wonderful Unity desktop on retail boxes and tablet PCs, such that end users do not have to bother with the installation. That is the single biggest hurdle and, as much as it pains me to say it, Ubuntu and Canonical are probably the only shot Linux has of overcoming this monumental obstacle.

        • Ubuntu Download of the Week Episode 1 – TuxCards
        • Top Things to do after installing Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

          The final release of Ubuntu Natty Narwhal is almost out. It’s scheduled to be out in the 28th of this month. After you actually get done with the installation, there would likely exist a heap of things you still need to take care of. This post will share some interesting insight and ideas about what you can and should do after a successful installation.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Developer Interview: Ronald “wattOS” Ropp

            Biff Baxter, real name Ronald Ropp, is a technology consultant based in Portland, Oregon. He’s also the developer behind wattOS, an Ubuntu derived Linux distribution (see our overview). We were quite impressed with wattOS, so we got in contact with him for some Q+A.

          • Linux Minx XFCE Roller Coaster
          • Peppermint Two Plans Publicized

            Shane Remington, co-founder of the Peppermint operating system (OS), announced plans to merge the previous two Peppermint OSes into one OS to be released as Peppermint Two.

          • Linux Mint 5 LTS Elyssa reached end of life

            Repositories will remain open but no more updates or security fixes will be made available. Users of Linux Mint 5 LTS Elyssa are asked to migrate to Linux Mint 9 LTS Isadora (Long Term Release which will be supported until April 2013).

  • Devices/Embedded

    • TI updates DSP line with new chips, Linux support

      Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new single-core TMS320C6671 member of its multicore TMS320C66x digital signal processor (DSP) family, as well as enhancements to its TMS320C6670 radio system-on-chip (SoC). In addition, the company released a free multicore software development kit (MCSDK) update for its C66x DSPs featuring updated Linux kernel support, optimized DSP libraries, and support for the OpenMP programming model.

    • Tablets

      • Nook Color gets tablet makeover

        Barnes & Noble announced an automatic update this week for its Nook Color e-reader that turns the device into more of a low-cost Android tablet. New features offered by the 1.2.0 update include 125 apps, an email application, and support for Adobe Flash, says the online retailer.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open-source backup

    Simon Brock rounds up the open-source options for backing up your critical data

    Everyone would like all their work securely backed up, with every version of every file instantly accessible, but few backup solutions come anywhere close to this ideal. And making backups is just boring.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4: A Review

        Popular web browser Firefox unveiled its newest iteration, dubbed ‘Firefox 4: Tecumseh’, free for download just last month. It introduced several new features, as well as several major improvements on already extant features like Tab Groups and App Tabs. Here’s a quick review.

      • Mozilla Can’t Attract Enough Firefox Testers

        Mozilla’s new Firefox channels may have launched with a bang, but they do not seem to be doing so well now.

  • Databases

    • SkySQL Forms Regional Customer Advisory Boards to Deepen Relationships With Key Customers

      SkySQL Ab, the first choice in affordable MySQL® database solutions for the enterprise and cloud, today announced the creation of regional Customer Advisory Boards (CABs) to facilitate deeper relationships with its growing global customer base. In addition to the opportunity to influence future offerings and network with their peers, members of the boards will be the first to try new SkySQL products and services. The board will also provide insight into their business priorities and strategic directions, allowing SkySQL to meet growing customer demands.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Libre Office 3.4 Beta 1
    • Oracle’s OpenOffice Surrender

      It’s hard to believe that it was only about six months ago that LibreOffice was born.

      The free and open source productivity software suite was created, of course, in response to Oracle’s (Nasdaq: ORCL) unclear intentions regarding OpenOffice.org, which had long been the community’s suite of choice. At the time, Oracle chose to keep OpenOffice to itself, but now — fast forward to just a little more than a week ago — it appears to be giving it up after all.

  • Project Releases

  • Licensing

    • Do we want to be 1991 forever?

      KDE’s licensing policies do not allow GPLv3+, LGPLv3+ and AGPLv3+ software in KDE’s repositiories (I guess it is for git, too, not only for SVN). But do we really want to keep that policy? There are more and more web-applications, ugly cloud-stuff, “software as a service”, is growing, and developers want to protect their Free Software by using the GNU Affero General Public Licens e. KDE is going to be adapted on embedded devices, and we should not care about tivoization? We should only use a 1991 license not targeting a lot of important issues of our times? Why should a KDE-application not be relicensed under the conditions of the GLPv3+ or AGPLv3+? In many cases that may be good.

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Google and friends wrap open video codec in patent shield

      Google has announced a patent-sharing program around WebM in an effort to guard the open source web video format from legal attack.

      On Monday, with a blog post, the company introduced the WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative, which brings together companies willing to license each other’s patents related to the format. Founding members include AMD, Cisco Systems, Logitech, MIPS Technologies, Matroska, Mozilla, Opera, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and the Xiph.org Foundation, as well as Google.

Leftovers

  • Amazon’s Cloud #fail is a wakeup call

    Amazon has been the poster child for everything that is good, right and holy about the cloud.

    After today, Amazon will also be demonized for everything that is wrong with their own cloud. Amazon today suffered a major outage crippling hundreds (maybe thousands?) or sites (including a few of my favs like reddit).

    For years, Amazon has been suggesting that their elastic cloud (leveraging Linux throughout as the underlying OS) had the ability to scale to meet demand. The general idea was supposed to be massive scalability without any single point of failure.

  • Time for your cloud gut check

    From Amazon’s and other providers’ perspectives – the cloud stubbed toe of this week also highlights how communication and reaction are perhaps as critical as the technical aspects of addressing what’s wrong and fixing it. Open source software also provides lessons here, indicating vendors and providers are best served by transparency and openness. What the message boards and Twitterverse are telling us now is that users will accept some degree of downtime and difficulty, but they want straight information on how long and how severely they will be down. Just as vendors face a challenge in fairly yet effectively pricing and charging for cloud computing, it may be difficult to provide guidance on recovery from an outage, but the same rules of PR crisis management apply: don’t over-promise and don’t under-deliver.

  • Cloud Haters Jump At Amazon EC2 Fiasco
  • Google Will Save Videos After All
  • HAPPY WORLD PENGUIN DAY!

    Each year, on or about the 25th of April, the Adelie penguins of Ross Island leave their brooding grounds and swim to their winter sanctuary northwest of the Balleny Islands. Some decided to mark the occasion by including all penguins and dubbing the day World Penguin Day.

    Most penguins do participate in migratory habits. Why they favor some places more than others as their destination is the current work of biologists. Current belief is that the Adelies favor a place that has more pack ice, thereby providing more protection. This appears to be true, as the Davis Station Adelies migrate north, then west, staying close to the Antarctic continent. Also, Antarctica’s days become much shorter and the Adelies do not feed well in the dark. Traveling north, these birds have longer days in order to fish and feed.

  • Hardware

    • Breaking in a Kingston SSD

      adation over time. Memory devices make use of internal garbage collection to regain areas no longer being used by programs. But due to certain drawbacks with garbage collection (such as time required to move data around), TRIM is recommended as well. The TRIM function detects and “informs” an SSD which blocks are no longer being used and can be wiped and reused. In Linux, one can use TRIM with ext3 and ext4 by adding the word discard to the options when mounting (or in /etc/fstab). An example of use could be: /dev/sda3 / ext4 acl,user_xattr,noatime,discard 1 1.

  • Finance

    • Hidden Handouts to Corporations Found in Walker’s Budget

      The almost $200 million in tax cuts that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has given to corporations have been both lauded and hated by the public and media. When it was discovered that businesses like M&I Bank and others who were large contributors to Walker’s gubernatorial campaign were receiving extra provisions through changes in the consolidated reporting law, questions started cropping up about why Walker was giving handouts to corporations even though he declared the state broke.

    • What Did Walker Admit?

      Union supporters celebrated and right-wingers raged when the Associated Press reported on April 15 that Governor Scott Walker admitted Wisconsin saves no money by “weakening government workers’ collective bargaining rights.” When responding to a question from Rep. Dennis Kucinich during congressional testimony, did Walker really admit the union-busting bill costs no money? And will implementing the annual recertification requirement actually cost Wisconsin taxpayers?

    • Insurers Getting Rich By Not Paying for Care

      UnitedHealth Group, the biggest health insurer in terms of revenue and market value, earned so much more during the first three months of this year than Wall Street expected that investors rushed to buy shares of every one of the seven health insurers that comprise the managed care sector. In my view, it would be more accurate to call it the managed care cartel.

    • What happens to our £220bn annual procurement spend?

      Any business needs to know where its money goes. This is especially so if it is spending £220bn a year – the equivalent of £3500 per adult and child in the UK – purchasing goods and services on our behalf. That is nearly 20% of our gross domestic product.

      The need for decent data on how it is spent and with whom has been highlighted in several reports including a National Audit Office report last May, Sir Philip Green’s report last September and my own, Towards Tesco, published by the Institute of Directors.

  • Privacy

    • State Police can suck data out of cell phones in under two minutes

      You don’t want to be pulled over by the police in Michigan. When law enforcement wants half a million dollars to produce documents for a FOIA request, something is not right. And since the high-tech mobile forensic device in question can grab data in one-and-a-half minutes off more than 3,000 different cell phone models, it could be used during minor traffic violations to conduct suspicionless and warrantless searches without the phone owner having any idea that all their phone data was now in the hands of authorities.

    • Big Apple, Big Google, Big Brother
    • Android Location Tracking is Opt-In

      The iOS operating system tracks your location without your knowledge and stores the data it collects in an unencrypted form on your phone. For Android users who maybe wondering the same thing, no, your location is will not be tracked without your express permission and approval.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Digital Economy (UK)/HADOPI

        • The Digital Economy Act: where we go now

          Yesterday morning Justice Kenneth Parker handed down his ruling on the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act. The Judge dismissed all grounds save for one aspect of the claim about the costs imposed on ISPs. The ruling means that Justice Parker deemed the other provisions of the Digital Economy Act are consistent with EU law.

          So what does this mean for those of us who place privacy, freedom of expression and due process ahead of chasing fictional losses from the creative industries’ revenues? On the face of it the decision feels like bad news for those who see important flaws in the Act. But it just means that this particular route to halting what we think is a damaging law may not work, depending on whether BT and TalkTalk appeal.

Clip of the Day

Working Title: “We use GNU linux”


Credit: TinyOgg

04.25.11

Links 25/4/2011: GNOME 3 Live Image 1.1.0 Released, US Army Chooses Android

Posted in News Roundup at 5:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Sony should pay €100 to man for OtherOS removal, consumer board says

    Finnish consumer board balks at Sony’s killing of OtherOS functionality, and thinks the consumer electronics giant should pay up.
    A Finnish man purchased a PlayStation 3 (PS3) console last year for €268.90. At the time of purchase, the product was being presented with capabilities to install an alternative operating system, such as a Linux distribution.

  • I’m considering not to renew your contract, Windows

    Furthermore, there is a powerful antagonist that wants XP out. It’s Microsoft, which has decided not to cover XP against certain diseases and marginalized him regarding the new browser they released. This company wants XP’s reputation to taint as much as possible so that they can ask me to replace him with the brother of that Vista punk that came looking for a job four years ago. So, do I need an employee that is even betrayed by the firm he represents?

  • Linux is Spoiling Me!!

    After reading an article about how tests have shown that antivirus solutions, in spite of their struggle to keep Windows systems protected, have fallen behind malware threats (MS Security Essentials among these)–and one company has actually fallen prey of hackers itself–, I realized that Linux is spoiling me.

    [...]

    Still, I’ve been able to get rid of 22 infections I got in one second after I plugged my USB key into an infected XP computer. It took me only 2 seconds and a single click to clean it. Yes, no AV required!

  • The Linux Security Circus: On GUI isolation

    There certainly is one thing that most Linux users don’t realize about their Linux systems… this is the lack of GUI-level isolation, and how it essentially nullifies all the desktop security. I wrote about it a few times, I spoke about it a few times, yet I still come across people who don’t realize it all the time.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression
    • Kernel comment: Perseverance pays off

      Today, there are open source Linux drivers for all major Wi-Fi chips, which was unimaginable five years ago. The constant pressure for open source drivers has thus paid off, and this may also work in other areas in the long term.

      “Buy a Centrino notebook, and then the Wi-Fi chipset will work with Linux.” Five years ago, such simplifications were more common because a lot of the Wi-Fi components either did not run on Linux or took a lot of tweaking, say, with Ndiswrapper and Driverloader to get the NDIS drivers intended for use with Windows to run on Linux. Internet forums contained thousands of comments on these issues, and people repeatedly said that the Linux kernel needed a stable API for external drivers; otherwise, manufacturers would never offer proper Linux drivers for Wi-Fi hardware.

    • Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression
    • The Linux Power Problem Is Widespread, Hits Desktops Too

      The major Linux power regression situation seems to only be getting worse at this point. Following the Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression and The Tests Showing Ubuntu 11.04 On A Power Consumption Binge, a variety of feedback has come in. There’s the usual FUD that it’s “Moronix” benchmarks and the like, but the fact of the matter is it’s a very real problem and it’s about to bite Ubuntu 11.04 and other Linux distributions planning to ship with 2.6.38 kernel or later.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Window Maker – The (Almost) Forgotten Window Manager

      With the big two desktop environments changing massively over the last few years and getting quite a bit heavier at the same time I thought I’ld look again at another alternative that’s been a staple in the area of window managers since release in 1997 – Window Maker. Initially it was WindowMaker by the way, but due to a naming conflict this had to be changed. It is designed to emulate the look and feel of the NeXTstep GUI, an object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers.

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDM In KDE SC 4.7 To Play With GRUB2

        The KDM code for KDE SC 4.7 has just gained one small but noteworthy feature: GRUB2 support. While the KDE Display Manager gaining support for the GRUB2 boot-loader may seem nonchalant, it’s actually quite useful. Now from the KDE Display Manager, users are able to select another GRUB boot entry without affecting the default choice or having to wait for the boot-loader to appear when rebooting.

      • KDE: Strength in Abstraction

        I have not yet tried out Gnome Shell or Ubuntu Unity, but the biggest complaint most people level against them is that our desktops are being tablet-ified. Sure, there need to be new, innovative interfaces for tablets and phones, but that’s no reason to abandon the desktop. Sure, perhaps the average Joe (or Jane) will be using tablets more and more, but some of us have real work to get done. We need to do photo editing, programming, video editing, 3D modeling, and other tasks that require something more than a glorified smart phone. This is where KDE excels.

      • Marble, Virtual Interactive Globe

        Marble has been designed to be a virtual interactive globe and world atlas that you can use to look-up information. The cross-platform application has recently been updated to version 1.1, reason enough to take a closer look at the software.

        The main interface that you see after installation displays a globe and several controls on screen. you can use the mouse to rotate or zoom in and out of the globe which works on first glance similar to Google Earth or comparable programs.

      • QApt sexiness…
      • KDE Commit Digest for 17 April 2011
      • Blessed by Trinity…

        I am long established fan of KDE3 (Trinity). There might be 2 reasons:
        1) My first ever Linux was SLAX which is based on KDE3.
        2) I prefer old-school menu style with one column in main part with branches for each of them. When I see several columns in main menu I quickly get lost in navigation. It’s like Win95 style compared to Win7 style. Of KDE3 compared to Mint Menu or KDE4 in some Linuxes.
        That’s why every Tux which is blessed by Trinity is interesting for me. That’s why I am very thankful to Sirius Lee who gave me [...]

        Yes, today my guinea pig is Trinity Kubuntu.

      • 19 things we’d change about KDE

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome 3 Look & Feel

        But after looking at all the ways in wich people like to work, and set up things, I don’t think that one way of doing something should be the end-all be-all of an Open Desktop Enviroment.

      • GNOME 3 Live image version 1.1.0 released

        This new image (1.1.0) is now based on GNOME:STABLE:3.0 repository and contains all security and bugfix updates for openSUSE 11.4.

      • On desktop re-invention

        My opinion is that GNOME 3 made a fundamental mistake in breaking with tradition. Innovation on that scale should target new less well established platforms, such as netbooks, tablets, and the like. Places where there’s still opportunity to define the Next Big Thing. Innovate with the new, don’t break with decades of established user experience on the old.

      • Yet another GNOME 3 user review

        I really enjoy using GNOME Shell, the overall experience is a lot better than GNOME 2 and the fonts seem more clear to me. Although I prefer the original workspace switch concept, the changes made by developers right before the release turned the multiple workspace feature into an interesting automatic workspace creator.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

    • Red Hat Family

      • Fedora

        • Gnome 3: Not Ready for Prime Time in Fedora 15

          I’ve been intrigued by the Gnome 3 desktop and the design decisions that the Gnome project has decided to test. Hearing some members of the Gnome community explain the design decisions in person was very interesting, and helpful when transitioning to the Gnome shell. And I’m proud that the Fedora Project is continuing to lead by incorporating new technologies and designs First.

        • Fedora and GNOME branding drama: Missing the big picture

          Some of the folks on the Fedora marketing list are in a tizzy over the amount of Fedora branding present, or not, in the upcoming Fedora 15 release.

          While I applaud the Fedora folks for being concerned about marketing, I think that they’re losing sight of the big picture — the actual impact of GNOME or Fedora “branding,” in the Fedora desktop is minimal at best.

    • Debian Family

      • Debian Project mourns the loss of Adrian von Bidder

        The Debian Project has lost an active member of its community. Adrian von Bidder (cmot) died on April 17th.

        [...]

        Adrian founded the “NTP Pool” (crowd-sourced time synchronisation), which our project has since fully adopted.

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Natty Narwhal About to Surface

          However, the Linux versus Microsoft story line is an old one in the tech industry, with little sign of the battle lines being redrawn.

        • Canonical: The Tablet Will Never Surpass The PC

          Canonical today announced its latest Ubuntu Linux release, version 11.04 Natty Narwhal. It follows the trend toward smaller screens with a streamlined interface, but developer Canonical says it will not follow the tablet frenzy – at least not yet.

          Ubuntu 11.04 will be available for download on April 28 and arrive with significant changes in its interface. It will include Unity, which first appeared in Ubuntu 10.10 for netbooks back in October 2010. Unity features an app launcher on the left of the screen. There is also additional touch screen support that now includes gestures for tasks such as scrolling as well as expanding and contracting screens.

        • Canonical shut down Sounder?

          It seems a story is making its way around the various Linux news organizations that is blatantly misrepresented. THIS STORY is the one making its rounds. It claims that Canonical takes another step against the Community. This is totally wrong in every sense of the word wrong. Let me break it down for those of you who actually believe this on the shut-down of the Sounder Mailing List.

        • Canonical shut down Sounder?

          The blogger Anthony Papillion has penned an article about how Canonical has taken another step against the community. It’s all about how Canonical have shut down the sounder mailing list and irc channels because they’re off topic and wildly out of control.

          I have many concerns relating to Canonical and it’s conduct, but this isn’t one of them.

          The first point Anthony raises is easy to debunk. The Community Council was the body to shutter the group, not Canonical. This was a community decision to help make sure the community is healthy. You can check what people were involved and if they work for Canonical or not.

        • Ubuntu 11.04 Tiptoes Into OpenStack

          Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed the Natty Narwhal, will be a major release for the Linux distribution’s cloud aspirations. Ubuntu 11.04 will be the first release that includes the OpenStack open source cloud platform, as well as the Eucalpytus platform, providing a new set of cloud deployment platform options for Linux developers.

          “We want people to think of Ubunutu as a Linux platform that is cloud native,” Steve George vice president, business development of Canonical told InternetNews.com.

        • Ubuntu shuns tablets in its fight with Microsoft

          As Canonical, maintainer of popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, readies its latest release which sports a dramatic new graphical user interface supporting touch-based input, it quashed the idea that is it preparing to enter the tablet market.

          The outfit has confirmed it will be releasing Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’ on 28 April 2011. With Ubuntu 11.04 comes the Unity desktop in place of the familiar GNOME, marking one of the biggest user-facing changes in the distribution’s history.

        • The Tests Showing Ubuntu 11.04 On A Power Consumption Binge

          This is the prequel to Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression and Uff Da! The Linux Power Bug Even More Mysterious. It was written in advance of tracking down the issue to a matter in the upstream Linux kernel. Though as the Phoronix Test Suite stack is presently bisecting and analyzing the kernel during the period in question (Linux 2.6.37 to 2.6.38), this article is being published now and hopefully on Easter Sunday or Monday the actual offending commit will be known along with much more information. This bug has also now been confirmed independent of Phoronix by at least six separate parties that I’m aware of, with reports of Natty either consuming excessive power or a very significant increase in heat output compared to Ubuntu 10.10. These independent reports have occurred on a range of hardware — including desktops. There is also at least one bug report on the matter for Ubuntu 11.04.

        • My thoughts on Unity

          Today is a good day to comment on Ubuntu Unity. I had refrained from doing so in the past largely because it seemed unfair to do so while it was in it’s formative process and not yet clear where they were trying to go. However, with the release of Ubuntu 11.04 imminent, and now with a much clearer idea of what the intent and design really is, it seemed an appropriate time to do so.

          Perhaps I am not choosing to be as critical of Unity as some are, for there is good ideas in it, and I know some good intentions intended. However I do feel it fails to deliver an effective user experience as a result of it’s design rather than in incompleteness, and I think this is because the people involved did not choose to go far enough in what they were trying to do.

        • Interview with Jessica Ledbetter

          Jessica Ledbetter: Hello everyone, I’m Jessica Ledbetter (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/jledbetter). I’ve been a web developer for a Department of Energy lab in Virginia for about 10 years, and I code primarily in Java and ColdFusion, plus freelance in PHP. I was the first in my family to go to college, and, so far, the only one to finish. I worked while getting my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, and later a Master’s degree in Information Technology.

        • Full Circle Magazine #48

          This month:
          * Command and Conquer.
          * How-To : Program in Python – Part 22, LibreOffice – Part 3, Finding eBooks and Using an Arduino in Ubuntu.
          * Linux Lab – Swappiness Part One.
          * Review – Remastersys.
          * Top 5 – Project Management Tools.
          plus: Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Games, My Story, and much much more!

        • A tour of Software Center 3.1| Natty’s new Software Manager | New User series #2
        • Ubuntu Unity 2D tweaking tool lets you adjust the Launcher, Dash & enable compositing

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Peppermint Two Wallpaper Challenge

            Hello to all from Peppermint Headquarters in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina. As many of you know we are poised to release the much anticipated Peppermint Two operating system. We are in the final stages of development and now is the time where we need to seek talented artists to apply the finishing touches – We need a Default Wallpaper that is creative and eye-catching !!

          • Moving from Ubuntu 10.10 to Linux Mint 10

            With a long Easter weekend available to me and with thoughts of forthcoming changes in the world of Ubuntu, I got to wondering about the merits of moving my main home PC to Linux Mint instead. Though there is a rolling variant based on Debian, I went for the more usual one based on Ubuntu that uses GNOME. For the record, Linux Mint isn’t just about the GNOME desktop but you also can have it with Xfce, LXDE and KDE desktops as well. While I have been known to use Lubuntu and like its LXDE implementation, I stuck with the option of which I have most experience.

          • Linux Mint Debian Edition Xfce review

            Out of the box, it is a lot more usable than Sabayon 5.5 Xfce.

          • An unlikely hero: Xubuntu
          • Bodhi Linux Road Map

            It’s been about a month since our Bodhi Linux 1.0.0 (stable) release and I would like to say thank you to everyone that has helped make it a success! We have climbed to rank #50 on distrowatch and have seen about 16,000 downloads in this last month. If there was ever any doubt that we are filling a needed spot in the Linux world, then I am fairly certain it is gone now.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

        • Insider’s look at Nokia’s exit from MeeGo

          In MeeGo now, upstream MeeGo is completely 100% open both the code and the processes, though this is a bit of a work in progress, of course because the stake holders in the companies that are involved quite often kind of keep their corporate culture without realizing that they should discuss things in the public.

      • Android

        • The Toshiba Regza AT300

          For those of you who keep up with tech news, you’ll remember Toshiba saying something about a new tablet they had in the works way back in January some time. Well, they’ve now announced a price, a release date, technical specifications, and a name: They’ve christened their tablet the Toshiba Regza AT300.

        • US Army picks Android to power its first smartphone

          The Army wants every soldier to carry a smartphone to stay networked. It doesn’t yet have a program for that, having spent the last year working through the implications of what it might mean to have such a system—like, for instance, what operating system would power it. An initial answer: Google’s Android.

          A prototype device running Android called the Joint Battle Command-Platform, developed by tech nonprofit MITRE, is undergoing tests. The development kit behind it, called the Mobile/Handheld Computing Environment, will be released to app creators in July, the Army says.

          But until then, the envisioned apps for the Joint Battle Command-Platform will run a gambit of Army tasks. There will be a mapping function like the kinds the defense industry is developing for soldier smartphones and tablets. A Blue Force Tracker program will keep tabs on where friendly forces are. “Critical messaging” will exchange crucial data like medevac requests and on the ground reporting.

    • Tablets

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open source gaming – or things I do when I should be working

    “What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself” – Steve Wozniak

  • FOSS marketing is stupid

    I have been reluctant to get into one of this potentially flamey posts again, as they seem to result in the most vague comments and little outcome. Yet this issue is important and therefore I’ll take my time today to get it out. As Dion points out very valuable and thoughtful points about the presentation of KDE, also others both in KDE and on the outside use the term “marketing” self-evidently when they talk about presentational, distributional or promotional issues. Though using this buzz-term seems to attract some people to join the related groups and efforts it makes you look pretty dumb to outside people who know what marketing is. Instead of seeming more professional and mature projects, it shows how little FOSS people still understand about what they do economically. They know a lot about the details and many FOSS-enthusiasts seek for ways to transfer the FOSS-attitude of openness and collaboration to the “old” economy, yet the terminology is still caught in the “old” ways.

  • Web Browsers

  • Databases

    • MySQL, State of the Ecosystem 2011

      It was a radical thought at the time. In part because when I expressed it, I did it not only outwardly to the world, but inwardly to the company as well. Many at the time thought that the ecosystem danced at the whim of the MySQL AB entity. When Peter Zaitsev left to form Percona I remember very clearly a management meeting where there was a hubris that his business would amount to nothing, and that he was missing his opportunity to be a part of something greater. History is of course writing a very different story.

      So how is the ecosystem?

      It turns out it is pretty healthy.

      I wasn’t sure if that was the case up until a couple of weeks ago. I was having lunch with Moshe Shadmon of ScaleDB and I asked him “Do you think the market is collapsing?”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Will Oracle alienate Java community next?
    • Google’s showdown with Oracle over Android will go to trial before November

      Oracle sued Google last year claiming that Google had infringed Java patents in the Android operating system. Initially Oracle said that Google had infringed its Java patents but then filed an amended complaint to allege Google “directly copied” its Java code. However with Judge Alsup’s comments, it doesn’t look like he’s of a mind to let this lawsuit drag out for very long.

    • Oracle Advances NetBeans for Java 7

      Not everyone in the open source community has had a positive experience with Oracle. The NetBeans community however is thriving under Oracle, with multiple releases and nearly a million active users.

      This week Oracle continued its support for NetBeans with its third release since the Sun acquisition. NetBeans 7 provides new support for the upcoming Java 7 language release, in a move that is all about fostering Java adoption.

    • Oracle Patches 73 Vulnerabilities in April Update
    • LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 2 Released

      Just one week since beta 1 hit the Internet, LibreOffice 3.4 Beta 2 was released today. These developmental releases fulfill the plans to release weekly betas until final. The original 3.4 release date has slipped a bit from the earlier May 2 estimate, but is on track for May 31.

  • Education

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • SproutCore 1.5 Released

        We’re excited to announce the final release of SproutCore 1.5. It’s been almost four months since 1.4.5 shipped, and we have lots of exciting new stuff for you.

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Fellowship interview with Michiel de Jong

      Michiel de Jong: There are several ways you could explain it; my favourite angle is the software freedom angle. Software freedom used to mean the right to control (use, share, study and improve) the source code / the program that the application executes – the definition that FSFE use. Back in the day, that was enough. It was taken for granted that you already had control the data that the application handled; of course you do, it’s on your computer, or on a server where you have full access to at least the data that your applications are using.

      For installed software, both desktop and server, that view used to be accurate: if you controlled the source code you had software freedom. But then, slowly, installed software was pushed further away from the user by hosted software (stuff like Google Docs, Facebook and Twitter). Hosted websites like these aren’t primarily a source of information; they are interactive applications, and in this context software freedom doesn’t exist.

      It’s absurd that hosted software makes you surrender your data to the author of the application in question, but it’s what happens. It happened slowly, because informational websites became dynamic websites, and those dynamic websites then started accepting user input and slowly became interactive software. Now fully hosted software is widely used, and people use it to replace locally installed desktop applications.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Hardware

      • Acer Web Surf Station packs simple browser/media into Full HD monitor

        Acer‘s latest may look like a regular monitor, but the Acer Web Surf Station is actually the latest all-in-one internet terminal for people who really don’t want to invite a PC into their lives. Based around a 24-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080 LCD display, the Web Surf Station has an integrated web browser together with a media player – using Acer’s Clear.fi branded DLNA – that can stream content across a network (or indeed play it back from USB media).

  • Programming

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Former engineer who sued Cisco now faces criminal charges

    A onetime Cisco engineer who had sued his former employer, alleging it monopolized the business of servicing and maintaining Cisco equipment, has been charged by U.S. authorities with hacking.

    Peter Alfred-Adekeye, who left Cisco in 2005 to form two networking support companies, has been charged with 97 counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer system without authorization for the purposes of commercial advantage, according to an arrest warrant. He faces 10 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine if convicted on the charges.

  • The Lawsuit’s in the Past, But Taco Bell is Still on the Offensive

    As we told you on Tuesday, the law firm Beasley Allen recently dropped its high-profile lawsuit against Taco Bell which claimed that the meat used in Taco Bell’s food was something other than advertised.

    Now, most large corporate clients would use the voluntary dropping of a lawsuit as an opportunity to do, well, nothing. To quietly let the matter drop and move on with other matters at hand.

  • 10 more classic mistakes in sci-fi movies

    That’s it, another supreme list compiled. After overrated movies and the first part, this comes as the new crown jewel of poetic justice, wielded in the hands of Dedoimedo. Science fiction is a lovely genre, but some things are just not meant to be. I’m especially proud of the fecal weapons in the last point raised. That was a stroke of brilliance. But all other mistakes are valid annoyances that movie producers try to slip under the radar, unnoticed. Unfortunately for them, I’ve got the eye of the tiger and nothing gets past. The laws of physics must be obeyed.

    I hope you liked this. There might yet be a third part, but it depends on YOU. Send me your ideas, the things that bother you from the scientific and technological perspective, and they might feature in the next article. That would be all. Have fun science-fictioning.

  • Finance

    • Goldman Sachs, the Tallest Midget in the Room

      What passes for top-notch financial journalism these days is an in depth report in the New York Times about why Goldman Sachs, the most successful of all Wall Street firms, is so modest. Amid billions of dollars in profits, a rising share price, the big Wall Street firm doesn’t like to take full credit for its success.

      The Times seems to think the Goldman brass, led by CEO Lloyd Blankfein, is being too modest mainly because the firm is afraid to flaunt its brilliance at making money during a time of economic hardship. The writer implores Blankfein & Co. to remember that making money is good for shareholders and taxpayers, and thus they should “take a bow. Don’t hide behind the curtain” and starting telling the world how great they really are.

    • Banks 1, nation states nil

      The battle between the banks and nation states is shaping up as something that lies between a phony war and a rout.

      The bald facts are that three years after the crisis in which banking almost brought down the global economy, the biggest banks are bigger, more global and more entrenched in their positions courtesy of a now all-but-explicit government guarantee.

    • Best Way to Raise Campaign Money? Investigate Banks

      A hilarious report has come out courtesy of the National Institute of Money in State Politics, showing that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller – who is coordinating the investigation into the banks’ improper mortgage dealings – increased his campaign contributions from the finance sector this year by a factor of 88! He has raised $261,445 from finance, insurance and real estate contributors since he announced that he was going to be coordinating the investigation into improper foreclosure practices. That is 88 times as much as they gave him not over last year, but over the previous decade.

      This is about as perfect an example of how American politics works as you’ll ever see. This foreclosure issue is a monstrous story that is somehow escaping national headlines; essentially, all of the largest banks in the country have been engaged in an ongoing fraud and tax evasion scheme that among other things has resulted in many hundreds of billions in investor losses, and hundreds of thousands of improper foreclosures. Last week, the 14 largest mortgage lenders a group that includes bailout all-stars like Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, managed to negotiate a settlement with the federal government that will mandate some financial relief to homeowners who have been victims of improper foreclosure practices. It’s unclear yet exactly what damages and fines will be involved in the federal settlement, or how many homeowners will be affected. But certainly there are some who believe the federal settlement was a political end-run around the states’ efforts to extract their own deal from the banks.

    • My Comment Turned Post – Criminal Activity Never To Be Prosecuted
    • Spitzer on Institutional Corruption on Wall Street
    • Senate Investigations Subcommittee Releases Levin-Coburn Report On the Financial Crisis

      #
      # Investment Banks and Structured Finance. Investment banks reviewed by the Subcommittee assembled and sold billions of dollars in mortgage-related investments that flooded financial markets with high-risk assets. They charged $1 to $8 million in fees to construct, underwrite, and market a mortgage-backed security, and $5 to $10 million per CDO. New documents detail how Deutsche Bank helped assembled a $1.1 billion CDO known as Gemstone 7, stood by as it was filled it with low-quality assets that its top CDO trader referred to as “crap” and “pigs,” and rushed to sell it “before the market falls off a cliff.” Deutsche Bank lost $4.5 billion when the mortgage market collapsed, but would have lost even more if it had not cut its losses by selling CDOs like Gemstone. When Goldman Sachs realized the mortgage market was in decline, it took actions to profit from that decline at the expense of its clients. New documents detail how, in 2007, Goldman’s Structured Products Group twice amassed and profited from large net short positions in mortgage related securities. At the same time the firm was betting against the mortgage market as a whole, Goldman assembled and aggressively marketed to its clients poor quality CDOs that it actively bet against by taking large short positions in those transactions. New documents and information detail how Goldman recommended four CDOs, Hudson, Anderson, Timberwolf, and Abacus, to its clients without fully disclosing key information about those products, Goldman’s own market views, or its adverse economic interests. For example, in Hudson, Goldman told investors that its interests were “aligned” with theirs when, in fact, Goldman held 100% of the short side of the CDO and had adverse interests to the investors, and described Hudson’s assets were “sourced from the Street,” when in fact, Goldman had selected and priced the assets without any third party involvement. New documents also reveal that, at one point in May 2007, Goldman Sachs unsuccessfully tried to execute a “short squeeze” in the mortgage market so that Goldman could scoop up short positions at artificially depressed prices and profit as the mortgage market declined.

  • Privacy

    • Transparency and Privacy

      One of the keys to a successful open source community is the equality of every participant. An community that is open-by-rule will have strong values around transparency as well as respecting its participants privacy and independence. Such a community will also be unlikely to have a copyright assignment benefiting a commercial party. Here’s why.

    • Android data tied to users? Some say yes

      Like iOS devices, Android phones do collect location information in a local file. But they seem to erase it relatively quickly instead of saving it forever.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • More Wayne Gray. No! Again? Still?! Yes. He Wants to Reopen Discovery in the USPTO Dispute

        Even I finally got my bellyful of SCO. But there is yet one guy left who still can’t get enough. And so it transpires that there are new developments in the never-ending trademark dispute that was initiated by X/Open in 2001 when Wayne Gray tried to trademark the mark INUX. If you recall, the dispute was put on ice back in the summer of 2010, pending resolution of Gray’s civil litigation.

        He lost. Big time. Now he’s back at the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, filing a motion to reopen discovery there. Yes. He claims he has discovered “dispositive new evidence” from the SCO v. Novell trial, and he wants five more months of discovery to flesh it out.

    • Copyrights

      • Righthaven Defies Court, Ignores Domain Name Ruling

        Last Friday, the Chief Judge of the federal court in Nevada, which is overseeing more than 200 Righthaven copyright cases, dismissed Righthaven’s meritless claim to seize its victim’s domain names. In each case so far, Righthaven contended that the mere hosting of any infringing material means that the entire domain name was forfeit to the copyright troll. Chief Judge Hunt rejected that claim, explaining that the “Court finds that Righthaven’s request for such relief fails as a matter of law and is dismissed.”

Clip of the Day

debian-gnu-hurd




Credit: TinyOgg

04.22.11

Links 22/4/2011: Planning for GNOME 3.2

Posted in News Roundup at 5:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Ubuntu Linux boosted by 10,000 seat PC win

    Canonical has taken the wraps off a morale-boosting deal that has seen German insurance giant LVM Versicherungen convert 10,000 PCs to use Ubuntu Linux across the company’s operations.

    [...]

    The official release made no mention of the operating system being displaced but Techworld understands these were running older versions of Windows in recent years.

  • The Commodore 64 Lives Again

    The new iteration of the classic computer won’t run Windows (although the company claims you’ll be able to install it if you so choose). Instead, the Commodore 64 runs a version of the Linux operating system on an Intel processor, and boasts 2GB of memory and a modern Blu-ray or rewritable DVD optical drive.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Graphics Stack

      • New Nvidia Linux Driver Supports Ubuntu 11.04

        On April 20th, Nvidia launched version 270.41.06 of its graphics driver, which brought initial support for Xorg Server 1.10 and support for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system.

  • Applications

    • Glipper Gets Ubuntu AppIndicator Support
    • Mobile Media Converter, Cross-Platform Audio, Video Conversion Software

      You encounter so many different video and audio formats both on your computer and on the Internet that you often need a software to convert media to make it compatible with your preferred software or hardware media players. The sheer amount of formats available sometimes makes this a difficulty process, considering that you need to find software that supports all the formats on your computer.

    • Geany – A Great Lightweight Code Editor For Linux

      Surprisingly, Linux doesn’t offer that many good IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments). I believe this is because back in the day most Linux programmers took out good old Notepad (or gedit in this case), and started coding from that.

    • More Of The Best Linux Screenlets

      Many users are already familiar with the advantages that Screenlets can offer, so I decided to seek out which ones were essential to the productivity and aesthetics of any desktop. Screenlets are small community created Python applications that can add style and functionality to your Linux desktop. Screenlets are easy to use, easy to create, and there are hundreds available to download. After extensive testing I found this select bunch of Screenlets particularly useful, many are included by default. More information about Screenlets and coming updates can be found at the bottom of this post.

    • 6 of the Best Free Linux Web Caches

      Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is considered to be the fundamental protocol of the web. This simple request/response protocol is used for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. The web consumes a large portion of internet traffic.

      With HTTP, a client makes a request for a resource to a server, and the server delivers messages with additional content such as images, style sheets and JavaScripts. HTTP dictates how these messages are displayed and transmitted, and how web servers and browsers should respond to various commands.

    • Audacious 2.5.0 Released With Option To Dock Plugins Into The GTK Interface, Configurable Columns, More [PPA]

    • Proprietary

      • Opera Browser: Strong Enough to Sing the Big Boys Off the Stage?

        Coke or Pepsi? Kirk or Picard? Betty or Veronica? The great battles of the marketplace tend to be duels, and few people gripe if you leave out RC, Sisko, or Cheryl Blossom. The “Browser Wars” are no different, with “IE vs. Firefox” having replaced “Netscape vs. IE” long ago, and other options are often forgotten. Opera has been one of the strongest alternate browsers for a long time, and it was my browser of choice prior to Firefox. Opera 11 (free) continues the Opera tradition of doing something different instead of a minor reskin of someone else’s codebase, and delivers a plethora of features that are actually designed to be usable, not to pad out a checklist.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • Vi: An Introduction
      • Gnome 2. Anonymous browsing with Tor

        I wanted to experience the thrill of browsing anonymously, or to a navigation system that does not easily reveal the information on the connection you use. The choice of which software to use is gone on Tor, but only because it is the most famous. Personally, I proceeded to download the latest version of TOR available for my GNU/Linux directly from its site.

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE 4.6.1

        A few weeks ago, I upgraded to KDE 4.6.1 in Fedora 14 from KDE 4.5. The first login after reboot dumped me into Gnome. What the heck was going on? Apparently, in GDM, the entry had changed from KDE4 to KDE Plasma Desktop. Once I logged in that way, I was able to see the new KDE. The biggest change I saw was that notifications looked much nicer. It’s hard to quantify in what way they looked nicer, but something they changed about the appearance is makes it more appealing to my eyes. Also, the way it animates really helps a lot. For example, when two of my contacts sign into IM networks at the same time, the second notification is smaller so that my desktop is not overwhelmed with notifications. If I mouse over the second one, it grows and the first one shrinks.

      • KWin and Plasma Active

        Plasma Active is an extremely awesome project and I am really looking forward to work on it and have my first own Plasma powered tablet. Of course KWin will be the Compositor and Window Manager in Plasma Active. And this is pretty awesome and very interesting for our future development.

      • Marble desktop globe adds map creation wizard

        The Marble development team has released version 1.1 of the KDE Education Project’s virtual globe application, which is similar to Google’s Earth application. According to the developers, the update is special as a number of the new features were developed as part of Google Code-in (GCI), leading the developers to decide to “get it out between the usual KDE application releases” – KDE 4.6 includes Marble 1.0 by default.

        Marble 1.1 features the addition of a new map creation wizard that supports three different kinds of map themes; maps made from one large source image, maps which are accessible from tile servers like OpenStreetMap, Google Maps or Ovi Maps, or those accessible via Web Map Service (WMS) servers. However, the developers consider the map creation wizard to be a “technical preview”, noting that it version 1.2 of Marble will improve its usability and include “additional features that could not be introduced in Marble 1.1 while keeping the library binary compatible at the same time.”

      • First ownCloud Sprint

        For four days, starting on Friday April 15th, about half a dozen souls gathered in the hive01 headquarters in Stuttgart. The goal of this very first ownCloud sprint was to discuss, plan and of course hack on the web services project.

        To kickoff we had a brainstorming session and discussion of the topics that were to be dealt with over the following days. We extensively debated fundamental things concerning the future directions of ownCloud.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome’s new makeover upsets traditional users

        It was a movement started by the KDE group around 3 years ago — radically redesigning how the Linux desktop looks. Since then, Ubuntu — the most popular flavor of Linux out there — latched on and announced it too will radically alter how the computer interface will look.

        Through all the retching changes, the ‘conservative’ linux user always had the predictable and most popular ‘skin’ of Linux — Gnome — to fall back on. It was the default on most flavors (distributions) of Linux — till this week.

      • Planning for GNOME 3.2 underway

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Some screenshots of Mandriva 2011 Beta 2

        Ms. Susan Linton described her impressions on the second beta release of Mandriva 2011 here. There are some additional comments here. Can you guess what the common denominator is? :-P
        In my case, I don’t like the Rosa launcher, either. I’m also a bit sad because the netdrake seems to be gone, along with the desktop cube effect.
        However, I’d like to focus this entry on the new features…

    • Red Hat Family

      • [Luc de Louw] I got employed by Red Hat

        I’ll continue to work at Siemens IT Solutions and Services AG until approx. mid of June and start working at Red Hat at 1st of July.

      • Fedora

        • Sanity saver: Fedora 15 answers Ubuntu’s Unity

          The Fedora 15 beta from the Red-Hat sponsored Fedora Project has dropped squarely into a moment of uncertainty and upheaval for the Linux desktop.

          The planned new Unity interface for Ubuntu 11.04, that replaces GNOME, is rough start. And while GNOME 3 – Fedora’s new default desktop – is considerably more mature than Unity, it’s still a radical break with the past that’s already bringing out the dissenters.

          It’s enough to make even the most diehard of GNOME fans retreat to the stable, if somewhat foreign, world of KDE. But not Fedora. Fedora is bravely diving into the GNOME 3 waters, even serving as one of the GNOME 3 live demos. Indeed most users will likely get their first taste of GNOME 3 from Fedora, which looks to be the first major distro to ship a final release with GNOME 3.

    • Debian Family

      • Try 2 Non-Debian Grandchildren this Summer

        April is raining Ubuntu and its family and open source world seems over loaded on Debian distros, what with Canonical adopting a bi-annual release this month forwards. Debian and its derivatives appear to be the flavour of the month but there are far too many Linux distros that are apt for Summer.

        Let us look at three distros that are non-Debian Grandchildren. First is the Xange, a true blue blood Fedora with the elegance of KDE. Fusion Linux distro, which runs every application, meant for desktops without requiring new installations is a Fedora that retains its popularity rating for its high-compatibility capability. Third, fuddle around with the Fuduntu on your lappie or netbook and enjoy a summer of flashy, elegance and fuddly distros.

      • People behind Debian: Meike Reichle, member of Debian Women

        Meike Reichle is a Debian developer since 2008 but has been involved for longer than that, in particular in Debian Women. She’s a great speaker and shared her experience in a Debconf talk.

        She’s also part of the Debian publicity team and managed the live coverage of the last release on identi.ca. Enough introduction, learn more about her by reading the interview. My questions are in bold, the rest is by Meike.

        [...]

        Debian press work is mainly about providing an official and coordinated point of contact to anyone wanting information from or about Debian. The press team answers all sorts of inquiries (the most popular one is is of course always the next release date) and makes sure all important events and developments within Debian receive the attention and recognition they deserve. Debian is a diverse project where every sort of contributor is free to voice his or her opinion in any way. We don’t have NDAs or prescribed terminology. That’s one of the things I love about Debian but also something that makes us difficult to handle for conventional media. They want official statements, in generally understandable terms, at appointed times. That’s what the press team takes care of. Almost all of the press work is done in the publicity team, which coordinates using IRC, Mail and SVN. The publicity team also publishes the Debian Project News, which are very popular among our users and developers. Press work is also an area of work that offers lots of possibilities for non-technical contribution. http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity lists a number of possibilities for contribution and, like most Debian Teams, we’d be more than grateful to get some more helping hands and happy to introduce interested newcomers to our work.

      • Special mention for Special purpose Debain-Med distro

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Canonical takes another step against the Community

          In a posting to the Sounder mailing list earlier today, Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical announced that the long running mailing list would be shuttered. The decision followed a recent heated political discussion on the list and a proposal to close the list the Community Council by Alan Pope.

          Even though the Sounder list might seem like an insignificant (and out of place) part of the community, I see this as yet another step that Canonical is taking against the very community that’s made Ubuntu so successful. With the debacle that is Ubuntu’s switch to Unity already polarizing users and driving many away and now the closing of a social list, it’s slowly becoming obvious that Canonical is taking a step away from the happy community project that could take over the desktop and taking one towards corporatism. The community, unless it tows the corporate line, doesn’t really matter to them anymore and that’s truly sad since it’s that very community that helped put the company where it is today.

        • Ubuntu is Shutting Down Off-Topic Mailing List
        • Ubuntu Natty in Virtualbox with Unity

          I have found myself explaining multiple times over the past few weeks how to get Ubuntu Natty with Unity working in Virtualbox virtual machines, there seems to be a common misconception that it doesn’t work (it does) and a common perception that it is not obvious how to do it (perfectly valid). So this is how. Firstly install a fairly new version of Oracle VirtualBox on your host operating system (I am using Ubuntu 10.10, I expect others including Windows would also work). The open source edition of Virtualbox might also work, but I am using the Oracle edition, not the OSE edition from the repositories.

          [...]

          Set up a new virtual machine, give it say a gig of ram and 32MB video ram

        • Ubuntu 11.04 UI Takes Inspiration From Smartphones

          Canonical has released details of the new version of its Linux-based Ubuntu operating system which has taken design inspirations from tablet and smartphone interfaces and brings the new Unity interface to all platforms.

        • Ubuntu 11.04 is ready for release

          A big change in the server update is the addition of the Cactus distribution of OpenStack. The open-source cloud platform has been incorporated alongside Eucalyptus into the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). The move, revealed alongside the release of OpenStack’s Bexar version in February, puts a rival to Eucalpytus into the heart of UEC.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Stick a Fork in Flock: Why it Failed

        You might think that Flock failed simply because the idea, or execution, wasn’t good enough. I’ve written about Flock a number of times since 2005, and it might be hard to remember now — but there was a time when a “social browser” seemed like it might be a good idea. Flock tried to simplify interacting with social tools like Flickr, del.icio.us, and WordPress. This was long before Facebook and Twitter, which helped speed Flock’s demise.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • I like OpenOffice disinvestment spin

      I like the ReadWriteWeb spin a lot but of course Oracle disinvests. Apparently they also axed their upcoming Cloud Office offering. As a computer users I just want to use my word processor (with a nice interface) and LibreOffice suits me best. It all about choice after all. My colleague Charles-H. Schulz wrote on behalf of the document foundation:

      The development of TDF community and LibreOffice is going forward as planned, and we are always willing to include new members and partners. We will provide as many information as we can with the progress of the situation. We are currently making every possible effort to offer a smooth transition to the project.

    • Red Hat’s Ceylon language is an unneeded tempest in a teapot

      Red Hat can’t be serious. The leading Linux vendor can’t really be planning to develop a brand-new programming language and SDK to compete with Java — can it?

  • CMS

    • Drupal 8 Design Initiative

      Way back in September 2010 I launched the Design 4 Drupal Core (D4DC) project – the initial goal was to define a better process for adding new themes to Drupal core. This grew out of the Drupal 7 process which was essentially a code race between Bartik and Corolla. It was clear to me this process could be improved. In the commercial world we always select the design first (as opposed to an entire theme), so I started making the argument that any new core theme would have to be selected based on the design – then coded into theme.

  • Project Releases

    • Firewall Builder Version 4.2 Released

      With today’s release of Firewall Builder V4.2, NetCitadel continues to demonstrate its leadership in the firewall configuration management market.

      Unlike many firewall analysis applications that only allow users to view and analyze firewall rules, Firewall Builder actually generates configuration files that can be loaded onto the firewall using the built-in installer. Even the most complex firewall rules are simple to configure in Firewall Builder letting organizations focus on their security policies instead of searching for commands.

  • Government

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Death of The Document

      The document as we know it — static and one-sided — has disappeared.

      Documents today are no longer stand-still and no longer offer only one view. The old model doesn’t work for today’s social and always-connected business. Business communication has evolved to become more fluid, dynamic and collaborative and is now an integral part of business processes. And the concept of a document (whether that be text, spreadsheet, presentation or a hybrid approach) is still one of the critical outputs of many businesses.

Leftovers

  • Copyrights

    • IMSLP Under Attack

      Today, the registrar of our domain, a division of Go-Daddy, froze our domain name (imslp.org) due to a complaint issued by the Music Publisher’s Association of the UK, who made two assertions in their complaint:

Clip of the Day

IRC Numbers Explanation


Credit: TinyOgg

Links 22/4/2011: Linux References in Portal 2, Preview of Fedora 15

Posted in News Roundup at 3:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Doesn’t Need To Kiss Anyone’s Ass

    I’m tired of everybody cringing in the corner apologizing for GNU/Linux and FOSS. I’m tired of these submissive little floor-kissers scurrying around to rush to the frat-hazing list of demands presented by the troll community. I’m tired of Linux being the only platform that is always under attack.

  • Server

    • System z Gets Extra Linux Support, Customer Win

      IBM continued to build momentum around its mainframe hardware, as Novell introduced extended Linux support for the big iron platform while Big Blue itself said it had snagged a significant competitive win for System z from Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.

      Novell said it would for the first time add SUSE Linux on System z to its Long Term Service Pack Support program. Under LTSS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server customers get three years of additional support, mostly covering access to new service and security packs, in addition to seven years of general support.

  • Google

    • Exclusive: Chrome notebooks confirmed to be released June/July

      You may or may not have seen the news about the Google Chrome production notebooks floating around the web today. Ariotech reports that “Google product manager Sundar Pichai said, Google were still fixing some bugs and improving compatibility with devices such as digital cameras on Chrome OS.” and that they expected the company to release the devices during “Summer 2011.”

  • Kernel Space

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • A Gnome Refugee’s Guide to Enlightenment

      The third major installment of the Gnome desktop released earlier this month and I am sure many users found themselves shell shocked with more than a few of the changes. Some will adjust, some will stick with Gnome 2 (or the classic desktop), and I am sure more than a few will go looking for something else to use as their desktop of choice. Bruce Byfield recently did an overview of seven alternatives to the Gnome 3 desktop and the second one he lists is the Enlightenment desktop.

    • A failure of logic

      Unity, KDE 4.6, Gnome 3 … are they all improvements, if they’re requiring the same amount of time, but more powerful hardware?

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Active Edge Screen Actions in KDE 4.6

        What actions can be configured? Any of the following:

        * No Action.
        * Show Dashboard.
        * Show Desktop.
        * Lock Screen.
        * Prevent Screen Locking.
        * Present Windows — All Desktops.
        * Present Windows — Current Desktop.
        * Desktop Grid.
        * Desktop Cube.
        * Desktop Cylinder.
        * Desktop Sphere.
        * Flip Switch — All Desktops.
        * Flip Switch — Current Desktop.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME 3

        I have been using Fedora 15 for several weeks now and while I normally use Xmonad as my main desktop environment I have been using GNOME 3 so that I can work on Fedora Docs with a better understanding of the new system.

  • Distributions

    • Red Hat Family

      • Scientific Linux 6 – Another great distro, but

        There are several critical questions we need to answer now. Is Scientific Linux any good? Yes, it is. It is a very robust, very decent, very capable desktop distro, with lots of great things. However, it requires some extra work to get fully configured.

      • Fedora

        • Preview of Fedora 15

          I haven’t had time to poke around with all the new features yet. I’ve only been running the Beta for a few hours. I don’t have any complaints so far.

    • Debian Family

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) Beta 2 Review

          Ubuntu Natty Beta 2 is out and this is the last Ubuntu Natty beta before the official release on April 28th. So what’s new in this beta? Well compared to the previous beta 1 there aren’t many visible changes except for lots of bug fixes and improvement in the stability of unity.

        • If You Are Going To Try Natty, Go All The Way. Otherwise Don’t Even Start

          Moving to Natty is not mere upgrading some code or some software packages. Moving to Natty needs us to change, to learn and to de-learn. You can’t move to Natty unless and until you ‘quit’ the Ubuntu you knew. Otherwise you will continue to struggle with trying to drag and drop applications on the top menu. Quit Ubuntu, if you want to move to Natty! Like it or not, that’s true.

        • Canonical confirms Apr. 28 release for Ubuntu 11.04, online trial version

          Canonical confirmed that it will ship Ubuntu 11.04 (“Natty Narwhal”) on April 28, and announced a new online trial version of the Linux operating system. The U.K.-based company also announced some new details of its server edition, including easier provisioning and a fully certified J2EE stack.

        • Ubuntu Linux 11.04′s Target Audience: Casual Windows Users

          Do you use Windows not because you like it or there’s some specific Windows-only application that you must use but because it’s what came on your PC? If that’s you, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, wants you to try their soon to be out Ubuntu 11.04 Linux desktop.

          When I talked with Canonical marketing manager Gerry Carr, I hadn’t expected him to say that. Over the last few years, Linux desktop vendors haven’t really tried to take on Windows head-on. Oh, to be certain, I think the Linux desktop is great. I’m writing this story on Mint 10, an Ubuntu variant, and I use openSUSE 11.4, Fedora 14, and MEPIS 8.0 on other PCs and laptops. But, I know most people are content to use Windows because that’s what comes on their PCs. Carr thinks though that with Ubuntu 11.04’s new desktop interface and a few other tricks up Canonical’s sleeve, Ubuntu can win over “casual Windows users.”

        • Not Loch Ness, But An Ubuntu Sighting in Scotland

          I just returned from a trip to the Scottish Highlands in search of the Loch Ness Monster and the Bonnie Prince. While I’m sad to report that both remain elusive, I did spot Ubuntu in use by a small business where I least expected it. Here are the details.

          I took advantage of a few free days after a conference in London last week to travel up to Scotland, a gorgeous country which I’d never seen. After stops in different parts of the Lowlands, I made my way to Inverness, the rugged Highlands’ only real city. It’s a short drive from Loch Ness, which needs no introduction, and from Culloden, where the last attempt of the lawful sovereigns of Great Britain to recapture the throne from usurping foreigners ended in disaster in 1746.

        • Ubuntu Server 11.04: Fully baked in 7 days

          If you have nothing better to do next Thursday after stuffing yourself full of Easter lamb or ham on Sunday, you might want to wander over to Canonical, get a slice of “Natty Narwhal”, and chew on a bit of Ubuntu Server 11.04.

          The Natty Narwhal release is based on the Linux 2.6.38 kernel, which came out in mid-March with lots of interesting performance enhancements. One of the important ones is transparent huge pages (THPs), which boost the memory page size from 4KB to 2MB and considerably speed up database, virtual machine hypervisor, and guest operating system performance.

        • Meet Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’… Linux just got cool

          When Canonical releases the latest version of its Ubuntu Linux operating system on 28 April, it’s ready to take on Windows. At least that’s what Director of Communications Gerry Carr told PC Advisor in an exclusive interview to promote Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’.

        • Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal’: A First Look at the OS

          The April 28 release of the open-source operating system update may be the most exciting yet for Ubuntu Linux. Here’s an advance tour of the features, including the Unity desktop and the Compiz window manager.

        • Ubuntu Transforms Your PC Experience
        • Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 Natty Narwhal Quick Look | Screenshots
        • Ubuntu 11.04 Doesn’t Play With Nouveau Gallium3D
        • Ubuntu 11.04: The desktop Linux you’ve been waiting for?

          Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu version of Linux, is making a new push for a larger slice of the PC market with a series of changes in the next version of the operating system, scheduled for release next week. The upgrade, Ubuntu 11.04, comes with a new interface that takes its cues from the worlds of smartphones and web search.

          The company plans seize the opportunity to promote Ubuntu 11.04 as a viable alternative for existing Windows PC users. PCWorld calls it “perhaps the most widely anticipated Linux release ever.”

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-based FROG-I robot thinks its a dinosaur

      The Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrated a quadruped robot intended to test gait control and locomotion — and eventually mimic the movement of a triceratops. The flexibly jointed, 3.1-foot FROG-I robot runs Linux on an Intel Xscale PXA270 processor, communicating via Wi-Fi with a host computer, while lower-level functions are controlled by two Texas Instruments DSPs.

    • Enea integrates Timesys’ LinuxLink in new multicore dev platform

      Enea announced a major upgrade to its embedded Linux development environment, incorporating Timesys’ LinuxLink development software. The newly renamed Enea Linux PlatformBuilder is initially available in a “ELPB-NE” version for NetLogic Microsystems’ MIPS-based multicore XLP, XLR, and XLS processors and combines Enea’s former Eclipse-based framework with the LinuxLink configuration and build system, says the company.

    • Desktop Computing with ARM

      So, I don’t see any problem with small, cheap computers running Linux and ARM moving into the desktop space. Maybe it won’t be a tidal wave this year, but next year when Cortex A15 is out, watch out!

    • Tablets

      • Toshiba launches Regza AT300 into uncertain Honeycomb tablet market

        Toshiba announced that its 10.1-inch Android 3.0 tablet will ship in Japan in June for $723 under the name “Regza AT300.” But despite rosy long-term projections for Android tablets, early problems — high cost requirements, an unstable Android 3.0, and Japanese component shortages — some vendors are delaying or sticking with with Android 2.x, say industry reports.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Events

    • Better Software 2011, Florence 27-28 June 2011

      The conference will bring together experts in the fields of agile project management, open source, web2.0, and all the elements which contribute to the production of a stable and marketable product.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox developer to open San Francisco office

        Mozilla, the developer of the popular Firefox web browser, will open its first San Francisco office this summer, bolstering the city’s growing renown as a technology hub.

        Mayor Edwin Lee will announce this afternoon that the Mountain View nonprofit has signed a 15,000-square-foot lease at 2 Harrison St. in the South of Market district, providing space for up to 125 staff members and volunteers.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and OpenOffice compared

      Kaminsky and Dormann only offer conservative interpretations of their results. Kaminsky says that, in his view, the situation has improved considerably. Neither of the researchers makes a statement about the potential reasons for their findings. With Microsoft, the introduction of the Software Development Lifecycle is likely to have played a major role, as the vendor has established specific processes and tools for increasing its product security in this context.

    • The Document Foundation is open for members

      With the last months the community around LibreOffice and The Document Foundation worked hard to establish policies, processes, infrastructure and all the things you need to deliver a high quality software. One of our basic principles is that we will acknowledge this merit and allow all the contributors to become official members of our community. All members will have the right to run for a seat in the Foundation’s Board of Directors, elect the board and drive the future of our projects.

  • Government

    • Alternative, open source mail server improves MEPs’ email access

      Policy staffers at the Greens/European Free Alliance are offering MEPs and their staff better access to their email, using a server built with free and open source software. The staffers want the EP to increase its use of free and open source software solutions, saying the EP should rid itself of vendor lock-in.

      The alternative server synchronises with the proprietary system currently in use at the EP, yet allows MEPs to access their email using more than a single proprietary email client, more than just one proprietary web browser and access their email using more than one proprietary smart phone system.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Data

      • Google Invites You to Edit the U.S. Map

        Google has invited “citizen cartographers” to refine the U.S. map for Google Maps and Google Earth.

      • Geek of the Week: Yaw Anokwa: UW Ph.D. student, Open Data Kit and Change

        One of the goals of GeekWire’s “Geek of the Week” feature is to shine a light on extraordinary people in the Pacific Northwest technology community. Yaw Anokwa, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Washington, certainly fits that profile — from his Open Data Kit research project to his work as a co-founder of the group Change at the UW.

        Continue reading for more details through his answers to our questionnaire — including some great advice for better efficiency in work and life, and a particularly interesting answer to the question of what he would do if someone gave him $1 million to launch a startup.

  • Programming

    • Rails To Support HTTP Streaming

      The Rails project has announced that Rails 3.1 is going to support HTTP streaming, aka chunked responses. fxn has posted a detailed blog about this. fx starts off with explaining what is HTTP streaming, which you can read here.

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • FEC Probes Obama’s 2008 Campaign Finances

      Barack Obama raised a record-shattering $750 million on his way to winning the 2008 presidential election. But that stunning flood of cash has triggered an investigation by the Federal Election Commission, which is taking a detailed look at the campaign’s records and transactions.

    • FEC Launches Audit of Obama’s 2008 Campaign
    • Startup America: New Commitments Fueling America’s Entrepreneurs

      This afternoon at Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley, following the President’s national town hall on Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity, I’ll join a group of entrepreneurs for a livestreamed panel on Startup America, the White House-led initiative to encourage and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship across the country.

      This initiative is a top priority for President Obama. Entrepreneurship is a key ingredient to economic growth. Startups all across the country play a crucial role in job creation, since these companies generate the lion’s share of net new jobs. Startups are also responsible for developing breakthroughs in industries such as information technology, biotechnology, and clean energy that will allow the United States to compete and win in the global economy.

  • Censorship

    • Freedom on the Net 2011

      Freedom House’s Sanjay Kelly and Sarah Cook just released a new report: Freedom on the Net 2011: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media. According to the report, two electoral democracies – Turkey and South Korea – engage in substantial political censorship.

  • DRM

    • PS3 hack case: graf_chokolo closes blog after threats from Sony

      PS3Crunch, which apparently has ties to Egorenkov, detailed the page’s closure: “If you are wondering why some of the pages have been removed at grafchokolo.com, then you need to know how Sony Computer Entertainment Europe are forcing us to remove them or graf_chokolo will be fined 250,000 Euros or worse, 6 months time in prison.”

      The closure extended to all development blogging, documentation and Git repositories, though the site maintains they hold back-ups to everything. The only thing still live is Egorenkov’s legal donation page, which was set up in March.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

Clip of the Day

Hackers part18


Credit: TinyOgg

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