08.25.11

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • More Windows 7 corruption and repair woes

    In comparison, GNU/Linux has similar repair software that is used by booting the repair DVD for the distribution. It scans the installed packages and repairs as necessary. Since the Linux boot sequence is far less complex than Windows, the kernel can at least boot and get the user to a command prompt (in case X11 can’t start), allowing for further troubleshooting of log files. Fortunately, I haven’t needed to run a repair like this for GNU/Linux in a long long time. Corruption and repairs just aren’t needed like they are in Windows. But, I’m guessing the latest GNU/Linux repair DVDs are very efficient at fixing issues, if any do come up.

• Kernel Space

  • he 20th Anniversary of Linux

  • Linux @ 20: The Swiss Army knife of operating systems

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Migrate Joomla Content (Articles) Using phpMyAdmin

    • Changing Desktop Appearance On Linux Mint 11

  • Games

    • Feature: Finding Success Through Open Source Game Development

      In a new Gamasutra feature, contributor Michael Thomsen looks at the sometimes surprising direction game development can take once its opened up to a group of excited enthusiasts and modders.

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • [Clonezilla 1.2.10-7
      released]

    • [Tiny Core Linux 3.8.3 released]

  • Red Hat Family

    • Finnish City of Kankaanpaa Cuts Project Hardware Costs by 50 Percent with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

      In 2008, the city’s information and communications technology (ICT) department faced several IT-related challenges. The management and configuration of individual desktops at several locations in and around the city, including diverse places such as public libraries and schools became very difficult to manage. In addition, there were numerous mission-critical solutions running on physical servers in its datacenter that presented a constant risk of downtime, which could directly impact business continuity. Lastly, the effect of running IT services on a limited number of physical servers increased complexity when deploying new applications, services or during hardware migration projects, which the city found to be both time consuming and expensive.

    • Telstra cloud certified Red Hat Enterprise Linux ready

      elstra has received Red Hat Enterprise Linux certification providing certainty to Australian organisations moving into Telstra’s cloud computing environment.

• Devices/Embedded

  • SilverStone DC01: An Entry Into The Linux NAS Market

  • $25 PC alpha board successfully runs Linux

    Late last month we reported that the $25 PC had gone into alpha production. That meant the spec of the board had been finalized by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and they wanted hardware to start testing. Now they have an alpha board to play with.

    The alpha board is significantly larger than the final product will be, but as testament to just how small this thing is even scaled up, the alpha version is about the size of 3 credit cards. The final version will be credit-card sized.

  • Phones

    • Android

      • Bringing an Unloaded Knife to a Gunfight

        The court in the Netherlands has thrown out Apple’s charges of infringement of a design patent againts Samsung only asking Samsung to change a swipe-scroll feature to clear them for importation. Apple lost huge points for fudging pictures and claiming the shape of a tablet was their idea.

      • Samsung v Apple in NL: Happy selling, Samsung!

      • HTC Bliss Handled in The Wild

      • Millennial Media: Android Leads All Mobile Platforms with 61% Share

        The latest Millennial Media ‘Mobile Mix’ has landed today and it shows Android continuing its dominance over all other mobile platforms. According to their ad network metrics, Android has grown 15% month-over-month and now has a 61% share of overall smartphone impressions. Apple comes in at a distant second place with 21% of the market, down six points from the month before. For whatever reason, the dip was considerably bigger than the previous few months which only saw slight 1% declines. Coming in third, RIM and their BlackBerry platform also dipped a point to 14% of the pie.

Free Software/Open Source

• Infoblox and Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) Team to Help Optimize Development of Critical Open Source Internet Infrastructure Software

• Taiwan should not overlook Korea moving to develop open-source smartphones

• Events

  • NoSQL Now! Conference to Open This Week in San Jose

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Fantastic Chrome Extensions for Linux Users

  • Mozilla

    • How To Make Firefox Look And Feel More Like Chrome

    • Mozilla WebAPI wants to replace native apps with HTML5

      Mozilla has launched an ambitious new project aimed at breaking down the proprietary app systems on today’s mobile devices. The project, dubbed WebAPI, is Mozilla’s effort to provide a consistent, cross-platform, web-based API for mobile app developers. Using WebAPI, developers would write HTML5 applications rather than native apps for iOS, Android, and other mobile platforms.

• SaaS

  • Eucalyptus Open Source Cloud Gets High-Availability Injection

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Oracle v. Google – Damages Report – Try Again, Oracle

    The court heard the oral arguments on the Daubert motion last Thursday and rendered its decision [PDF] on the same – back to the drawing boards, Oracle. But we shouldn’t be too quick to draw a blanket conclusion in favor of Google from Judge Alsup’s order. Rather, we need to parse it and consider what the order says.

• Healthcare

  • OpenEMR achieves full ONC certification

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Fellowship interview with Richard Shipman

    Richard Shipman, Teaching Fellow at the Computer Science department of Aberystwyth University, has extensive experience of working with Free Software and discussing its strengths and weaknesses with others.

• Licensing

  • Why the GPL sky isn’t falling

    With all of the talk about the license for the Linux kernel being violated by Google and downstream vendors of the Android operation system, I wanted to find out what would happen in a worst-case scenario.

    Specifically, if someone wanted to sue a vendor for GPL non-compliance on behalf of the Linux kernel, who could do it, and what might happen next?

    To understand this, let’s back up and talk about how “ownership” of the Linux kernel works. Throughout this discussion, I will be talking about the Linux kernel proper, not any form of the broader Linux operating system (aka GNU/Linux, if you’re so inclined). Ownership of the operating system is a little easier: Red Hat owns Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE owns SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and so on.

• Standards/Consortia

  • Bart Hanssens:

    next #odfplugfest interop event will be in Gouda, The Netherlands, November 17/18 plugtest.opendocsociety.org/doku.php #fedict #noiv #odf

Leftovers

• Hardware

  • Compact 1.8GHz Atom PC is just $200

• Security

  • Twitter adds SSL security

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • General Electric’s Jim Cramer Heads to Midwest to Cheerlead for Fracking

    Today, CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer’s “Invest in America” series will take the show to a seemingly unlikely locale. The crew will head to a place many would consider the middle of nowhere — the state of North Dakota.

  • Plain Talk: Gore deplores BS skewing climate debate

    It has been nearly two years now since Wendell Potter, the former public relations expert for two of the nation’s largest health insurers, wrote the book “Deadly Spin,” exposing the misleading advertising campaigns and dirty tricks that insurance companies have used to try to scuttle meaningful health care reform.

    In the book Potter, who is now a senior fellow at the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, revealed that the health insurance industry has been using many of the same tactics and, indeed, some of the same people who successfully fought off tobacco regulation for decades. Tobacco interests used doctors and other medical “experts” to discredit the research that found tobacco causes cancer and numerous other diseases in not just smokers, but people around them.

• Finance

  • Cameron and Osborne did the Swiss tax deal to support tax evasion – there’s no other explanation

    The UK – Swiss tax deal does not meet with my approval, as some will have noticed. The deal is outlined here. My objections are littered through the blogs preceding this one.
    But let’s stand back for a moment and consider why the UK have done this deal – uniquely (because it seems unlikely that the supposedly similar German one will get parliamentary approval and so will not happen).

  • Under Fire, Goldman Sachs CEO Hires Top-Notch Attorney

    Goldman Sachs’ shares nosedived nearly 5% after it confirmed that its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has hired Reid Weingarten, a high-profile Washington, D.C., defense attorney to defend the embattled executive in connection with the Department of Justice’s inquiry into Blankfein and other firm officials.

    The Justice probe is looking into findings in a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations which alleges Goldman Sachs (GS) executives misled Congress and investors about its mortgage-backed securities deals.

  • Could Blankfein Face Prison?

    The Goldman Sachs CEO didn’t get a big-time criminal-defense lawyer because he’s worried about an SEC wrist slap—there’s a real possibility of doing time, says former Goldman managing director Nomi Prins.

  • Job Creation and America’s Future

    Right at the beginning the report hits us in the face with a few statistics highlighted in big text that succinctly capture the job picture in 2011: US jobs have declined by 7 million since December 2007; 20% of men are not working today, up from 7% in 1970; there has been a 23% drop in new business creation since 2007; the jobless recovery is projected to last 60 months; 10% of Americans move annually, down from 20% in 1985.

  • Revealed: Former Goldman Sachs VP Turned Issa Staffer Supervised Scheduling Of Elizabeth Warren Incident (Think Progress)

    Last week, ThinkProgress revealed that Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) hired Peter Haller, a former Goldman Sachs vice president, as one of his top aides. Haller, who adopted his mother’s maiden name in 2008 and had escaped public scrutiny until now, coordinated an Oversight Committee letter to regulators demanding that they justify new Dodd-Frank rules impacting investment banks like his old employer, Goldman Sachs. After publication of our story, the Project on Government Oversight discovered more of Haller’s Oversight Committee letters, again on issues directly related to Goldman Sachs.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks

    The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers’ guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags.

  • Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills

    July 29 marked the one-year anniversary of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, a year that has seen similar anti-immigrant bills emerge across the country. Thanks to the release of over 800 pieces of “model legislation” by the Center for Media and Democracy, we can now pinpoint the source of the outbreak to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a bill factory for legislation that benefits the bottom line of its corporate members. While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.