TechrightsSearch results for 'tanenbaum' (page 1 of 2) http://techrights.org Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Sat, 07 Jan 2017 22:03:37 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.14 Links 19/12/2016: NetworkManager 1.4.4, GNU Hurd 0.9 http://techrights.org/2016/12/19/networkmanager-1-4-4/ http://techrights.org/2016/12/19/networkmanager-1-4-4/#comments Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:11:01 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=97591 This great search was powered by Search Unleashed.
Help to remove this message by getting the site owner to support this software.

… That commitment just received a huge boost, thanks to a $20-million gift from the Larry and Judy Tanenbaum family. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (BA’94) was on hand at a press conference on Dec. 16 to announce the launch of the Neuro’s new Tanenbaum Open Science Institute. “This is a catalyst,” says Neuro director Guy Rouleau of the Tanenbaum gift. “This is really going to allow us to get things done.”

McGill Neurology will no longer patent researchers’ findings, …

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/12/19/networkmanager-1-4-4/feed/ 0 Links 5/8/2016: ROSA Fresh R8, GNU C Library 2.24 http://techrights.org/2016/08/05/gnu-c-library-2-24/ http://techrights.org/2016/08/05/gnu-c-library-2-24/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2016 12:45:18 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=94777

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Creating affordable solutions with open source tools

    Open source is often the heart of many civic technology solutions because using open source leverages the minds of many. Small web solution providers, in particular, often turn to open source as a way to deliver services without having to reinvent the wheel. I recently found out about Digital Deployment, a civic web solution provider in Sacramento, that leverages open source, and so I asked them to share their story with me. I chatted on the phone with Chief Operating Officer Sloane Dell’Orto and Lead Software Engineer Dennis Stevense.

  • Cogito, Ergo Sumana

    Advice on Starting And Running A New Open Source Project: Recently, a couple of programmers asked me for advice on starting and running a new open source project. So, here are some thoughts, assuming you’re already a programmer, you haven’t led a team before, and you know your new software project is going to be open source.

    I figure there are a few different kinds of best practices in starting and running open source projects.

  • FCC Settlement Requires TP-Link to Support 3rd-Party Firmware

    In a win for the open source community, router maker TP-Link will be required to allow consumers to install third-party firmware on their wireless routers, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced Monday. The announcement comes on the heels of a settlement requiring TP-Link to pay a $200,000 fine for failing to properly limit their devices’ transmission power on the 2.4GHz band to within regulatory requirements. On its face, new rules about open source firmware don’t seem to have much to do with TP-Link’s compliance problems. But the FCC’s new rule helps fix an unintended consequence of a policy the agency made last year, which had led to open source developers being locked out of wireless routers entirely.

  • Events

    • Why You Should Speak At & Attend LinuxConf Australia

      Monday 1 February 2016 was the longest day of my life, but I don’t mean that in the canonical, figurative, and usually negative sense of that phrase. I mean it literally and in a positive way. I woke up that morning Amsterdam in the Netherlands — having the previous night taken a evening train from Brussels, Belgium with my friend and colleague Tom Marble. Tom and I had just spent the weekend at FOSDEM 2016, where he and I co-organize the Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom (with our mutual friends and colleagues, Richard Fontana and Karen M. Sandler).

      Tom and I headed over to AMS airport around 07:00 local time, found some breakfast and boarded our flights. Tom was homeward bound, but I was about to do the crazy thing that he’d done in the reverse a few years before: I was speaking at FOSDEM and LinuxConf Australia, back-to-back. In fact, because the airline fares were substantially cheaper this way, I didn’t book a “round the world” flight, but instead two back-to-back round-trip tickets. I boarded the plane at AMS at 09:30 that morning (local time), and landed in my (new-ish) hometown of Portland, OR as afternoon there began. I went home, spent the afternoon with my wife, sister-in-law, and dogs, washed my laundry, and repacked my bag. My flight to LAX departed at 19:36 local time, a little after US/Pacific sunset.

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • 10 reasons you should use LibreOffice and not Microsoft Word

      The Document Foundation just released version 5.2 of its fully open source office suite LibreOffice. This release brings many new features and UI improvements. When I got the press release, I started updating LibreOffice on my MacBook. But here’s the thing: I’m also a user of Microsoft Word.

      That made me pause and consider why I use LibreOffice when I am forking over $99 a year to Microsoft. The flash of introspection surprised me. I’m an unabashed open source and Linux fan, but I am kind of agnostic when it comes to the tools I use. I use what works for me. So I reached out to my followers on Google+ and Facebook to learn about their reasons for using LibreOffice.

      Here are some of the many reasons why people, myself included, love LibreOffice.

    • Finding Alternatives to Microsoft Excel

      For example, if you are looking for software to install on your Windows-, OS X- or Linux-based computer so you can work without an internet connection, consider free, open-source suites like LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice. Along with word-processing and presentation applications, both suites include a spreadsheet program called Calc that uses the .ods format — but can open and save files in Microsoft Excel’s native format.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Embracing Open Source Software: Advantages and Risks

      Many business and government ­organizations rely on open source software (OSS). One of the most common and widely known ­examples is the Linux operating system. While the use of OSS can provide numerous advantages such as inexpensive and particularly robust software that has been debugged and ­optimized by ­numerous ­programmers, there are also attendant risks. This article explores OSS and its use generally in commercial settings. An ­overview of OSS is provided along with a discussion of its ­popularity with programmers and several associated risks. Additionally, a brief description of ­various OSS licenses is provided. A ­follow-up ­article will provide a strategy for developing a policy to ­manage OSS use.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • European countries awarded for their “star” commitments

      IRM attributes “starred” status to selected commitments included in countries’ National Action Plans (NAP). These commitments “represent exemplary reforms that have potentially transformative impact on citizens in the country of implementation”, OGP said.

    • Open Access/Content

      • The largest Wikipedia gathering in South Asia kicks off

        Wiki Conference India 2016 (WCI), the largest gathering of contributors to Wikipedia and its sister projects in South Asia, will be held during August 5-7 this year in Chandigarh, India.

        The first iteration of this event was five years ago in 2011. The event is focused around South Asian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects. Hundreds of participants, including over 100 scholarship holders from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, will participate in this three-day event. A team of volunteers representing several Wikimedia communities across the country and three Wikimedia affiliates—Wikimedia India, Punjabi Wikimedians and Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge program—are working together to make this event a success.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • EOMA68: > $60k pledged on crowdsupply.com

        crowdsupply.com has a campaign to fund production of EOMA68 computer cards (and associated peripherals) which recently passed the $60,000 mark.

        If you were at DebConf13 in Switzerland, you may have seen me with some early prototypes that I had been lent to show people.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • CP/M Creator Gary Kildall’s Memoirs Released as Free Download

      The year before his death in 1994, Gary Kildall—inventor of the early microcomputer operating system CP/M—wrote a draft of a memoir, “Computer Connections: People, Places, and Events in the Evolution of the Personal Computer Industry.” He distributed copies to family and friends, but died before realizing his plans to release it as a book.

      This week, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with the permission of Kildall’s children, released the first portion of that memoir. You can download it here.

      Wrote Scott and Kristin Kildall in an introductory letter: “In this excerpt, you will read how Gary and Dorothy started from modest means as a young married couple, paved a new path for start-up culture, and embraced their idea of success to become leaders in the industry. Our father embodied a definition of success that we can all learn from: one that puts inventions, ideas, and a love of life before profits as the paramount goal.”

    • E-mails show how UK physicists were dumped over Brexit

      UK researchers are suffering because of the country’s vote to leave the European Union — and a British physicist has now gone public with one such tale of woe.

      Paul Crowther, who heads the physics and astronomy department at the University of Sheffield, has shared e-mails from late July that explain why researchers in his department were suddenly dropped from an EU collaboration. The European coordinator for the consortium felt that Brexit put UK-based researchers in a “very awkward position” and that their participation would “compromise the project”.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Why the GMO Labeling Bill Obama Just Signed Into Law Is a Sham—and a National Embarrassment

      It is known as the DARK Act—Denying Americans the Right to Know. It was signed by President Obama last Friday in the afterglow of the Democratic National Convention, without fanfare or major media coverage. The bill’s moniker is apt. With a few strokes of his pen Obama scratched out the laws of Vermont, Connecticut and Maine that required the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

      He also nullified the GE seed labeling laws in Vermont and Virginia that allowed farmers to choose what seeds they wanted to buy and plant. And for good measure he preempted Alaska’s law requiring the labeling of any GE fish or fish product, passed to protect the state’s vital fisheries from contamination by recently approved genetically engineered salmon.

    • Rave On: Music, Ecstasy and the Real Tragedy of Corporate Drugs

      Drug use doesn’t begin at raves, it begins when children as young as three are diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and are placed on Ritalin. As of 2010, according to the National Health Interview Survey, 5.2 million kids between the ages of 3 and 17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. According to the University of Utah’s Genetic Science Learning Center, “Ritalin is a stimulant like cocaine” and “may cause changes in the brain over time.” Further, up to “50% of adolescents in drug treatment centers report abusing Ritalin.” Yet a vague evaluation by a doctor or teacher of too much “squirminess” can lead a youngster to spend an adolescence on meds. The none too subtle message? If you have a problem, pop a pill.

    • The Washington Vaccination Ploy: Puerto Rico and the Zika Quandary

      Should you fear receiving the needle from a stranger? Yes. Should you fear receiving it from a person you know all too well as a historical abuser? Even more so. Empires do it, states do it, and even local agencies do it. Let’s all, as it were, vaccinate for all in this perverted paraphrasing of the Cole Porter song, the assumption that the medical facility cures, and the giver and administrator knows all.

    • Add Russia’s Olympic Doping Scandal to the Rich History of Cheating in Sports

      Of the 387-member Russian team, more than 100 have already been banned, including 67 from the glamour sport of track and field, according to a recent ruling by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

      Not that cheating is necessarily a communist hallmark. Athletes from capitalist countries do it, too.

      In the most celebrated Olympic scandal, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was disqualified after winning the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when he was found to have used the steroid stanozolol.

      The most celebrated Olympian who was never quite caught was the United States’ Carl Lewis, who won nine Olympic gold medals from 1984 to 1996. In 2003, Lewis acknowledged testing positive three times before the 1988 Olympics. He got off with warnings from U.S. officials, although, under the rules, he should have been prevented from competing in Seoul, where he won gold medals in the 100 meters (after Johnson defaulted) and long jump.

      After the scandal, Lewis wasn’t exactly contrite.

      “There were hundreds of people getting off,” Lewis said in 2003. “Everyone was treated the same. … It’s ridiculous. Who cares? I did 18 years of track and field, and I’ve been retired five years, and they’re still talking about me, so I guess I still have it.”

    • Why Florida’s Medical Marijuana System Is Ripe for Corporate Takeover

      In June 2014, the disgraced former CEO of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) signed Florida’s medical marijuana bill into law. It was a fitting beginning to a regulatory process that has been marred by shadowy fraud in the selection of lucrative vertically integrated licenses in what could become one of the largest medical marijuana markets in the country. The state appears poised to double down upon the fraud, and in keeping with Governor Rick Scott’s legacy of putting healthcare profits before people, some of the new law’s provisions could shield corporate revenues at the expense of fragile patients.

      This is the picture painted by Freedom of Information Act requests, Sunshine Law requests and public reports pointing to perjury and fraud on the part of Alpha Foliage and its partner Surterra Therapeutics, one of only five nurseries granted oligopolic power over Florida’s entire medical cannabis market. The corruption may lead all the way to the governor’s office and it seems some of Florida’s powerful agricultural companies have wielded their influence over existing medical marijuana laws to add dangerous provisions in their financial favor.

    • EPA protected Monsanto’s corporate profits by hiding the truth about glyphosate and cancer for decades

      Is it really possible that the EPA – which is supposed to stand for Environmental Protection Agency, by the way – actually hid the truth about the toxicity of one of Monsanto’s top-selling herbicides ?

      According to researcher and consultant, Dr. Anthony Samsel, the answer would be an unequivocal yes. Dr. Samsel claims to have gained possession of EPA documents that reveal the cancer-causing effects of glyphosate. In fact, Samsel states that these documents contain information tying glyphosate to cancer beginning in the 1970s.

      Glyphosate is the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide known as Roundup, which is an extremely popular product that is used across the world in the cultivation of GM crops. Dr. Samsel has been researching the effects of glyphosate for many years, though he notes that much of his work has not been taken seriously and often dismissed.

      Along with fellow researcher, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Dr. Samsel has authored several studies on the potentially negative effects of glyphosate use. Though their work was previously unrecognized, many who initially dismissed their research are now beginning to pay more attention.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Thursday
    • Risk From Linux Kernel Hidden in Windows 10 Exposed at Black Hat [Ed: “Alex Ionescu, chief architect at Crowdstrike” – well, enough says. CrowdStrike Microsoft-tied. CrowdStrike are the same chronic liars who recently accused Russia of DNC leaks despite lack of evidence. The corporate press cited them. How can GNU and Linux running under a piece of malware with keyloggers and back doors be the main security concern?]
    • Italian-based Android RAT spies on mobiles in Japan and China, say researchers

      Researchers discover an Italian-based Android RAT designed for spying that is targeting mobile devices using their unique identification codes

    • keysafe

      Have you ever thought about using a gpg key to encrypt something, but didn’t due to worries that you’d eventually lose the secret key? Or maybe you did use a gpg key to encrypt something and lost the key. There are nice tools like paperkey to back up gpg keys, but they require things like printers, and a secure place to store the backups.

      I feel that simple backup and restore of gpg keys (and encryption keys generally) is keeping some users from using gpg. If there was a nice automated solution for that, distributions could come preconfigured to generate encryption keys and use them for backups etc. I know this is a missing peice in the git-annex assistant, which makes it easy to generate a gpg key to encrypt your data, but can’t help you back up the secret key.

      So, I’m thinking about storing secret keys in the cloud. Which seems scary to me, since when I was a Debian Developer, my gpg key could have been used to compromise millions of systems. But this is not about developers, it’s about users, and so trading off some security for some ease of use may be appropriate. Especially since the alternative is no security. I know that some folks back up their gpg keys in the cloud using DropBox.. We can do better.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Colin Powell’s Former Chief of Staff Thinks Hillary Clinton Is Too Eager to Resort to War

      This is a useful conversation that ranges beyond the realm of the lesser-evil cliché, and one that answers these key questions: What exactly is “the playbook,” and why does onetime George W. Bush aide Lawrence Wilkerson say Hillary Clinton comes straight out of it?

      Wilkerson, who served as former Defense Secretary Colin Powell’s chief of staff in the Bush II White House, is the one to whom The Real News Network’s Paul Jay turns, in this TRNN video clip, to gauge Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s approaches to foreign policy issues as well as to potential and actual armed conflicts.

    • Trident in a time warp: party politics vs defence needs

      As Britain and Europe reeled from Brexit Theresa May rushed through the vote on Trident replacement. Was this strong leadership or our human security being sacrificed to expediency?

    • “People’s Tribunal” Launched in Haiti to Commemorate 101 Years of U.S. Occupation

      Thursday, July 28, when Hillary Rodham Clinton took to the stage to accept the Democratic nomination to be the first female candidate of a major political party for president, was also the 101st anniversary of the U.S. military occupation of Haiti that lasted nineteen years.

      Hundreds of people took to the streets and filled a gym named after president Stenio Vincent, who negotiated the departure of the U.S. Marines in 1934, to launch the People’s Tribunal on U.S. Occupation/Domination. The march began at Fort National, of historic significance. Equally significant was the rapprochement of various segments of Haiti’s progressive movements, often fragmented along political lines.

    • Needing an Exit from Afghan Quagmire

      The failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan has been obvious for years, but neither President Bush nor President Obama wanted the defeat hung on their legacies, so the bloody folly goes on, a test for the next president, says Alon Ben-Meir.

    • Hiroshima: the Crime That Keeps on Paying, But Beware the Reckoning

      The decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a political not a military decision. The targets were not military, the effects were not military. The attacks were carried out against the wishes of all major military leaders. Admiral William Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his memoirs that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…” General Eisenhower, General MacArthur, even General Hap Arnold, commander of the Air Force, were opposed. Japan was already devastated by fire bombing, facing mass hunger from the US naval blockade, demoralized by the surrender of its German ally, and fearful of an imminent Russian attack. In reality, the war was over. All top U.S. leaders knew that Japan was defeated and was seeking to surrender.

    • The Saudi Role in the 9/11 Attacks

      On 27 November 2002 a bipartisan commission was established by Congress to investigate the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. By the time the commission was created, President George W. Bush had characterised the attacks as “acts of war”, adding that “freedom and democracy are under attack”. It was therefore to be expected that anyone who was actually, or even imagined to be, involved in these attacks was going to be labelled as an enemy.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • What we may expect from recent Wikileaks on Turkish politics

      In his latest book, The Uprising, “Bifo” Berardi (2012) borrows some concepts from one of the most important figures in the study of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, in order to describe the prevailing social impasse: instead of engendering a radical transformation or revolutionary upheaval, systemic disruptions in the social field increasingly consolidate and even give a boost to the power of the dominant paradigm, process, or group.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • California to set power regulations on computers

      California, the state where the personal computer business was born and eventually revolutionized society, is about to be home to another change that figures to have a permanent impact on the computer industry.

      By all indications, by the end of this year the California Energy Commission will adopt energy efficiency guidelines for computers, becoming the first state in the nation to do so.

      The agency estimates it will add about $18 to price of a computer but promises it will save customers and businesses much more in energy savings.

    • To Save Energy Or Not, That Is The Question.

      Unless the state is going to run all IT, this just can’t work. Whatever throttle, limit or setting California requires will either have some means of circumvention or be counter-productive.

    • Are We Looking at a Mass Extinction Event?

      If you or someone you know needs proof that global climate change is real and is happening before our very eyes, you could go to the “State of the Climate Report” put together by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

    • Major Amazon dam opposed by tribes fails to get environmental license

      Brazil’s environmental regulator Ibama decided on Thursday to shelve the environmental license request for a hydroelectric dam on the Tapajós river in the Amazon, a project that had been opposed by indigenous tribes and conservation groups.

      Ibama’s licensing office ruled the dam’s backers had not presented information in time to show its social and environmental viability. They halted the 30bn reals (£7.2bn) project. In April, Ibama had suspended the licensing process that began in 2009 after criticism by Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, Funai.

      With installed capacity of about 6.1 gigawatts, the dam proposed by state-run Eletrobras, Brazil’s largest power utility holding, and a group of other electricity companies, would have been one of Brazil’s biggest.

      But it would have flooded 376 sq km (145 sq miles) of Amazon rainforest that is home to some 12,000 Munduruku Indians, according to Greenpeace.

  • Finance

    • Trade Deals Like the TPP Put Corporate Polluters Above the Law

      The Obama administration’s historic rejection of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline marked the first time a major fossil fuel project was denied over climate change concerns. The decision capped a contentious years-long fight, and helped spark a broader grassroots movement aimed at keeping fossil fuels in the ground, which scientists have increasingly warned is necessary if we hope to limit global temperatures to manageable levels.

      But TransCanada would not take no for an answer. Soon after the rejection, the company announced it would sue the United States government for $15 billion in lost profits under a tribunal system in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) called Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). This system, which the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership would dramatically expand, allows foreign investors to bypass U.S. courts and challenge American laws in a corporate-friendly arbitration system. The Keystone XL case shows how the ISDS system puts corporate polluters above the law and threatens global action on climate change.

    • Don’t make crude assumptions about young people’s attitudes to the EU

      It has become a mantra that, as a matter of natural course, younger people are pro-EU and that therefore the future looks bright for the Remain camp. This is not reflected either in the recent history of UK voting or opinion polling, or indeed of current surveys in other EU countries.

      The unmentioned story of the EU referendum is that to win it, the Leave camp had to alienate one surprisingly eurosceptic age group over a very short period. The 18 to 24-year-old voter.

    • IRS Launches Investigation of Clinton Foundation (Video)
    • Why has Britain stopped striking? Workers no longer feel empowered to act

      Striking in Britain has now reached an all-time low. Last year saw the fewest workers go on strike since records began in 1893. Is this a cause for celebration, a victory for partnership between capital and labour? The answer is a firm no.

      Although striking is a last resort for workers on account of the lost wages incurred, the fact that only 170,000 days were lost to strikes in 2015 (compared with 29.5m in 1979) indicates just how weak the vast majority of workers feel they are in today’s labour market. It shows workers perceive themselves as ever more powerless to collectively stand up against the increasingly common employment practices of the likes of Sports Direct, Deliveroo and Hermes. Some companies now require employees to shoulder what were previously employer responsibilities (such as national insurance, pensions and sick pay) and be subject to pernicious performance management targets and monitoring.

    • Mike Pence Loves ALEC and Keeps Pushing Public School Privatization, Despite Lousy Indiana Record With Charters and Vouchers

      Mike Pence is a hardcore right-winger playing the long game, especially when it comes to privatizing public schools.

      It’s not just that the Republican vice-presidential nominee and Indiana governor last weekend told a roomful of deregulation-obsessed executives and lobbyists in Indianapolis, “You are the model for Washington, D.C., after this election. You really are.”

      The nation is “at a fork in the road,” Pence said at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual meeting, referring not only to who would be president for the next four years but who would control the Supreme Court for the “next 40 years.”

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Spoiler Myth: Clinton Has More Problems Than Jill Stein and the Bernie or Busters

      Now that Hillary Clinton has wrapped up the Democratic Presidential nomination with the endorsement of Bernie Sanders, her supporters have transitioned to denigrating progressives who affirm they are “Bernie or Bust” by supporting Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein over Clinton. Senator Sanders has affirmed the importance of continuing the political revolution, and many of his supporters are choosing to do that outside of the Democratic Party.

      Critics against Stein cite Ralph Nader and his running mate, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, as the spoilers of the 2000 election, in which he received over 90,000 votes in Florida, the state Gore lost by just over 500 votes. Had Gore won Florida, he would have won the general election, but those who smear Nader as a spoiler are ignoring other contributing factors to that election. Bill Clinton’s impeachment in December 1998 inspired helped inspire over 300,000registered Democrats in Florida to vote for Bush in the general election. According to Florida exit polls, only a small percentage of Nader supporters would have voted for Gore instead of Bush, with most citing they wouldn’t have voted at all. The Supreme Court ruled, controversially, to halt the recount in Florida. A study conducted by the Progressive Review in 2002 analyzed whether Al Gore’s polling prior to the general election inversely changed with Ralph Nader’s and no correlation was found. Voter turnout in Florida for the general election in 2000 was 70 percent, according to the Florida Division of Elections, a few percentage points lower than each general election Florida since then. Across the country in 2000, more than 100 million eligible voters didn’t cast a ballot.

    • Did You Know That AARP Is A Paying Member Of ALEC?

      Here is a real shocker. AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) has been a paying member of the notorious right-wing, Koch-tied lobbying organization American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) since at least 2014.

      Yes, that AARP, once known for protecting the interests of senior citizens and fighting to protect Social Security and Medicare. Yes, that ALEC — an organization dedicated to, among so many other things, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and getting rid of public-employee pensions. AARP apparently joined ALEC even as many corporations were fleeing thanks to exposure of ALEC’s reprehensible actions.

      Just wow.

    • Smearing Stein: Media as Propaganda

      Jill Stein, the Green Party’s nominee for president, has been the sudden target of attacks from all corners of online media since the official end of Bernie Sanders’ campaign at the Democratic National Convention. Outlets like the Washington Post, New York Magazine and Gizmodo have assaulted Stein by using out-of-context quotes to assail her, wrongly, for being anti-vaccination and anti-WiFi, which is a code for being “anti-science.” This allows us a unique opportunity to confirm the structural role of the media as hypothesized by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent: that the media is a propaganda arm for the elite and powerful, and is used to condition us to accept the bounds of socio-political discourse as set by the ruling class. It also shows us the desperate need we have for an alternative media culture to counteract mainstream discourse.

      The attack on Stein (and not, conveniently, on Gary Johnson), is linked to the need by the elite to de-legitimize A.) critics of neoliberal policies and B.) potential alternatives to the political status-quo. Trump and Clinton have had and will have no discussion about thirty years of neoliberalism and austerity. Sanders gave a voice to those within the Democrats who were willing to question, but since his defeat momentum on the left has shifted to Stein and the Green Party. It is, granted, still early, but the outpouring of support means there is a possibility the left could begin to regroup outside the Democratic Party. Real success for Stein could mean a permanent presence on the national stage for the left, to which a president Clinton or Trump would have to answer and which would be able to build an entirely different ideological discourse in the United States.

      What is the role of the media in this scenario, one that explains the current froth about Stein? Although the public is rarely allowed a glimpse behind the curtain, almost all media in the United States is controlled by just a few large corporations. In the era of mass communication, the media has usurped the role formerly played by the Church as a primary source of information and the bounds of discourse. Private corporations are interested in making a profit, and ensuring the economy continues to produce those profits. Marx once opined that “the ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class,” and in an era of (potential) mass political upheaval, the media plays an active role in silencing dissent to those ideas. Indeed, they are linked to the continued profits generated by the political order. Political candidates and parties that challenge and threaten to upend this are typically subject to vigorous criticism if they threaten to shift the political discourse or take power: witness the barrage of negative stories and editorials on leaders like Hugo Chávez or new political parties like Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain.

    • Could Hillary Lose?

      Could Hillary lose? If she were running against a Republican whom the Party’s grandees and the capitalists behind them liked, someone like Mitt Romney, the answer would be Yes.

      After eight years of President Drone, the Republican would have a clear advantage. It wouldn’t even matter if that Republican were to pander, say, to the Ted Cruz element in the GOP base, the way that Romney pandered to the Tea Party. The smart money would still be on him.

    • I Spent the Day with Trump’s Undying Fans in Maine

      Somehow, my press credentialing e-mails from the Trump campaign keep getting blown off the porch of the Intertoobz.

      So, on Thursday, I decided to be just another face in the crowd at an event at the Merrill Auditorium, a lovely old piece of big government memorabilia attached to City Hall here. I applied through the website, and I got my confirmation that I was invited to be a guest at what the website said was going to be a “town hall” with the Republican candidate for President of the United States. Doors would open at 7 a.m. for a 10 a.m. start. No, wait. The doors would open at 11 a.m. for a 2 p.m. start. Hold on. The doors will open at noon for a 3 p.m. start. Technically, you’re not running late if you keep changing the time.

      I assumed that the last e-mail was the final one, so I got to the venue at 9:30 on Thursday morning. There already was a line. People stood in the shadeless plaza, broiling and being heckled from all over the sky by raucous seagulls. (You’d have sworn Tippi Hedren was in line, wearing a God, Guts, and Guns tanktop.) A lot of the people were elderly, and most of them were white and pale. (For the record, I am both.) You’d have thought the campaign would have kicked in a few pallets of Trump Water for the faithful.

    • For Progressives: a Moment of Grief, Pause and Reorientation

      In this frantic rush for “unity,” the DNC is trying to silence dissent and critical thought about where we are now and how we got here. Even PBS’s Washington Week in Review featured guests this week, who referred to Sanders’ convention delegates as “hecklers” because they dared to show support for their candidate at their party’s convention. The mainstream media’s patronizing tone aims to shame Sanders’ supporters, who it now blames for any division within the Democratic Party, accusing progressives of being “in denial” and “being a baby.”

    • Beyond Clinton vs. Trump, Green Party Convention Kicks Off

      The Green Party kicked off its national convention in Houston, Texas on Thursday, where presumptive nominee Jill Stein will present a third-party challenge to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

      The convention will run from August 4-7. The proceedings are expected to include keynote speeches from scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West, who endorsed Stein over Clinton after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, and Philadelphia-based activist YahNé Ndgo. Local Green Party candidates for office will also appear.

      Stein is expected to accept her party’s nomination on August 6.

      On Wednesday, CNN announced it would host a Green Party town hall on August 17—offering the party a rare chance to access the large media platform usually reserved for establishment candidates.

    • 2016 Is the Best and Worst Year to Be Jill Stein

      On a sweaty Sunday afternoon in late July, John Griffin happened upon Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, in his North Philadelphia neighborhood. Joined by a couple dozen people, Stein was pointing out the economic inequality and environmental degradation in the area, which she referred to as an “open-air prison.” Griffin, 37, who works security and facilities maintenance at a church, had a Bernie Sanders button pinned to his white T-shirt. “I love Bernie,” he told Stein.

      “I love Bernie,” Stein repeated. Then she ticked off areas where she was promising more than Sanders had: guaranteeing a living-wage job to every American who wants one; canceling all student debt; cutting military spending in half. “She’s awesome,” Griffin said afterward. “No one else is in the middle of the ghetto, in the middle of the ’hood, trying to campaign.”

    • We The People Tossed Out of Trump Rally For Unspeakable Crime aka Holding Up Our Country’s Founding Document

      So this happened Thursday in Portland: The orange cretin was lying and blathering on to a rapt audience of whoever these racist, ill-educated, uncomprehending people are when a group of protesters stood and mutely held up, echoing Khizr Khan, pocket versions of the U.S. Constitution. Because this was a Trump rally, the crowd booed, hissed, hollered “U.S.A.!”, tried to rip one book from its owner and screamed, “Traitor!” as the miscreants, reportedly members of the progressive Maine People’s Alliance, were hauled out. The ACLU loved it; they responded on Twitter with, “Glad to see people are standing up for constitutional principles using their ACLU pocket Constitutions!” And what’s not to love: Great visuals, unprecedented levels of irony if anyone there knew the meaning of the word. We think Constitution-waving should definitely become a thing.

    • Donald Trump Will Leave a Lasting Stain on the GOP, Even if He Loses

      To Republicans who hope to emerge from the Donald Trump fiasco with any shred of political viability or self-respect, I offer some unsolicited advice: Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.

      I’m speaking to you, House Speaker Paul Ryan. And you, Sen. John McCain. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—along with so many other elected Republicans and party stalwarts. You are not fools. You are well aware that the erstwhile Party of Lincoln has nominated for president a man wholly unfit to hold the office.

      I realize that puts you in a tough spot politically. Breaking with the party’s standard-bearer, chosen by voters in primaries and caucuses, would surely mean short-term pain. For some of you it could be politically fatal. But sticking with Trump, as far as I can see, will almost surely be worse—for you, for the party, and potentially, heaven forbid, for the country you have sworn to serve.

    • Talking Lawn Sign

      It’s time to make up your mind
      the primary’s over and so is your sign
      You were feeling the Bern
      Now you know it’s her turn-
      put up a sign for Jill Stein

      Can you forgive the DNC
      Faking neutrality
      And putting in the fix
      For their nominatrix
      In the name of D-mockracy?

    • Europe’s “Bought Journalists”

      One day, historians will wonder how it was that the EU, a wealthy and ostensibly unified polity with a population of over 500 million people and an extremely deep and sophisticated history of indigenous intellectual production, came to have its public discourse dominated by the narrow and often quite parochial concerns of the elites of another country (right down to their absurd and largely unconditional devotion to a small and bellicose apartheid state in the Middle East) located halfway around the globe.

    • Waiting on Putin, The Dream Candidate

      Washington really needs an Arch Enemy, a guy who looks like a Bond villain with nuclear weapons he’ll brandish but never use.

      Putin.

      Americans are already well-prepared by the old Cold War to see Russia as an evil empire, and Putin does look the part. A new Cold War will require America to buy more military hardware, plus discover new places like the Baltic states to garrison. It might even straighten out a NATO confused about its role regarding global terrorism.

      Forget Trump and Clinton; Putin is the political-military-industrial complex dream candidate.

    • Clinton Camp Courts Hackers in Vegas

      n 2016, can Hillary Clinton be the candidate of the hacker crowd?

      That was the question posed at a fundraiser Wednesday at the annual Black Hat security conference, an affair that brings thousands of hackers and deep-pocketed security firms to the Nevada desert to learn about the latest and greatest in computer exploits.

      Amid a program packed with technical presentations on computer security, the fundraiser represented an unusual addition and has had a polarizing effect on some long-time attendees of the conference, who consider the event for Clinton out of step with the conference’s hacker ethos. A conference that begins, for example, with a presentation on “Memory Forensics Using Virtual Machine Introspection for Cloud Computing” really shouldn’t end with a partisan political event, some Black Hat veterans privately groused Wednesday. And for these old-timers, who reminisce about the conference’s heyday in the late 1990s, when glitzy corporate sponsorships and booths didn’t dominate the event as they do now, a Clinton fundraiser seems the final deathknell for the event’s counterculture status.

    • Poll: Clinton up 9 points on Trump nationwide

      The Democratic nominee retains her edge over Trump when the race becomes a four-person contest. There Clinton takes 45 percent to Trump’s 34 percent, leaving the GOP’s presidential nominee still trailing her by 9 points. Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson ranks third with 10 percent, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein nabs 5 percent.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Anurag’s masterclass on censorship

      The festival, which will kick-start on August 11 in Melbourne, will see the participation of the filmmaker and other celebrities like Rishi Kapoor, Fawad Khan, Richa Chadha and Radhika Apte. In a statement, Anurag said, “I can put forth my point of view and talk about how censorship is so pointless in the day and age of the Internet. I am really looking forward to interacting with the students.”

    • Pro-independence candidate to send ‘blank’ election mailouts in protest of censorship

      A pro-independence candidate in the upcoming Legislative Council election has said he will send a “blank” election mailout to voters, after reports that the Electoral Affairs Commission censored other mailings.

      Chan Chak-to of the Kowloon East Community group chose to send out mailings with conspicuous blank spaces and phrases like, “You can ban speeches, you can ban candidacies, but ideas are bulletproof,” and “My political view is [blank].”

      Chan was one of the rare pro-independence candidates who were allowed to run in this election, while most other independence advocates were banned for participating.

      “We believe that, according to reports, the election platforms we have made ready have the ‘sensitive phrases’ listed, and they will not be able to be posted,” he said. “We wanted to give up on sending the mailouts, but after the political screening [of candidates], we wished to present the truth to you.”

    • British woman held after being seen reading book about Syria on plane

      Free-speech groups have condemned the detention of a British Muslim woman after a cabin-crew member reported her for “suspicious behaviour” while reading a book about Syrian culture on a flight to Turkey.

      Faizah Shaheen, a psychotherapist in Leeds, was detained by police at Doncaster airport on 25 July, on her return from her honeymoon in Turkey. A Thomson Airways cabin-crew member had reported Shaheen on her outbound flight two weeks earlier, as she was reading the title Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline.

      Police officers questioned Shaheen for 15 minutes under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, under which the police can detain individuals without grounds for suspicion of involvement in criminal activities, including terrorism.

      [...]

      Jo Glanville, director of English PEN – which supported the book’s publication with a grant towards translation – said Thomson Airways should be “highly embarrassed about this gross act of misjudgment”.

      “The current culture of anxiety around extremism now means that even our reading material has become grounds for suspicion of terrorist activity,” she said. “The freedom to read any book, no matter the subject, is a fundamental cornerstone of our liberty.” Glanville also called Schedule 7 a “continuing problem” and said it was overdue for reform.

      Zaher Omareen, the co-editor of Syria Speaks, condemned Shaheen’s detention as a “despicable incident”.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Here’s How Your Facebook Feed Is About to Change [Ed: still a propaganda, surveillance and censorship cesspool. What Facebook labels “clickbait” is excuse for even less neutrality so that they can demote views Zuckerberg and friends dislike. So now Facebook can censor useds [sic] for “hate”, “troll”… and finally… “clickbait”… which is so vague that it’s a broad brush.]

      The company has tried to minimize clickbait before, but this time, Facebook says it has gone farther, categorizing phrases often used in clickbait headlines and looking at which websites publish those stories.

    • Comcast wants to sell your Web history to advertisers
    • Comcast wants its broadband users to pay for their privacy
    • Comcast Thinks It’s Totally Chill to Charge For Privacy
    • Comcast supports higher prices for customers who want Web privacy
    • Comcast Wants to Charge for Privacy

      Ars Technica , Gizmodo, ZDNet, and a host of others are reporting that Comcast claims that the FCC has no authority to limit or prohibit the internet provider from distributing web histories to advertisers.

    • This Engineer Started a Tor-Based Internet Provider to Fight Surveillance

      UK lawmakers are currently closing in on their biggest expansion of government surveillance powers since the Snowden revelations—but one network engineer is determined to not let privacy go down without fight.

      The Investigatory Powers bill—championed by former Home Secretary and current UK prime minister Theresa May and sometimes called the “Snooper’s Charter”—would create an expansive new legal regime for government mass surveillance in the UK, effectively legitimizing many of the programs exposed by Snowden. Among other things, it controversially proposes requiring that all internet service providers in the UK keep tabs on their customers’ internet activity, forcing them to retain so-called Internet Connection Records, or ICRs, for 12 months, and hand that data over to the authorities upon request.

      But as the UK’s upper house prepares to vote on final amendments to the bill, engineer Gareth Llewelyn is readying his own technical countermeasures. Earlier this year, Llewelyn started building his own non-profit internet service provider that runs on the Tor anonymity network. His goal: Design a system that will frustrate the new mass-surveillance regime by making it technically impossible to censor content or comply with government requests for subscribers’ internet records.

    • Labour deputy leader calls on PM to halt plans to wipe old Companies House data

      The Labour party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has called on Theresa May to intervene to stop the UK government agency Companies House from deleting information about firms that have been shut down. Without older records on dissolved companies, it will be much harder to spot when criminals try to set up new businesses to defraud the public, or to combat money laundering.

      Currently, the details of dissolved companies are kept for 20 years. Companies House, which holds key data on nearly 4 million UK businesses, is considering reducing that to six years according to The Guardian, even though the associated extra costs are minimal, as the price of digital storage continues to fall.

      The mass deletion is in response to an increasing number of requests from business people demanding the “right to be forgotten,” according to The Times. “Individuals and their reputation management firms have contacted Companies House claiming that its retention of records revealing an association with struck-off companies is personally damaging and a breach of data protection laws.”

    • FBI Releases Secret Spy Plane Footage from Freddie Gray Protests

      In response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI has released more than 18 hours of video from surveillance cameras installed on FBI aircraft that flew over Baltimore in the days after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in 2015. The videos, which were released to the ACLU before being posted online by the FBI this week, offer a rare and comprehensive view of the workings of a government surveillance operation. While the release of the footage addresses some questions, it leaves others unanswered.

    • Security Sense: You’re Not as Interesting to the NSA as You Think You Are

      Now having said that, the feds and the cops are not high up the list in my personal “threat model”. There are other people for whom well-resourced state actors are a serious threat. Political dissidents. Free speech proponents in authoritarian countries. Criminal actors. But for these guys, there’s an easy solution: turn off the biometrics, limit login attempts and use a strong PIN or password. There are many other “opsec” steps beyond this they may take too of course, but the point is that these devices can be configured more securely for those who need it by disabling certain usability features.

    • U.S. Cloud Firms ‘Out Innovated’ Competitors in Wake of NSA Leak

      Despite dire predictions of revenue losses in the wake of a leaked U.S. spy agency’s electronic surveillance program three years ago, U.S. cloud providers have instead “out innovated” local competitors to keep a firm grip on the European market, a market watcher says.

      U.S. cloud providers were widely expected to be hurt by local business and regulatory efforts to safeguard European data following the 2013 release of documents linking U.S. tech firms to National Security Agency surveillance programs.

    • Good Ruling In California Protects Anonymity Of Online Critics — Even When The Information Was False

      Over and over again we’ve seen people try to interpret anything someone says about them that they don’t like as defamatory. But just because you don’t like what’s said, that doesn’t make it defamatory — and that can also apply even if the statements actually were false.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • After The Age Of The PC, Welcome To The Age Of The PD — The ‘Personal Drone’

      As that rightly notes, there’s a world of difference between today’s small drones — “consumer” in this context means anything weighing more than 0.5lbs — and traditional aircraft. But in many ways, it’s exactly the same difference between the very first PCs, and the mainframes and minicomputer systems that had existed for decades. In that respect, we can see the 500,000 registered drones as an indication that we are now truly in the age of the PD — the Personal Drone.

      The conference also touched on a key concern raised by Karl Bode last year, who was worried that over-strict regulation of drones might kill off some promising new business models.

    • Sheriff Raids House to Find Anonymous Blogger Who Called Him Corrupt

      After a watchdog blog repeatedly linked him and other local officials to corruption and fraud, the Sheriff of Terrebone Parish in Louisiana on Tuesday sent six deputies to raid a police officer’s home to seize computers and other electronic devices.

      Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies submitted affidavits alleging criminal defamation against the anonymous author of the ExposeDAT blog, and obtained search warrants to seize evidence in the officer’s house and from Facebook.

      The officer, Wayne Anderson, works for the police department of Houma, the county seat of Terrebone Parish — and according to New Orleans’ WWL-TV, formerly worked as a Terrebone Sheriff’s deputy.

    • Stealing the spectacle

      The new Polish xenophobia cannot be explained only by political economy, but also needs to be understood in terms of political aesthetics.

    • U.S. Human Rights Observers Harshly Interrogated By Israel and Booted For Being Muslim

      Five individuals carrying American passports say they were branded “terrorist” and mistreated by Israeli security, then got no help from their own government.

    • Six books Muslim (and non-Muslim) women should add to their reading list

      These books on faith and feminism will force you to reevaluate your stereotypes of Muslims.

    • What’s Emancipation Day to the Caribbean Working Class?

      On 1 August 1838, enslaved Africans in the British Empire won their emancipation from slavery. Emancipation Day is now commemorated throughout the Anglophone Caribbean as a public holiday or national observance. Emancipation was not a gift from Britain or White abolitionists. It came from the accumulated covert and overt acts of resistance by enslaved Africans.

    • Top 10 Reasons the ACLU Fights for Breastfeeding Rights

      A few weeks ago, a mom named Jessie Maher was breastfeeding her baby in the cafeteria of a Target store in Connecticut when a belligerent man approached and said she was “F*ing disgusting” and “nasty.” Fellow shoppers and Target employees quickly sprang to Maher’s defense, shielding her from the man.

      “You shouldn’t be ashamed of feeding your baby,” one of them said to Maher. “This is a beautiful moment right now. If he doesn’t like it, he can go.”

      Maher posted a video of the incident that quickly went viral, generating more than 8.5 million views and an outpouring of support from fellow nursing mothers.

    • Does DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge Need A Safety Protocol?

      Today, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the R&D arm of the US military) is holding the finals for its Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) competition at DEF CON. We think that this initiative by DARPA is very cool, very innovative, and could have been a little dangerous.

      In this post, we’re going to talk about why the CGC is important and interesting (it’s about building automated systems that can break into computers!); about some of the dangers posed by this line of automated security research; and the sorts of safety precautions that may become appropriate as endeavors in this space become more advanced. We think there may be some real policy concerns down the road about systems that can automate the process of exploiting vulnerabilities. But rather than calling for external policy interventions, we think the best people to address these issues are the people doing the research themselves—and we encourage them to come together now to address these questions explicitly.

    • Door to justice finally opens in El Salvador [Ed: complex history there]

      As the door finally opens for war criminals to face justice in El Salvador, the law can start serving the country’s poor.

    • Anarcha-Feminisms

      Every piece in Perspectives offers material for a feminist and anti-racist anarchism that builds solidarity with revolutionaries, activists, and organizers who do not readily identify with the term “anarchist.” There’s plenty in the issue that can expand anarchism’s horizons. Consider Julia Tanenbaum’s U.S. anarcha-feminist history of the 70s decade and Hillary Lazar’s notion of “interlocking oppression”– inspired by Black feminism. Colleen Hackett offers thought-provoking “psy-ence fiction” lessons from teaching in a women’s prison, and Theresa Warburton thinks through different ways we generally relate anarchism to feminism. Laura Hall develops a comprehensive “Indigenist eco-queer anarcha-feminist” vision, and Zoe Dodd and Alexander McLelland offer an imminently practical horizontal Hep C/HIV treatment model cultivated from health crisis work. Romina Akemi and Bree Busk provoke readers with “sexual dissidence” and a multi-sectoral organizing plan, and Kelsey Cham C. develops an account of developing political consciousness (including language’s power) through addiction. Finally, there are some short and informative book reviews tucked in nicely at the issue’s end.

    • Culture Clash: When Violence Against Women Is Accepted, Lawful And Expected

      Last New Year’s Eve it was reported that 2000 men sexually assaulted 1200 women in Cologne, Germany. Immediately, politicians and pundits jumped to make the connection between the rash of violence against women and the influx of refugees. And each time another incident takes place, the battle between political positions is reignited. One liberal politician in Germany noted that the debate must be centered around “no means no” and not around “whether refugees should be deported” or allowed safe haven in Western countries, and I agree with this completely. This is not a refugee issue. It is a case of incongruent cultural practices. Men from societies that reject women’s rights must reform their attitudes and practices if they wish to exist in Western societies in which women are treated as equals. But more broadly, this sort of antiquated thinking must change.

    • Malaysian man charged with rape escapes jail after marrying 14-year-old victim

      A Malaysian man charged with raping a 14-year-old girl has avoided prison after he married her in a case that has sparked anger from rights groups and calls for a ban on child marriage and justice for victims of sexual violence.

      Ahmad Syukri Yusuf, 22, was charged with statutory rape of the girl late last year and faced up to 30 years in jail and whipping for the offense, but he later married the teenager under Islamic law, according to prosecutor Ahmad Fariz Abdul Hamid.

      The prosecutor said a court in Kuching, in Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak ruled there was no need to proceed with the case after Ahmad Syukri submitted a marriage certificate and the girl withdrew the complaint.

    • Video: Black lives matter: shutdown

      “1,562 deaths in police custody in my lifetime. 0 convictions”. As Black Lives Matter protesters set up blockades in London, Birmingham and Nottingham, here’s their video explaining why it’s time for a shutdown.

    • How can we change political discourse?

      The day after the referendum Facebook was full of comments like these, only they were less curious and more angry. This is shameful, they said. Why could so many be so stupid. Some even called for ‘un-friending’ the Leavers. The friendly appeal on my news feed just a week before- ‘could you explain your reasons to me?’- had been replaced by bitterness and recrimination “F**k this. I am ashamed to be British”. It felt as though the country had lost its innocence.

    • The Voting Rights Act, 2.0

      The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965, helped enfranchise millions of African-Americans over the decades. Speaking before a bipartisan gathering of members of Congress, his Cabinet, civil-rights leaders and the press, Johnson said of African-Americans: “They came in darkness and they came in chains. And today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds.”

      The Voting Rights Act was renewed and extended several times during the last half-century. Then, in June 2013, a divided U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, gutted the law. Almost immediately, Southern states began passing restrictive voting laws, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters. Three years later, however, this new generation of Jim Crow-style laws is facing federal court challenges, and they are being thrown out or significantly weakened, one by one.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T, Comcast Fight Utility Pole Reform To Slow Google Fiber’s Arrival In Nashville

      We’ve talked a few times about how incumbent broadband providers often use their ownership of city utility poles (or their “ownership” of entire city councils and state legislatures) to slow Google Fiber’s arrival in new markets. In California and Texas, AT&T has often been accused of using the process of pole attachment approval to intentionally block or slow down the arrival of competitors. AT&T also recently sued the city of Louisville for streamlining utility pole attachment rules intended to dramatically speed up the time it takes to attach new fiber to poles.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Trademarks

      • When its comes to “deadwood”, leave it in the State of South Dakota and out of Trademark Office policy

        Last month, Guest Kat Mike Mireles published a post— “The USPTO Moves to Clear ‘Trademark Deadwood’.” Mike reported on the latest steps intended by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to clean “deadwood” from the trademark registry. For several years, the claim has been expressed (not just in the U.S.) that there are too many unused registered trademarks, with the result that the registry suffers from trademark clutter. Moreover, it is claimed, unless we get control of the deadwood issue, the task of trademark clearance will one day become well-nigh impossible.

    • Copyrights

      • MPAA Anti-Piracy Cutbacks Lead to “Bullying” Lawsuit

        The ASA, formerly known as the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, is being sued by its former managing director for discrimination and bullying. A decision by the MPAA to reduce funding to the group led to Mark Day, a former MPA legal counsel, being dismissed while he was on sick leave.

      • Getty Sued Again Over Abusing Copyright Law, Licensing Images It Has No Rights To

        Getty hasn’t been having a very good past few weeks. After getting sued last week by famed photographer Carol Highsmith, after a Getty subsidiary demanded money for her posting her own photographs (which she had donated to the Library of Congress), it’s being sued again by independent press agency/wire service Zuma. Zuma claims that Getty was offering 47,048 images of its images for licensing, despite not actually having a license to do so.

        The full lawsuit is pretty short on details, so it’s difficult to assess the legitimacy of the lawsuit. In fact, the lack of detail in the filing makes me wonder if there’s a lot more to this story. Most of the filing focuses on highlighting how Getty has rapidly been buying up other photo licensing/stock photo sites, and using that fact to make the assertion (without further evidence) that Getty does not do enough due diligence to make sure the photos it offers for license are properly authorized. It may very well be that Getty screwed up here, but it seems like the complaint should include a few more details. Instead, there’s a lot of innuendo.

]]> http://techrights.org/2016/08/05/gnu-c-library-2-24/feed/ 0 Links 21/11/2011: Steel Storm 2, GNOME Mentoring Program for Women http://techrights.org/2011/11/21/steel-storm-2/ http://techrights.org/2011/11/21/steel-storm-2/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:13:05 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=55886

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux is a tortoise.

    Lets face it. Modern day Linux installations are nowhere near as fast as they were a few years ago. It seems that they have been adding in everything, including the kitchen sink. To be fair, the kitchen sink will be used somewhere down the line. Actually, the standard desktop Linux installation generally has everything already installed to do ninety five percent of all needed tasks. Without having to install anything else.

    This means that you have a fully capable word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program, graphics program, music player, cd burner, chat, mail, web browser and kitchen sink. Right out of the box so to speak. This is so much more than proprietary offerings can give. Even if those proprietary systems do supply some functionality out of the box. It is nowhere near the functionality of the add ons which you absolutely must have to be able to do any work.

  • Why Linux Isn’t Only for Geeks

    If you’ve ever owned a Windows computer chances are your computer was at one point infected with a virus. The solution to this problem is not purchasing antivirus software.

    The answer to this problem is abandoning Windows as your main operating system, however to some this might seem an impossible thing to do. Apple computers are rather expensive and while they can run Windows as a secondary operating system most people would prefer to be able to run Windows applications on their primary operating system without a noticeable slowdown.

    This is where Linuxcomes in as an all around great performer. Linux has very few viruses written for it and due to the many different versions and “flavors” of Linux it is hard to write a virus for this platform. Linux is still not perfect and does have security features implemented to protect you from the few threats that are present or any threats that may arise in the future.

  • Kernel Space

    • The Journal – a proposed syslog replacement
    • Linus Torvalds: Locked Down Technologies Lose in the End

      “Technologies that lock things down tend to lose in the end,” said Torvalds when asked about Microsoft’s secure boot feature, which he likened to Apple’s use of DRM technology. “People want freedom and markets want freedom,” he added.

      Secure boot is a feature in Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system designed to protect against low-level hacker attacks, but it could also end up preventing users from installing Linux on a PC shipped with a pre-loaded copy of Windows 8.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Krita 2.4 reviewed

        We still haven’t released, and at the Calligra sprint we decided to have at least one more beta, but that hasn’t prevented Linux Format to give Krita as their “hottest pick” award in their Christmas issue, issue 152, which you can get from good news agents everywhere!

      • The Great Features of KDE Workspaces and Applications Part II – Klipper

        Today I’d like to introduce Klipper, easy, small and very useful tool included in KDE Workspace since…well, always. That’s the scissors icon sitting in the systray area. Basically it is a history of your clipboard but it can do much more. Very important thing is that the contents persist between sessions, so if you have something in your clipboard, you log off/reboot/shutdown and then you log back in, you still have your whole clipboard history ready and the most recent entry already in clipboard, so you can paste it immediately.

      • Kstars, a desktop Planetarium that’s not just an Educational “Toy”

        Have you ever wondered what that bright object in the pre-dawn morning was that you couldn’t help notice? Or is that reddish star Mars? Is that fuzzy mass of white a wispy cloud or a galaxy?

      • Plasma Workspaces Wallpaper Contest

        With the KDE 4.8 releases drawing near, it’s time to change the look of the default desktop. Every two major releases, the main wallpaper of the Plasma Workspaces changes to maintain a fresh style.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • GNOME mentoring program for women continues

        As part of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women, the Foundation has announced the twelve women who will be sponsored and mentored to work on open source projects. The internships will run from 12 December 2011 to 12 March 2012. The programme builds on previous successful internships which have seen participants work on on-screen keyboards for the GNOME Shell, Empathy avatars, educational Braille software and many other applications.

  • Distributions

    • Commodore OS Vision Beta 6

      Last night i was searching for a new Linux OS to install on my laptop and when i was looking on distrowatch i found the Commodore OS Vision. Commodore OS Vision is based on Linux Mint 10 (Ubuntu 10.10) and is still under development. It comes with GNOME 2 so all the desktop effects are there and installed by default… just watch the video!!

    • Top 6 Linux and BSD graphical installation programs

    • New Releases

      • Softpedia Linux Weekly, Issue 174

        Summary:
        · Announced Distro: Linux Mint 12 Release Candidate
        · Announced Distro: openSUSE 12.1

      • Tiny Core Linux v4.1

        Continued upgrades to the base system including pcmciautils, sudo, freetype, imlib,libpng, and busybox. New boot codes of “cde” and “pretce”. cde for easy remastering. pretce for raid and lvm support. Improved support for Microcore which includes Ondemand, and icon options when used with the X extensions. Several bug fixes and enhancements as requested by the community. See change log for all the details.

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva Powerpack 2011 released

        Mandriva has released Powerpack 2011, a commercially enhanced version of the company’s Mandriva Linux distribution. The system comes with the Linux kernel 2.6.39 and uses KDE 4.6.5 as the default desktop.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Why I’m quitting the Debian Lineup

        Being an advocate of Linux Mint, which is a derivative based on Ubuntu, which is a derivative of Debian; I noticed a nasty bug back in July of 2011. Ubuntu 11.04 was released in April of that year and I waited for the bugs to be shaken out of the rug and finally installed it.

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • 7 Hidden Features Of Ubuntu 11.10 You Might Not Know Of

            As the latest version of Ubuntu was released, the team of developers have been hard at work adding some convenient features. However, some are more known than others, while others will surprise you when they pop up. Some aren’t even installed by default but can be very useful. So what are these features that can make a major difference?

          • Bringing The PackageKit Interface To Ubuntu

            The PackageKit DBus Interface is coming to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but it’s not full PackageKit support and integration.

            Back during the Ubuntu 12.04 Developer Summit in Orlando, PackageKit integration was talked about. However, it’s not bringing PackageKit to Ubuntu Linux, but rather just their interfaces and they will interact with Canonical’s own design.

            Sebastian Heinlein yesterday wrote to PackageKit DBus Interface in Ubuntu – It is the API that matters! to the Ubuntu development mailing list. He’s the developer working on bringing the PackageKit system D-Bus interface to the Ubuntu desktop by adding a compatibility layer that in turn will make it poke AptDaemon, which is Canonical’s preferred software management service for Ubuntu.

          • death by a thousand cuts

            It’s amazing to me what features drive decisions when choosing a technology. In my case, it’s a clock applet, but let me set a little bit of a context first.

            I stopped configuring my UI environment several years ago, opting instead to use the experience that had been designed for me by the fine folks at Ubuntu. This wasn’t entirely just blind trust or pleasure – but rather that the defaults were sensible enough, and I wanted to be in the business of doing things, not spending an hour deciding what font I wanted my desktop to display. I believe I’ve been doing this since dapper, if not earlier.

            Until now.

            I tried. I mean, I’ve bitched at Jorge some in person, but I ran Unity starting with Natty up until last week. I ran it as provided, as intended, and I tried to learn to think about things in the way it was asking me to.

          • Ubuntu’s Global Menu Is A Stupid Idea

            I have been using Fedora 16 for a week now and since its quite stable I have been using it instead of my trusted and much loved Ubuntu. One of the reason behind using Fedora over Ubuntu is Unity. I love Unity, but at the moment there is very little customization possible, which makes it a bit hard to reshuffle things around according to one’s needs. Gnome 3, on the contrary, offers much more customizations, thanks to Gnome-Shell Extensions. Before trying Fedora I was using Gnome 3 Shell in Ubuntu, instead of Unity.

            I must also add that I love Ubuntu. No other distro can match the work Ubuntu team has done to make GNU/Linux useful for an average user. Even if I am using Fedora, there is no denying the fact that Ubuntu has a very important place in the consumer desktop space — which presumably is not the market of Fedora.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • USB stick packs ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, runs Android or Ubuntu

      FXI Technologies announced a USB stick-sized computer that can run Android or Ubuntu on a 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor. The “Cotton Candy” will include 1GB of RAM, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and an HDMI port, the company says.

    • Tiny USB Stick Brings Android to PCs, TVs

      Google has made no secret about its plans for Android. Smartphones and tablets are just the beginning — the company wants Android everywhere. And thanks to FXI Technologies’ Cotton Candy USB device, we may not have to wait long to see Android on more than just our mobile devices.

      FXI essentially built an ultra-lean computer inside a small USB stick. Stick it into any device that supports USB storage, and Cotton Candy will register as a USB drive. From there, you can run the Android OS in a secure environment inside your desktop, courtesy of a Windows/OSX/Linux-compatible virtualization client embedded in the device.

    • Phones

      • A Promise Kept – Never Again Nokia

        A few months ago, when the Trojan Horse from Microsoft made the decision to switch Nokia to Windows Phone, I swore that I would never buy another Nokia product. Yesterday was the first time that I put that promise into action.

      • Android

        • Motorola Mobility shareholders approve Google merger

          Motorola Mobility shareholders have approved the sale of the company to Google. However, it will be federal regulators who have the final word on whether the deal will go through, and they have yet to make their decisions.

        • Android 4.0 arrives as Galaxy Nexus goes on sale

          Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, the first phone with Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android, has gone on sale in the United Kingdom.

        • Amazon planning Kindle smartphone in 2012?

          Amazon looks like it’s not content with just having a shot at the e-reader and tablet market, with reports emanating from Asia that it wants a smartphone too.

          According to CitiGroup, Amazon is looking to launch a smartphone in Q4 2012 in association with Foxconn International Holdings, and will aim it at the cheaper end of the market.

        • Motorola Mobility sued for allegedly stealing source code
        • Top 5 Audiobook Players for Android

          Unlike iOS, Android doesn’t come with a dedicated Audiobook player. However, that shouldn’t stop you from listening to your favorite books. The Android Marketplace offers some great apps that can play and manage audiobooks really well. Not only will these apps let you play audiobooks in MP3, OGG and M4B formats, they’ll also allow you to manage, tag and organize your favorite books easily. So, if you’re itching to listen to that nail-biting bestseller you just downloaded, here’s a list of five of the best audiobook players and managers for Android.

        • Small Taiwanese Firms Finally Get Some New Android Code

          Google had pledged to release the source code for Honeycomb, also known as Android 3.0, but then delayed its release indefinitely. It provided Honeycomb only to bigger manufacturers, such as Acer and Motorola, while smaller companies had to stick with earlier versions of the software.

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Android tablet mimics iPad display specs

        Archos announced an Android 2.3 tablet with an iPad-like display: 9.7 inches, 1024 x 768 pixels, and IPS (in-plane switching). The Arnova 9 G2 is equipped with a single-core 1GHz processor, 8GB of storage, a front-facing videocam, plus micro-USB, USB, and microSD connections — but so far, no price tag.

      • HTC Launching Quad-Core Tablet at MWC? (Update – it’s called Quatro)
      • Nook Tablet starts shipping a day early

        Barnes & Noble has begun shipping their latest product, the Nook Tablet, one day ahead of schedule. While it might not seem like much of a deal on the surface, it puts the tablet in stores and, more importantly, in hands earlier than expected. The sooner these are in a retail environment, the better as the next few weeks will be heated to say the least.

      • Nook Tablet Now Runs Kindle, Aldiko, & More – No Hack Required

        Earlier today I was griping about how Amazon had quietly made it difficult to install competing reading apps; today I get to dance for joy because I’ve learned how to install third party apps on the Nook Tablet.

        A reader tipped me to the secret (Thanks, Geert). There’s a thread over on the XDA-Forums where someone discovered a loophole in the Nook Tablet firmware.

      • Amazon Posts Kindle Fire’s Open Source Code

        Unlike some vendors which shall remain unnamed (*cough*, HTC, *cough*), Amazon didn’t make us wait for the mandatory open source bits of the Android Fire’s kernel and released them over at their Source Code page the same day the tablets themselves started arriving in consumers’ hands. The download, which comes as a compressed tar.gz, weighs in at a whopping 809MB.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Google’s Eclipse Plugin open sourced

    Google’s IDE integration for GWT, Speed Tracer and App Engine, which is known as Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE), has been open sourced under the Eclipse Public Licence. The tools had previously been proprietary, but Google said in a blog posting that the size of the ecosystem around GWT, App Engine and the company’s cloud services meant the idea of open sourcing the tools made “a lot of sense for us” as it was easier for the community to improve the tools.

  • jQuery Mobile 1.0 finalised

    After a “year of refinements” the jQuery Mobile developers have finalised version 1.0 of the HTML5-based user interface libraries and framework for mobile platforms. Based on jQuery core and jQuery’s UI library, the platform has been developed to work with Apple iOS, Android 2.1-2.3 and Honeycomb, Windows Phone 7 and 7.5, Blackberry 6.0, 7 and Playbook, Palm WebOS, Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile, MeeGo 1.2, Kindle 3 and Fire, and the desktop versions of Chrome 11-15, Firefox 4-8, Internet Explorer 7-9 and Opera 10-11.

  • Commercial, Open Source App Suites Offer Alternatives To Microsoft Office

    “Microsoft Office doesn’t dominate the way it used to,” said Doug Heintzman, strategy director for IBM collaboration solutions, including the company’s free Lotus Symphony personal productivity application suite. “This is a very dynamic and changing landscape.”

  • Typesafe to integrate Play 2.0 into its Scala stack

    The open source Java/Scala web framework Play 2.0, recently released as a beta, will be integrated into Typesafe’s Scala based application stack. Typesafe, which launched in May, has built its Typesafe Stack, aimed at providing all the tools needed for Scala developers to create applications which address multi-core and cloud-scale computing workloads. The announcement by Typesafe notes that the addition of Play will make the stack “a complete web platform”.

  • Open Source Nurtures Innovation

    With his usual rigour, Stephen O’Grady considers whether open source is innovative over on his blog. As ever, his view – that “innovation is a function of incentive, not the software development model” – is worth understanding and accepting, but I think there’s more to consider here. While it provides no guarantees, I believe an open source environment potentially makes software innovation cheaper and easier.

    As a proprietary developer, you are responsible for the eternal care of every line of code you add to your software. In the early days, you can be very productive, creating clean, fresh software that is compelling and doing so fast because you’re in complete control of the process. But the code you create is your sole responsibility, and as it gets more and more substantial – and as you have more and more paying customers depending on it – the burden of sustaining it grows.

  • Open source backup software lags in the cloud and VM backup

  • Events

    • Open Source India 2011 Kick-Starts Today!

      Gear yourself up for three consecutive days of learning and exciting time with 3,000+ open source innovators, enthusiasts, and gurus at Bengaluru’s NIMHANS Convention Centre. The technology world is looking at open source technology for future innovations. Thus, the 8th edition of OSI Days, which will run through 22 November 2011, becomes even more important. It aims to commemorate and celebrate the true spirit of open source, and aims to strengthen and consolidate the Indian open source community.

    • More Linux lessons at hub

      Linux Users Victoria is holding a second, free information session for people keen to learn more about the original computer operating system, similar to Windows and Android, but with one major exception ? there is no cost.

    • Lucene Eurocon 2011: Day Two

  • Web Browsers

  • SaaS

    • Own Your Cloud: Interview With PageKite Founder

      Cloud computing is the buzz word, even if most users don’t even fully understand what it is. One thing is for sure, putting all your eggs in one basket is always a bad idea, especially when someone else is holding the basket. So, the best cloud is the one that you own. We are aware of ownCloud, which you can easily run on your local server. But your ISP doesn’t let you assign an IP to your network, so you can’t access your ownCloud from outside your network. That’s the problem that PageKite solves. We interviewed the CEO and founder of PageKit,e Bjarni R. Einarsson, and discussed various aspects of the Cloud computing and how a user can take control of his/her own cloud.

  • CMS

    • Dr Dre of the Internet

      Dr Dries Buytaer, the Dr Dre of the Internet and founder of Drupal, the world’s most used open source Content Management System (CMS), was in the city on a visit to ISB and IIIT-Hyderabad.

      While the passion of developers came as a pleasant surprise, what made his “eyes pop” was, all of India.

  • Business

    • Semi-Open Source

      • SugarCRM: More Business Partners, Less Open Source Talk

        Like so many open source software companies, SugarCRM seems to be talking more about business growth and partner momentum, and less about open source technologies. The latest example: SugarCRM’s Q3 billings rose 69 percent vs. Q3 2010. Moreover, SugarCRM recruited 38 new partners during Q3, raising its worldwide partner engagements to 343 companies. Impressive. Here’s how SugarCRM has been evolving to deliver that type of growth.

        First, The VAR Guy needs to be clear: SguarCRM certainly isn’t abandoning open source. The company continues to promote its open source community and open source values. And CEO Larry Augustin has carefully described his views on open source.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Linux super-duper admin tools: gdb

      Let’s talk debug. So you wrote a piece of code and you want to compile it and run it. Or you have a binary and you just run it. The only problem is, the execution fails with a segmentation fault. For all practical purposes, you call it a day.

  • Project Releases

    • ColorHug open source colour management announced

      Developer Richard Hughes has announced the development of ColorHug, an open source colorimeter for measuring the colours displayed on a screen and creating a colour profile. Hughes began working on colour management in Linux two years ago and decided to create the device after finding that existing hardware was closed and proprietary. He wanted to make colour management accessible to end users and, with a background in electronics, set about designing the hardware.

  • Public Services/Government

    • Open government leaders support funding for key transparency initiatives

      OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation today [November 16, 2011] released an open letter to the U.S. Senate supporting continued funding for the Electronic Government Fund’s important transparency projects. The letter echoes the Obama administration’s policy statement issued Nov. 10.

      The letter calls for full funding for the E-Gov Fund, which pays for flagship projects such as USAspending.gov and Data.gov. In April, Congress short-sightedly slashed the E-Gov Fund by 75 percent, from $34 million to $8 million, drastically reducing the fund’s ability to maintain current transparency tools or develop new ones. The House Appropriations Committee has proposed a slight increase for the fund next year, but Senate appropriators proposed an additional cut.

  • Licensing

  • Openness/Sharing

  • Programming

    • Google Code-In 2011 about to start

      Eighteen open source organisations have been selected for this year’s Google Code-In contest for pre-university students. The contest starts on November 21st so it’s time for students to select the tasks they want to work on.

    • Five years of open-source Java: Freedom isn’t (quite) free

      Open source Java has a long and torrid history, rife with corporate rivalry, very public fallings-out, and ideological misgivings. But has all the effort and rumpus that went into creating an officially sanctioned open JDK been worth it?

      Java co-creator James Gosling certainly thinks so – although he didn’t seem entirely open to the idea in the early days.

    • Version 5.0 of Open64 compiler improves performance

      The developers of the Open64 compilers have released version 5.0 of the tool, with improved performance, bug fixes and changes to the infrastructure of the compilation system. Open64 is an open source optimising compiler for x86-64, IA-32 and IA-64 platforms. Historically, Open64 is derived from SGI’s Pro64 compiler for MIPS architectures; versions of the compiler for MIPS and other architectures such as CUDA and PowerPC are available from other sources. The main release of Open64 concentrates on Intel and AMD architectures and offers pre-built C, C++ and Fortran 95 compilers.

    • Java’s ‘Steve Jobs’ moment in 2012?

      The OpenJDK project followed shortly after Sun’s open-sourcing of Java in November 2005; it’s both a free-and-open-source implementation of Java Standard Edition (Java SE).

      The project has seen a fresh lease of life under Oracle, Sun’s buyer, who has tempted IBM away from the Apache Software Foundation’s Harmony Java SE project and who also recruited Apple to OpenJDK. OpenJDK also has a new set of governance rules, albeit rules that hand Oracle and IBM a duopoly over ultimate control of the project and, therefore, the roadmap.

    • Why devops is no silver bullet for developers

      In the survey, Puppet Labs finds that 55 percent of respondents ranked the automation of configuration and management tasks as the top benefit expected from the devops movement. Another 13 percent ranked it in their top three expected benefits.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • The trials and tribulations of HTML video in the post-Flash era

      Adobe reversed course on its Flash strategy after a recent round of layoffs and restructuring, concluding that HTML5 is the future of rich Internet content on mobile devices. Adobe now says it doesn’t intend to develop new mobile ports of its Flash player browser plugin, though existing implementations will continue to be maintained.

      Adobe’s withdrawal from the mobile browser space means that HTML5 is now the path forward for developers who want to reach everyone and deliver an experience that works across all screens. The strengths and limitations of existing standards will now have significant implications for content creators who want to deliver video content on the post-flash Web.

Leftovers

  • Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures and M$ Is Oh So Desperate

    In the marketing wars over cloudy documents M$ has launched a campaign to get back the defectors from Office 365 to Google Docs. A sign of their desperation is a blog post in which they trot out US advertisements by Google requiring skills with Excel. They find 88 such ads. When I look I find Google has 1500 ads out there without any need for Excel, suggesting Google’s use of Excel is less than 10% of desktops… Ouch! Thank you, M$, for advertising Google Docs.

  • Google enhances WebP to take on PNG

    Google has enhanced its open source image format WebP. The latest update adds a new lossless compression technology and supports transparency information for images. This, the developers say, allows the format to be an alternative to PNG; it was originally introduced as an alternative to JPEG, with its lossy compression of image files promising files up to 39 per cent smaller but retaining the same quality. PNG, a very popular image format for the web, is the target for the Google developers now, especially with the support for transparency.

  • Security

  • Finance

  • Copyrights

    • Pirate To Join European Parliament As Youngest Member

      In a few weeks Amelia Andersdotter will be the second Pirate Party member to take a seat at the European Parliament in Brussels. The 24-year-old Swede was voted in more than two years ago, but due to bureaucratic quibbles her official appointment was delayed. TorrentFreak catches up with the soon-to-be youngest MEP to hear about her plans and expectations.

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/11/21/steel-storm-2/feed/ 0 Steve Jobs and His War on Linux, LSD Addiction, and ‘Theft’ of Credit for UNIX, Java, Xerox Inventions http://techrights.org/2011/10/23/steve-jobs-exposed/ http://techrights.org/2011/10/23/steve-jobs-exposed/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:48:35 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=54962 Apple headquarters

Summary: The empire of ripoff comes under fire after revelations about its deceased CEO

MR. JOBS Is gone, but his legacy remains for all of us to suffer from. Several readers have urged us to write about this legacy, but we were collecting existing feedback (as the subject was thoroughly covered in the big publications).

Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement. Exploiting Free software and other people’s ideas is not an achievement, either.

“Fabricating evidence, dozens of actions to ban the competition and various other cases of aggression are not an achievement.”One person who was once working at MIT told us that Steve Jobs had pressured MIT to keep fostering the GNU project because it was valuable to the industry. But just look what Apple turned into a couple of decades later. Apple is becoming almost worse than Microsoft in certain aspects. And based on new reports, Steve Jobs was very much at the core of the abusive behaviour inside Apple. We shall come to this in a moment.

Over at USENET, Ron quotes Jobs as saying that Microsoft is “mostly irrelevant”. This comes from a new biographical book. About Microsoft and its CEO, Steve Ballmer: “In the final pages of the book, written in Mr. Jobs’s own words, he described Microsoft as “mostly irrelevant” and said companies like it often ran aground when they were run by salespeople. He singled out Apple’s former chief executive, John Sculley, and Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, as examples, adding that he didn’t think Microsoft would change as long as Ballmer was in charge.”

“Bill [Gates] is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
      –Steve JobsAbout Bill Gates: “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

Gates is now promoting patents, just like Jobs does (even after his death).

“Unfortunately,” writes Ron, “Jobs seemed incapable of looking in the mirror and applying this to himself.”

“We’ve always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” said Steve Jobs. “As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours,”said Bill Gates. They use the word “steal” very spuriously and, as we shall see in a moment, they also make such accusations against Linux/Android, where sharing is encouraged and the word “steal” is hardly ever used. According to TalkAndroid, the “upcoming biography, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson is scheduled for release next week, but the Associated Press got a copy early. From their descriptions, it sounds like there is some pretty bombshell stuff scrawled on the pages within. Apparently Steve Jobs was so vehemently agitated by Android that no monetary settlements with Google would ever be made. He had every intention to fire all of his guns at once, in effort to obliterate Android from the marketplace. Straight from the book, you’ll find this, quite frankly kind of disturbing, quote,

““I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.””

“Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable.”It also says that “[i]n a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, California, cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit…”

The quote goes line this (assuming one kept accurate record of it): “I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”

Apple sure is scared of Linux/Android and evidence of this is undeniable.

We know that there are Apple fans out there who attempt to discredit Android and back Apple’s position, but a lot of rebuttals have been written already. To quote one from Homer, “Jobs vowed to “destroy” Android with his “last dying breath”,” his USENET message goes like this:

From: Homer (Slated.org)
Date: Saturday 22 Oct 2011 00:17:55
Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy

What an evil bastard:

[quote]
Steve Jobs said he would spend his “last dying breath” fighting Google’s Android mobile operating system because he viewed it as a “stolen product,” according to an upcoming biography on the Apple co-founder.

The Associated Press excerpted Jobs’ words after obtaining a copy of the book “Steve Jobs,” written by noted biographer and former Time executive Walter Isaacson, ahead of its Oct. 24 release date. Though other biographies on the enigmatic entrepreneur have appeared in the past, the book is unique in that it is the only one to be officially authorized by Jobs himself.

According to the report, Isaacson writes about an “expletive-laced rant” that Jobs made to him about Android after the introduction of one particular HTC phone in January 2010.

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs reportedly said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
[/quote]

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vowed_to_destroy_google_android_called_it_a_stolen_product.html

Behold the “great” Steve Jobs.

So let’s see what Apple “invented”:

Android is a Dalvik shell running on Linux, incorporating applications primarily for communication, such as E-mail and Web browsing, and many third-party applications for other tasks. The visual design is roughly a grid of icons on a desktop, with full screen menus for preferences.

Dalvik is derived from Java, Sun’s “open source” development platform, but which its new, patent-troll owner, Oracle, now claims needed to be licensed and paid for when implemented… on mobile platforms, despite the former owner giving Google its explicit blessing to do so.

Apple did not invent Java, or Dalvik. Java was invented in 1995 by Sun employee James Gosling, who (ironically) later joined Google, and most recently joined a startup company called Liquid Robotics.

Linux is an operating system kernel ideologically based on Minix, that was further ideologically based on Unix. Andrew Tanenbaum, the creator of Minix, has explicitly stated Linux did not copy any code from Minix whatsoever, and is not a “rip-off”.

Apple did not invent Linux, or Unix. Unix was invented by Thompson and Ritchie at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969, whilst Jobs was still trying to get his first date in high school, and was being taught how to not put the round peg in the square hole by his foster parents.

The communication application interfaces on Android are based on KHTML technology, which was later assimilated by Apple, then renamed WebKit, and various industry standards for communication protocols established
by the Internet Engineering Task Force and many others.

Apple did not invent KHTML, or WebKit, or any communication protocols. Even Bonjour is just Apple’s reimplementation of Zeroconf, which was a protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. In fact the person most directly responsible for Zeroconf was Erik Guttman of Sun, not Apple:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=613609

http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/webExtensions/elections/SA/SA2/Election_April_2011/SA2_GUTTMAN_Chairman.pdf

The concept of a grid of icons on a desktop was invented by Xerox PARC way back in 1973, and only assimilated by Jobs, when he was allowed to peek inside the Palo Alto facility in exchange for stock options.

Apple did not invent the GUI, or icons, or grids of icons, or windows, or mice, or pointers, or any other aspect of desktop computing. All of that was invented by Xerox PARC, including drop-down/pop-up menus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface#Xerox_PARC

Apple invented nothing, Jobs invented nothing, and his vicious crusade against others implementing ideas that had nothing to do with him is one of the most sickening chapters in the history of technology.

May the name “Steve Jobs” be forever remembered as an evil tyrant, who fraudulently laid claim to others’ creations, and swore with his dying breath to destroy all those who were not beholden to him and his reign of tyranny.

May he burn in Hell.

Strong words. Another poster calls this “Apple’s premeditated patent aggression against Linux Android” and says that it “looks like Apple hallucinatories had pre-meditated the patent aggression against Linux android from day 1 because they
were hallucinating!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to “alternative medicine” (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life.”He is referring to other reports based on the book, referring specifically to Steve Jobs’ drug use, which is more of a personal angle. “So this patent aggression with a $40bn war chest is completely premeditated. Any judge looking at that should think very carefully about the judgments that are being handed down. No one has the right to sue every tom dick and harry because they got money in the bank and want to grab even more by manufacturing reasons and using the courts to hand out verdicts that are systematically unfair given the *whole* picture.”

He adds: “Far east manufacturing companies should also look hard at servicing any more orders from Apple. Unless they undertake written commitments by Apple to not sue you or your customers who are buying androids components and devices from you, you should avoid doing business and definitely not share your best tech with Apple.

“Most far east companies now gift their most advanced technologies to open source, Linux and Android companies. They make a lot more money doing that than go play judge and jury games with Apple’s patent trolling management who are out trying to impoverish any and all companies that do business with Apple.”

For those who are interested in the personal issues with Jobs, there is this article from a reputable source. One poster in USENET jokingly wrote: “The whole empire was built on LSD addiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

From the article: “The 630-page account of the technology pioneer’s life reveals intimate details of his relationships, how he was influenced by LSD and railed against executives at Apple who, he believed, cared more about making money than good products.”

But as we later found out, Jobs was willing to blow $40 billion on just destroying Android. What will shareholders say? “Apple should spend their $40bn cleaning up their electronics manufacturing waste mess in their China factories and pay the locals compensation before these factories are all shut down,” writes the USENET poster.

To quote more from the article: “Jobs also describes how taking LSD had “reinforced my sense of what was important: creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.””

More mysticism. Some sources alleged that Jobs also resorted to “alternative medicine” (placebo treatment) rather than procedures that could save his life. But that again is a personal angle which does not relate to the technical and cannot be properly verified (Wikileaks also contains alleged evidence of Jobs having HIV).

“Jobs then proceeded to renounce greed by … making a $337 billion company and an $8.6 billion personal fortune, without ever donating even a single dime to charity, and “reinforced his sense of what was important” by … selling trivial toy gadgets, then went on to oppress any competition with patent extortion and litigation, thuggishly and hypocritically hoarding ideas he merely stole from others, whilst vowing with his dying breath to destroy everyone else, like a frothing maniac,” wrote another poster. “Yup, definitely the hallucinatory effects of LSD. Of course it helps if one is already an evil bastard in the first place.”

As the latter poster put it: “It’s hard to work with addicts and their violent character, particularly in a business environment where getting the work done and taking responsibilities are a big part of daily chores to bring in the daily bread. I pity all who were his coworkers. I hope they sue the crap out of Apple if they were subject to daily abuse from drug addicted management.

Utah State Prison Wasatch Facility with Apple

Leary and LSD

“No one has rights to inflict abuse on fellow workers if their manager chose to be an LSD addict and visit them with daily abuse.”

Last night we saw funny comment from a troll, who said: “The steve jobs attacks are funded by the FSF, and carried out by Techrights and its supporters.”

“Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with?”Now, that was funny. We find it flattering that one might draw a connection between us and the FSF (none exists).

The only thing Android stole was Jobs’ thunder. Richard Stallman was right about Jobs. And just because we agree with the FSF on many issues does not mean we are, in fact, in any way related to it. We are 100% independent. We always were.

This afternoon I had the pleasure of sitting down in a local coffee shop talking to a Ph.D. graduate of Sir Stephen Furber, who is one of ‘the’ public faces of ARM. Does the man behind ARM know that Steve Jobs claim credit for things he never came up with? Either way, the man I spoke to detests Apple for many of the reasons we covered here over the years. █

Apple in a nutshell

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/10/23/steve-jobs-exposed/feed/ 2 Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman Paid by Microsoft for Open Source Spin (and Alexis de Tocqueville Institution Recalled) http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/professors-sponsored-by-microsoft/ http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/professors-sponsored-by-microsoft/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:40:15 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=44589 Writers sponsored by Microsoft

Stocking for business

Summary: A followup to an incident which was mentioned yesterday in a rush (Microsoft pays professors to write venomously about Microsoft’s competition); Microsoft works hard to disguise its assault on software freedom

LAST night we wrote about a so-called 'study' or book that Microsoft was funding, noting that the results were unsurprisingly like those which Microsoft wanted. Once again the London School of Economics (LSE) was involved; we’ve mentioned before how Microsoft uses it. A few hours ago Groklaw responded to the same thing by saying: “What an amazing coincidence. Two researchers take Microsoft money, no strings attached, mind you, and then after much study just happen to come to the same conclusions as Microsoft’s talking points.”

On exactly the same day that we mentioned this Wayne Borean wrote about the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, which we alluded to in the post. He caught up with where the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI) is today and to repeat what we put in our daily links for the afternoon:

However ADTI had first become publicly noticed a few years prior, when as part of the 1998 Tobacco Settlement Agreement, the Philip Morris corporation released millions of pages of documents concerning their operations. In them was evidence that Philip Morris had hired ADTI to campaign against tobacco regulations.

It’s a rather curious that an institution dedicated to the ‘ideas and ideals’ of Alexis de Tocqueville, on the extension and perfection of democracy would be working as hired guns for the tobacco industry. And if they worked as hired guns for the tobacco industry, who else have they worked for? Microsoft was suggested immediately after the UPI article was published.

In May of 2004 our questions were answered. ADTI put out a press release stating that Linux could suffer from patent issues. The original press release has vanished from the ADTI site, but a copy is here. The press release appeared to have only one reason for existence, to push users away from Free and Open Source Software, and towards using proprietary software.

The final capstone was a week later, when ADTI put out another press release in which they questioned whether Linus Torvalds really wrote Linux, which Pamela Jones deconstructed at the time.

Later Ken Brown, the staffer who supposedly was writing a book exposing Linux, was exposed as a liar. Ken made claims about what certain people, including Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the man who designed and programmed the Minix operating system, said, and curiously every single person that he quoted disagreed with his quotes. Such a total repudiation is unusual to say the least.

So the question to ask is, did Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman ‘pull a Brown’? And if so, it should not surprise us because Microsoft has a history of bribing professors to promote its products and views. Right about now Microsoft has a huge PR campaign going (Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman are living proof of it), trying to portray itself as an open source-friendly company so that it can devour it all. Groklaw has responded to it by saying: “Microsoft’s announced dream is that “open source” applications run on Windows, instead of on Linux, and everything they do seems to harmonize with that goal. They still want to kill Linux. But why would you want to help them do it? Who do you trust more, Linus or Ballmer?” █

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/professors-sponsored-by-microsoft/feed/ 0 Links 19/1/2011: Cybercom Enters Linux Foundation, Qt in Canonical http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/cybercom-linux-foundation/ http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/cybercom-linux-foundation/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:19:49 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=44586

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Foursquare Releases Two Open Source Development Tools

    Today Foursquare released the code for two applications on GitHub: Rogue, a MongoDB query domain-specific language written in Scala, and Full-Loaded, “a caching image loader for iOS.”

  • Of China, Piracy and Open Source

    As news stories prove every day, China is more than capable of creating technology that matches that of the West – think of maglev trains or stealth fighters. It could easily knock up its own operating system and applications to replace the proprietary ones that are pirated across the land. But in fact it doesn’t even need to go to all that trouble.

    For some years, the China government has been quietly supporting and promoting the use of free software within its borders – conscious, no doubt, that it forms a handy insurance policy against the day when it might not want to be so dependent on Western proprietary products.

    [...]

    It’s sad to see a serious newspaper like the Corriere della Sera spouting the kind of unrealistic nonsense; it bolsters the erroneous view that software piracy is a serious problem around the world, and that vast sums of money are involved. When you look closely at the details, neither turns out to be true. The real sums involved in developing countries are relatively small, and in any case, as Gates himself admits, companies like Microsoft actually prefer piracy to the alternative: a world running on open source.

  • In defence of hackers and open source

    With open source code, you have various objective metrics – speed, size, portability etc. When it comes to designing interfaces, it’s very subjective – and hence hard to ensure that things always improve through iteration. But these problems are not about “openness” or the “collective” approach as such: top-down, centralised efforts have just as much difficulty determining what is “progress” for areas where judgement matters, and just as little problem when there are clear metrics.

    [...]

    The fact that he trots out the old FUD about open source being unable to innovate – maybe he’s heard of this thing called the internet, which was created almost entirely using open protocols and open code – is perhaps an indication of the tiredness of his arguments.

    Similarly, the idea that the middle class have fewer opportunities to finance content creation overlooks the fact that people are now creating unprecedented quantities of content for *free*, purely for the love of creation – you know, that “l’art pour l’art” thing again. It’s true that not every one of them is a masterpiece, but guess what? That’s always been the case: the vast majority of creation has *always* been mediocre. The difference is that today we are more aware of how much rubbish there is because we have unparalleled access to it.

    [...]

    In other words, hackers and open source are precisely the forces that Lanier should be praising, since they are closely aligned with his desire for an allegiance to people, not machines. It’s a pity that someone with his pedigree doesn’t recognise that.

  • If it sounds mad

    I’ve just been reading Glyn Moody’s article on the defence of hackers and open source. And no doubt I fully disagree with any notion that Free and Open Source is as relatable to some mass anarchistic insensible process.

    I thought to myself that there probably is a quick test to see if what someone is saying about open source makes sense. A quick and dirty litmus test for checking if the author understands open source in principle and in practice.

    If you replace “Open Source” with the word “Science” and set the date of the article or book back to 1650, does it sound like it’s totally mad?

  • Open-Source Projects Are Getting Ripped On Amazon

    It’s been brought to my attention today by a Phoronix reader that several major open-source projects are being ripped off and sold for-profit on Amazon by a small company out of the United Kingdom. FlightGear, InkScape, and Scribus are among the free software projects being affected right now and Amazon apparently has yet to catch onto this or act.

  • The Butterfly-Amazon Open-Source Saga Continues

    It’s also been discovered by Phoronix readers that this company is passing off GnuCash as “Small Business & Personnel Finance Manager”, the Ardour music application is called “Music/Audio Editing Tool-kit”, PDF Creator is resold as “Create Your Own PDF”, and DVD Flick is “DVD Studio.”

  • Being a Free/Open Source Software Catalyst : Part I

    This is no time for Holy War. If you have a chance to switch to Apache, switch! Your Boss may not know it’s Apache (I can’t believe it’s not butter!), or he may be fully aware. In either case, he’s coming to you with a golden opportunity.

  • 50 Open Source Replacements for Storage Software

    Here are 50 noteworthy open source replacements for commercial storage-related tools.

  • Open Source in GSM Could Breed Mobile Mayhem

    The open source code for GSM base station programming could allow malicious hackers to set up rogue base stations and grab control of peoples’ cellphones, according to security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann. He’s raised particular concern about such activities near places like airports and embassies, but other researchers have questioned the seriousness of the threat.

  • Five open source network management projects to watch

    Open source software has a long history in lower-level network software so it’s not surprising there is a healthy range of free tools available for network and systems management.

  • Events

    • LPC 2011 Call for Track Ideas

      The organizers behind the Linux Plumbers’ Conference have put out a call for track ideas for this Linux conference taking place in Santa Rosa in early September. Jesse Barnes asks that anyone interested read the below message.

    • [LCA2011-Chat] lca2011 venue update

      The conference venue is now officially confirmed as being at the Qld. University of Technology – Kelvin Grove campus. Unfortunately due to the damage sustained by the recent floods in Brisbane, the original buildings located at QUT – Gardens Point campus will not be available for the week of the conference.

  • Web Browsers

    • Midori vs Epiphany Review

      In the last couple months I’ve been seeing a lot of articles concerning the Midori web browser. It’s a lightweight GTK-based browser that uses the WebKit rendering engine also used by browsers like Chromium and Safari. At version 0.2.9, it’s relatively new (it’s still a ways away from a 1.0 release), but it’s included as part of the Xfce “goodies” package. It’s also the browser of choice of the Elementary project. I’ve tried Midori before and like it because it isn’t too much of a system resource hog, and it faithfully displays the webpages I visit.

    • Mozilla

      • School of Webcraft Charter (draft)

        For about a year now, Mozilla has been working with Peer to Peer University to set up a School of Webcraft. The vision is simple enough: a free, community run school for web development. It’s going well, with almost 30 courses on offer for the January term.

      • Firefox Mobile – Managing Profiles

        Last week we were talking about the need for private browsing, or something like it, in Firefox Mobile. Even though you might not share your phone with other people, you might share a tablet – especially the “family tablet”, sitting there on the coffee table. Private browsing is an obtrusive system, at least as implemented in Mozilla, and it’s doubtful we could add it for Firefox Mobile in time for the upcoming release. Also, private browsing doesn’t really satisfy the sharing use case for tablets.

      • Threads and Workers for Add-ons in Firefox 4

        The upcoming Firefox 4 includes a ton of significant changes, many of which have a direct effect on add-ons. The majority of these changes are just new and different ways of doing things. Unfortunately, there are a couple of changes that offer no alternative and add-on authors will just need to cope with them. The stability changes that were introduced in the threading model for Firefox 4 are an example of this.

      • Firefox Mobile- The Good and the Ugly

        Firefox mobile is also the first mobile browser to support addons. There’s a handy collection of really cool ones already available. Then finally, it really does render pages just like they were designed.

  • Databases

    • Cassandra service company Riptano changes name to DataStax

      Founded last April, Riptano, a company that provides training, advice and support for the NoSQL database Apache Cassandra, has been re-named as DataStax. Riptano was founded by Jonathan Ellis, chief of the Cassandra Project and Matt Pfeil. Both were previously employed by the cloud provider Rackspace, and Rackspace supplied the seed capital for Riptano.

  • Oracle

    • More LibreOffice Mockups: Citrus UI

      Speaking of LibreOffice, WebUpd8 reader Nathan Moos mentioned some refreshing mockups called Citrus UI (please note that these are not official mockups!).

      Citrus tries to remain somewhat familiar while brining more logic by reorganizing things differently – such as the File menu which currently holds commands that are in no way related to the current file. Further more, the menus are contextual meaning you won’t get any grayed-out menus and instead, they are hidden by default.

    • OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice Release Candidates Duke It Out

      Oracle-owned OpenOffice.org and independent LibreOffice are both nearing their freely available 3.3.0 versions and show their wares with recent release candidates. Commercial OpenOffice.org 3.3 was released by Oracle last month at a licensing fee starting at $49.95 for the Standard Edition, but has yet to release the freely downloadable version for home and small business use. That version has reached RC9, which is said to probably be the last development release before final. On the other side of town, LibreOffice has been releasing development versions as well with the latest being RC3 on January 13, which is rumored to be its last before final as well. LibreOffice has gained popular support probably primarily due to breaking from Oracle control and ownership while offering largely equal functionality.

  • Business

    • Open source status report reveals good health and profits

      2010 marked the 25th year of the Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. In that time the use of free software has become pervasive. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some open source software usage statistics today. It’s truly amazing the size of the open source software community and the levels of participation in them.

  • Funding

  • BSD

    • Backdoors in OpenBSD? Reply hazy, try again

      On Dec. 11, OpenBSD founder and lead developers Theo de Raadt received an email from Gregory Perry, CEO of GoVirtual Education, a Florida-based VMWare training firm, in which Perry told de Raadt he was “aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA [an acronym for the US Dept. of Justice], the parent organization to the FBI.”

      [...]

      History may show otherwise, but right now this incident seems to be a story of missteps, and not maliciousness.

  • Government

  • Licensing

    • Gevent Joins the Software Freedom Conservancy

      Today, the Software Freedom Conservancy welcomes Gevent as its newest member. Gevent joins twenty-four other Conservancy members, who receive the benefit of aggregated non-profit status available to all Conservancy member projects.

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Work is not the opposite of play!

      HR and legal are going to have to give up some reflexes biased against greater transparency on employee performance.

    • Can open source reinvent the music business?

      Under the traditional music model, bands create an album, sign their distribution rights to a record label, and the label distributes the music and benefits from the majority of sales. Recent economic problems and the advent of digital distribution and file sharing have squeezed labels for cash, which has limited distribution and marketing. Consequently, bands have suffered by losing their distribution rights to companies that no longer have the funds to effectively distribute their music.

      This poses a few unfortunate outcomes for bands. First, they lose control over their distribution, and if a label is not doing a good job, this can cripple a band’s ability to spread awareness of their material. Second, labels typically provide tour support if a band sells a certain number of units. However, low investment in distribution translates into limited sales, meaning bands won’t get to tour and raise that awareness. Finally, bands usually make money through tours and merchandise sales. With the labels not providing adequate marketing and distribution, bands are not sent on tour, so they don’t make much money. The net result is that the romantic dream of a record deal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    • Open Data

      • Launch of the Principles on Open Bibliographic Data

        The initial idea for something like the Principles on Open Bibliographic Data dates back to May 2010 and originated in the German OKFN chapter. Originally, they were directed at the library world. It was not before July 2010 that the OKFN Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data started work on the principles – taking ideas (and text) from the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science.

  • Web Standards

    • An HTML5 Logo

      W3C unveiled a logo for HTML5 today. HTML5 in the broad sense covers many different technologies at varying degrees of standardization and adoption. Commercial sites have begun to take advantage of some of the technology, and we are excited that this logo will help raise awareness about HTML5 and W3C. Please check out the logo home page for information about free stickers. We are also selling T-shirts and part of the proceeds will support the HTML5 test suite effort.

    • W3C Introduces an HTML5 Logo
    • W3C’s new logo promotes HTML5–and more

      Underscoring the confluence of technology, politics, and marketing, the World Wide Web Consortium today unveiled a new logo for HTML5.

      With the logo, the W3C wants to promote the new Web technology–and itself. The Web is growing far beyond its roots of housing static Web sites and is transforming into a vehicle for entertainment and a foundation for online applications.

Leftovers

  • Facebook’s 3rd Biggest Advertiser is (Allegedly) a Bing Affiliate Scam (With Updates)

    Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s anti-webspam team and tonight he came across what looks like a huge trove of scammy, spammy spam – on Facebook. And it involves Microsoft. Advertising publication AdAge reported tonight on findings from advertising analysts that Facebook sold an estimated $1.86 billion in worldwide advertising for 2010, an amazing sum. Who’s spending all that money on Facebook ads? A long, long tail of self-serve advertisers for sure – but near the head of the tail is someone that should have raised a whole lot of red flags.

    At the end of the AdAge article is a passing mention that the 3rd largest advertiser across all of Facebook, after AT&T and Match.com, is a mysterious company listed as Make-my-baby.com.

  • Legal Thuggery, or Law as Transaction Cost

    There are two great things about this. First, the BoingBoing post isn’t even about Academic Advantage: it contains those words, but is utterly unrelated. Second, the allegedly bad part (which L, A, & Y complains about) is the use of the term “scam.” But: the term “scam” was put up by a poster. That means that BoingBoing is immune from any tort action – like defamation – under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Any lawyer admitted to the bar should know that – this is Internet Law 101.

  • Audio slideshow: On the map

    Until recently, what is often billed as one of Africa’s largest slums – Kibera, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi – was a blank spot on official maps. But a group of volunteers have been training young people living there to create their own digital map of the area.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • Whitehall chief blocks release of Blair’s notes to Bush on Iraq

      Britain’s top civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell, is preventing the official inquiry into the Iraq invasion from publishing notes sent by Tony Blair to George W Bush – evidence described by the inquiry as of “central importance” in establishing the circumstances that led to war.

      O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, consulted Blair before suppressing the documents, it emerged tonight. The Cabinet Office said: “There is an established convention covering papers of a previous administration whereby former ministers would normally be consulted before release of papers from their time in government.” The prime minister’s spokesman said David Cameron had not been consulted.

    • The Real Domestic Extremists

      Who threatens us most – peaceful campaigners or a private militia run by police chiefs?

    • Clean-up of covert policing ordered after Mark Kennedy revelations

      The government said today that a private company run by police chiefs should be stripped of its power to run undercover spies in the wake of a Guardian investigation into the police officer Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

      The Home Office minister Nick Herbert and senior police officers acknowledged for the first time that “something had gone very wrong” in the Kennedy case, which led to the collapse last week of the trial of six people accused of planning to invade a Nottinghamshire power station.

    • FBI Issues Death Threat in U.S. Citizen Interrogation

      An FBI agent reportedly issued a death threat against a U.S. citizen traveling abroad, according to the January 13 New York Times. The American, 19-year-old Gulet Mohamed, also alleges beatings and sleep deprivation in his interrogations since his arrest by Kuwaiti authorities in late December.

      After he was detained by Kuwaiti authorities, “Mr. Mohamed said the agents began yelling the name ‘Anwar al-Awlaki’ at him,” the Times reported, “prompting Kuwaiti officials to intervene and request that the agents end the interrogation.” New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen and Islamic cleric who has emigrated to Yemen and advocated jihad against America, and President Obama has reputedly put him on an assassination list of U.S. citizens for when he is found.

      Making a death threat against a defenseless prisoner is a crime of felony torture under the U.S. criminal code, and the jurisdiction of the crime for federal agents is anywhere in the world. The U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 2340 defines felony torture as follows: “torture means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control,” including “the threat of imminent death.”

  • Cablegate

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Sales of sustainable seafood soar in UK supermarkets

      Sales of “alternative” species of fish and seafood have soared after being championed in Channel 4′s newFish Fightcampaign, the UK’s leading supermarkets reported today.

      Consumers are favouring coley, dab, mussels, squid and sardines over the staple salmon, cod and tuna following the programmes last week, which highlighted the wasteful use of “discard” in fishing practices while encouraging shoppers to take the pressure off popular fish stocks by being more adventurous in what they eat.

  • Finance

    • Executive order: Gov. Haslam throws out income disclosure rules

      Republican Gov. Bill Haslam has signed an executive order that eliminates a requirement for the governor and top aides to disclose how much they earn.

      Under the order signed after Haslam took office on Saturday, the disclosure rules applying to himself and senior administration officials will be the same as those for members of the General Assembly. Those only requires them to list sources of income, but not how much they make.

    • Ex-Swiss banker says he’ll hand files on alleged tax evasion in offshore havens to WikiLeaks

      Elmer said he would not reveal what specifically was in the documents, and said that he personally would not disclose “individual companies or individual names” of the account holders.

    • Tax havens and the men who stole the world

      Shaxson has compiled a remarkable dossier: part analysis, historical and contemporary, part expository, part anecdote and gossip, wholly revealing, shocking and, yes – entertaining. His publisher’s proof copy for reviewers suggests that he has written a thriller, and certainly his often over-written narrative strains for that effect. For me it is possibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level.

      The scale of abuse is staggering. More than half of world trade passes, often just on paper, through tax havens. More than half of all banking assets and a third of all multinational corporations’ foreign direct investment is offshore where the assets and revenues escape not only tax, but also the rule of law and democratic regulation. UK Uncut’s estimates of lost tax revenue come to some £100 billion over four years. Shaxson quotes a National Audit Office finding in 2007 that a third of the UK’s biggest companies paid no tax at all in this country in the previous boom year. It is of course not only developed nations like the UK that lose out. Developing countries lose some $160 billion annually just through manipulative price fixing that drains tax revenue out of poor countries – as well as sustaining corrupt rulers in power.

    • Ex-Banker Gives Data on Taxes to WikiLeaks

      Rudolf M. Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank Julius Baer for eight years until he was dismissed in 2002, refused to identify any of the individuals or companies, but he told reporters at a news conference that about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among them.

      He told The Observer newspaper over the weekend that those named in the documents come from “the U.S., Britain, Germany, Austria and Asia — from all over,” and include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.”

      Mr. Elmer handed two computer disks to Mr. Assange at the news conference, the first significant public event the WikiLeaks founder has held since he was arrested in London in early December after Swedish prosecutors sought to have him extradited on charges of sexual crimes there. He has denied the charges but was briefly jailed last year before bail was granted.

      Wearing the same dark blue suit he has worn through his legal battles, Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks would verify and release the information, including the names, in as little as two weeks.

    • Would More Education Reduce Unemployment and Income Inequality?

      Some people argue that education is the answer to some of the big current problems the U.S. economy faces. Want to fix the unemployment problem? That’s easy: just provide additional educational opportunities for those having difficulty finding jobs. Want to lessen income inequality? That’s easy too: if more people have college degrees, they’ll qualify for higher wage work. While these arguments appear to make sense, looking at the data over the past several decades provides the opposite answer: more education would solve neither problem.

      Lawrence Mishel of the Economics Policy Institute makes this argument in a new paper. While he agrees that a better-educated workforce would ultimately help U.S. growth, he shows pretty convincingly that these two current economic problems can’t be solved with more education.

    • Conservatives Ruined the Economy and Now They’re Blaming Liberalism

      Really? Reagan and “vigilance about big government and balanced budgets” in the same sentence? Time for a reality check:

      Reagan made big government bigger; he never submitted a balanced budget; and his deficits piled up more government debt than in all the United States’ prior history, due precisely to low taxes and the bloated defense budgets underpinning “peace through strength.” Bottom line: conservatives’ combination of “low taxes” and “strong defense” during the Reagan and Bush II administrations produced huge fiscal deficits to be passed on to future generations. Wait until they find out all those Reaganomics tax cuts were, in fact, future tax increases on them. To add insult to injury, the revenue hole left by the Reagan tax cuts was filled by loans from Asia and OPEC, suddenly prosperous thanks to huge trade surpluses. During Reagan’s watch, therefore, the United States swung from being the world’s largest creditor to the world’s largest debtor nation, undermining America’s financial sovereignty. “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

    • 85-Year-Old-Woman Arrested for Bank Protest — 6 Revolts the Tea Party-Obsessed Corporate Media Overlooked

      Some of the most undercovered stories of 2010 were actions taken by ordinary people standing up for a more just and equitable society. People are taking to the streets on a regular basis across the country, but unlike the corporate-sponsored Tea Party — whose spokespeople can’t answer basic questions about the deficit they claim to be so worried about — those who believe in health care, affordable housing, economic justice, education, a living wage, and a better life for all rarely, if ever, get the attention they deserve. Instead, the media, even the alternative media, spent the better part of last year obsessing over the Tea Party and manufactured personalities like Sarah Palin, while ignoring people like 85-year-old Julia Botello.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • FCC gives green light to Comcast’s merger with NBC Universal

      The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday gave the green light to Comcast’s proposed acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal by a vote of 4-1.

    • Indoctrinating Children To Hate Freedom Of The Press?

      I just listened to a recent podcast from This American Life with the theme of “Kid Politics.” As per usual, it’s an entertaining hour, but the First Act struck me as especially interesting, given the current debates about Wikileaks and free speech. In that story, reporter and TAL regular Starlee Kine visits the Ronald Reagan library, where a bunch of school children visit and run through an exercise in which they get to simulate the invasion of Grenada and get to make all the decisions just like Reagan did. They’re prepped for this with a bit of laughably propaganda-filled version of history (e.g. if we didn’t invade Grenada, then Grenada, Cuba and Nicaragua would have invaded the US and made us communist). Then, they go through this simulation — in which they’re told there are “no right or wrong answers.” However, it later turns out that if you answer differently than Ronald Reagan actually did, an angry buzzer buzzes and the students are told they’re wrong — if you answer the same as Reagan, a bell dings, and the students are told they made “the correct choice.” In most cases, of course, the students are lead to the “easy” answer being exactly what Reagan did.

      Then, suddenly, in the middle of the exercise, the evil press ruins everything, by revealing that two US carriers have been rerouted to Grenada, ruining the element of surprise. To be honest, if you look through historical reports of the invasion of Grenada, the press leaking this bit of information is pretty hard to find. Yet, in the Reagan Library, it’s the key to the whole story. The element of surprise has been blown, and now the faux-Reagan needs to decide whether to move forward with the invasion.

    • The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

      However ADTI had first become publicly noticed a few years prior, when as part of the 1998 Tobacco Settlement Agreement, the Philip Morris corporation released millions of pages of documents concerning their operations. In them was evidence that Philip Morris had hired ADTI to campaign against tobacco regulations.

      It’s a rather curious that an institution dedicated to the ‘ideas and ideals’ of Alexis de Tocqueville, on the extension and perfection of democracy would be working as hired guns for the tobacco industry. And if they worked as hired guns for the tobacco industry, who else have they worked for? Microsoft was suggested immediately after the UPI article was published.

      In May of 2004 our questions were answered. ADTI put out a press release stating that Linux could suffer from patent issues. The original press release has vanished from the ADTI site, but a copy is here. The press release appeared to have only one reason for existence, to push users away from Free and Open Source Software, and towards using proprietary software.

      The final capstone was a week later, when ADTI put out another press release in which they questioned whether Linus Torvalds really wrote Linux, which Pamela Jones deconstructed at the time.

      Later Ken Brown, the staffer who supposedly was writing a book exposing Linux, was exposed as a liar. Ken made claims about what certain people, including Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the man who designed and programmed the Minix operating system, said, and curiously every single person that he quoted disagreed with his quotes. Such a total repudiation is unusual to say the least.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Righthaven extends copyright lawsuit campaign to individual Web posters

        Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC is now suing individual message-board posters, not just website operators.

        Righthaven, which files copyright infringement lawsuits over unapproved online postings of material from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, filed seven infringement lawsuits Tuesday and Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Nevada, lifting its lawsuit total since March to at least 203.

      • Senior Judge ‘Astonished’ By Actions Of ACS:Law in File-Sharing Cases

        Following on from our article detailing ACS:Law’s no-show at the directions hearing for their 27 active file-sharing cases, today we take a closer look at yesterday’s proceedings. Judge Birss QC said that he found ACS:Law’s actions both “remarkable” and “unprecedented” and was “frankly astonished” by their behavior, while defense lawyers made serious allegations concerning ACS:Law’s conduct.

        Following a review of all outstanding active ACS:Law cases, last month Judge Birss QC found that a total of 27 had been filed, many of them displaying what he described as “unusual features”. In order to decide how to progress these cases he ordered a directions hearing to take place at the Patents Court in London yesterday.

      • No Ads, Domain Seized and No Anonymity For Pirate Site, Judge Rules

        A U.S. District Court judge has issued a preliminary injunction against two advertising networks and a Whois protection service of a site that offers pirated e-books. Advertising networks Clicksor and Chitika are now prohibited from serving advertisements to the site, while Enom’s Whois Privacy Protection Service was ordered to hand over all personal details of the site’s owner and make the site inaccesible.

        Just a few days ago we discussed several strategies that can be employed to take down or hurt sites that are associated with online piracy. One of those strategies is pursuing the ad-networks of these sites, in order to cut off their revenue streams. Another is to target domain registrars and push these services to disable access to the sites.

      • MPAA trumpets new filesharing ’study’

        “Expect to see this ’study’ quoted ad nauseum in ‘findings’ emanating from various entertainment cartel disinformation units”, said p2pnet in a post on a new ’study’ underlining the supposed horrors to the entertainment industry’s bottom line.

        Constructed for the US Chamber of Commerce, it’s “about counterfeiting and ‘piracy’ in general terms”, we said, going on, “But, big surprise, file sharing gets most of the attention.

Clip of the Day

How to Root and Install a Cyanogenmod ROM


Credit: TinyOgg

]]> http://techrights.org/2011/01/19/cybercom-linux-foundation/feed/ 0 Novell, OIN, and AttachMSFT: Why It Confirms Novell Was Trouble All Along http://techrights.org/2010/12/15/novell-writings-on-the-wall/ http://techrights.org/2010/12/15/novell-writings-on-the-wall/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:53:41 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=43087 “Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

Executed

Summary: The writings have been on the wall for 4 years, persistently warning that Novell was a ticking time bomb with its growing pile of software patents and growing relationship with Microsoft

NOVELL’S UNIX might still be up for sale, so Novell owning it for the time being is missing the point. It’s many articles like this one which fail to mention the possibility of a UNIX sale. One has to remember that Novell has already decided to sell to Microsoft close to 1,000 patents, mostly software patents. Novell cannot be trusted, so why should AttachMSFT be trusted? Just look what happened to Caldera/SCO. Allies sometimes become enemies for strategic reasons and amoral shareholders. As for the SCO case, delays are bound to become epic as each so-called “bankruptcy hearing” gets cancelled (this happens many times repeatedly, which makes one wonder about the court system). Here is the latest such cancellation (delay until 2011). “Novell Wins Most of the Costs It Asked the Court to Get SCO to Pay” Groklaw says, but time is running out as the company falls into other hands whose interests are foreign.

The Clerk in the US District Court in Utah has signed off on most of the costs Novell asked for from the second SCO v. Novell trial. For the rest, they can ask the judge, as some of the expenses, while the clerk might find them reasonable in a case of this type, can’t be ordered by the clerk. Either side now has seven days to ask the judge to review.

Rick Whiting from CRN says that “Novell Partners See Promise In Attachmate Acquisition”, but the claim seems optimistic (and lacking substance). AttachMSFT is likely to axe some products that partners rely on.

Jack Wallen has published “The Novell deal is done: Let the patent scandals begin”. Therein he repeats the Microsoft-funded Linux libel (from Ken Brown), which sneaks into the news. “Linux was based on Minix,” Wallen claims, but this is utterly false as we clarified before [1, 2, 3]. Here is more from Wallen:

Here’s where I get confused: Linux was based on Minix. Minix was an operating system (Mini UNIX) created by Andrew Tanenbaum designed for education and science. Minix is a UNIX-like operating system, but was built from scratch. There was never any IP infringement on the part of Tanenbaum. When Torvalds decided to create his own operating system, he was just trying to create a “Minix” that would run on x86 hardware (He couldn’t afford the far more expensive hardware required to run Minix). And so Linus Torvalds created Linux. Eventually the GNU applications were added to replace the Minix application. The GNU applications were created by Richard Stallman with the goal of creating free, UNIX-like software from the ground up.

Microsoft insists on getting Linux sued for something, be it false claims relating to Minix, UNIX, and currently Microsoft patents which the company refuses to even name. Microsoft’s Walli (whom we recently mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) continues to promote his employer by playing apologist amid the patents acquisition:

So to me (naively) it looks like Microsoft vacuumed up the Novell portfolio because it could.

It’s almost like saying you can take food from a child because you can. Shame on Microsoft.

Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer asks: “So why did EMC/VMware back out of the NOVL deal? Questions raised by http://is.gd/ivy2Z MSFT plays a role, ofcourse.” Fascinating revelation (caught also/originally by Groklaw):

Microsoft entered negotiations four to eight weeks before the deal was formally announced, said a fourth source close to the process.

EMC, acting on behalf of VMware, had been representing a consortium of players to be part of the Novell sale, the first source said. When it became clear that the storage company was no longer interested in a transaction, advisors looked elsewhere.

“The Microsoft consortium was able to bridge the gap in valuation that enabled the deal to get done,” the second source noted. Microsoft paid what was considered a “high price” for the IP portfolio, the sources said.

[...]

Microsoft and Golden Gate Capital have a good working relationship so were able to move quickly in negotiating a deal for the patents, the second source said. In 2008, Microsoft invested in Aspect Software, a portfolio company of Golden Gate.

Novell declined to comment for this story. EMC did not respond to a request for comment.

Why could they possibly refuse to comment? Maybe it’s a rhetorical question. Andy Updegrove has posted a followup to his detailed preliminary analysis of the AttachMSFT deal. This time he focuses on the patents Novell has given to Microsoft:

Who are those guys? The first and most obvious question relates to who the other members of CPTN Holdings, LLC (CPTN) the Microsoft syndicate may be. To my knowledge, there has not yet been a leak of this information. As I noted in my previous blog entry, the transaction documents that are made public pursuant to public reporting obligations may never reveal the names, unless one of the consortium members is required to disclose it in one of its own public reporting documents. Presumably that will happen, if it will happen at all, within three to four months, as part of a normal quarterly filing on Form 10-Q.

The second, and far less likely way would be as an indirect result of a filing by CPTN or Attachmate under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Public Improvements Act of 1976 (HSR). Whether or not a filing is required involves a complex analysis of the facts, as summarized in a 20 page Introductory Guide available at the Web site of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the agency which receives HSR filings and determines whether or not to permit a transaction described in an HSR filing to proceed.

If the patent acquisition were to be made by Microsoft alone, an HSR filing would clearly be necessary. Whether an acquisition by a consortium with the specific membership of CPTN would be required is a more complex question.

Intriguingly, the 8-K states that one of the conditions for the closing of the patent acquisition will be:

..the expiration or termination of the waiting period (and any extensions thereof) applicable to the consummation of the Merger under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended (the “HSR Act”), and certain other antitrust laws;

Unless this language was careless, it suggests that while the main transaction requires an HSR filing (no surprise there), the patent acquisition would not. Otherwise, there would also be a reference to any HSR filing that, if challenged by the FTC, might prevent the patent sale to go through.

In my last blog entry, I had said that I assumed, but had not had time to look up, whether HSR filings are public; I’ve now had time to take a look, and neither the fact that an HSR filing has been made, nor the text of the filing itself, becomes public. In fact, filings are even exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Redmonk, an analyst which also receives some payments from Redmond (Microsoft), writes about “The End of Novell” and says the following about these patents:

Of far greater concern to some, however, is Novell’s intellectual property portfolio. As has been well documented, as part of the transaction Novell sold some 882 patents to CPTN Holdings, a consortium that counts Microsoft as a member (more on them here), for $450 million dollars. Although Novell subsequently disclosed that it was retaining its Unix copyrights, this does not satisfy fears regarding the patents. Copyrights, remember, refer simply to a given codebase, while patents refer to the idea or invention behind them. It’s entirely possible, then, that Novell could retain the copyrights to code as Microsoft simultaneously acquired patents that read on same. Questions, therefore, remain: what – specifically – was the intellectual property acquired? More importantly, what’s the intent of purchase: are they being purchased for offensive or defensive purposes? It’s admittedly speculative to extract intent merely from Microsoft’s recent history with respect to intellectual property licensing and litigation, but in the absence of other information this reaction is natural.

Over at The Source, Jason’s analysis comes in two parts [1, 2, as do his analyses of Asay’s departure (covered last week) and the firing of Blankenhorn (I personally like Blankenhorn, but recently in particular he boosted the agenda of Microsoft Florian, who wants patents to harm FOSS and only days ago openly admitted that he is not pro-FOSS).

Groklaw has been perplexed by what Novell’s patent sale to Microsoft will mean to FOSS and Carlo Piana, an excellent lawyer specialising in this area, says that “OIN is a short term hack to #swpats [software patents], but — as PJ says — can work in cases like Novell pats gone to MSFT”. Here is Groklaw’s analysis, which says:

Here’s how it works. The patents of OIN members are licensed to each other royalty-free in perpetuity. Even on a sale, the license remains in force for all pre-existing members. If you are a member of OIN prior to the closing on the Novell deal, then, you are covered. The proposed closing date is January 23rd, so you still have time to join OIN and get the benefit of the license to those patents. Then, if Microsoft shows up at your door, you can say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I already have a license.” So here’s what it all adds up to, by my reading: if ever you were thinking of joining the Open Invention Network, this is the sensible time to do it, as long as you get it done before this sale closes and that door shuts with respect to the Novell patents.

One can’t assume that the Microsoft consortium has evil plans for these patents, but on the other hand, consider who we are talking about. Novell’s license to OIN members can’t be revoked, even on the sale, so what’s the down side? Looking at it the other way, anyone who is not a member prior to the sale closing, even if it were to join OIN later, will have to deal with the Microsoft consortium regarding those patents. Let me repeat: if you are an OIN member *prior to the closing*, you are covered by the Novell license to OIN.

Here is the LWN discussion. Gentoo joined on the same day, or merely announced it on that day at least. To quote from the Gentoo Web site:

This week Gentoo Foundation joined Open Invention Network as a licensee. OIN is an organization which helps protect the Linux ecosystem by building a variety of defenses against patent attacks. These defenses include both traditional mechanisms, like defensive patent pools, and more innovative approaches, like the Linux Defenders project, which uses a variety of methods to pro actively prevent the publication of particularly egregious patents. As a licensee, we’ll have access to OIN resources in case we’re threatened by operating entities with patents, and over time we’ll likely become more involved in providing our own ideas and resources to OIN projects.

OSS Watch had this to say about OIN:

I am not a lawyer, but my reading of this clause is that – assuming this agreement was in force between them – Novell needed OIN’s agreement to sell their patents and the patents themselves remain subject to the agreement at their new home. If this is the case, it seems extremely unlikely that they can be used against Linux.

Karsten (FSFE) wrote about Novell’s new business model after sale to AttachMSFT, posing the whole thing as a question.

AttachMSFT is not a company that can be trusted and Groklaw found shades of TurboHercules in this news story which shows AttachMSFT adding Windows Server support to UNIX/Linux products:

Support for the latest release of Microsoft Windows Server heads the list of improvements in version 7.0.

The SFLC’s show (now somewhat detached from the SFLC) spoke about this whole subject in its latest episode which is summarised as follows: “In this episode of Free as in Freedom, Karen and Bradley discuss in the first segment recent press coverage of sexist attitudes at Free Software conferences, and in the second segment, discuss the public filings related to the Novell sale.”

“Customers will continue to be authorized to use Novell products under this intellectual property,” said Novell after the deal. Is this reassuring to Novell rivals who distribute GNU/Linux? Regarding the press release, be sure to read this from Savio Rodrigues:

What is surprising, and frankly astonishing, is that Microsoft would agree to be named as having played such a prominent role in the acquisition press release….

Groklaw responds to this by writing: “To those of us who never believed for a minute that Microsoft was softening toward Open Source and viewed all that as Microsoft softening Open Source up so it could eat its heart, I’m not surprised a bit. And as to what they get out of it, the prominence is, I’m guessing, so they can threaten stragglers and the weak in the community to force them to pay Microsoft for the patents, with the goal of making Linux cost more, so Microsoft can compete, as well as making a little money for Microsoft on the side from the work of others. Litigation is expensive and unpredictable. Some of the patents likely would be found invalid or not infringed, so the behind-the-scenes bullying is way more appealing, I’m supposing. By the way, if your company gets such a visit, you might mention it to OIN. Lots of things that work in the dark lose their power when a light is turned on.”

Be sure Novell will try to spin it. The spin parade has already begun as the VAR Guy sells blog space (adverts as articles) to whitewash the terrible AttachMSFT arrangement. It’s sad to see that the VAR Guy is beginning to post more sponsored “posts” (adverts). He did the same thing with Oracle, which is a shame. This time he put a Novell-paid plug. Anyway, a very interesting (and genuine) post from The VAR Guy explores options that Novell may have rejected:

1. Who else, if anyone, bid on Novell? And what about the rumor that VMware wanted to buy Novell’s SUSE Linux business?

Dragoon’s reply: He declined to get into specifics but he offered this juicy nugget of information: Sometime in December, Novell will file a proxy statement with the SEC that discloses details about the the Novell sale process. The Proxy will also offer key information about due diligence. Also, Dragoon said Novell relations with VMware remain strong, though he declined to say if VMware was among the bidders for Novell.

The VAR Guy’s spin: Sounds like the proxy statement could include a potential list of bidders that didn’t wind up acquiring Novell. The VAR Guy has bookmarked the SEC web site and is standing by for timely reading…

2. Will Dragoon remain Novell’s Channel Chief after Attachmate completes the Novell acquisition?

Dragoon’s reply: His potential role (or non-role) is still to be determined. That discussion is part of the integration planning phase, which starts now. One of the items to be discussed is the structure of the management team moving forward, Dragoon said.

The VAR Guy’s spin: Too soon to say. When it comes to personal matters like career status, our resident blogger tries not to speculate.

Katherine Noyes has published “Microsoft, Attachmate and Novell’s Linuxy Ménage à Trois”

“I’m saddened but not surprised,” wrote znmeb on PCWorld, for example. “I’m a loyal openSUSE user and have three appliances available for download in the SUSE Studio Gallery. My hope was that whoever bought Novell would invest in this technology, not buy it to kill it.”

Novell’s PR people still speak about these appliances and Glyn Moody’s analysis is the best we’ve found so far. He too is not terribly excited.

First, there is nothing to stop Attachmate – or any subsequent owner that later buys Novell from it – deciding that litigation would be a nice way to squeeze money out of companies. Attachmate is run by an “investment group”, so I doubt whether they’d have any qualms about doing this if they thought there would be a net gain from the process. It’s true that SCO, the last company to try this, has been mauled in the courts, and no infringing Linux code has ever been found. But it is also important to note that despite that fact, SCO, is *still* fighting on.

One of the big problems is that winning such battles is as much about (financial) might as right. Because SCO took on IBM, its strategy didn’t work out too well, but it’s not hard to see a stronger aggressor being more successful against smaller companies with more limited resources, or companies that use GNU / Linux only incidentally, for example in embedded software. There are now many of these, and as similar attacks on Android have shown, those that use GNU / Linux in this way have no appetite for defending it, because it’s a means to an end for them – it’s simpler just to pay up and move on. But the knock-on effect of buckling in this way is to increase the pressure on other companies to do the same.

That was the biggest problem with Novell’s 2006 deal with Microsoft: it lent credence to the idea that GNU / Linux might, in some unspecified way, infringe on Microsoft’s patents. One of the frustrating things about it was that Microsoft did not have to prove this: the existence of the deal was enough to suggest it. I’ve certainly had Novell cited to me as “proof” that there are hidden patent problems with GNU / Linux, as well as an example of how free software can / should compromise on these matters.

Novell has moved ahead since 2006. Back then Novell implied that Microsoft’s patent claims had legitimacy. Now it is handing Microsoft lots of patents that can actually fulfill this premise. Shame on Novell. A Novell boycott was justified. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/12/15/novell-writings-on-the-wall/feed/ 1 Links 11/10/2010: New Ubuntu Reviews, MySQL Up-selling http://techrights.org/2010/10/11/new-ubuntu-reviews/ http://techrights.org/2010/10/11/new-ubuntu-reviews/#comments Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:42:27 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=40450

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Blind Inventors Develop Free Software to Enable the Blind to Use Computers

    For many blind people, computers are inaccessible. It can cost upwards of $1000 to purchase “screen reader” software, but two blind computer programmers have solved this problem.

  • Biggest Genome Ever

    Now THAT’s a genome. A rare Japanese flower named Paris japonica sports an astonishing 149 billion base pairs, making it 50 times the size of a human genome—and the largest genome ever found.

  • Queensland open source firm doubles staff

    The downturn in the US economy has benefitted Queensland open source company Jentla to the extent that it has had to double its staff numbers to meet demand.

    [...]

    As a result of the demand, Jentla has taken on 20 new staff in the last quarter. The company has offices in Brisbane, its headquarters, Chennai (India) and in Romania. Most of the staff have been recruited in Chennai, at the company’s Tamil Nadu research and development office.

  • Events

    • Diversity, Freedom and Education at the Open World Forum

      This year I have been invited to present the first results of my research about Open public data at the 2010 Open World Forum. Due to the subject of my talk, I was also invited by Glyn Moody to a panel on Open Democracy (see Glyn’s comments on that panel at CWUK).

      I have to confess that I went to the Open World Forum expecting to find some pompous, self-referential, corporate driven marketing show. Luckily, that wasn’t the case, and this is what I’ll try to show here. The pounding, rave-style music at the beginning of each session was really depressing. A few talks by some politicians were not among the highest moments of the Forum (Glyn already explained why and I agree with him). This said, the Forum agenda was quite balanced and diverse. Personally I found it an interesting, useful event, one I would have been glad to attend even if I had not had to present my work. The Forum explored many sides of openness, not just the commercial one of Open Source software. Here are just a couple of examples.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • 4 Ways to Supercharge Double-Click Action in Firefox

        Double-clicking (and double tapping) is one of the preferred mouse (or touch pad) actions for me. It’s quick and easy and helps to get things done faster. Sadly, double-clicking is really under-utilized in Firefox.

        The only thing you can do by double-clicking in Firefox is highlighting the word right next to the cursor. Besides that (which is a less-known behavior), if you double-click the 2-3 pixel wide bar just beneath tabs, it opens a new empty tab in the foreground.

      • Mozilla puts Firefox 4 Android beta on crash diet

        The Firefox 4 Android beta is morbidly obese. But Mozilla has a diet plan.

        Over the past twelve hours, after Mozilla released its first Firefox 4 beta for Android, multiple Reg readers have said the browser takes up far too much space on their Googly phones. “Fooking HUGE!!!” said one. “Not even going to waste my time with the beta.”

      • Mozilla upsets net world order with Bing on Firefox

        As Mozilla announced this morning with a blog post, the latest English-language version of Mozilla’s open source browser — due for release in November — will retain Google as the default search engine. But for the first time, Bing will be listed in the pull-down that lets you change the default. Google will be first on the menu. Yahoo! — now powered by Bing — will be second. And Bing will be third.

  • Oracle

    • Oracle Up-selling MySQL

      Oracle is pressuring customers to pay more for enterprise support for MySQL. Those who may make tons of money from servers may feel comfortable with this but this could be a (another) fork in the road for MySQL. To what extent will the features Oracle is plugging in be available in the Free Software versions available to distros? So far, most of the differences are in clustering, management and support which do not affect many users of MySQL as a simple server.

    • MySQL price hikes reveal depth of Oracle’s wallet love

  • BSD

    • Ten ways Linux and BSD differ

      People tend to talk about Linux and BSD in the same breath, but a number of telling differences set them apart, says Jack Wallen.

      I hear it all the time: people lumping together Linux and any of the BSDs. On occasion, I’ve even done it myself. Of course, there are plenty of similarities. Both are based on Unix and have mostly been developed by non-commercial organisations. They also share a common goal — to create the most useful, reliable operating system available. But there are also significant differences that shouldn’t be ignored, and I thought it would be worth highlighting them here.

  • Licensing

    • HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile’s New G2 Android Phone

      Last week, the hottest new Android-based phone arrived on the doorstep of thousands of expectant T-Mobile customers. What didn’t arrive with the G2 was the source code that runs the heart of the device — a customized Linux kernel. Android has been hailed as an open platform in the midst of other highly locked-down systems, but as it makes its way out of the Google source repository and into devices this vision has repeatedly hit speedbumps. Last year, I blogged about one such issue, and to their credit Google sorted out a solution. This has ultimately been to everyone’s benefit, because the modified versions of the OS have routinely enabled software applications that the stock versions haven’t supported (not to mention improved reliability and speed).

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Generate OpenDocument spreadsheets from DB2 (or any other) database

      DB2 pureXML is IBM software for management of XML data that eliminates much of the work typically involved in the management of XML data.The OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an open international standard for office texts, presentations and spreadsheets that is very simple to process or generate automatically. This page is a short synthesis of an article published in September 2010 by N. Subrahmanyam, Using DB2 pureXML and ODF Spreadsheets, to give an idea (see my comments at the end) of how flexible ODF scripting is. Please read the original full article to know how to actually generate ODF documents from DB2 pureXML files.

Leftovers

  • AMD says it is definitely, really not for sale

    Maybe Larry Ellison’s killing of Opteron-based servers from Oracle’s Sun Fire x64 server lineup earlier this year was a love touch instead of a bitchslap for Advanced Micro Devices?

  • Ex-General Electric boss unleashes bile on HP board

    Oracle’s Larry Ellison isn’t the only CEO mouthing off at Hewlett-Packard’s decision to hire Leo Apotheker as the company’s replacement for disgraced former boss Mark Hurd. Now Jack Welch, the ex-chief of General Electric, is sticking the boot in, too.

  • Flat pay turns IT workers into job seekers

    Companies have cut salaries and training, held back on bonuses and piled more work on employees in response to the economic downturn. These tactics may well be pushing many IT professionals to go job hunting, according to Computerworld’s latest salary poll.

  • Former FTC staffer files a complaint against Google

    The complaint was filed on 6 September by Christopher Soghoian, a former technologist at the FTC’s division of privacy and identity protection. Soghoian has decided to take on Google after leaving the agency that should have done it anyway by issuing a complaint alleging that the search engine and advertising outfit shares data with third parties.

  • Former FTC Employee Files Complaint Over Google Privacy
  • Google Patent Proposes $2 Fee To Skip Commercials

    A day after Google debuted its new Google TV website, the USPTO issued U.S. Patent No. 7,806,329 to the search giant for its Targeted Video Advertising invention. Among other things, the patent proposes having viewers take 5-10 minutes to ‘fill out a consumer survey and perhaps to provide additional information such as a mailing address survey before starting the program’ to avoid having to watch 10 minutes of commercials. ‘As another alternative,’ the patent continues, ‘the broadcaster may offer the users an option to pay $2 (such as through a micro-payment system, such as GBuy) to exchange for skipping all commercials.’

  • Las Vegas Review-Journal Endorses The Same Candidate It’s Suing For ‘Stealing’ From Them?

  • Science

    • Boy of 15 fitted with robotic heart

      What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you’re Dr Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart giving the boy another 20-25 years of life.

      The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution.

    • Mission Complete! WMAP Fires its Thrusters for the Last Time

      The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has, quite literally, changed our view of the Universe. And after nine years of mapping the slight temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, its job is done and NASA has commanded the probe to fire itself into a “graveyard orbit” around the sun.

      Launched in 2001, this ground-breaking spacecraft set out to unravel some of the most fundamental questions in modern cosmology. How old is the Universe? What happened when the Universe was born?

    • How nitroglycerine explodes – in slow motion
    • Three scientists receive 2010 Chemistry Nobel

      Wednesday, October 6, 2010, saw the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announce the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: It went to three scientists for their work in synthesizing complex carbon molecules; specifically, “for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis”.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Aggression

    • The Government That Cried Wolf

      Speaking as an American who lives in Europe, I feel it is incumbent upon me to describe what people like me do when we hear warnings like the one issued on Sunday by the U.S. State Department and cited above: We do nothing.

    • iPhone app tagged as terror tool
    • US ex-spook wants ‘rogue states’ banned from Internet

      A FORMER US SPOOK wants all countries in the world to agree to do what America says or be banned from the Internet.

      It is not clear how much the views of the former chief technology officer at the US National Security Agency Dr Prescott Winter reflect those of his mates who still work there.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Solar Panels to Appear on White House in Spring 2011

      Solar panels will be installed on the White House roof a quarter of a century after they were removed by Ronald Reagan, the Obama administration said today.

      A mix of solar thermal and photovoltaic panels will be fitted in spring 2011 to generate hot water and renewable electricity, said Nancy Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, and energy secretary Steven Chu at a conference on how federal government can green up.

    • Tuna Industry “Sustainability” Group Should Act to Save the Tuna!

      ISSF member companies account over 70% of the world’s tuna. The power to shift fishing practices on the water is well and truly in their hands, so Greenpeace
      challenges them to flex their considerable muscle to create positive change. If ISSF is genuinely concerned about transshipment and its role in overfishing and illegal fishing, then it should adopt conservation measures to oblige every one of its members to simply stop buying tuna from fishing companies that engage in tuna transshipment.

    • ‘Emission free’ nuclear power is more greenwash

      We’ve discussed before on Nuclear Reaction the nuclear industry’s attempts to greenwash nuclear power by rebranding it ‘clean’. It’s a description of this most contaminating of energy sources that nuclear boosters are pushing more and more in the debate about the future of nuclear power.

      Another term we’re starting to see more and more of is ‘emission free’, as in ‘nuclear power is an emission free energy source’. Take a look at this infographic where the Nuclear Energy Institute (‘the policy organization for the nuclear technologies industry’) portrays nuclear power as such. Even institutions like the BBC have bought the industry spin.

    • UPDATE: Climate negotiations from an American girl in China

      Tcktcktck’s Paul Horsman delivers a traditional Chinese stamp to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres to mark the wall in support of collective action against climate change.

  • Finance

    • China’s recent activities in eurozone to devaluate US dollar

      The market structure of the rates of foreign currencies has been thrown into question. China has become more active in the eurozone as a result of the economic conflict with the USA. The Chinese dragon starts to determine quotations on world’s basic currencies, such as the euro and the US dollar.
      Premier Wen Jiabao of China stated during the meeting with the head of the Greek government George Papandreou that China had purchased long-term bonds, issued by Greece to cover its sovereign debt. Beijing, the Chinese official said, was determined to continue purchasing the bonds if Athens needed new loans to settle its huge budget deficit. Several days before that, the lower house of the US Congress approved the bill targeted against the lowered rate of the Chinese currency vs. the US dollar.

    • Fannie Mae logic-bomb saboteur convicted

      A computer contractor has been convicted of planting a logic bomb on the servers of Fannie Mae, the financially troubled US housing and mortgage giant.

      Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, 36, responded to the termination of his two-year-long spell as a software development contractor at Fannie Mae in October 2008 by planting a malicious script designed to wipe all the data from its network on 31 January 2009. Anyone attempting to access data on the system after the logic bomb went off would have received the message “Server Graveyard”.

    • Unemployed find old jobs now require more skills

      The jobs crisis has brought an unwelcome discovery for many unemployed Americans: Job openings in their old fields exist. Yet they no longer qualify for them.

      They’re running into a trend that took root during the recession. Companies became more productive by doing more with fewer workers. Some asked staffers to take on a broader array of duties – duties that used to be spread among multiple jobs. Now, someone who hopes to get those jobs must meet the new requirements.

    • White House doubts need to halt all foreclosures

      A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.

    • Financial regulators planning worldwide rules for large firms

      International bank regulators are planning a fresh wave of rules for the world’s most important financial companies in an effort to ensure that firms considered “too big to fail” are better protected from collapse – and that taxpayers are insulated from the fallout if they do.

    • Govt: No call for Social Security increase in 2011

      As if voters don’t have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in their monthly benefits.

      It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.

    • White House Aide Doubts Need to Halt Foreclosures

      A top White House adviser questioned the need on Sunday for a blanket halt to home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about growing evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.

    • Foreclosure freeze could undermine housing market

      Karl Case, the co-creator of a widely watched housing market index, was upbeat three weeks ago. Mulling the economy while at a meeting at a resort near the Berkshires, Case thought the makings of a recovery were finally falling into place.

      “I’m a 60-40 optimist,” he said at the time.

    • Why are so many Goldman/Sachs guys working for Obama?

      Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. He was confirmed despite heated congressional grilling over his role, as Reuters described it, “as a high-level Treasury official in a 2000 law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight. The financial instruments have been blamed for amplifying global financial turmoil.” Gensler said he was sorry — hey, it worked for tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner — and was quickly installed to guard the henhouse.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Corrupt Akamai worker charged after secrets sting

      An Akamai accounts worker has been arrested for alleged wire fraud. This follows a sting operation during which the man was led to believe he was handing over confidential information to an agent of a unnamed foreign power.

    • Hacking the D.C. Internet Voting Pilot

      We found a vulnerability in the way the system processes uploaded ballots. We confirmed the problem using our own test installation of the web application, and found that we could gain the same access privileges as the server application program itself, including read and write access to the encrypted ballots and database.

      The problem, which geeks classify as a “shell-injection vulnerability,” has to do with the ballot upload procedure. When a voter follows the instructions and uploads a completed ballot as a PDF file, the server saves it as a temporary file and encrypts it using a command-line tool called GnuPG. Internally, the server executes the command gpg with the name of this temporary file as a parameter: gpg […] /tmp/stream,28957,0.pdf.

      We realized that although the server replaces the filename with an automatically generated name (“stream,28957,0” in this example), it keeps whatever file extension the voter provided. Instead of a file ending in “.pdf,” we could upload a file with a name that ended in almost any string we wanted, and this string would become part of the command the server executed. By formatting the string in a particular way, we could cause the server to execute commands on our behalf. For example, the filename “ballot.$(sleep 10)pdf” would cause the server to pause for ten seconds (executing the “sleep 10” command) before responding. In effect, this vulnerability allowed us to remotely log in to the server as a privileged user.

    • Hackers hijack internet voting system in Washington DC

      An internet voting system designed to allow District of Columbia residents to cast absentee ballots has been put on hold after computer scientists exploited vulnerabilities that would have allowed them to rig elections and view secret data.

      The system, which was paid for in part by a $300,000 federal grant, was hijacked just 36 hours after Washington DC elections officials began testing it ahead of live elections scheduled for next month. Scientists from the University of Michigan pulled off the hack to demonstrate the inherent insecurity of net-based voting.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • A Library Without Walls

        Can we create a National Digital Library? That is, a comprehensive library of digitized books that will be easily accessible to the general public. Simple as it sounds, the question is extraordinarily complex. It involves issues that concern the nature of the library to be built, the technological difficulties of designing it, the legal obstacles to getting it off the ground, the financial costs of constructing and maintaining it, and the political problems of mobilizing support for it.

      • On CBC podcasts and CC-licensed music available for commercial use

        On Friday, Michael Geist broke the story that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had apparently banned use of CC-licensed music in its podcasts. This seemed odd, given that the CBC’s Spark podcast has long used, promoted, and done interesting projects with CC-licensed music.

      • Record labels fail to get ‘three strikes’ rule enforced in Ireland

        Four of the world’s largest record companies have failed in an attempt to get the “three strikes” rule enforced against illegal filesharers in Ireland.

        Warner Music, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and EMI brought the case against UPC, one of Ireland’s largest broadband providers, in order to establish a legal precedent that would force internet service providers to cut off illegal filesharers’ internet connections.

      • ACTA

        • ACTA is worthless without Chinese involvement

          But apparently those behind ACTA thought that they might have been able to get China on board. The fact that they have not has stymied ACTA negotiations, according to people familiar with the situation.

          “Critics say the omission of China from the list – the main source of the world’s counterfeit goods – makes the deal almost worthless, an argument strong refuted by the EU”, reports the EU Observer website.

Clip of the Day

Andrew Tanenbaum @ FOSDEM 2010: MINIX 3: a Modular, Self-Healing POSIX-compatible Operating System


Credit: TinyOgg

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/10/11/new-ubuntu-reviews/feed/ 0 Links 6/9/2010: Debian 5.0.6, Many More Android Tablets http://techrights.org/2010/09/06/many-more-android-tablets/ http://techrights.org/2010/09/06/many-more-android-tablets/#comments Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:08:19 +0000 http://techrights.org/?p=38322

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • How Linux Got To China And The Nordic Open Source Miracle

    China’s and other emerging, or rather growth, countries’ efforts around open source have made a lot of headlines in recent years. But how did, for example, Linux make its way to China? The story that should be told more often is that Helsinki University’s doctoral student Dr. Gong Min upon returning to China in 1996 had 20 diskettes in his luggage containing that moment’s version of Linux. Shortly after that first Linux distro (collection of software) was available in China.

  • Microsoft: Battle the Norm

    But Microsoft windows is normal and using anything else isn’t normal. We have a long way to go before Ubuntu is more recognised as a good technology, well made and not just used by social misfits and people who want to use obscure products to look cool.

    Even if you just think about the technical aspects there is just a barrier from service providers, shops and the media.

    One of the really nice things about Ubuntu is that it’s managed to improve (slightly) this by replacing the Linux brand in a lot of people’s minds1. More people seem to know about Ubuntu and FOSS by extension because of the work we do to be welcoming and accommodating to new users. But are we doing enough? What more could we do to reduce some of the social stigma of using none Microsoft products?

  • The Bizarre Cathedral – 80

  • Desktop

  • Server

    • A Bolder, Brassier VMware Emerges From The Cloud

      Microsoft, Red Hat and Ubuntu are all operating system vendors heavily invested in some other form of virtualization than VMware’s. And they’re all wary of VMware’s widening ambitions and description of a future operating system for the data center, based on its own virtualization layer. Microsoft prefers to talk about Hyper-V and its management component, Virtual Machine Manager in Systems Center. Red Hat is sticking to its open source guns and going with KVM. Ubuntu also packages up KVM and Xen.

    • Zentyal 2.0 – A major new release of the Linux Small Business Server

      The Development Team of Zentyal, the Linux small business server previously known as eBox Platform, announced today the availability of Zentyal 2.0.
      Zentyal 2.0 is a new major release of this server software and it is based on Ubuntu 10.4 LTS distribution.

  • Kernel Space+MINIX

    • Are microkernels the future of secure OS design?

      MINIX 3 itself is still in development, but it is currently a working OS with many of Tanenbaum’s intended reliability assurance features already implemented. You can download it from the MINIX 3 Website and boot it from a LiveCD though, as Tanenbaum states, you should install it to a partition on the hard drive of a computer if you want to do anything useful with it.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Looking At The OpenCL Performance Of ATI & NVIDIA On Linux

        Recently we provided the first Linux-based review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 graphics card. Overall, this Fermi-based graphics card was a great performer for selling around $200 USD and is complemented by great video playback capabilities with VDPAU acceleration and great proprietary driver support. In that review we primarily looked at the OpenGL performance under Linux, but with NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture bringing great GPGPU advancements for CUDA and OpenCL users too, in this article we are looking more closely at the Open Computing Language performance of this GF104 graphics card as well as other NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards.

  • Applications

  • Distributions

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • New MeeGo User Interface Screens Emerge

          We have been keeping up with the progress of Nokia’s and Intel’s collabortaive mobile operating system, bringing you screenshots of its first stable release to developers.

      • Android

        • Toshiba Folio 100 tablet review: first look

          After traipsing around the semi-completed halls of Berlin’s IFA show, it seems like every manufacturer under the sun has decided to release a tablet. Toshiba is no exception, but its Folio 100 tablet has decided to tread a slightly different path to its rivals. The 10.1in form factor and Android 2.2 OS come as no surprise, but Intel and Qualcomm don’t get a look in – instead Nvidia’s Tegra 2 takes centre stage.

        • ViewSonic ViewPad tablets review: first look

          With many of IFA’s halls still resembling something more akin to a building site than a cutting-edge technology show, we were surprised to find that ViewSonic’s stand was already up and running. And, to a chorus of heart-stopping crashes and bangs from the grumpy Germanic workmen nearby, ViewSonic gave us a hands-on look at its latest 7in and 10in ViewPad Tablets.

        • Samsung Galaxy Tab review: first look

          The Galaxy Tab’s beauty is more than skin-deep, however. Before you even lay a finger on the Samsung-skinned Android 2.2 OS, the 7in TFT display [sadly not AMOLED, as we had hoped] beams forth with rich, saturated colours and wide, wide viewing angles. It’s by far the best we’ve seen at the show, and not least as the 1,024 x 600 resolution keep everything looking pin sharp. It’s simply glorious.

        • Android accounts for one-quarter of mobile web traffic, says Quantcast

          It’s terribly difficult to get reliable statistics, as numbers tend to vary drastically depending upon whom you ask, but if you’re inclined to believe that Android is mopping up Apple and RIM’s declining mobile mindshare in the US, you’ll find nothing but corroboration from Quantcast.

        • New Android 2.2 build leaks out for Nexus One, minor improvements noted

          Well, well — what have we here? Word on the street has it that we’re looking at a new, unreleased (officially, anyway) Froyo build for Google’s now-tough-to-locate Nexus One.

    • Sub-notebooks

    • Tablets

      • Elonex releases tablets in the UK

        Elonex has just revealed a plethora of tablet devices that are touted to go on sale in the UK, where they have been priced at affordable levels. We’re talking about £99 to £159, and at those sticker prices, chances are pretty high that interest will be strong. The eTouch line will start from 5-inches in size, going all the way to 10-inches if you need something larger. Powered by the Google Android operating system, they might come across as cheap substitutes for the Apple iPad, but will utilize a widescreen display instead of the iPad’s 4:3 screen. Each purchase will come with keyboard docks to further enhance their functionality when attached.

Free Software/Open Source

  • SparkleShare Shaping Up to be Slick FOSS Alternative to Dropbox

    If you love Dropbox for easy file sharing across computers but are longing for something free and open source, you’re wish is closer to be granted. The team of developers behind the GNU GPLv3-licensed SparkleShare released a beta version of its new app and it’s shaping up to be pretty slick.

  • Open source Plex media center to run on LG TVs

    Plex source code is hosted on GitHub and is licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public Licence (GPLv2), apart from the Plex Media Server which is currently closed source and connects to the GPL licensed client over the network.

  • [Free Software Magazine] Newsletter, 3 September 2010

  • Web Browsers

    • Chromium Now Prompts You With a Choice of Search Engines Available

      Chromium and Google Chrome had this feature in a more subtle way before. It never blatantly asked the user to choose the search engine of choice. But interestingly, I didn’t saw this feature in the new Google Chrome 6. So is this a feature only for Chromium? Most probably.

    • Mozilla

      • Start of feature cull for Firefox 4

        Mozilla has confirmed that it has started culling features for version 4.0 of its open source Firefox web browser. According to the Mozilla Platform Meeting Minutes from the 31st of August, the first feature that will be removed is the Account Manager, previously only rated as “at risk”.

  • SaaS

    • Free, as in Fear

      There is a reason there are ~150 people in #openstack on IRC. There is a reason people are submitting patches.

      This isn’t because of Rackspace. This is because of how the community has been engaged and the promise of a truly open cloud framework.

      There are two other things worth noting for people who haven’t followed this story and can’t be bothered to get the facts straight. First, there are other entities involved in OpenStack, not the least of which is NASA. Maybe you have heard of NASA? I don’t think NASA is in this beholden to Rackspace. OpenStack will evolve in the direction that is a combination of the collective utility of the community and whoever chooses to actually contribute code. Which brings me to the second point, code wins. If you think something should work a certain way, prove it with code.

  • CMS

    • Diaspora coming

      It’s probably not true to say that everybody hates Facebook. But there are many millions (of the hundreds of millions that use the site) that claim to hate Facebook’s cavalier approach to privacy and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s equally vague approach to the future of our privacy. There are even groups dedicated to encouraging users to leave Facebook (some on Facebook itself, ironically).

      The alternative to Facebook, some are hoping, is a new, distributed social network that builds in strong privacy controls from the outset. It’s called Diaspora and its makers are a group of university students from the US. The group are now getting ready to launch a developer version later this month and go into public beta in October. But can Diaspora offer what users want or is it too late?

  • Semi-Open Source/Servicing

  • Project Releases

  • Openness/Sharing

    • P2P Hopping Protocol

      A key question is how do your route over a peer-to-peer network a message from one node to another with only the hash of the source and target nodes. None of the nodes have a general routing table or a full view of the network topology. Still, we can route the message from hop-to-hop by, at each hop, reducing the “distance” between the message and its destination. The distance is measured not is physical or network distance, but in the difference between a node identifier and the target of the message. In any case, it works quite well.

  • Programming

    • ActiveState Emphasizes Key Enterprise Programming Issues, Adds Python Modules for GUI Development, Database Connectivity and Cryptography

      ActiveState, the dynamic language experts offering solutions for Perl, Python, and Tcl, is adding key Python open source packages to its ActivePython Business, Enterprise, and OEM Editions specifically to help enterprise developers. Python modules have been added for Graphical User Interface (GUI) development, secure connections with a wider range of proprietary and open source databases and incorporation of core cryptographic capabilities to ensure secure, authenticated connections to databases, servers and web services.

    • Rails 2.3.9 extends bridge to Rails 3

      The release of Rails 2.3.9 by the Ruby on Rails developers will allow Rails coders an easier transition to the recently released Rails 3. The deprecation and renaming of a number of functions now means that, if a Rails application runs on Rail 2.3.9 with no deprecation warnings, then “you’re looking good for an upgrade to Rails 3″ according to the developers.

    • Second alpha for Python 3.2 arrives

      Continuing the efforts to improve and stabilise Python 3.x, the developers have released the second alpha of Python 3.2. Since the moratorium on changing Python 3′s language syntax from last November is still in effect, there are no changes in the language or its built-in types in this release. Alpha 2 builds on August’s initial alpha release which saw improvements in handling the Python Global Interpreter Lock for better multithreading.

Leftovers

  • Pac Rim CAFTA Challenge of Salvadoran Environmental, Mining Safety Policies Given Go-Ahead by Tribunal

    This month, the Obama administration must decide how to proceed with Bush’s leftover Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which contains the same CAFTA special rights for foreign investors and private enforcement of them through “investor-state” tribunals. A CAFTA panel for another mining-related investor challenge brought against El Salvador by Milwaukee-based Commerce Group for $100 million was constituted a few weeks ago.

  • Security/Aggression

    • New government ID cards easily hacked

      The sensitive personal information found on the new German identification cards with data chips scheduled for nationwide introduction this November can be easily hacked, according to testing done by a TV news show.

    • Iraq WMD dossier was ‘reviewed’ to match Labour spin, memo reveals
    • Looking for Tony Blair’s memoir? Try the crime section

      But a Facebook page was today inundated with pictures of the former prime minister’s book in odd places after thousands joined a group entitled “Subversively move Tony Blair’s memoirs to the crime section in bookshops”.

    • America’s real school-safety problem

      Last fall, a Delaware student was suspended from school after bringing a knife into his classroom. Because of his school’s zero-tolerance weapons policy, he was suspended for 45 days and forced to attend an alternative school. Swift justice? Perhaps — except that the student, Zachary Christie, was a first grader at the time and the “weapon” was his Cub Scout-issued fork-spoon-knife tool. When his case received national attention, his punishment and the school’s policy were swiftly revised — part of the growing groundswell of opposition to zero tolerance.

    • Airline CEO: Nix co-pilot, save money

      He’s already suggested installing coin-operated lavatories and selling standing room on flights, so it may not be surprising that the latest idea from the colorful CEO of Ryanair is once again pushing air travelers’ buttons.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • A climate warning from the deep

      Bryozoans make unlikely prophets of doom. Nevertheless, scientists believe these tiny marine creatures, which live glued to the side of boulders, rocks and other surfaces, reveal a disturbing aspect about Antarctica that has critical implications for understanding the impact of climate change.

      British Antarctic Survey researchers have found the dispersal of these minute animals suggests a sea passage once divided Antarctica 125,000 years ago. The discovery was made for the ongoing Census of Antarctic Marine Life project and involved comparing bryozoans from the Ross and Weddell seas. These two seas are separated by the west Antarctic ice sheet, one of the planet’s largest masses of ice. Bryozoans found in the Ross and Weddell seas should have been fairly different in structure if the sheet had been stable and ancient. The two populations would have slowly evolved in different manners, if the sheet was millions of years old.

  • Finance

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Flash Player as a spy system

      If a forged certificate is accepted when accessing the Flash Player’s Settings Manager, which is available exclusively online, attackers can potentially manipulate the player’s website privacy settings. This allows a web page to access a computer’s web cams and microphones and remotely turn the computer into a covert listening device or surveillance camera.

    • Phone-hacking inquiry was abandoned to avoid upsetting police

      The Home Office abandoned plans to establish an independent inquiry into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal last year after a senior official warned that the Metropolitan police would “deeply resent” any interference in their investigation, according to a leaked government document.

      As Alan Johnson came close today to accusing Scotland Yard of having misled him over the scandal, a leaked Home Office memo shows that the last government decided against calling in Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary after intense internal lobbying.

      Stephen Rimmer, the Home Office director general for crime and policing, warned that Scotland Yard would “deeply resent” a review of its investigation by the inspectorate and that it would send a message that “we do not have full confidence” in the Met.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Sending letters to your MP.

        One of the features of this site is an interface to send a letter to your MP. We are in the process of drafting a new letter which focuses on Bill C-32 and TPMs. There is an existing general copyright letter which I’ve updated that may be more what you would like to send.

      • The Economist:: the World Wide Web is fracturing

        In the end, the bleak look is softened by The Economist’s usual on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other outlook such as, ‘Yet predictions are hazardous, particularly in IT.” I wouldn’t hold my breath unless the consumer is heard and is listened to.

      • ACTA

        • Written Declaration 12/2010 signatories list
        • ACTA: TELL YOUR MEP TO SIGN WRITTEN DECLATION 12
        • Is Your MEP Aware Of ACTA?

          Right now, a new trade agreement is being secretly negotiated that could impose on European businesses draconian rules that could result in new forms of legal action. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) goes far, far beyond the scope of its name and in fact attempts to “harmonise” (read: impose the worst parts of each region’s policy) the treatment of copyrights, trademarks and patents internationally. It is attempting to achieve by secret treaty what democratically-elected governments globally have declined to do.

        • URGENT: Has Your MEP Signed The ACTA Written Declaration?

          The following had NOT signed at 11pm UK time on Monday:

          * William (The Earl of) DARTMOUTH
          * John Stuart AGNEW
          * Marta ANDREASEN
          * Richard ASHWORTH
          * Gerard BATTEN
          * Godfrey BLOOM
          * Sharon BOWLES
          * Philip BRADBOURN
          * John BUFTON
          * Martin CALLANAN
          * David CAMPBELL BANNERMAN
          * Michael CASHMAN
          * Giles CHICHESTER
          * Derek Roland CLARK
          * Trevor COLMAN
          * Nirj DEVA
          * Diane DODDS
          * James ELLES
          * Nigel FARAGE
          * Vicky FORD
          * Ashley FOX
          * Julie GIRLING
          * Daniel HANNAN
          * Mary HONEYBALL
          * Richard HOWITT
          * Stephen HUGHES
          * Syed KAMALL
          * Sajjad KARIM
          * Timothy KIRKHOPE
          * Elizabeth LYNNE
          * David MARTIN
          * Linda McAVAN
          * Arlene McCARTHY
          * Emma McCLARKIN
          * Claude MORAES
          * Mike NATTRASS
          * James NICHOLSON
          * Paul NUTTALL
          * Brian SIMPSON
          * Peter SKINNER
          * Struan STEVENSON
          * Catherine STIHLER
          * Kay SWINBURNE
          * Charles TANNOCK
          * Geoffrey VAN ORDEN
          * Derek VAUGHAN
          * Glenis WILLMOTT
          * Marina YANNAKOUDAKIS

Clip of the Day

Puppy Linux Lucid Puppy 5.11 Install Tutorial & Screencast Review


Credit: TinyOgg

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/09/06/many-more-android-tablets/feed/ 0 Links 20/2/2010: Ubuntu 10.04 Gets New Appearance, Jacobsen vs Katzer Victory http://techrights.org/2010/02/20/jacobsen-vs-katzer/ http://techrights.org/2010/02/20/jacobsen-vs-katzer/#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:10:52 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=27258

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Resource Hogs

    My people are running XP in 256MB with a serious over-commit to virtual memory. I can run 12 users at once and services in 1024 MB with GNU/Linux. That would explain a lot of the speed difference. My terminal server is not swapping.

  • We’re All Makers

    Fortunately, nobody is making us fall under the spell of fancier, shinier, ever-more-closed toys, and we still have a wealth of great choices open to us. Like Linux and Free/Open Source Software, for starters. All you need is a PC, an Internet connection, some time, and the creative possibilities are legion.

  • Intelligence Slideshow: 40 Fast Facts on Linux
  • Which Linux For Non-Techie Windows Users?

    obarthelemy writes “Having at last gotten Linux to run satisfactorily on my own PCs, I’d now like to start transitioning friends and family from XP to Linux instead of Windows 7. The catch is that these guys don’t understand or care much about computers, so the transition has to be as seamless and painless as possible. Actually, they won’t care for new things; even the upcoming upgrade to Windows 7 would be a pain and a bother, which is a great opportunity for Linux. I’m not too concerned about software (most of them only need browser, IM, VLC, mail and a Powerpoint viewer for all those fascinating attachments). What I’m concerned about is OS look-and-feel and interface — system bar on the bottom with clock, trash, info on the right, menu on the left, menu items similar to those of Windows. Is it better to shoot for a very targeted distro? Which would you recommend? Are there themes/skins for mainstream distributions instead? I’ve been looking around the web, and it’s hard to gauge which distros are well-done and reasonably active.”

  • LemonPOS: Your Open Source Point of Sale

    If your small business is looking for a solid point of sale system, without so many bells and whistles as to increase the learning curve, LemonPOS might be just what you are looking for. It’s not Quickbooks POS, but it will help you to get your business up and running quickly and inexpensively. And, since it’s running on top of the Linux operating system, you know it’s running on top of a proven, reliable system.

  • The Evolution that is Linux

    Not only is Linux and FreeBSD holding on to the server markets but also under the hood of iPhones and ARM processors. Spreading its seeds across all continents be it the PC Market or Laptop or Mini-Laptop Market, the species continues to awe its original developers.

  • Desktop

    • Matt Asay Sees the Light

      Oh well, better late than never. The year of GNU/Linux on the desktop has come and gone, he agrees, and we will go forward to much greater accomplishments.

    • From OS X to Ubuntu: 2 Years Later

      I have to say that over the last couple of years, I’ve really come to love Ubuntu. Until recently, I rarely felt the need to go back to Windows or OS X (I’ll tell you more about that in another blog post). I’ve been generally pleased with each new release of Ubuntu and enjoy seeing the incremental improvements. Ubuntu has come an unbelievable way since I first tried it almost 5 years ago.

    • Alex laptop to bring Linux to the masses

      A new laptop aims to make it easier for anyone to get online, surf the net, send emails and keep in touch with friends and family.

      The Linux based 15.4-inch Alex laptop comes with a suite of programs for everyday tasks including office and image editing tools.

    • When Vendors Go Bad

      That’s right: I installed Linux on the laptop, and therefore Newegg is not going to honor my refund.

      Need I say more? Newegg is now on record as a vendor from whom you purchase at your own risk. They have demonstrated that they will knowingly sell defective hardware, and not honor refund requests on same.

    • Activating Virgin Media Broadband on Linux

      When I plugged in the router and went to view a website on my computer, I was redirected to an activation page, where I had to enter my name and postcode and stuff like that. Except that the first page you go to checks to make sure you’re running Windows or using a Mac. Thankfully, Konqueror and Opera both let me change my browser identification string so that Virgin’s servers think I am using Windows.

    • Staples Launches Online Backup, Security Service

      Help desk support is provided along with systems and network monitoring. For larger, more sophisticated businesses, Staples provides cross-platform and open source support for Windows, Linux, and Apple operating systems.

    • [Sarcasm] Linux frustrates!

      I have heard of my geeky friends talking about this Linux stuff. I wasn’t sure what it was so I asked them about it. Honestly, I thought they were trying to sell me some religion the way they jumped all over me trying to explain what Linux is. They did make some very good points though. I have always felt uncomfortable with using a pirated version of windows but I can’t justify the expense of buying an original version. I am also tired of all the problems I have been having because of virus and spyware infestations. These Linux guys tell me that they don’t have any problems with that stuff.

  • Server

    • Linux and Open Source Software at the center of security

      If Linux is recommended by the Department of Defense, then I consider it good for me as well. I no longer trust Internet Explorer or Windows for that matter, with any valuable information online. Too often I hear about rootkits and malware running silently in Windows, allowing critical information to be gathered through a backdoor. Even the most recent activity regarding the TDL3 rootkit which was installed on a huge amount of Windows computers. Users never even knew it was there until the Microsoft patch for the 17 year old bug was released. I’ve seen malicious programs get downloaded and launched by simply visiting a website with Internet Explorer. With all things considered, Linux proves to be the most solid platform in the long run, which to me should make it the #1 choice for servers and desktops, or whatever application you choose.

    • VM

      • Linux and the Power of Virtual Mega-Machines

        Currently, the vast majority of workloads requiring a large number of processing cores or large memory have already moved or are in the process of moving to Linux.

        These once-proprietary Unix applications have been relatively easy to migrate or are increasingly being written for a Linux or open source operating system alternative. This makes it inherently easier for these workloads to move to x86 infrastructure, providing more flexibility in their deployment models and giving customers the ability to take advantage of higher-performance and lower-cost commoditized systems.

      • Virtual Appliances Offer Fast Sandboxes, Production Environments

        One of the most obvious benefits of free and open source software is the ability to download world-class software and implement it gratis on your system. But, sometimes, there is a big difference between theory and action.

        I’m not talking about installing desktop applications like Firefox, OpenOffice.org, or GIMP. Most of the Linux distributions have by now made this process newbie-simple, and Windows and Mac systems have never had a problem with installation. Rather, I am talking about complex server systems, like Ruby on Rails, Tomcat, Joomla!, or Drupal. Regardless of platform, getting one of these instances running can range from a bit tricky to downright hair-pulling.

      • TestDrive – Test Drive an Ubuntu ISO in a Virtual Machine

  • Kernel Space

    • Herding the Meta-Cats

      In the famous online argument between Linus and Minix creator Andrew Tanenbaum during the very early days of Linux, one of the more memorable statements from the latter was the following:

      I think co-ordinating 1000 prima donnas living all over the world will be as easy as herding cats

      The “prima donnas” that he was referring to were hackers, rather than opera singers, and his point was that it’s hard to get technically very able people with strong opinions to agree to the point where they can move a software project forward. And that, indeed, is part of the amazing achievement of Linux and all the free software projects that have adopted its methodology: without formal lines of command or management structures being imposed on them, those same prima donnas often *do* manage to agree on enough to make projects successful well beyond what traditional development techniques can produce.

      So, it turned out that Tanenbaum was wrong as far as herding those particular cats was concerned, but what about at the next level: how easy is it to herd *meta*-cats – that is, to get the various projects working together in a more coordinated fashion?

    • New attempt to integrate AppArmor into Linux

      John Johansen, a developer with commercial Ubuntu sponsor Canonical, has submitted an updated version of the AppArmor security framework to the Linux kernel developers for inspection. Johansen writes that, like the SELinux and Tomoyo solutions already integrated into the kernel, this fourth general posting of AppArmor uses Linux Security Modules (LSM) to hook into the kernel. Some, but not all of the characteristics criticised by the kernel developers when AppArmor was posted last have reportedly been corrected in the new posting – known for his rather direct comments, however, the maintainer of the Virtual File System (VFS) of Linux soon also found various inconsistencies in the newly posted code.

    • Invoking user-space applications from the kernel

      Invoking specific kernel functions (system calls) is a natural part of application development on GNU/Linux. But what about going in the other direction, kernel space calling user space? It turns out that there are a number of applications for this feature that you likely use every day. For example, when the kernel finds a device for which a module needs to be loaded, how does this process occur? Dynamic module loading occurs from the kernel through the usermode-helper process.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • Easy folder sharing in KDE 4.4
    • Window-specific options in KDE 4.4
    • How to install KDE Software Compilation 4.4 from PPA in ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic)

      KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4 on 9th feb 2010, “Caikaku”, bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE’s bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented. The KDE community would like to thank everybody who has helped to make this release possible.

    • Arch Linux + Kdevelop + Irrlicht 3D + Blender

      Kdevelop was another application that I noticed was much quicker. Under Ubuntu I could barley use KDE as it was but now I can use KDE and the KDevelopment system and I have no lag issues at all. I’m really starting to wonder what the Ubuntu team is adding to their distribution to make it such a hog.

    • Getting Google Calendar to work with KDE’s KOrganizer, Kontact and KMail (on Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala)
    • KDE or Openbox

      I love KDE, and the latest release is better than ever. It’s easy, fast, beautiful, all that.

      So when I installed Arch on another partition in another attempt to to find the cause behind those pesky network problems, and I slapped Openbox on it because I didn’t want to waste my bandwidth on a KDE install I’d never use, I certainly didn’t think I would consider using it full time.

  • Distributions

    • Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva 2010 – A Review
      • 15 Awesome Mandriva Linux Wallpapers

        15 Awesome Mandriva Linux Wallpapers: We’ve featured several distro-specific wallpapers before, like our awesome Slackware wallpapers collection and a number of cool Ubuntu wallpapers. This time, I’ll be giving tribute to one of the best Linux distributions (currently topping our “Best Linux Distro of the Decade” poll) around, by sharing with you yet another set of beautiful desktop wallpapers.

    • Gentoo Family

      • using gentoo

        My point is that, it shouldn’t matter what Linux distribution you are going to use — you need someone to keep it up and running. I think Gentoo is great because it removes the veil from saying, “just run these versions of the software and you’ll be totally fine.” Bugs creep in all the time. Binary distributions stick you with a set of packages, that if, you want to break out of that pigeon hole, it may be completely impossible to do. With Gentoo, the definition of “stable” is left up to the user, the maintainer, the systems administrator. I love it. :)

        Go Gentoo. :D

      • Pulseaudio and Kmix 4.4 in Sabayon 5

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 13 and rawhide diverge

        The much-anticipated split between the Fedora “Rawhide” development repository and the stabilizing Fedora 13 repository has happened at last. That means that people continuing to follow Rawhide should fasten their seat belts and update their backups in anticipation of a flood of packages intended for Fedora 14.

    • Debian Family

      • Dual booting Debian and KolibriOS

        KolibriOS is very impressive stuff, and after finding a brief set of instructions for installing it to a hard drive, I had a “dual-boot” system of both Debian and Kolibri running on the old Thinkpad 560e that’s still floating around the house.

      • Ubuntu

        • Eeebuntu 4 Beta 1 Overview And Screenshots

          Eeebuntu, the Linux distribution for netbooks which won the Sourceforge Choice Awards: BEST NEW PROJECT in 2009 has released the first beta of the new version 4. For now only the i386 version is available.

        • Ubuntu Netbook Remix enlightens ARM support

          Canonical is developing a 2D ARM interface based on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries for the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 (“Lucid Lynx”) version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix. In other Ubuntu news, Ubuntu Live CDs in Lucid Lynx will boot 33 percent faster, and The Linux Box will market Ubuntu.

        • Ubuntu Optimizes its OS for ARM CPUs
        • Ubuntu live CDs now boot 33% faster!

          How to convince a Mac OS X or Windows user to try GNU/Linux? Installing the desired distribution in a Virtual Machine? Read them all those FAQs about partitioning your hard drive for a dual-boot system? No, no – there’s an easier way: live CDs or DVDs! Almost every distribution (like Ubuntu, Knoppix or Fedora) are capable of booting into a fully functional desktop right from a burned disc. Simply download the .iso image file, burn it to a CD or DVD with your favorite disc burning application, and reboot your machine!

          [...]

          According to Bennett, tweaks to the debconf database have boosted the live CD startup time nearly 33%!

        • Ubuntu 10.04 May Backport More Kernel DRM

          The decision to stick with the Linux 2.6.32 kernel rather than the soon to be released Linux 2.6.33 kernel for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS that will be released in April is leading to a few more headaches for those involved with packing X.Org and the graphics components for the Lucid Lynx release.

        • Ubuntu Finally Getting A New Default Theme Starting With Lucid

          In a recent interview (as of yesterday, 19 February) for DellVlog, Mark Shuttleworth says Ubuntu will finally change the default theme from Human to a “light theme”.

        • No Human Theme In Ubuntu 10.04

          In an interview recorded on February 19 2010, Mark Shuttleworth revealed that a new light theme will replace the Human theme in Ubuntu 10.04. The Human theme has been the default theme in Ubuntu since the first release.

        • New Theme For Ubuntu 10.04 – Human Theme Dropped
        • Ubuntu One Music Store Sneak Peek

  • Devices/Embedded

    • OSS big in mobile world

      The annual Mobile World Congress was dominated by open source operating systems

      The annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) is always a highlight of the year for the mobile sector but this year’s show was also a big one for open source software. Traditionally in a market dominated by proprietary operating systems there has been a significant shift towards open source software by mobile phone makers over the past year.

    • Linux Wall Wart Works Wonderfully

      It’s no secret that Linux runs behind many consumer devices, and embedded Linux fits in the tiniest of places. One of the latest ways to get your Linux fix comes in what looks like power wall wart from TonidoPlug. Under the cover you’ll find essentially a Marvell SheevaPlug with a 1.2 GHz CPU, 512MB of DDR2 memory and a 512MB flash disk. On the outside you’ll see a single USB port and an Ethernet jack.

    • Projectors

      • Android phone sports pico projector

        Samsung unveiled an Android 2.1 phone equipped with a built-in pico projector. The “I8250″ Android phone offers a 3.7-inch WVGA “Super AMOLED” display, an eight-megapixel camera, and up to 16GB of internal memory, says Samsung.

      • Pico Projectors Marry Mobile Phones

        Mobile phones are incorporating pico projectors for on-the-spot presentations, or for just sharing photos with friends, projected up to 100 inches wide. Four phones showcased that feature at Mobile World Congress.

    • MeeGo

      • Under the Hood with MeeGo

        Some may be surprised by the merger, announced this week, of the open source Maemo and Moblin projects, given their architectural differences. Maemo targets ARM, while Moblin aims to enable devices with Intel Architecture (commonly “x86″) processors.

      • Tablet runs on Moorestown processor

        OpenPeak announced an Intel Moorestown-based tablet device, which may well end up running the new Nokia/Intel MeeGo operating system. The OpenTablet 7 features a 7-inch multi-touch display, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, cellular, HDMI output and dual cameras, says the company.

      • The open source mobile ’super-platform’ cometh

        As you may be aware by now Nokia and Intel have announced that they will merge their respective Maemo and Moblin software platforms to create a combined Linux-based operating system targeting a new broader range of fixed and mobile devices. MeeGo is aimed at creating a unified Linux-based environment that will run across smartphones, mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, digital TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

      • What does MeeGo mean for Mobile Linux?

        After years of hearing about it, I’m only aware of one phone the N900 that runs Maemo -and that’s from Nokia a company with hundreds of devices and handsets. Moblin on the other hand is the benchmark standard that Linux distros have been aiming for when it comes to netbooks – Intel Atom powered netbooks to be precise.

      • Maemo + Moblin = MeeGo: The Q&A

        Q: What about the decision to host it with the Linux Foundation?
        A: That’s a positive. It will get more visibility than it would directly managed by the vendors, it will abstract the project from certain institutional political interference (think ARM enemies at Intel, and the pro-Symbian crowd at Nokia), and it gives the project a more open image.

    • Phones

      • Linux, open source driving smartphone revolution

        Google’s Linux-based Android operating system powers the industry’s latest must have, the Motorola Droid. Many more Android phones are making their debut, such as Motorola’s Backflip, which will be sold by AT&T it was announced at the Mobile World Congress this week. Apple must be thrilled.

      • Google gains the most, Palm loses the most, in smartphone market share

        Google’s significant gains can likely be attributed to the release of the Motorola Droid and Droid Eris phones on Verizon, along with the ingenious marketing campaign that introduced those phones to the public.

      • Biz Break: AT&T joins Google’s Android army; plus: Intuit profit rises

        AT&T will sell its first smartphone with Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google’s adroit Android operating system next month: Motorola’s Backflip.

      • Android

        • SK Telecom crams Android, processor inside a SIM card

          The SIM cards in cellular telephones might be smaller than a postage stamp and less than a millimeter thick but that hasn’t stopped South Korea’s SK Telecom from cramming all the major components needed to run Google’s Android OS inside one of them.

          The carrier’s Android SIM, a prototype of which is on show at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, includes an ARM-based processor, companion memory and 1GB of flash memory to store the OS and other data.

        • Android phone boasts 14Mbps HSPA+

          Huawei announced the U8800, which it calls the first Android smartphone to run the 14Mbps HSPA+ cellular technology, and also tipped three lower-end Android phones — the U8300, U8100, and U8110 — plus a 7-inch “SmaKit S7″ Android tablet. Meanwhile AT&T confirmed that it will launch the Motorola Backflip on Mar. 7.

        • Saving the Gadget? The Dilemma of an Android Fanatic.
        • Multi-touch displays support all ten fingers at once

          The French company Stantum is demonstrating multi-touch displays that can react to as many as ten fingers simultaneously. The Android-ready “PMatrix” technology permits the use of gloves or styli, responding to varying levels of pressure, according to the company.

          According to Stantum, its PMatrix IP core and firmware watches every grid intersection of a touch-panel’s matrix and reports any change of electrical characteristics, “delivering an exact image of what’s happening on the touchscreen surface.” As a result, the company claims, there’s essentially no limit to the number of simultaneous touches a device can respond to.

        • Apple, Google gain in phone market

          The iPhone’s share of the smartphone grew to 25.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009–up more than a point–while Research In Motion (RIMM) fell to 41.6 percent, down a point, according to a comScore report. Microsoft (MSFT) and Palm (PALM) also lost ground while Google’s (GOOG) Android gained nearly 3 points to reach 5.2 percent.

        • HTC Android phones sport AMOLED, new UI layer

          Both the high-end HTC Desire and the more modest HTC Legend offer Android 2.1 along with a new version of HTC’s Sense UI layer. Most notably, the new HTC Sense offers an application called HTC Friend Stream, which is said to aggregate social communications, including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, into one “organized flow of updates.”

        • Multi-touch displays support all ten fingers at once

          The French company Stantum is demonstrating multi-touch displays that can react to as many as ten fingers simultaneously. The Android-ready “PMatrix” technology permits the use of gloves or styli, responding to varying levels of pressure, according to the company.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • The New UI for ARM Based Ubuntu Devices

        ARM based platforms traditionally have a problem with graphics drivers and free software. Encumbered by licensing issues, many platforms only ship with 2D based drivers whilst the 3D driver-enabled offerings only frequent the poshest of circles such as Nokia’s N900. There are exceptions, but its a painful reality at the moment.

        Vendors are trying to work around it, especially as there is the expectation of a ramp-up in the availability of ARM based hardware. Super long-life netbooks, low powered touch based computers, and even a flurry of smaller embedded devices are forecast to hit the market this year, many of which will be based on the Linux operating system. Ubuntu would be a great match for this.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Google Declares “Living Stories” Experiment Success, Offers as Open Source

    It’s been just over two months since Google, the New York Times and the Washington Post joined together to experiment with a new way to provide news with Google’s Living Stories. Today, Google has declared the experiment a success and has said that it will offer the project’s functionality to the general public.

  • Events

    • Free/Open Source Software 2010 Workshop

      The Workshop on the Future of Research on Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) was recently held in Newport Beach, California.

      FOSS 2010 was an invitation-only workshop aimed at identifying the key research projects and challenges for free and open source software. FOSS is funded by the Computing Research Association and the National Science Foundation, and hosted by the Institute for Software Research at UC Irvine.

    • SCALE ready for launch – Pre-registration for SCALE spikes, WIOS/OSSIE and more on Friday

      To get a sense of how the health of the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community is in general and to monitor the interest in FOSS and Linux in the region in particular, the Southern California Linux Expo staff watches pre-registration closely leading up to SCALE 8X.

    • SCALE: 5 Key Takeaways for Open Source VARs

      SCALE, the Southern California Linux Expo, kicks off today in Los Angeles. More than a Linux geek fest, there are signs that SCALE is starting to attract solutions providers that work with Red Hat, Novell, Canonical and other open source partner programs. Here’s a look at five key trends solutions providers should be watching at SCALE.

  • Audiocasts

  • Fog Computing

    • Eucalyptus Completes Amazon Web Services Specs with Latest Release

      The Eucalyptus Project has reached a major milestone this week with the 1.6.2 release. While it mostly consists of minor improvements for performance and stability, the point release also marks the implementation of Amazon’s EC2 and S3 specifications. Your private cloud is now ready!

    • Carnegie Mellon joins Open Cirrus, continues to grow cloud research expertise

      Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science announced this week that it is has joined the Open Cirrus project, adding one of its clusters to resources available on the open-source test bed for cloud computing research.

    • Open sourcers fortify Ubuntu’s Koala food

      With Eucalyptus – the open source platform that put the Koala in Ubuntu’s Karmic Koala – you can mimic Amazon’s so-called infrastructure cloud inside your very own data center. At least up to a point.

      At the moment, Eucalyptus duplicates the APIs for Amazon’s three primary Web Services: Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Elastic Block Store (EBS). But it’s yet to provide things like elastic load balancing or an Amazon-esque browser front-end – something that lets users tap your so-called private cloud through a reasonably intuitive GUI.

  • Twitter

    • All A-Twitter about Open Source

      Twitter loves open source.

      [...]

      In a sense, this is a non-story: after all, does *anyone* these days not use open source for these kind of massive, rapidly-growing sites?

    • It’s not just Twitter

      A recent Washington Post story observed that Twitter loves open source. Twitter’s not the only ones. Most, if not all, social networks are built on top of Linux and open-source software.

      When the writer wrote that Twitter loves open source he wasn’t exaggerating. He was quoting from Twitter’s About Open-Source page. There, Twitter states that, “Twitter is built on open-source software-here are the projects we have released or contribute to.”

    • Twitter Loves Open Source: Just Not as Much as Status.net

      News is making the rounds that Twitter has put up a directory showing all the open source projects it loves, which in real terms means the projects that Twitter contributes to. It’s an impressive list of projects, including cachet, its Java-based text-processing software for handling Tweets, contributions to several Ruby tools, and other major contributions. Of course, notably absent is the actual platform that runs Twitter itself — so the love only runs so deep, apparently.

  • Mozilla

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD and the GPL

      Linus Torvalds has said Linux wouldn’t have happened if 386BSD had been around when he started up. We trace the history of FreeBSD and how it’s affected the open source world.

  • Releases

    • Announcing project OsmocomBB: Open Source GSM Stack

      I am hereby publicly announcing project OsmocomBB: A Free and Open Source software project to create a Free Software GSM baseband firmware.

      The baseband chipset is the part of a mobile phone that actuall communicates directly with the GSM network. It typically includes a DSP and a microprocessor running some RTOS, drivers for the baseband chipset, the GSM protocol stack and some kind of user interface.

    • HAST Project is Complete!

      I’m very happy to report to FreeBSD users that the HAST project I was working on for the last three months is ready for testing and already committed to the HEAD branch.

      I’ll describe what HAST does in few words. HAST allows for synchronous block-level replication of any storage media (called GEOM providers, using FreeBSD nomenclature) over a TCP/IP network for fast failure recovery. HAST provides storage using the GEOM infrastructure, meaning it is file system and application independent and can be combined with any existing GEOM class. In case of a primary node failure, the cluster will automatically switch to the secondary node, check and mount the UFS file system or import the ZFS pool, and continue to work without missing a single bit of data.

    • NetworkManager 0.8 Is Ready For Release

      NetworkManager, the free software project that’s backed by Red Hat and used by many distributions for easily managing network connections from the Linux desktop, is ready for its version 0.8 milestone. NetworkManager 0.7 is getting old and while NetworkManager 0.7.1 brought some improvements last year, the 0.8 release is rather exciting.

    • Wine Announcement [1.1.39 Released]

      The Wine development release 1.1.39 is now available.

      What’s new in this release (see below for details):
      – Support for registry symbolic links.
      – Many MSI fixes.
      – Build process improvements.
      – MSXML cleanups and fixes.
      – A number of MSHTML improvements.
      – Various bug fixes.

  • Government

  • Licensing

    • Major legal victory for open source in US

      The long running case of Jacobsen v. Katzer has been settled on terms favourable to Jacobsen, a developer of the Java Model Railroad Interface project. The case came about when Katzer incorporated Jacobsen’s code into it’s proprietary model trail software, after deleting the copyright notices that existed in the code.

    • A Big Victory for F/OSS: Jacobsen v. Katzer is Settled

      A long running case of great significance to the legal underpinnings of free and open source/open source software (F/OSS) has just settled on terms favorable to the F/OSS developer. The settlement follows a recent ruling by a U.S. Federal District Court judge that affirmed several key rights of F/OSS developers under existing law.

      That case is Jacobsen v. Katzer, and the settlement documents were filed in court just after 9:00 AM this morning. Links to each of them can be found later in this blog entry. The brief background of the case, the legal issues at stake, and the settlement details are as follows.

      The software underlying such an important legal dispute is almost charmingly inconsequential from a commercial point of view – model railroad software. But to the litigants, the stakes were high relative to their resources and their commitment to that niche. The plaintiff, Robert Jacobsen, is a software developer member of the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI) Project, and the defendant, Matthew Katzer, is the owner of a proprietary vendor of model train software called KAMIND associates, d/b/a KAM Industries.

    • Jacobsen and FOSS Community Win Big in Jacobsen v. Katzer Settlement

      The lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice (i.e. the case cannot be refiled by either party). This case is an excellent resolution for the FOSS community and the lawyers for Jacobsen should be congratulated for their hard work and success.

  • Openness

    • Open-source sets trend for broader transparency

      Moody jokingly told the LCA2010 audience that the genome book is essentially the same text as Rebel Code, his 2002 book on Linux and the open source movement, with just a few terms changed.

      There is, he suggests, a more direct connection between the two endeavours. A public programme to piece together into a complete genome the fragmentary sequences of genetic materiel that came out of analysis in the early years of the decade was competing with a parallel programme run by private company Celera Genomics, which could have patented crucial parts of the discovery.

    • Open Data: A Question of (Panton) Principles

      They form the basis of the newly-formalised Panton Principles for open data in science, and are followed by the four short principles themselves – essentially that there should be an explicit statement of what may be done with the data, and that ideally that data should bein the public domain.

    • Victorians To Win $100,000 To App The State

      Victoria’s IT innovators will be invited to take part in a $100,000 online competition to create new applications to be formally launched later this month, as mentioned in the statement of government intentions released this week.

      Minister for Information and Communications Technology, John Lenders, said the ‘App My State’ competition would give Victorians the motivation to turn their creative ideas into applications used by other Victorians every day.

    • How MakerCulture Is Reinventing Politics

  • Programming

    • Subversion accepted as a Apache Top-Level Project

      According to a post on the Subversion Community website, Subversion, the popular open source version control and configuration management tool has been accepted as an Apache Top-Level Project (TLP). The news marks the end of Subversion’s time in the Apache Software Foundation’s (ASF) Incubator which is the first step to becoming an ASF Top-Level Project. It also means that it will now be governed under the Foundation’s meritocratic process and principles.

    • Oracle is working on a combined Java Virtual Machine

      The engineers responsible for the development of the JRockit and HotSpot Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) are “spending lots of quality time together” to work out how to combine the Oracle JVM and what was Sun’s virtual machine.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • File formats, alphabets and public money: did you know that…

      This said, the situation in Italy can be summarized as follows: file formats are alphabets, open file formats were officially declared necessary at least five years ago, an official organization of the Italian Government says the formats of Microsoft Office are not open ones, but those formats are still ignored, when not actually refused, in most Italian Public Administrations. Why? Very often, it’s just out of inertia and because citizens themselves never complain. So don’t follow this example, check what your national laws say about open file formats, demand that they are applied and to know more keep reading Stop!/Zona-M.

    • AI based software, a new challenge to Open Standard. A case of Quillpad typing hindi

      I am a big fan of Open Standards, but the nature of development do not take care about open standards. Recently my brother asked me why do not I use Quillpad ( http://www.quillpad.in/hindi/ ) for writing hindi.

Leftovers

  • [Linus Torvalds:] Demons? Really?

    And that’s when it gets strange. One of them starts to seriously talk about praying demons away, and then after the prayer has driven the demon out of the person, you have to support the person so that the demon doesn’t come back. And nobody laughs at him.

    Seriously? What year is it again? I’m pretty sure they didn’t have Costco foodcourts in the middle ages, but maybe there was some time warping going on.

    What the hell is wrong with people?

  • What we can learn from Nepali orphans

    In many ways, Nepali culture of today closely resembles pre-tech revolution Japan. The way the aunties at Ama Ghar prepared food in the kitchen or washed clothes in buckets of cold water reminded me of the way my Japanese grandmother went about her daily chores — it’s something about the pacing and the commitment to what may seem like the most menial tasks that made me nostalgic for my childhood. I see many similarities between Japanese and Nepali culture. They’re both traditionally patriarchal societies, with heavy Buddhist influences; children are taught to respect and care for elders, and society as a whole values community over individualism. But an unfortunate side effect of economic growth was that some of these cultural values have been compromised — if not ignored outright, they have at the very least become marginalized.

  • Health Insurance Death Spiral

    The most startling implication of Anthem/Blue Cross of California’s announcement last week that it is going to raise individual health insurance rates by up to 39 percent this year is not that insurance companies are arrogant and untouchable. That was already well known.

    What has to be more alarming for the 800,000 Californians who are covered by Blue Cross individual health insurance policies is that their insurance rates appear to have entered what insurance industry underwriters call a death spiral.

  • Security

    • Firm uses typing cadence to finger unauthorized users

      Though most users feel anonymous when browsing the Web, their browsers constantly turn over unique information such as a list of installed plugins, screen resolution, and the user agent string. Taken together, such bits of information can uniquely identify many users even without cookies.

    • Mother ‘fined £50 for dropping banana’

      A mother claims she was issued with a £50 fine when her toddler dropped the end of a banana out of his pram.

    • Leys crime rises despite CCTV cameras launch

      CRIME outside shops on a road on an Oxford estate has risen since long-awaited CCTV cameras were switched on two months ago.

    • Plans to extend town’s CCTV system

      FELIXSTOWE: Moves are under way to extend the town centre’s crime-busting CCTV system as part of work to revamp the shopping area.

    • Car nabbed under CCTV

      LONG-TIME Murwillumbah resident Ken Ward thought it would be safe to park his Landcruiser ute under the CCTV security cameras in central Murwillumbah

    • Bob Barr At CPAC: ‘How Would You Like To Be Waterboarded?’

      One-time Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr riled the conservative CPAC crowd on Friday, when he declared that civilian courts were appropriate for handling terrorists and insisted that — if a trial was what they wanted — those who used waterboarding should be brought before a judge.

    • Pennsylvania School Accused of Cyberspying

      “I don’t feel that school has the right to put cameras inside the kids’ home, inside their bedrooms and spy on children,” Holly said.

    • Government drops jail for data thieves… again

      The government has quietly dropped plans to jail personal data thieves, frustrating the Information Commissioner and arousing criticism of the Data Protection Act as toothless.

    • Support workers to spot terrorists

      Staff sources say that the sessions have included being told how to spot anything suspicious, and being asked to report anything – no matter how trivial – to police, such as quantities of empty bottles of bleach.

      Support workers who visit a range of clients in their own home including vulnerable groups, people with addictions and elderly people, have been among the first to get the training.

      Concierges, community safety teams and other front-line staff across the council are also to be sent on the sessions, which are hosted by police as part of the Home Office’s counter-terrorism strategy.

    • Air security a matter for all

      The federal government should ground plans to charge air travellers for the privilege of subjecting themselves to full-body scanners while going through security.

    • Interested in campaigning against body scanners? Click here
    • Body scanners are to be compulsory
    • Insult to injury – charging passengers for the privilege of going through body scanners..?
    • Tracy Residents Now Have To Pay For 911 Calls

      Tracy residents will now have to pay every time they call 9-1-1 for a medical emergency.

    • Could Looking At London’s 2012 Olympics Logo Land People In Prison?

      That is the logo for the 2012 Olympics in London. My first reaction to it was that it’s just hideous from a design standpoint, but others quickly noticed something worse. You can look at that logo and… um… see what appears to be Lisa Simpson… doing something she shouldn’t be doing. Yeah. Once you see it, it never goes away. So, as CHT notes, given that ruling of child porn for having an image of a Simpsons cartoon child performing sex acts… is looking at the 2012 Olympic logo going to be classified as viewing child porn now?

    • Official: FBI probing Pa. school webcam spy case

      The FBI is investigating a Pennsylvania school district accused of secretly activating webcams inside students’ homes, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press on Friday.

      [...]

      Days after a student filed suit over the practice, Lower Merion officials acknowledged Friday that they remotely activated webcams 42 times in the past 14 months, but only to find missing student laptops. They insist they never did so to spy on students, as the student’s family claimed in the federal lawsuit.

    • Calling 911? That’ll Be $300

      This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard in a while. Does the town really want to discourage people from calling in the event of an emergency? In my life, I think I’ve called 911 four times — and three of those were after witnessing car crashes by other people. With this rule in place, I would have much less incentive to call to get the police if I witness something bad happening, whether it’s a car crash, or someone getting mugged. 911 is a public service. You shouldn’t have to pay for a 911 call.

    • Mother’s fury as nanny state brands her healthy daughter, 5, ‘fat and at risk of heart disease’

      Sports mad, always full of energy and certainly not fat, five-year-old Lucy Davies’ parents had no concern about her health.

    • Now council issues elf ‘n’ safety alert over swimming goggles

      They are perfect for encouraging children to swim by keeping the stinging chlorine out of their eyes.

      But health and safety officials today revealed a darker side to swimming goggles.

    • Misha Glenny on the Mafia [TED]
    • Move over China, here comes Russia

      In late January, NetWitness security research were able to gain visibility into a large scale ZeuS-based botnet, taking user credentials and confidential information from thousands of organizations around the world (See The Wall Street Journal article). Some of the information collected has been synthesized in the Kneber Bot whitepaper that you can dowload from the NetWitness website.

  • Environment

    • World’s top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates

      Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

    • Distinguishing Climate “Deniers” From “Skeptics”

      A fair number of people have written in response to my previous posting – The Real Struggle Behind Climate Change – A War on Expertise – griping that I do not get a crucial distinction between climate-change “Skeptics” and “Deniers.”

      Several claimed to be rational, educated fellows who regret the shrill anti-intellectualism of Fox News. Yet, they still defend the core notion underlying the anti-HGCC (human generated Climate change) movement — the premise that virtually 100% of the thousands of scientists in a given field can be suborned, corrupted, or intimidated simultaneously into supporting a nonsensical, baseless theory.

      [...]

      Skeptics first admit that they are non-experts, in the topic at hand. And that experts know more than they do.

      Sound obvious? Especially regarding complex realms like atmospheric studies, or radiative transfer, or microcell computer modeling. But this simple admission parts company from…

      … Deniers, who wallow in the modern notion that a vociferous opinion is equivalent to spending twenty years studying atmospheric data and models from eight planets.

    • An addendum on “The Fall of Civilizations”

      One is the trail of stupidity, leading to a cliff. Almost 100 years ago, in The Decline of the West, Ozwald Spengler transfixed the public with his certain-sounding explanations for why Europo-American society would soon dissolve into pain and despair, decadence and dust.

    • The Real Struggle Behind Climate Change – A War on Expertise

      The schism over global climate change (GCC) has become an intellectual chasm, across which everyone perceives the other side as Koolaid-drinkers. Although I have mixed views of my own about the science of GCC, and have closely grilled a number of colleagues who are front-line atmospheric scientists (some at JPL), I’m afraid all the anecdotes and politics-drenched “questions” flying about right now aren’t shedding light. They are, in fact, quite beside the point.

      That is because science itself is the main issue: its relevance and utility as a decision-making tool.

    • Open-source environmental protection

      As part of the Agency’s Open Government plan, they’re soliciting input from the public through March 19th. Not only can you offer ideas, you can vote, and comment, on other people’s.

  • Finance

    • 95% Of Americans Got Tax Cuts; 12% Know It; Tea Partiers Least Informed

      A CBS poll reveals that when asked whether the Obama administration, raised, lowered, or kept taxes the same for most Americans, only 12% get the answer correct: taxes were decreased.

      • 24 percent of respondents said they INCREASED taxes.

      • 53 percent said they kept taxes the same

      • And 12 percent said taxes were decreased.

    • Bank of America forecloses on house that couple had paid cash for

      Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure.

    • Who needs banks if you have a mobile phone?

      WITH smartphones taking the world by storm, a phone that can only send and receive voice calls and text messages may seem like a relic from a bygone age. Yet in East Africa, simple phones like these are changing the face of the economy, thanks to the “mobile money” services that are spreading across the region.

    • Most of the big banks are insolvent

      The steady drip of details about the financial crisis continues. PBS News Hour has Paul Solman interviewing an ex-bank regulator, William Black who now teaches at the University of Missouri link here. Points Black makes that are worth thinking about:

      *Following the S & L collapse, more than 1000 executive insiders were convicted and jailed for fraud. No one has been charged in the current mess, much less convicted or jailed.

    • The Great Goldman Sachs Fire Sale of 2008

      In an interview last week, President Obama said he didn’t begrudge Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorganChase, and Lloyd Blankfein, the head man at Goldman Sachs, their 2009 bonuses of $17 million and $9 million, respectively. He said that while $17 million was “an extraordinary amount of money,” there are “some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

    • Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

      Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy – they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash

    • Goldman Sachs: No Longer Shocking, But Still Wrong

      We can’t help but share the “shocking” news we came across in the Sunday Times that former US Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO) Hank Paulson does not believe that banning proprietary trading at large banks (i.e. Goldman Sachs) insured by tax payer dollars is a good idea. Since most of those in Washington with the power to formulate financial reform have spent most of their careers on Wall Street, and maintain close ties with their former pals, this “shocking” news should not come as a surprise. But it still makes us sick to our stomach.

    • Greece Is Far From The EU’s Only Joker

      First there was Enron; then, subprime. Now it turns out that some governments have been just as adept at using financial alchemy to hide debts. Take Greece, a country with a $350 billion national debt that is now under investigation by the European Commission (EC) for underreporting its deficit by as much as 9 percent of GDP in 2009. It used derivatives devised by Goldman Sachs to give itself an off-the-book loan, sold future EU subsidies and lottery earnings to investment banks for upfront cash, and raised money by mortgaging its highways and airports.

    • Why the fate of Greece matters to the world

      OVER the past few weeks, financial headlines have been hijacked by Greece. A number of commentators have almost buried the euro, pointing to the failure of Greece as the first domino to fall and to be followed by Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. All those who had predicted in the 1990s that the euro was a stillborn project are at it again.

    • Greece Hires Former Goldman Banker as Debt Chief

      Greece replaced its debt management chief with a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker, as declines in the country’s bonds roil European markets.

    • The euro’s Greek tragedy

      The Greek crisis has thrown another detour into the euro’s march to world currency domination.

      The rise of the European common currency has been a market theme for years. At its peak early in the financial crisis, the euro had gained 59% against the dollar since its inception in 2000, thanks to the European Central Bank’s inflation-fighting mandate and years of lax policy in the United States.

    • Greek Crisis Fallout: Could the Euro’s Days Be Numbered?

      The rest of the euro-zone countries can come to the rescue. Indeed, these countries — led by France and Germany — have pledged twice this month to do what’s necessary to see Greece through its deficit crisis and defend the common currency. If need be, officials say, that will include a financial bailout of Greece, providing the funds to allow Athens to make its debt payments as the government slashes spending and raises taxes, no matter how unpopular this may be with its taxpayers.

    • A Prisoner’s Dilemma: AIG and Goldman Sachs Game Each Other And PwC

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • US drug firm drops libel action against scientist

      A US corporation, GE Healthcare, has dropped the controversial British libel action it brought against a scientist who criticised one of its drugs, saying the firm did not mean to stifle academic debate.

      Lawyers for leading Danish radiologist Henrik Thomsen said today: “He will be obviously relieved. Now he won’t have to worry about his future financial position, and won’t have to keep looking over his shoulder before he says anything.”

      At a 2007 Oxford medical conference, Thomsen criticised use of Omniscan, GE’s best-selling contrast agent injected into patients so their tissues show up better during MRI scans.

    • Europe to the rescue – again

      I for one despair of us being dependent on a Court and a Parliament which have grown from a very different jurisprudential and cultural tradition to protect our rights, and for those with a sense of British liberty and freedom it feels rather shameful, doesn’t it?

    • Full footage from the Livingstone interview – “The Assault on Liberty”
    • PIC: Zuma cops lock up jogger

      A UCT student has been arrested, had his house searched and been questioned about his political affiliations after gesturing at President Jacob Zuma’s convoy of vehicles.

      Police officers have claimed he pointed his middle finger at vehicles in the convoy and tried to resist arrest.

    • Switzerland pursues violent games ban

      Possibility of stricter measures after resolution passed restricting sale to minors

      With violent games currently causing a stir in Australia, closer to home it has emerged that Switzerland is now considering banning violent video games outright in the territory.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Filtering round up: French filtering, Ireland backs off, UK sidesteps?

      Meanwhile in a surprising twist, Eirecom have apparently pulled out of the negotiated settlement they reached in January 2009 to disconnect subscribers “repeatedly” using P2P for (alleged) illicit downloading. This was the result of the Irish court case brought against them by various parts of the music industry for hosting illegal downloads, and appeared to open up a route to “voluntary” notice and disconnection schemes on the part of the ISP industry; a worrying trend both for advocates of free speech, privacy, due process, ISP immunity and net neutrality.

    • UK Music complains to BBC over report on Digital Economy Bill

      UK Music has filed a formal complaint to the BBC over what it believes is a breach of the corporation’s editorial guidelines on accuracy and impartiality. The complaint relates to an an edition of The Culture Show broadcast on BBC2 on 4 February, 2010, which featured a segment on the Digital Economy Bill (DEB), which includes measures on clamping down on illegal filesharing.

      The umbrella organisation that promotes the interests of Britain’s music industry claimed the programme-makers misrepresented certain facts relating to the bill that had been presented to them in advance. In a letter to the editor of the show, UK Music stated that this resulted in a broadcast it believes was not only grossly misleading and inaccurate, but also misinformed the audience in a biased and prejudicial manner.

    • BBC iplayer DRM raises its head again: now for the iphone

      But with iplayer, and other DRM systems, you are point blank breaking the law if you take that speech and use it – even though you wish to exercise your right to free speech, supposedly guaranteed in copyright law. This is because it is also illegal to get round copy restriction systems.

      That’s right. You must break the law to use your legal rights. That’s very wrong. In a world full of bloggers, where free speech is genuinely being exercised publicly by thousands of individuals, these rights really matter.

    • [BBC presenter] Ray Gosling had already told friends about killing his former lover
    • Newspaper publishers lean on the BBC Trust

      THE NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION (NPA), which is adopting a King Canute strategy against new technology, is trying to stop the BBC from making its content available on mobile phones.

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • Not wrong, just illegal

      From a practical point of view, trying to regulate the distribution of these materials over the Internet is an unachievable goal. No matter what laws are put in place, technological advances by ingenious young computer geeks mean that youth will always be one step ahead of the authorities. The industry may successfully prosecute and punish a few people but their success will be short lived. Almost no one will be deterred by legal prosecutions because the chances of being caught are minimal.

    • The Creative Class War

      Awhile back an author and thinker named Richard Florida wrote articles and penned a book about the “rise of the creative class,” a demographic of young urban professionals who would be ferociously attractive to dying cities that have lost their industrial/manufacturing base, and what these cities would have to do in order to attract them. While there’s been some impressive debate about whether or not Florida’s thesis has proven true, and what cities are really benefiting from this push, one thing that’s clear to me is that the “creative class” — journalists, writers, programmers, Web designers, graphic artists, traditional artists, musicians, and so on — need all the help they can get.

    • Are People Resentful Of Content Creators?

      Coming at the same question from the other direction, again, I have trouble seeing “resentment” as the issue at all. When we look at the success stories, the one thing that comes through loud and clear is that respecting fans results in those fans becoming incredibly loyal. They’re loyal to a fault, in fact. There’s no resentment there at all. If anything, at times, it seems to border on hero worship.

    • Time To Change (Or Ditch) The USTR Special 301 Process That Pressures Other Countries To Adapt US IP Laws

      In the meantime, EFF and Public Knowledge have teamed up to ask the USTR to change the process and, at the very least, stop taking the word of industry lobbyists as if it were gospel. They also suggested that the USTR be more flexible in allowing countries to set their own IP policy — noting, amusingly, that the US itself famously didn’t implement its “international obligations” in the Berne Treaty for decades, because the country felt differently about certain aspects of copyright law. Hell, even today we’re not in full compliance with Berne. But for some reason the USTR acts as if other countries need to fall in line with US IP policy, even as we’ve chosen to go in a different direction when we felt it was warranted.

    • Illicit File-Sharing and Streaming of TV Shows Increases

      A new report by a consultancy firm specializing in analyzing consumer consumption of digital media reveals that during the last quarter of 2009, increasing numbers of Swedes accessed unauthorized movies and TV shows online. The research indicates that the downward trend provoked by the introduction of the IPRED legislation is over.

    • Infographic: buying DVDs vs pirating them

      I rip all my kid’s DVDs (not least because she has a tendency to scratch them to hell), and the difference between firing up a movie on a laptop and it just starting versus trying to explain to a toddler why Daddy has to spend five minutes pressing next-next-next menu-menu-menu is enormous.

    • Olympic bullying drives goggle-maker to verse
    • IOC Claims Olympian Lindsey Vonn’s Name As Intellectual Property
    • Blonde we like wins Downhill (Last name rhymes with “Bonn”)

      There once was a lawyer from the IOC,
      who called us to protect “intellectual property.”

      “During the Olympics”, she said with a sneer
      “your site can’t use an Olympian’s name even if they use your gear.”

      “No pictures, no video, no blog posts can be used…”
      Even if they are old? “No!”, she enthused.

      While Olympians chase gold the IOC pursues green.
      Cough up millions, or your logo cannot be seen.

    • Disney Decides To Kick A Dying Man Over Copyright Issues
    • The Real Purpose of ACTA

      So it is obvious that whatever ACTA is, it isn’t a trade agreement. I came to this conclusion before Christmas 2009, but didn’t publish anything at the time, because I had no conclusive proof that it wasn’t a trade agreement. It’s obvious that something was being negotiated, but what?

      The situation reminded me of the World War 2 Allied deception plans that were put in place to fool the Germans into thinking that the invasion of Europe would be anywhere other than Normandy.

      So if ACTA is a deception plan, what is it hiding?

      [...]

      The main points I got from her recording were:

      1. ACTA would not require any changes to IP laws. Note that this is impossible if the Treaty actually had anything to do with IP, but he was adamant on this point.
      2. He kept mentioning Prince William. He seemed to thing that Prince William would become King of the United States, as well as England, Canada, Australia, and Mexico.
      3. He was under the impression that no one would accept Prince Charles as King, due to his marriage to a divorced woman, an exceptionally archaic viewpoint as far as I am concerned.
      4. He then confirmed that ACTA would require changes to laws. When she questioned him on this, as he had said earlier that it wouldn’t require changes, he said ‘I said it wouldn’t require changes to IP laws, I didn’t say it wouldn’t require changes to other laws’.
      5. He then proceeded to mumble about how paranoid the Americans were, and how wrong they were about the ‘New World Order.’

    • Book Publishers Circulating ‘Talking Points’ To Counter Arguments That Ebook Prices Need To Go Lower

      For a while now, we’ve been discussing how the pricing on ebooks doesn’t make much sense, and almost certainly needs to fall. Like many industries, the book business could learn a lot from other businesses that have realized that drastically lowering the price on digital goods can massively increase sales, and better maximize profits. But, instead, book publishers seem to be pushing in the opposite direction, and trying to push the price of digital books up. We recently wrote about a NY Times article that suggested consumers might revolt if the publishers keep moving in this direction, which is actually supported by reports of how consumers are reacting to publishers’ anti-consumer activities with regards to ebooks.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Christian Einfeldt’s DTP presentation in Berlin 2004 08 (2004)


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/02/20/jacobsen-vs-katzer/feed/ 0 New Study Confirms That Vista 7 is Bloated http://techrights.org/2010/02/18/vista-7-memory-hog/ http://techrights.org/2010/02/18/vista-7-memory-hog/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:48:13 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=27137 Vista 7 as a pig

Summary: Data from Devil Mountain Software shows that Vista 7 is a memory hog, which is therefore a lot slower for most users

A NEW study (data analysis rather) confirms what we’ve been saying all along. On many occasions we produced and shared evidence to show that Vista 7 was just too damn bloated (slower than Vista sometimes, except for cases where the reviewers had very modern hardware or received high-end hardware as bribe from Microsoft, in which case the bloat was harder to sense).

Anyway, the study at hand was covered by Gregg Keizer, who is one of the best guys at IDG/ComputerWorld.

Most Windows 7 PCs max out their memory, resulting in performance bottlenecks, a researcher said today.

Citing data from Devil Mountain Software’s community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet), Craig Barth, the company’s chief technology officer, said that new metrics reveal an unsettling trend. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.

The above from Barth says that Vista 7 is “larger and more complex”, which is a gentle choice of words for “bloated”.

In the following new video from Linux Magazine (“Andrew Tanenbaum on Bugs and Minix’ Reincarnation Server”), the inspirer of Linux explains that many operating systems have become too bloated. Sorry about Flash alone being an option for viewing. █

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/02/18/vista-7-memory-hog/feed/ 7 Links 17/2/2010: Calculate Linux 10.2 Released, SimplyMEPIS 8.5 @ Beta 5 http://techrights.org/2010/02/17/simplymepis-8-5-calculate/ http://techrights.org/2010/02/17/simplymepis-8-5-calculate/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:26:12 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=27061

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • The Linux Box to Market Ubuntu to U.S. Enterprise Users

    Launched in October 2004, Ubuntu is one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions in the world with more than 10 million users. With users in homes, schools, businesses and governments around the world, Ubuntu is a powerful and secure open source operating system for desktops, laptops, netbooks and servers. Ubuntu contains all the applications you need and will always be free of charge. With the values of open source software at its core, Ubuntu costs nothing to download or update.

  • The Linux Box to Market Ubuntu OS in the U.S.

    The Linux Box announces a partnership with Canonical whereby it will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the U.S.

    The Linux Box has announced a partnership with Canonical whereby it will market the Ubuntu Linux operating system in the United States.

  • Linux desktops: you say no

    Freeform Dynamics’s new survey “of 1,275 IT professionals from the UK, USA, and other geographies” has just been published. Two-thirds of respondents said that cutting costs was a prime mover behind their decisions to switch to Linux on the desktop but that user acceptance was a key consideration in the decision to do so.

  • Using Linux to back out a Windows XP patch

    As of this writing (Tuesday Feb 16th) there don’t seem to be any new suggestions from Microsoft to assist XP users whose systems were rendered un-bootable after installing the February 9th patches. For example, the last entry on The Microsoft Security Response Center blog is four days old.

    So let me offer a suggestion: boot to Linux and move some files around.

  • The Incredible Story of Scott Kveton: Linux, Firefox, Bacon & iPhones

    When Kveton was 31 years old he founded the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University in Corvallis. After working at various big tech companies for a few years, he had joined the University and cut its hardware budget by 75% the previous year – just by buying open source Linux servers. The school decided to put the budget surplus back into the paradigm that made the difference. Then Google, IBM and other big companies started giving the new Lab money to host open source projects they were working on. Soon Kveton had a staff of 25 students and contacts all over the Open Source world. That was 6 years ago and those contacts have been invaluable throughout the rest of his career.

    [...]

    After continued success hosting other open source projects (like Drupal) at the Lab, Kveton decided he wanted to try something entrepreneurial.

  • The Disposable PC.

    I am pretty sure that if Microsoft wanted to invest the time and money to create the most secure and stable operating system, they could. They don’t have idiots working for them. I think it is that “if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours mentality.” It also doesn’t help that whenever a call is placed to a support center or when a PC is brought into a repair shop, the solution usually given by the technician is to re-image Windows. If I have a virus, why can’t you just remove the virus and I will be on my way?

    I, as many of my readers, on the other hand know better and choose to rely on something a lot more stable and secure with (insert flavor of Linux or UNIX here). Why be bothered with constantly having to maintain or repair your OS. Sometimes you just need things to work. Maybe that is why you read stories about how repair shops such as Best Buy’s will refuse the repair of a computing device if you are not running a version of Windows. They probably don’t see any money it.

  • Linux Professional Institute at CeBIT 2010, Hanover, Germany

    (Kassel, Germany: February 11, 2010) The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world’s premier Linux certification organization (http://www.lpi.org), announced that its affiliate, LPI Central Europe (http://www.lpice.eu) will host a full program of activities at CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany. Open Source will be a top theme at this years edition of one of the world’s leading trade fairs for the ICT industry (http://www.cebit.de/opensource_e).

  • GraphOn Announces Free GO-Global Personal Edition Software

    Similarly, GO-Global for UNIX Personal Edition publishes UNIX or Linux applications onto the Internet or network for remote access from any PC, Mac, or Web browser.

  • JoikuSpot Goes Linux

    The new JoikuSpot Linux Edition contains enriched features such as Speed Measurement to allow users to accurately see their mobile internet connection speed. Users see exactly the mobile data speed they get with their mobile broadband subscription.

  • Comcast Tech Support vs Linux user

    It appears that Comcast has no idea how to handle someone with an IQ over 30. This individual just wants setup fancast to watch hbo programming on his computer. Clearly Comcastic doesn’t know how to handle such a complicated question and the madness begins.

    The below is a cut and paste of the IM discussion with Comcast this individual has.

  • Server

    • Linux Server Discounts From Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data

      Call it a rare triple play in the open source server market. Lenovo, Red Hat and Tech Data are partnering to give resellers discounts on select Lenovo ThinkServers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced. Here are the details — and the implications for open source solutions providers.

    • Samsonite to adopt Polaris’ Linux based retail store management solution

      Polaris claims that the Linux based system can potentially bring down the set-up and running cost of retail store software by 50 percent

    • Sybase Delivers Top Performance Results for Data Warehousing and Analytics on TPC-H(TM) Benchmark

      The new TPC-H benchmark result of 102,375 queries per hour (QphH) was recorded using Sybase IQ 15.1 with the HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server and running the Red Hat(R) Enterprise Linux 5.3 platform, achieving a price/performance of $3.63 per transaction(1). The benchmark represents the best result among Linux and x86 vendors in the non-clustered marketplace at this scale factor(2) and is further proof of Sybase IQ’s ability to deliver maximum performance by utilizing available assets while reducing the cost of ownership for mid-tier organizations.

  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.33 (Part 5) – Drivers

      Enhancements to the ALSA code for HD audio codecs, a V4L/DVB driver for the Mantis TV chip, drivers for MSI laptops and drivers for newer AMD CPUs are just some of the improvements to Linux hardware support. Android drivers have now been escorted from the staging area, while Ramzswap (formerly Compcache) framework for compressing RAM has been added.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Fifth Stable Update Ends Out X Server 1.7 Series

        X Server 1.7.5 doesn’t have much to offer beyond the 1.7.5 release candidates from weeks ago, but mostly smaller changes scattered throughout the X Server code-base.

      • Benchmarks Of Nouveau’s Gallium3D OpenGL Driver

        To benchmark the Gallium3D driver in Fedora 13 for Nouveau we fired up the Phoronix Test Suite and ran the OpenArena, World of Padman, Urban Terror, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Warsow test profiles. We tested each of these OpenGL games at five different resolutions: 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1680 x 1050, and 1920 x 1080.

      • AMD Reveals Upcoming Catalyst Driver Changes

        In other words, there really isn’t much to get excited about if you are a Linux user when reading today’s press release. There are, however, other significant changes — for better or worse — coming to the Catalyst Linux driver this month or next. When we are allowed to share, you can be sure that we will. Maybe X Server 1.7 support will finally come too.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • Choosing Linux Desktop Environments

      Linux users have the unique privilege and challenge of picking the distribution that fits them best. Most start out their Linux-experience with a major distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE, and for some, that’s as far as they go. Others, curious or eager to try the variety of Linus Torvald-”flavors” available, start trying to find out what differences exist between “smaller” distributions like Elive or Crunchbang and the bigger ones.

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

      • KDE Review: KDE 4.4 Comes in from the Cold

        Between radical changes and limited functionality, the KDE 4 series got off to a rough start. However, with each release, KDE 4 has improved steadily and silenced more critics. Now, with the KDE 4.4 release, the series has reached first maturity.

        Those who expect everything to behave exactly as it did in the KDE 3 series may still struggle with 4.4. But, for those willing to accept change, 4.4 has no shortage of new features to offer, ranging from the implementation of several long-term directions to enhanced usability on the desktop — including Plasma Netbook, a new interface designed specifically for netbook computers.

        [...]

        But, by far the greatest desktop innovation in KDE 4.4 is one that is also the simplest — the ability to group windows by tabs. This feature is implemented by a single item added to each window’s menu. Yet the implications for easing users’ workflow is immense.

      • Five useful KDE 4.4 widgets

        With the rise of KDE 4.4 comes a new crop of desktop widgets (or Plasmoids). Earlier renditions of KDE 4.x saw the Plasmoids less than useful. The latest workings, however, have become quite useful, productive even.

        In this article I will introduce you to five of those Plasmoids that can help your productivity in one way or another. I will also show you how the Plasmoids are now installed.

      • Installing KDE 4.4 in Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora And ArchLinux
      • KDE SC 4.4: A Worthy (though not perfect) Upgrade
      • Missing Features – Feeling Brian Proffitt’s Pain

  • Distributions

    • Which is the Best Linux Distribution for your Desktop?

      Some Linux distributions are light-weight (they’ll run just fine on your old laptop), some are targeted at people who just want to try out Linux without replacing their main OS while other desktop distros (say Ubuntu) include a more comprehensive collection of software applications and also support a wide variety of hardware devices.

      [...]

      Arch Linux is a recommended distro for power (experienced) users as it allows them to create a customized Linux installation built from the ground up. It does not have a graphical install interface.

      [...]

      Slackware is another distro that deserves mention in this context. As compared to Arch Linux, Slackware Linux provides more stable packages and is thus more conservative. However, Arch Linux provides a more usable package management system that takes care of dependencies.

    • New Releases

      • Calculate Linux Desktop 10.2 released
      • Calculate Linux 10.2 Has Support for Canon Printers

        The Russian developer Alexander Tratsevskiy proudly announced last week, on the Linux Questions forum, the availability of Calculate Linux 10.2, which includes all its derivatives: Calculate Linux Desktop, Calculate Linux Server, Calculate Linux Scratch and Calculate Linux XFCE.

      • Element v1.0 final release
      • PLoP Linux 4.0.3 released

        added: ddrescue 1.11, testdisk photorec 6.11, lzip 1.8, rsync 3.0.6, dbus 1.2.14, netcat 1.10, LVM 2.2.02.58
        update: kernel 2.6.32.8, usbutils 0.84, fsarchiver 0.6.7, ntfs-3g 2010.1.16AR.1, nmap 5.21, partimage 0.6.8, mutt 1.5.20, groff 1.20.1, findutils 4.4.2

      • MilaX 0.5 released

        Based on OpenSolaris snv128a.
        JWM as WM, system monitor – conky, keyboard layout switcher – SCIM.
        Now with fastest browser Midori – Twitter, Facebook and other sites is working well.
        Fast start: boot LiveCD (LiveUSB), configure network (Menu ->Setup->Net Setup),
        run zfsinstall (~pfexec zfsinstall), reboot and enjoy.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Morgan Stanley Maintains Red Hat at Equal-Weight, Sees Revenue Acceleration in 2011 (RHT)
      • Savvytek Lands the First Red-Hat Linux Virtualization Implementation Project at MEPS

        In partnership with Red Hat and Oracle; and in their endeavor to lead the market towards a more proficient, secure and better performing infrastructural solutions; Savvytek was chosen by Middle East Payment Services (MEPS) to implement their new core application – RS2 – based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle technologies. This technology migration project comes to support MEPS direction in building a Highly Available, Cost-Effective–Ready Data center that hosts and supports their mission-critical, dynamic operation.

      • Fedora

        • Bring on the skins.

          Did you know that you can use Fedora trademarks to create skins, application themes, Firefox personas, and other such application sprucer-uppers, pursuant to our trademark guidelines? You can find this change, along with complete usage guidelines, through our trademark guidelines page on the Fedora wiki.

    • Debian Family

      • Celebrate Presidents Day with SimplyMEPIS 8.5 beta5

        MEPIS has announced SimplyMEPIS 8.4.97, the fifth beta of MEPIS 8.5, now available from MEPIS and public mirrors. The ISO files for 32 and 64 bit processors are SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.97-b5_32.iso and SimplyMEPIS-CD_8.4.97-b5_64.iso respectively. Deltas, requested by the MEPIS community, are also available.

      • SimplyMEPIS 8.5 Beta 5 Is Ready for Testing
      • Securing the Debian zones

        The plan is to introduce DNSSEC in several steps so that we can react to issues that arise without breaking everything at once.

      • Ubuntu

        • Lucid Gets New Icons For Rhythmbox, UbuntuOne, MeMenu, More!
        • Ubuntu single sign on service launched

          We are pleased to announce the launch of the brand new Ubuntu single sign on service. The goal of this service is to provide a single, central login service for all Ubuntu-related sites, thus making it more convenient for Ubuntu users and community members to access information, communicate, and contribute. This service will replace the existing Launchpad login service that is currently in use for many Ubuntu-related sites, although existing Launchpad accounts will continue to work in the new service.

        • Autonomic Resources Approved to Offer Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux and Landscape Through GSA Advantage

          Autonomic Resources, an IT and service integration firm serving the U.S. federal government, announced today that the General Services Administration (GSA) has approved the company to offer Canonical’s Ubuntu and Landscape to government customers.

        • Lubuntu: Not Just for Lusers

          For a long time, the Ubuntu family has had three members–Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu (sorry Edubuntu; we’re not counting you). But that may change, with a new project, Lubuntu, vying for official endorsement by Canonical. Here’s a look at Lubuntu, and thoughts on what its future may hold.

          The Lubuntu project, which was established a year ago as a community endeavor, aims to create a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. Towards this end, it uses the LXDE desktop environment in combination with the Openbox window manager to keep the demand on system resources low.

        • Security Expert Releases New Linux Distribution for Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing

          As a derivative of Ubuntu this ‘Live CD’ runs directly from the CD and doesn’t need installing on your hard-drive. Once booted you can use the included tools to perform penetration tests and ethically hack on your own network to ensure that it is secure from outside intruders. As well as the standard Linux networking tools the Live Hacking CD has tools for DNS enumeration and reconnaissance as well as utilities for foot-printing, password cracking and network sniffing. It also has programs for spoofing and a set of wireless networking utilities.

        • Mint

          • Bordering on blasphemy?

            I came across this interesting article today and it brings up some very good arguments regarding the usability of Mint over Ubuntu for new Linux users.

            [...]

            In my mind, Mint is not really a Linux derivative but more of a highly customized Ubuntu install. Most of the modifications in Mint I find I make in Ubuntu. Mint cannot survive without Ubuntu.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Wipro Tech in pact with TI

      Wipro Technologies on Tuesday announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it has tied up with Texas Instruments (TI) to offer services on TI’s OMAP processors. The services, which include Linux baseport, Android operating system porting on hardware platforms, middleware, third-party component integration, application development, and operator customisation, aim to address the commercialisation requirements for OEMs designing on Android, ensuring fast time to market.

    • RoweBots Releases Ultra-Tiny Embedded-Linux RTOS for Renesas Technology’s SH-2A Microcontrollers

      RoweBots Research, Inc., a supplier of tiny embedded POSIX RTOS products, today announced the launch and release of Unison™ Version 5 and the open-source version of Unison Version 4. These two ultra-tiny embedded-Linux™ and POSIX compatible RTOSs open Renesas Technology Corp.’s SH-2A microcontroller (MCU) family to Linux and POSIX compatible development for the first time.

    • Porting Android 2.x to Sony Xperia — Psh. Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 — Now we’re talkin’

      One of the greatest things about a more open platform for smartphones I believe, is the ability to (if you choose) customize it until you’re hearts content. From personal experience, I swap ROM’s every couple of days on my DROID trying out the updates and newcomers to the custom DROID ROM scene alike. But porting various ROM’s developed for your phone, or at the very least, the phone’s operating system, are rather easy all things considered. Especially so when comparing a simple ROM port from one Android device to the next against porting a full blown desktop OS to a Sony Xperia X1. Oh yeah, it’s real.

    • ARM and Global Foundries push mobile chip development

      The joint SoC platform is based on the Cortex A9 processor and ARM’s physical IP, but taps GloFo’s experience with 28nm High-K Metal Gate process to create a proven reference design for manufacturers of smartphones, smartbooks, tablets and a host of other mobile devices.

    • Two-bay NAS device can expand to seven bays

      Synology America announced a two-bay member of its DiskStation network-attached storage (NAS) family that can expand via an optional seven-bay expansion enclosure from 4TB to up to 14TB. Aimed at small-to-medium businesses, the DiskStation DS710+ runs Linux on an Intel Atom D410, and supplies gigabit Ethernet and USB connectivity.

      [...]

      Like the DS210j, the DS1010+, and other Synology NAS devices, the DS710+ runs version 2.2 of Synology’s Linux-based, DNLA-compliant Disk Station Manager software, which is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac workstations. DSM 2.2 enables automated backup features, remote file sharing, iSCSI target support, and multimedia streaming, says the company.

    • Phones

      • Telstra to launch an Android phone

      • Android

        • Tiny handsets run Android

          Sony Ericsson announced two compact, scaled-down members of its Xperia X10 Android smartphone line. The Xperia X10 Mini and the QWERTY-keyboard equipped X10 Mini Pro both offer Qualcomm processors clocked to 600MHz with 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreens, five-megapixel cameras, HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, aGPS, and Android 1.6, says the company.

        • Acer updates Liquid, adds three more Android phones

          Acer announced three new Android smartphones, as well as an Android 2.1 version of its Liquid phone. Acer’s BeTouch e400 and BeTouch E110 fall into the mid- and low-end range, while the Acer “Liquid e” and Formula One styled Acer Ferrari smartphone both appear to target the upper ranges of Android phones.

        • Motorola’s latest Android handset offers multi-touch

          In its Cliq XT incarnation, the Quench appears to be intended as the next-generation version of Motorola’s first Android phone, the T-Mobile-sold Cliq. However, the company did not list which global carrier(s) would pick up the Quench version.

        • Freescale’s Cortex-A8 SoC jumps into Android phones

          Lumigon Corp. announced three Android 2.1 phones — the T1, S1, and E1 — touted as the first smartphones to use Freescale’s 1GHz i.MX51 system-on-chip. Meanwhile, the company also reported contributing to Ulysse Nardin’s Chairman, an Android handset that will start at over $13,000, and Freescale announced an Android evaluation kit for the i.MX51.

        • HTC working on app store tech and studying tablets

          High Tech Computer (HTC), the world’s biggest maker of Windows Mobile and Google Android OS smartphones, is working on technologies for applications used in handsets and application stores and plans to put this software to use but not until a later time.

        • HTC unveils update to Nexus One and HTC Legend

          The similarity is no big surprise considering HTC built Nexus One for Google.

        • Android Market should stimulate Open Source Apps

          For Google this is also good because with open source multiple people can start contributing to apps such that they can improve faster. Furthermore people can start new projects by simply reusing open source code of other Open Source Android applications. All in all it will spur innovation and improve quality of applications and in the end that’s good for Google because the platform will become more popular.

          Furthermore it fits in the Google policy that they stimulate Open Source.

        • Mobile World Congress: Content plans reveal likely mobile winners and losers

          2. Google’s Android platform gained critical mass 18 months from launch, heralding the rise of the open source OS. Juniper said. Android had been as much about as enabling search and services across different devices as capturing OS market share. This had prompted Nokia to open-source its Symbian environment and was being followed by Nokia and Intel, which combined efforts to launch the Linux-based MeeGo platform .

        • Google geared toward mobiles over desktops: CEO

          Google, which became an important player in the mobile industry with the launch of Linux-based open platform Android in 2008 and last month’s release of the first Google phone, the Nexus One, denied that it is competing against mobile carriers.

    • Sub-notebooks

      • The Gdium Liberty 1000 clearly stands out from the pack

        Innovative architecture entrenched in the open-source world, elegant and sober design, yet stylish, security and mobility with the G-Key, a personal and bootable USB key, Gdium is an ultraportable computer that is one of the cornerstones of a wider environment dedicated to knowledge, communication and learning.

      • Are smartbooks and Linux meant for each other?

        Since the desktop line of Windows currently doesn’t run on ARM processors, we can exclude XP/Vista/7 from the list of likely contenders as smartbook operating systems. Windows 7 successors are currently not planned to be ported to ARM and even that wouldn’t be a complete solution since Windows applications will have to be ported as well (a very wide, close-sourced ecosystem).

        [...]

        Linux on the other hand has a very good technical background on ARM. It has no limitations for processing cores and operating memory and has targeted distributions for this architecture. Android is an outstanding example but several well-known distributions – like Ubuntu – have ARM ports in addition to their x86 base edition. Also, due to the fact that most of the Linux applications are open-source, they are at least possible to port, so we can expect the full usual complement of desktop Linux applications to show up on an ARM Linux distribution when the need becomes visible for them.

      • Top 5 Operating Systems for Netbooks

        My personal favorites are Windows 7 Home Premium and Jolicloud, thanks to the ease use. My HP Mini is currently running Windows 7 Home Premium and runs Jolicloud off of a thumbdrive when I want a different experience. I am also testing out a Sony Vaio W which comes standard with Windows 7 Starter and despite the limitations of Starter I am getting by alright so far; though I couldn’t use it every day thanks to the lack of multi-monitor support.

      • Jolicloud – A great Linux distro that blurs the line between desktop and web applications

        In the end Jolicloud manages to keep a good mixture of native and web applications, and abstracts the differences between them so you can just focus on doing your work. This is one OS to look for when it releases.

      • Tablets

        • OpenTablet 7 is Flash-friendly iPad alternative

          No one has a clue how much an OpenTablet will cost, or when it will go on sale. Considering that we’re having a hard enough time figuring out who’s going to buy a $500 JooJoo, the folks at OpenPeak better aim low if they want to make Apple sweat. Some impressive battery life estimates wouldn’t hurt their cause, either.

    • MeeGo/Maemo/Moblin

      • Aava Mobile unveils world’s first fully open mobile device

        There are many open platforms for software in the tech world from operating systems to development environments for various software. We rarely see open hardware or mobile devices though. Aava Mobile has unveiled what it calls the world’s first fully open mobile device at MWC.

        [...]

        The reference design is aimed at Moblin 2.1 and Android for the OS options with plans for support of MeeGo in the future. Features include an extended touch screen, full HD video capability, micro USB port, HD video conferencing, dual mics, 3D sound and UI, GSM capable, and it has GPS, WiFi, compass, and an accelerometer.

      • Aava Mobile unveils open mobile device platform
      • Is MeeGo Linux’ Answer to iPad?

        Intel, Nokia and the MeeGo community are thinking much bigger than tablets, phones or netbooks. While MeeGo greets competition with the iPad head on, it will also compete in a variety of device categories not yet fully defined thanks to its approach to open source development and cross-device portability provided by Qt. The “killer app” is not a single device locked down with crippling DRM. The “killer app” is your content and the ability to access the Internet from anywhere: a phone, a car, a kitchen or television regardless of the device or who makes it.

        It seems clear that Jobs miss-stepped by not thinking big enough because – despite his brilliance – Apple products are being confined to the limits of his team’s imaginations, while the future is about accessing content from anywhere.

      • Nokia patches N900 firmware

        It’s the third N900 firmware update to be posted since the gadget’s November 2009 release. It’s version 3.2010.02-8 and it weighs in at a mere 16.2MB.

      • The Year of the Tablet Computer

        Next: Enter the latest addition to the touchscreen devices set to da-beau in 2010: MeeGo. In a joint effort between the Intel and Nokia companies. MeeGo, a Linux based operating system, is going to be targeted at both ARM and x86 based devices (despite the former of the two not being made by Intel). While MeeGo is still in the very preliminary stages of development, other Linux-based touchscreen-orientated operating systems, such as Android and Maemo, have shown us that the Linux platform is more than capable of functioning on such devices in an elegant manner. With backing from such large companies MeeGo is going to be hard-pressed to not get at least some publicity.

      • HALCON Embedded Runs on the Nokia N900

        The standard machine vision software HALCON Embedded runs on the mobile phone Nokia N900 (Linux-based operating system Maemo). Test runs by the manufacturer of HALCON, MVTec Software GmbH (Munich, Germany), have shown an outstanding performance.

      • MSI Wind U160 gets the Moblin Linux treatment

        Sure, the folks at Moblin recently announced that they were merging with the Maemo project to develop a new OS called MeeGo. But that hasn’t stopped PC makers from installing the latest version of the Moblin netbook operating system on their latest models and showing them off at trade shows like Mobile World Congress and CES.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Open Source Choices

    Open source was Best Supporting Actor in the 2010 Intelligent Enterprise Editors’ Choice Awards. It plays an important part — in some cases, a star turn — for four of The Dozen top-category winners and for eleven of the thirty-six Ones to Watch. Noting that the awards reflect both current impact and our expectations — all forty-eight awardees, really, are “ones to watch” — clearly, in our estimation, open source has reached a new level of enterprise importance and promise.

    [...]

    There’s really nothing new in my points, just a reaffirmation and extension of common knowledge regarding the value open source. Intelligent Enterprise clearly sees open source as delivering ever increasing value for enterprise information management and applications. 2011 should be no exception.

  • Open source: dangerous to computing education?

    First, let’s talk about breadth of opportunity. Mark seems to assume that every student developer has the opportunity to engage in commercial development. This is demonstrably untrue. It may be true that an elite school like Georgia Tech provides these kinds of opportunities to most of their conputing students — but what about everywhere else? For that matter, what about the kids at Georgia Tech who, for whatever reason, don’t make the cut? Unless you can guarantee 100% co-op or internship placement for every computing student on Earth (and let’s be honest, we’ll never get even close to that number), there will always be aspirant student developers who have no chance at all to see a commercial codebase, or to engage in Legitimate Peripheral Participation.

  • I’ve got a feeling : is Open Source at an inflexion point ?

    Open source = competitive solutions

    More and more, open source software is used/bought, not because it is open source/free (speech/beer) but because it is a good software (intrinsic value). The fact that this software/solution is open source is not the determining factor that make customers buy it. On a head to head competition with closed source alternative, a bunch of open source players emerges (Firefox, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, etc.) and are in a position to become market-leaders.

  • Cubeia unveils open-source game server

    Technology solutions provider for the igaming industry Cubeia, has announced the release of Firebase Community Edition, a scalable, enterprise server for multiplayer games.

  • HighTower Launches HOST – Industry’s First Open Source Portal

  • Healthcare

    • Project GNUmed Live started

      It all originated from the need to host GNUmed Live CDs, VMware images and so on. Nothing comes for free and there was no way we could host these images on the GNUmed servers.

    • Five sites for open source healthcare

      If you’re browsing the web looking for sites about open source healthcare, here are five I found interesting. There are a ton of sites out there, and I tried to stay away from those that talked strictly about software–instead focusing on those that tackled the issues in open source ways beyond technology.

  • Mobile

    • Smartphone Phenomenon Down to Open Source Coding

      Of course, though the fuel behind the fire, experts are also warning that there are obvious pitfalls to developers, in particular the possibility of decreasing standard as open source coding continues to become available across platforms.

    • Symbian S^3 released: The open source mobile OS with fliptastic finger tricks

      Symbian’s recent mobile operating system dubbed S^3, will go down in history as the companies first entirely open source release to engage more people in creating an application environment free of restrictions.

    • RIM switching to open source WebKit

      At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Research In Motion announced an overhaul of its Blackberry phone web browser. Like the iPhone and Android systems, the new browser is WebKit based and is expected to be available on Blackberry devices later this year. in interviews Mike Lazardis, co-CEO of RIM said “You’ll see how quickly it downloads, how quickly it renders and how smooth it scrolls and zooms in”.

    • Faster, better browser for BlackBerry

      The use of open source WebKit browser engine by RIM would give the Canadian company parity with such other players in the market as Apple and Google.

  • Web Browsers

  • Fog Computing

    • A Guide to Amazon Web Services for Corporate IT Managers

      Finally, they are becoming the industry standard and their interfaces are or will be incorporated into a variety of third party providers. One example is Linux distro vendor Ubuntu. They have an Enterprise Cloud offering that makes use of the same AWS programming interfaces, making it easier for developers to port their cloud applications to a private server running Ubuntu inside your corporate data center. Another is coming from Racemi, which plans on having tools that can import VMware virtual machines into and out of AWS later this year.

    • Legal experts split over cloud effect on open source

      At the Cloud Law Summit in London on Wednesday last week, Andrew Charlesworth, director of the University of Bristol centre for IT and law, said the reasons some businesses choose open-source software — lower cost and lack of vendor lock-in — could be eroded by cloud services.

    • Is open source still a recruitment tool?

      As part of its effort to find the best employees it can, Twitter has launched a directory to the open source projects it supports, with cute little icons representing the employees working on each one.

    • Twitter Loves Open Source And Launches A Directory To Prove It

      In recent months, there seems to be a mad rush of companies trying to one-up each other with how open-source they are. Twitter is the latest, as they have launched a directory of all the open source projects they’re currently working on and/or contributing to.The list is fairly impressive. It includes open source projects in Ruby, Scala, Java, C/C++, and other various tools.

  • Sun/Oracle

    • Linux MySQL distros meeting in Brussels

      When I saw Shlomi’s post on why not to use apt-get or yum for MySQL, I thought immediately that his conclusions are quite reasonable. What you get from the Linux distributions is not the same thing that you find in the official MySQL downloads page. Now, whether you value more the completeness of the server or the ease of administration through the distribution installation tools, it’s up to you and your business goals. We at the MySQL team have organized a meeting with the Linux distributions with the intent of finding out which differences and problems we may have with each other, and to solve them by improving communication. What follows is a summary of what happened in Brussels during the meeting.

    • What happens to Sun’s open-source software now?

      The deal is done. Oracle now owns Sun. Oracle’s main message to Sun’s customers seems to be “Don’t worry, be happy.” That’s not easy when Oracle is not explaining in any detail what it will be doing with open-source software offerings like MySQL, OpenOffice and OpenSolaris.

    • MilaX 0.5: OpenSolaris as Live-CD

      MilaX, a Live distribution of OpenSolaris, is available in version 0.5 with new software.

  • Business

    • Talend Announces Record 2009 and Continues Growth in the New Year

      Talend, the recognized market leader in open source data integration software, today announced that 2009 was a record year for the company. For the tenth consecutive quarter, Talend achieved record performance, reflecting the company’s ability to deliver cost-optimized, high-performance data management solutions to global companies of all sizes.

    • Amplifying creativity and business performance with open source

      The world of open source software—cited by Thomas Friedman as the most disruptive of the 10 forces making the world flat today—turns this notion of property on its head. The ownership society seems to be doing nothing to help—it’s sucking value out of our system by the trillions, and it acts as though its ownership is an entitlement rather than a responsibility for action.

    • Seeding the Community

      For an open source company, nurturing a community around the software is as important as picking the right licence. Although developer communities tend to be more self-starting with a reasonably open development process, user communities, which are a source of valuable feedback, need more encouragement. The H went to the first meeting of the UK BIRT User Group (BUG) to see how one company was helping to create a user community.

  • Funding

    • OpenERP raises 3 million euros

      The business suite application vendor OpenERP announces today that it raised 3 million euros. The investors are Sofinnova Partners, represented by Olivier Sichel, and the Iliad’s managers, Xavier Niel and Olivier Rosenfeld. The funds raised will allow OpenERP to achieve its ambition to be one of the leading application business suite vendors worldwide.

  • BSD/UNIX

    • Video: Andrew Tanenbaum on Bugs and Minix’ Reincarnation Server

      Linux Pro Magazine met the author of numerous standard works in informatics and the most famous Linux critic at the Fosdem in Brussels.

    • OpenSource Operating Systems

      For most of us, thinking of the University of California Berkley doesn’t bring about images of nerdy software engineers, but instead makes us think more of LSD, hippies, the children’s revolt, and Vietnam… Despite all of that, they are a prominent uni, and they did create Berkley Unix. While BSDs are usually source compatible with AIX, HPUX, and Linux there are also two API layers available, Linux and WINE. Currently, there are four main flavors: OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Darwin. OpenBSD is focused on security, FreeBSD is focused on being general purpose, and NetBSD is focused on running everywhere (really… everywhere like toasters, palmtop computers, servers, mainframes… you name it, NetBSD runs on it). The Berkley Software Distribution has long been considered one of the most stable, secure, and efficient platforms available.

    • An Embedded Web Server on the Head of a Pin

      The Unison Operating System offers an ultra tiny embedded POSIX environment for 32 bit microcontroller (MCU) based development that is also Linux compatible.

    • Open Source embedded operating system Contiki updated to 2.4

      The BSD licensed operating system is designed to be small, highly portable and work in networked, but memory constrained systems, such as sensor network nodes.

  • Releases

    • Gnumeric 1.10 released

      Following nearly two years of development, the Gnumeric developers have announced the release of version 1.10.0 of their GNOME Office spreadsheet application. The first stable release in the 1.10.x series includes several changes, updates and improvements.

  • Government

    • What if politicians innovated the open source way?

      I read an interesting post last week by Morton Hansen (author of Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results) entitled Obama’s Five Collaboration Mistakes. In the comments below the post, some folks interpreted his words as an attack on the Obama administration. Me? I’d probably interpret Hansen’s words more broadly. Perhaps something like:

      Politicians are pretty darned bad at collaborating a lot of the time.

    • The standard is open, almost

      india’s draft policy on the software platform for e-governance has made a concession for proprietary software businesses like Microsoft. Proponents of open-source software called it a major departure from the Union government’s earlier stand, saying allowing proprietary software in the standards will limit people who can e-access the government. At the heart of this controversy is a change in the ‘Recommended Policy on Open Standards for e-governance’.

  • Luminaries

    • Meet free software guru Richard Stallman at Pitt

      Copyrights used to expire after a few years; now some corporations want them to last forever to protect their revenue streams on copyrighted works. Stallman continues to influence this conversation with an eye toward protecting computer users’ freedom and making software more conducive to a genuine education.

      “The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments for copyright violations and to increase their copyright powers while suppressing public access to technology,” says Stallman. “If we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright– to promote progress for the benefit of the public — then we must make changes in the other direction.”

    • See ‘Revolution OS’ at the Darress Theatre in Boonton

      The New Jersey Linux User’s group will present a film titled “Revolution OS” at the Darress Theatre in Boonton on Wednesday, March 31. This is a documentary detailing the roots of the Free Software and Open Source movements that resulted in Linux, as well as many other free software projects.

  • Openness

    • Google gifts Wiki millions

      Google is giving the Wikimedia Foundation a $2m donation, meaning the online fact dump can continue to serve up instant research to hard-pressed college students and broadcast researchers.

  • Programming

    • Gitorious or GitHub?

      Gitorious

      Pros:
      - Has the latest commits right up front, providing a good overview of what’s been happening and what’s available.
      - The wiki-type front pages are a bit easier to navigate. The whole site feels less cluttered than GitHub.
      - Much easier to see up front who’s part of a project and who’s cloned it.

      Cons:
      - Gitorious takes longer when searching for stuff; it’s also a little slower just to click through trees and links, like the Neuvoo project.
      - Business model? What business model? How are they gonna stay open on down the road?
      - Doesn’t seem to offer private repos, should I need one in the future.

    • Subversion 1.7 Planned for Summer 2010 Release
    • Let there be light

      So, a few days back, I started with an idea of a periodic summary of what is going on around the Vala programming language, mainly for those subscribed to the mailing list who are not that much interested in bugzilla.

Leftovers

  • Online store selling AMD’s 12-core server chip before launch

    Server distributor Oakville Mehlville Computers is offering the 12-core Opteron processor code-named Magny-Cours on its eBay auction site.

  • Lists

  • Security

    • France: Report Says Army Exposed Troops to Radiation

      The French military deliberately exposed enlisted men to nuclear radiation in the Sahara Desert in 1961 in order to study resulting physical and psychological effects, according to a classified 1998 report published Tuesday by a French daily, Le Parisien.

    • Johann Hari: Obama’s secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all

      He was elected in part to drag us out of this trap. Instead, he’s dragging us further in

    • TSA Logo Contest Finalists

      Last month I announced a contest to redesign the TSA logo. Here are the finalists. Clicking on them will bring up a larger, and easier to read, version.

    • Minister deploys ‘dodgy’ DNA case study

      Crime and policing minister David Hanson put forward five case studies to a select committee, but due to an “administrative error” one was a copy of one of the other cases with the name altered.

    • Met Police sorry after disrupting Hackney funeral

      The Metropolitan Police and Hackney Council have apologised after 83 people were searched in a churchyard while a funeral was being held.

      They were taken to a marquee put up in St John’s Churchyard, in Hackney, after being arrested elsewhere as part of an operation targeting youth knife crime.

    • Guaranteeing freedoms and liberties for people you don’t like is essential if you want them yourself

      I learned in my time at the Bar that it is precisely when the odds are stacked against a defendant that he most needs the benefit of a fair justice system – that it is when the evidence is apparently strongest that the rule of law is most important. Megarry J said in John v Rees [1970] that the path of the law is strewn with examples of open and shut cases whcih, somehow, were not; of unnswerable charges which, in the event, were completely answered; of inexplicable conduct which was fully explained… Coughlin is not interested in those notions – of testing evidence by due process, of a fair trial acting as a buffer between the wrath of the people and the individual.

    • Women’s Institute members threatened with on-the-spot fines for handing out charity flyers

      A group of Women’s Institute members have been threatened with £80 fines for handing out flyers for a charity art exhibition.

      Grandmother Liz Day, 68, was confronted by a council litter warden who warned her and three other WI members it was illegal to hand out the charity adverts.

      The women were told they narrowly escaped an on-the-spot fixed penalty notice because the East Hertfordshire Council warden was in a ‘good mood’.

  • Environment

    • GOP lawmaker accused of plagiarizing Washington Times’ anti-climate change rant

      Rep. Matt Wingard, who has a degree in broadcast journalism, admitted on Monday that he lifted his speech from an editorial entitled “Osama and Obama on global warming,” which sought to link Osama bin Laden’s recent declaration on global warming to the US president’s policies.

    • U.S. Supports New Nuclear Reactors in Georgia

      President Obama, speaking to an enthusiastic audience of union officials in Lanham, Md., on Tuesday, underscored his embrace of nuclear power as a clean energy source, announcing that the Energy Department had approved financial help for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia.

    • Push to ban trade in endangered bluefin tuna

      It was one of the most expensive fish ever sold. A few weeks ago, a giant bluefin tuna achieved a price of 16.3m yen – about £111,000 – at auction in Tokyo. The rich, buttery taste of the tuna’s flesh made the 513lb fish irresistible for one group of restaurateurs. The bluefin’s fillets ended up on hundreds of sushi platters across Tokyo within hours of the sale.

  • Finance

    • EU toughens stance on Greek bailout

      Greece’s embattled government will come under added pressure tomorrow to enforce even tougher austerity measures to combat the country’s debt at a meeting of EU finance ministers expected to focus solely on the crisis.

    • Goldman Sachs’ Greek tragedy

      Has the severely PR-challenged Goldman now aided one global crisis too many?

    • Brown University’s Simmons says she’ll leave Goldman Sachs board

      Simmons, 64, who has been a director since 2000, will not stand for reelection at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this spring, according to a statement from the New York-based investment firm.

    • Outrageous But Legal: EU Knew Goldman Sachs Helped Greece Use Derivatives to Conceal Deficits
    • Greece’s Goldman Sachs Swaps Spawn EU Dispute on Disclosure

      A dispute is unfolding about how long European Union officials have known that Greece used derivatives to conceal its growing budget deficit.

    • Goldman Sachs Takes the Rap Again, This Time for Greece

      Goldman wasn’t the only bank named, although it was clearly the villain of the piece. JPMorgan Chase had a supporting role for a round of stealth borrowing it was said to have arranged for Italy (there seems to be an inverse relationship among European nations between fiscal rectitude and olive oil production).

    • The Hoi Polloi vs. Goldman Sachs

      Greece is turning into a battle royal between the global financial elites and the average worker in the industrial West. This started out as a more limited struggle, pitting the finance ministers and central banks of the European Union against the Greek unions, but the fight has unexpectedly broadened with news of the surreptitious involvement of Goldman Sachs in helping Greece avoid borrowing constraints.

      The picture painted in the Western financial press makes the unions the villain in this play. The unions are described as greedy, lazy, too quick to strike, and insensitive to the burdens they were imposing on the Greek economy. To cope with union threats and extortion, various Greek governments had no choice but to borrow excessively, and well beyond the European Union target range that allowed domestic budget deficits to be no higher than 3% of GDP. As of last year, Greece’s budget deficit was 12.7% of GDP.

      [...]

      The answer to that is a corrupt, broken, secretive, and exploitative international financial system – one that grants enormous power and wealth to a handful of private sector firms. This is the reality the citizens of Greece – not just the unions – are now facing. It is a reality that justifiably will create disgust and anger among the people of Greece, who may well reject the shock therapy being offered by the EU finance officials, thereby calling their bluff. If so, it will be the second rebuff of the international financial elites, following the rejection of austerity measures by Iceland to repay its debt.

      EU officials are still talking and acting as if they have matters under control, and their pronouncements carry the weight of law. They may be about to find out otherwise, and if so, the global financial system and global markets are in for an economic version of shock and awe.

    • Elders of Wall St. Favor More Regulation

      While the younger generation, very visibly led by Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, lobbies Congress against such regulation, their spiritual elders support the reform proposed by Paul A. Volcker and, surprisingly, even more restrictions. “I am a believer that the system has gone badly awry and needs massive reform,” said Mr. Bogle, the 80-year-old founder and for many years chief executive of the Vanguard Group, the huge mutual fund company.

    • Making a Living in MakerCulture

      If you weren’t making things 100 years ago, you’d be dead. Your home, your food, your clothes and even your toys were all made by you or someone you knew. Somewhere along the way, humans seem to have forgotten that we were makers, and instead became consumers.

      Now, when some people build, sew and bake they are making a conscious choice to return to our maker roots. This movement is MakerCulture. Today, makers challenge the mainstream and make instead of buy.

    • Congress’ Phony Price Tags

      With the federal government, massive cost overruns are the rule, not the exception. The $700 billion cost of the war in Iraq dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion that Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, predicted at the outset. In 1967 long-run forecasts estimated that Medicare would cost about $12 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost more than $98 billion that year. Today it costs $500 billion.

    • Gord Hill: Why protest Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics?

      Due to massive construction projects associated with the Olympics, from venues to infrastructure, there is both widespread environmental destruction, as well as huge public debts. As part of security operations, police, military, and intelligence agencies receive millions of dollars for new personnel, equipment, weapons, et cetera—strengthening the creeping police states we see around the world (and south of the border) and further eroding our alleged “freedoms” and civil liberties.

    • Vancouver’s poor protest against Olympic largesse

      PROTEST ORGANISER: You know, you probably heard these base rumours that they spent $6, $7 billion on the Olympics, the OWElympics, O.W.E lympics. We are the Poverty Olympics – our budget wasn’t quite that – they’re probably looking at $6 billion, we’re $6. Look what we’re doing; what we’re doing on six bucks that’s so great.

      LISA MILLAR: A loose coalition of anti-Olympic, anti-global, anti-poverty protesters are threatening to derail the Games.

      Today was the first taste of what they say will be weeks of noisy rallies, street marches and attempts to block spectators and competitors.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Obama wants a social notworking guru

      The lucky hire, who will have to run the White House’s Twitter, Facebook and Myspace accounts, should have, “Excellent writing and editing skills with strong attention to detail; your writing is strong, sharp, and personable,” which makes us wonder what blogs, tweets and Facebook pages he has been looking at as comparisons.

  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Google and Yahoo! join Oz protests

      Google and Yahoo! have joined a pressure group which seeks to stop Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s doomed attempt to filter Aussie web traffic.

      [...]

      It is also concerned that Conroy’s mandatory filer will include content that is educational or social. Trials last year did wrongly blacklist websites promoting a Queensland dentist, a photographer and a travel agent.

      Finally, the group warned that sites like YouTube, which is bound to have some pages on the filter blacklist, would effectively overload the filter and create bottlenecks.

    • Google and Yahoo raise doubts over planned net filters
    • Facebook hit with class action over privacy changes

      A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook over changes that the social networking site made to its privacy settings last November and December.

    • Any use of this article without the NFL’s express written consent is prohibited

      With the Super Bowl just concluded and baseball’s spring training only weeks away, a question occurred to us: whatever happened to the push for copyright holders to tone down their copyright notices?

  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Net Neutrality: A simple guide

      Google’s recently announced plan to set up trial fiber optic networks in the US with ultra-high speed Internet connections puts the long running national debate over Net Neutrality back into high gear.

      A hot topic of discussion and debate in government and telecom circles since at least 2003, Net Neutrality, actually involves a broad array of topics, technologies and players

    • Net Throttling Hasn’t Stopped

      Canadian Internet service providers fall short on net neutrality rules, testing CRTC’s patience.

    • Ridiculous Arguments: Net Neutrality Would Mean No iPhones

      I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m very much against enforcing net neutrality through legislation (too many unintended consequences) but I’m stunned at the ridiculous and totally bogus reasons given by those fighting against those regulations in support of their claims. The latest on this front is Stephen Titch, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (a group whose work I usually think is quite good), coming out with a policy brief making the ludicrous argument that network neutrality would mean no more iPhones.

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • Redbox Caves To Warner Bros., Will Delay New Movie Releases From Kiosks

      The whole thing makes no sense at all. Warner Bros. mistakenly thinks that if people can’t rent a particular DVD in the first four weeks of release, they’re more likely to shell out money to actually buy the DVD. This is Warner Bros. pretending that it can influence customer behavior by denying them what they want.

    • Viacom CEO: We Need To Pay Less For Music In Videogames

      Lower licensing fees and more selective video game companies could be bad news for some music companies. Video games have provided a boost to licensing revenues and overall awareness for many artists. But sales are down sharply. An analyst with Wedbush Securities estimated, that two-thirds of December’s 12% year-over-year decline in video game sales came from the music category.

    • Public Knowledge Proposes New Copyright Reform Act

      The general topics for copyright change are to:

      1) strengthen fair use, including reforming outrageously high statutory damages, which deter innovation and creativity; 2) reform the DMCA to permit circumvention of digital locks for lawful purposes; 3) update the limitations and exceptions to copyright protection to better conform with how digital technologies work; 4) provide recourse for people and companies who are recklessly accused of copyright infringement and who are recklessly sent improper DMCA take-down notices; and 5) streamline arcane music licensing laws to encourage new and better business models for selling music.

    • New Anti-Piracy Task Force Set To Pressure File-Sharers

      In order to step up the pressure on illicit file-sharers and others that violate intellectual property laws, Swedish police and prosecutors are heading up a new specialist team of investigators to deal with infringements. Team members will be designated their own areas but will also be able to operate nationally.

    • Project Postcard: design chosen!
    • US citizens: Let the USTR know today that you oppose draconian copyright

      There’s only a few hours left to submit your comments to the US Trade Representative opposing export of draconian copyright restrictions to other countries.

    • My Comments To The USTR On Special 301 Report On Foreign Copyright Issues

      A lot of people have been incorrectly claiming that these comments are about ACTA, but they’re not. The Special 301 report basically just tries to determine which countries the US should put more pressure on to “get with the program,” diplomatically speaking, when it comes to copyright issues. In the past, it’s been used to bully countries like Canada and Israel — both of which have strong copyright that is very much in compliance with international obligations.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Christian Einfeldt’s DTP presentation in Berlin 2004 05 (2004)


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/02/17/simplymepis-8-5-calculate/feed/ 2 Links 10/2/2010: KDE SC 4.4.0 and OpenOffice.org 3.2.0 Released http://techrights.org/2010/02/09/openoffice-org-3-2-0-released/ http://techrights.org/2010/02/09/openoffice-org-3-2-0-released/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:58:05 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=26650

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • One Dad’s Take: Why Windows Could be Worse Than Teen Dating

    Though most of the machines at home are currently Linux driven, there are a couple of Windows machines in the house that are used by my children for Software they Cannot Live Without. My teenager likes games, and my tweenager is quasi-addicted to iTunes.

    Being a tolerant Dad you have to know when to pick your battles. This may be a shock to some Linux users out there, but compared to boys, piercings, and parties, letting them run Windows seemed to rank very low on the Dad scale of things that can possibly go wrong. Did I mention boys?

    [...]

    Instead, I launched my KNOPPIX liveCD and used this great Linux utility distribution to hunt down and kill the errant files that I found online in this list. There were also registry entries to delete, and KNOPPIX has an on-board registry editor (WINE-enabled) that lets you get in and fix things, too. For me, using Linux as a solution tool made absolutely sure that things were done right.

  • A sensation of wonder about technological developments

    So, after all this reading, one thing becomes clear: knowing where our computers are connecting to can become the difference to detect infections. Later developments seem to favor built in messaging clients with login data. This means that those bots are connecting as we connect the computer, even when not being part of any attack, only waiting forever, making it easy to spot this with any port scanner.

  • Linux Enthusiasts Raise Over $33,000 to Help Save

    The LCA2010 conference is over, but the generosity of its delegates will leave a lasting impression on the Life Flight Trust.

    During the conference closing dinner at the Wellington Town Hall, attendees bid to win a unique opportunity to join an action-packed Westpac Rescue Helicopter winch training mission. All bids were donations to Life Flight.

    Delegates could donate online with their laptops and results were displayed in real-time on an open source application created by Andrew Caudwell of Catalyst IT.

    At the end of the evening a $12,750 donation from Linux Australia brought the total funds raised to more than $33,000.

  • Linux Conf raises $33,000 for charity
  • The Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center is Established

    It was just a short time ago that Scot Finnie announced a long-time Linux Advocate had fallen terribly Ill. His name is Bruno Knaapen and he is the author and maintainer of Brunolinux.com. We wrote about Bruno at Blog of helios and told you that we planned to dedicate a technology learning center to him. I began speaking with different people about various possibilities and locations for the center. It became obvious after a short time that we were not going to be able to find a suitable place any time soon.

  • OU announces Linux course

    The Open University has announced ‘Linux – an introduction’ a ten week course on the open source operating system aimed at absolute beginners.

    Starting in May, registration for the first ten week course closes on the 24th of April. The course will cost £185 for students in the UK. The OU gives a second start date of October 2010, although registration for that date is not yet open, and in future hopes to run the course twice a year.

  • mimio for the Masses: Studio 6 Software Available for Mac and Linux Communities

    mimio, a provider of interactive teaching technologies for educators, is now extending its mimio Studio 6 software offering to Mac and Linux users in multiple languages. Available for download on mimio.com, Studio 6 software allows teachers using Mac, Linux and Windows operating systems to simply create interactive lesson content in multiple languages and provide access to features sure to raise the level of classroom participation.

  • Once scorned, twice as nasty

    I speak of course, of the troll wars pertaining to Linux vs Windows vs Mac. Now, unfortunately, Macs tend to get away pretty well in these arguments, because regardless of how much open source software they steal and how much they try to push forward the boundaries of Vendor Lock-In, they are still the under dog in comparison to Microsoft, so MOST people, tend to leave them alone. The troll wars that I am particularly interested in, are those that follow the blog posts of a certain Steven J Vaughan-Nichols (Or SJVN to most of us). You see this is a very seasoned journalist, who has got a LOT of experience in the world of I.T. and he has a tendency to make rather straight forward blog posts. Only this morning I read one on Windows 7 and how good it was, yet immediately after, I read another which claimed Ubuntu 9.10 was better and gave the reasons why he thought so, the post about Windows being good, had barely a bad word said in the comments, no Linux fans jumping in there saying how much Windows sucks or that it’s a crap OS, yet the other post, whoohoohoohoo out come the zealots, and then the defenders of the faith.

  • From Windows to Linux: a sound decision

    When Beasley first looked at Linux, it was Mandrake (now Mandriva) with KDE 2.0 that he picked up along with a PC magazine. “My initial impression was that I could survive in that environment,” he said.

    But it took seven years before Beasley decided to make the move. His Windows set-up caused him constant headaches, with the crashes of both applications and operating system, and given the level of use he was putting his machines to, he had to reinstall at least twice a year. The software also imposed severe limitations on creativity. All this time, he kept track of developments in audio software for Linux through the website of Dave Phillips, whom he describes as “one of the great movers and shakers in Linux audio.”

  • Desktop

    • ABC TV now allows Linux users to watch streaming media!

      Linux users for a long time have been kept out of ABC Television’s streaming media. Today I checked, and this artificial limitation is no more! Thank you ABC for listening to your viewers; Netflix are you paying attention?

    • The Linux Desktop Experience For 2010

      But personally, I think Xubuntu is a really great desktop experience because of it’s key applications and the fact that it’s really customizable and easy to do just that.

      It’s a great choice as well for people to experience for the first time the use of the XFCE environment as a desktop experience that you can build confidence in and get the kind of desktop you really want.

      And it’s a desktop that will appeal right up until the next release which I may add comes regularly so make sure you watch out for them.

      The XFCE desktop is a environment that works well for most hardware as well which makes it great for old computers and can really give your new computers a real edge in terms of being super quick in everything you do with your desktop.

    • Linux Advocacy: The Right Way

      I mentioned that it was not Windows, but something else – Ubuntu. Alright, I lied before then he asked my favorite question:

      “Oh, never heard of that before. How much did that cost?”

      I smiled.

      “It’s free.”

      He then asked:

      “Free? Really? What can it do?”

      “Oh, you know everything you expect a computer to do. Type a paper, surf the internet, solve math equations, play games…”

      He then asked where he could get it from, I gave him the web address and told him if he had any questions about it he could feel free to ask me next week at class.

    • When Linux Nerds Choose Mates from the Windows Herd.

      You take a deep breath and reach for your laptop. In the case, you have a live cd and you tell her that you want to show her what Linux is. You go on to explain that Linux is free and that she can use it without any real worry about viruses.

  • Dell

    • Dell Ubuntu Order Experience

      I believe Jolicloud will make it big. It has all the right ingredients for commercial success. One thing is sure, though. Year 2010 is going to be an exciting year of the netbook wars, and now there’s a new kid on the block. And it has big teeth and a knuckleduster. Watch out.

    • 168-hour days at Dell

      So, I went looking on the Dell support website, and to my amazement, I found the machine is still under warranty and will be until fall 2011. I had forgotten I’d bought a 3-year care package with Next Day Onsite Service. Sa-weet!

    • Memo to Dell: Sort Out Your Ubuntu Strategy

      Small system builders like System76 and ZaReason earn considerable praise for their Ubuntu efforts. Dell would earn similar praise if the company managed to keep Ubuntu available on desktops during product transitions. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

  • Server

    • Inside CloudLinux’s New Linux-Based Cloud OS

      For the past 13-years, Igor Seletskiy has developed a series of innovative new products for the hosting industry, including the control panel H-Sphere, container-based virtualization product FreeVPS, single server control panel CP+, Web-based file manager WebShell, and website building tool SiteStudio.

  • Kernel Space

    • Ksplice debuts zero downtime service for Linux

      Ksplice Inc. today officially launched its no-reboot patching service for Linux servers.

    • FOSDEM 2010: Andrew Tanenbaum Sets Reliability Before Performance

      Computer science veteran Andrew Tanenbaum presented the third version of his Minix operating system at the FOSDEM 2010 conference on February 6-7 in Brussels, Belgium.

    • Graphics Stack

      • Irrlicht 1.7 Released With Many New Features

        Version 1.7 of the Irrlicht Engine has been released. For those unfamiliar with Irrlicht, it’s an open-source, real-time 3D engine that has OpenGL support as well as its own software renderer. Irrlicht is used within games, technology demos, and other projects — even areas like using it as a 3D renderer in CAD applications. Irrlicht 1.7 is a particularly large release that is coming less than six months after the 1.6 release.

      • Notes From X@FOSDEM 2010: GLSL, X, Etc

        Daniel’s talk was on how users expect “every frame must be perfect” and some of the current problems include issues with RandR reconfiguration, video display programs, server implementations are awful, video tearing is common, and window reconfiguration is brutal. Daniel also briefly commented on the Wayland Display Server, but as he said, “X is the best since everything else doesn’t work or doesn’t exist.” Daniel thinks someday Wayland might function according to him.

      • X@FOSDEM 2010 Video Status Update
      • Jerome’s Radeon KMS Short-Term TODO List
      • There’s Evergreen KMS Support & More To Test

        David Airlie has re-based his drm-radeon-testing tree and there’s now a whole lot of new code and features that users can play with and test. The drm-radeon-testing tree is a branch of the Linux kernel and is code for the Radeon DRM area that will ultimately make it into the mainline tree in the Linux 2.6.34 kernel series and later.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

      • KDE.org Relaunched for Software Compilation 4.4
      • KDE SC 4.4.0 Caikaku Release Announcement

        KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 Introduces Netbook Interface, Window Tabbing and Authentication Framework

      • Software Compilation 4.4!

        As if the new look KDE website wasn’t enough Software Compilation 4.4 is out too.

        There are plenty of goodies in this new release (see the feature guide for a more complete run down). However, one of the most exciting new features is the Plasma Netbook workspace. Almost makes me want to get a netbook, but I suspect I’ll give it a run out on my old but little laptop anyway.

      • KTorrent: KDE’s BitTorrent client

        The amount of tweaking you can do in Ktorrent’s configuration is extensive. You can specify default ports, maximum download speeds, connection limits, proxies, seeding settings, specify file and disk settings, and select a default save location for your files. The interface is quick and easy to use, while users who expect a powerful file-sharing application will not be disappointed. Ktorrent is free software released under the GNU General Public License and is available for download for Linux, versions of BSD, Windows, and Mac OS X.

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Ubuntu 9.10 and GNOME 2.28: Advancing Past Meh

        Many eons ago, GNOME 1.4 still lived, and it was good. It was extremely configurable and hackable. You could use either Enlightenment or Sawfish as the window manager, and could customize it to your heart’s content. It was even friendly to homegrown GTK+ hacks. And then tragedy struck: the GNOME maintainers decided that 1.4 needed a ground-up rewrite, and thus GNOME 2.0 was born.

  • Distributions

    • Best Linux Distributions of the Decade (2000-2009)

      We’ve seen plenty of “Best of the Decade” lists around, but not one is related to Linux distribution. So it’s only fitting that we will give credit to the best Linux distros that dominated the last decade (2000-2009), or most part of it.

    • Kolibri: 1.44Mb of cute

      How KolibriOS squeezes all that into 1.44Mb is beyond mortal comprehension. And it’s not just that there’s a blinking cursor attached to a terminal somewhere, but an entire graphical system, complete with notepads, system monitors, games, utilities and more nifty doodads than you can shake a stick at. The mind boggles.

    • Msec updates getting (mostly) ready for 2010.1

      It has been quite some time since I last posted here about msec. For the past few weeks, it received some attention and now I guess many of the features I wanted to push for Mandriva 2010.1 are implemented. So I’ll describe the most interesting ones in this blog post (and save some for later :) ).

    • Debian Family

      • Debian 6.0 Squeeze behind schedule

        The Debian release team are sounding the alarm: With only one month left before the planned release freeze, the number of critical bugs in Debian 6.0 Squeeze is still far too high to freeze development and create the next stable version of Debian. As a result, it has become unlikely that Squeeze will be released this summer as scheduled.

      • Home, Events, and Ubuntu :-)
      • Ubuntu Marketing Focus

        There is a discussion going on in the Ubuntu Marketing team’s mailing list about creating Ubuntu videos in order to advertise Ubuntu to normal users. We got onto talking about existing adverts from Microsoft and Apple and I thought I’d share with the wider community my thoughts.

      • Working with Ubuntu One

        I’ve only recently come back to using the Ubuntu One service; I gave up on it the first few times I tried it. For one thing, I wasn’t happy with the way it created conflict files here and there. In part, I should have expected such behavior, but at the time, I found it too annoying and just switched back to using my good ol’ flash drive.

      • Linux Mint 8 KDE Community Edition

        The final release of Linux Mint 8 (Helena) KDE Community Edition is available for download. I wrote about the Release Candidate of this a couple of weeks ago, so I won’t add too much more now. I’m still more of a Gnome desktop user than KDE, but as KDE 4 gets better and better, and combined with the excellent integration with Linux Mint, this one is a real alternative for me.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Pandora open-source handheld is go

      For quite a while now, I’ve been following the progress of the Pandora, an open-source handheld for music, movies, and games. It’s hard to stay excited, though, when there’s the constant threat of the thing ceasing to exist.

    • Barnes & Noble rolls out second Nook update

      A new software upgrade is now available to owners of Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader. This is the second upgrade since the device launched in early December and it appears to be more substantial than the first, which arrived shortly after the product shipped and addressed a handful of small but pervasive bugs.

    • Android

      • Linus Torvalds: Google’s Nexus One First Mobile Phone I Don’t Hate

        Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being “mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights” even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems.

      • Torvalds’ Nexus One endorsement may be regretted

        I hope people will understand that following Torvalds’ blog post extolling the Google Nexus One.

        Apparently Linus has the same problem my son does (along with millions of other people). Directions are not his strong suit. So for him, Google navigation was a killer app.

        Trouble is, in many ways Linus Torvalds is not “just a programmer.” He’s a brand name. He is, however reluctantly, a celebrity. So a simple blog post can read like an endorsement.

        [...]

        Google is trying to build a competitive ecosystem in Android, and Android is not the only Linux-based system in the mobile space. It’s like saying which one of your children you like best.

      • Android versus Linux?

        Is Android at odds with Linux after the removal of Android device drivers from the Linux source code tree or is this business as usual for the Linux community and nothing new? The H looks at the issues.

        [...]

        Google’s Android development takes place behind closed doors, with the company’s own Linux source tree. This isn’t an uncommon model at Google; it runs its own source tree for its internally deployed Linux, allowing them to optimise for its specific uses for the operating system.

      • The New Era of Big Company Forks

        I was intrigued to read Greg Kroah-Hartman’s analysis of what’s gone wrong with the Android fork of Linux, and the discussion that followed on lwn.net. Like Greg, I am hopeful that the Android platform has a future that will work closely with upstream developers. I also have my own agenda: I believe Android/Linux is the closest thing we have to a viable fully FaiF phone operating system platform to take on the proprietary alternatives like the BlackBerry and the iPhone.

        I believe Greg’s comments hint at a “new era” problem that the FLOSS community hasn’t yet learned to solve. In the “old days”, we had only big proprietary companies like Apple and Microsoft that had little interest in ever touching copylefted software. They didn’t want to make improvements and share them. Back then (and today too) they prefer to consume all the permissively licensed Free Software they can, and release/maintain proprietary forks for years.

        I’m often critical of Google, but I must admit Google is (at least sometimes) not afraid of dumping code on a regular basis to the public, at least when it behooves them to do it.

      • 10 Reasons Why the Linux Community Could Influence iPhone Sales

        Over the weekend, Torvalds wrote on a personal blog that although he can’t stand mobile phones, he was pleasantly surprised by Google’s Nexus One smartphone. Torvalds called the device a “winner” and said he’s happy with its design. And since the phone runs a version of Linux, he was even more willing to pick it up.

        The importance of Torvalds’ endorsement of the Nexus One can’t be understated. In many ways, the Linux community follows his lead. When he offers an opinion, the community rallies behind him. The Nexus One will be no different. And considering that the Nexus One competes against Apple’s iPhone, Torvalds’ endorsement could have a more profound impact on iPhone sales than we might expect.

      • App Store craziness: banning the word ‘Android’

        Ok this is crazy. PC World’s JR Raphael reports that Apple has apparently forbidden a developer from using the word “Android” in his app’s description.

      • Archos

    • Sub-notebooks

      • Jolicloud – Jolly good Linux (psst, don’t tell anyone)

        Jolicloud is a really interesting distro. It works great, it provides out of the box experience for just about anyone and it’s dead simple to install and maintain. It’s a perfect solution for the common computer user. Even calling it Linux or distro might be too much, as it could scare away potential customers.

        [...]

        I believe Jolicloud will make it big. It has all the right ingredients for commercial success. One thing is sure, though. Year 2010 is going to be an exciting year of the netbook wars, and now there’s a new kid on the block. And it has big teeth and a knuckleduster. Watch out.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Top 10 areas where open source leads the way

    With job losses rising and belts being tightened across the country, now is the perfect time to look once again at the benefits of using open source software aside from the reported $60 billion a year savings on offer.

  • Open Symbian: New World Order or Big Yawn?

    Is Symbian finding its way back through FOSS? “Symbian is on its way out,” says Martin Espinoza, a blogger at Hyperlogos. “Even Nokia knows it, which is why their flagship product — the N900 — is based on Linux.” On the other hand, the news “is a fine example of a near monopoly graciously sharing with the world in order to compete fairly and with better products,” says blogger Robert Pogson.

  • Has the Irresistible Rise of OpenOffice.org Begun?

    What’s interesting about these figures – particularly the high numbers in certain countries – is that it takes OpenOffice.org into the same kind of market-share territory that Firefox occupied a few years back. Which raises two interesting questions. First, are we seeing the start of the same kind of growth trajectory, and secondly, how can the open source community help propel it along that graph more rapidly?

  • VMware Partner Exchange: Searching for Zimbra Clues

    More than 2,600 partners will converge at this week’s VMware Partner Exchange conference in Las Vegas. Big channel names such as Arrow ECS and Ingram Micro will lend their names to the event. Multiple cloud and virtualization storylines will emerge. But The VAR Guy is zeroing in on one thread: VMware’s strategy for Zimbra, the recently acquired open source email platform.

  • Clang Successfully Self-Hosts!

    Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM’s regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap.

  • My weekend at FOSDEM

    Another year over and FOSDEM has come and gone. It was an amazing weekend, full of interesting talks and meeting people. With so many attendees on this subject, there are so many opinions on subjects, technology, languages and operating systems flying about it can get heated. It’s also rather entertaining!

  • Open Office 3.2.0 Final Released

    Open Office 3.2.0 Final has been released and is currently distributed to mirror ftp servers worldwide to ensure a smooth delivery once the release notifications will be added to the project’s homepage. Five release candidates and numerous betas have made available before the developer’s of Open Office decided to release the final version of the Office suite.

    There are lots of changes and improvements over Open Office 3.1.1, the current stable build that is still offered at the Open Office website.

  • Firefox Addon: Fox Clocks

    So, today I was hanging out at IRC, which I usually do and is totally awesome, a friend of mine, duanedesign, told me about this new Firefox addon, Fox Clocks, which lets you keep track of different timezones. The best part is that you can create watchlists for your different international friends and keep a better track of their sleeping and working timings. Let me show you how it works.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU

    • Copyrights and wrongs

      One of the issues I have with the Free Software approach is that advocates have habit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater when discussing issues that they see as in any way negative to free software.

      [...]

      This is a suggestion that deserves more consideration. However, Bradley is so busy protecting the FSF from being maligned by Mark that he completely ignores the point raised by Mark – that copyright assignment policies are confusing, complex, and potentially problematic.

    • Audio and Video of Eben Moglen’s Talk on Freedom in the Cloud is Now Available

      Eben talked to the New York chapter of ISOC on February 2nd about Software Freedom, Privacy, and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing.

  • Programming

    • Chunking and Programming Languages

      Some of my biases are transparent. For example, I believe that many of the complaints of Perl’s “unreadability” are from people who’ve never bothered to learn how to read the language. You often see this from people who say “Sigils? Pfft. They’re useless—mere syntactic noise!”

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 Theora Video Codec for Silverlight

      I’m glad to announce the first release of our fully managed Theora audio / video decoder implementation for the Silverlight platform! The Highgate media suite will bring installation-free support for HTML5 streaming video to an additional ~40% of web users overnight.

Leftovers

  • Google Gmail Getting Social Features

    Google is reportedly planning to make Gmail more social by allowing users to exchange status updates with friends and share Web content links, features that moves Gmail into more direct competition with Facebook.

  • Google, don’t be evil
  • Is a code of silence evil?
  • Google warns Chinese knock-off to stop using logo

    Google Inc has sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of a Chinese search website whose logo bears a close resemblance to its own.

  • Because When MetroPCS Says ‘No Contract,’ It Actually Means ‘Well, Of Course There’s A Contract’

    The mobile phone business seems to have a serious problem with taking words that have a pretty clear meaning in English, using them in advertising and marketing promotions — but meaning something entirely different. For example, various mobile operators claimed “unlimited” broadband, but to them “unlimited” meant “really, quite limited.”

  • Hardware

  • Security

    • Airport Body Scanning Raises Radiation Exposure, Committee Says

      Air passengers should be made aware of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation, an inter-agency report said.

    • Unlawful anti-terror powers planned for use during 2012 Olympics

      Police are planning to use an anti-terror law deemed unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights across the country during the London Olympics, The Times has learnt.

      Senior officers are considering using Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at every Underground and railway station nationwide.

    • Online safety push for five-year-olds

      Children as young as five are being targeted in a new online safety campaign backed by the government.

    • Wigan Council loses the data of 200 disabled residents

      A Greater Manchester council has lost details of 200 disabled residents – a year after a previous security blunder.

    • Broken CCTV missed vandal attack

      Businessman Barry Clayton was left fuming when his shop window was smashed and he discovered a CCTV camera opposite was not working.

    • Southwark CCTV ‘old and outdated’

      The report says that the network needs massive investment, with many cameras not working, but adds there is “very limited” funding to overhaul the network.

      It adds: “It will not be affordable or cost-effective to fund the cost of repairing or replacing all CCTV equipment that is at the end of its natural life.

      “Many cameras are irreparable, unused, redundant or no longer monitored.

      “The council is in breach of legislation if cameras that are not in use or fit for purpose remain in situ.”

    • Man can’t prove ID with ID card

      Darren McTeggart tried to use the £30 card to pick up a replacement credit card from a branch of Santander – formerly Abbey – in Manchester, where the scheme was rolled out on a voluntary basis last year.

    • 500,000 EU computers can access private British data

      Privacy campaigners expressed shock last night after it emerged that large amounts of confidential personal information held about British citizens on a giant computer network spanning the European Union could be accessed by more than 500,000 terminals.

    • Google Superbowl Ad Explains The Need for Search Privacy

      The poignant story, along with Google’s suite of search stories, masterfully illustrates how some of the most intimate information in our lives–from planning a trip to political activism–are routinely and vividly expressed in our interactions with Google, and highlights the need for that information to have strong protections.

    • Massive Attack Album Cover Banned From London Underground

      BRISTOLIAN sound specialists Massive Attack were banned from advertising their new album Heligoland on the London Underground because it looked like graffiti.

    • Home Office questions

      Home Secretary Alan Johnson has rejected calls to ban a device which emits high-pitched noises designed to cause discomfort to young people.

      At question time on 8 February 2010, he described the Mosquito as “very helpful” in dispersing groups of young people.

    • Gov tempts young London onto ID database with booze, ‘games’

      Youngsters between the ages of 16 and 24 are being tempted into the scheme – and therefore onto the National Identity Register – with the prospect of being able to buy “alcohol, computer games and DVDs, going to the cinema or to a club.”

  • Environment

    • Blackburn hairdresser’s brush with the council over recycling trimmings

      A HAIRDRESSER has slammed “mafia-style” council officers who stopped him recycling the trimmings from his clients.

      Jeff Stone said that for the past 40 years he had taken home the hair from his salon in Fleming Square, Blackburn, to use on his compost heap.

    • Should Stephen Harper be Considered a Traitor?

      The definition of Treason is a very narrow one. It is legal for the Prime Minister to cause tremendous damage to the country according to the criminal code.

      Is this right?

      I personally do not believe so. Consider the supposed Climate Change debate. A close investigation will reveal that it is not a debate. Instead it is an attempt by Fossil Fuel companies to sue confusion in the electorate, because if actions are taken to combat Climate Change, their profits will suffer. Any Prime Minister who damages the country, by working with the Fossil Fuel corporations against the citizens of the country, is guilty of Treason in my opinion.

    • If you’re going to do good science, release the computer code too

      One of the spinoffs from the emails and documents that were leaked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia is the light that was shone on the role of program code in climate research. There is a particularly revealing set of “README” documents that were produced by a programmer at UEA apparently known as “Harry”. The documents indicate someone struggling with undocumented, baroque code and missing data – this, in something which forms part of one of the three major climate databases used by researchers throughout the world.

  • Finance

    • The situation in Europe is dire.

      After years of profligate spending, Greece is becoming overwhelmed. Barring some sort of large-scale bailout program, a Greek debt default at this point is highly likely. At this moment, European Central Bank liquidity efforts are probably the only thing holding back such a default. But these are a stopgap measure that can hold only until more important economies manage to find their feet. And Europe’s problems extend beyond Greece. Fundamentals are so poor across the board that any number of eurozone states quickly could follow Greece down.

    • Goldman does in AIG, you, and me

      GRETCHEN MORGENSON and LOUISE STORY write in the New York Times today a long story about how Goldman Sachs raped AIG and in the process, got us tax payers, all of the unemployed in America, and all of the savers who received low interest rates because of the need to stimulate the economy link here. It didn’t cause all of the problem, but it lit the match that started the conflagration, forced the bailout of AIG, and then made out in the wreckage.

    • What Do People Really Think Of Goldman Sachs? (VIDEO)
    • AIG-GATE: THE WORLDS GREATEST INSURANCE HEIST

      Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapmanwrites in The International Forecaster:

      Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs to hide the details of the criminal conspiracy of the AIG bailout. . . . This is a real crisis on the scale of Watergate. Corruption at its finest.

      But unlike the perpetrators of the Watergate scandal, who wound up looking at jail time, Geithner evidently has a golden parachute waiting at Goldman Sachs, not coincidentally the largest recipient of the AIG bailout. At least that is the rumor sparked by an article by Caroline Baum on Bloomberg News, titled “Goldman Parachute Awaits Geithner to Ease Fall.” Hank Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor, was CEO of Goldman Sachs before coming to the Treasury. Geithner, who has come up through the ranks of government, could be walking through the revolving door in the other direction.

    • Goldman Sachs: Contributor to Mortgage Meltdown

      This article is astounding on several levels, the central one being that Goldman Sachs possibly over stated its mortgage losses, which were insured by AIG, not only because there WERE in fact losses which should have been covered, but because the greater the losses known to the public the lower the market would go — which Goldman had bets on. In other words, by adding to the panic in the markets — by overstating its own losses– it would be able to profit.

    • Goldman Sachs vs AIG

      There is a huge front page article in the NYT discussing what we already know — that AIG extracted billions from AIG before ($5.9B) and after ($12.9B)their collapse.

      We know that Goldie got paid 100 cents on the dollar post-bailout.But what insured party gets to set their own valuation of losses? According to the article, GS nabbed closer to 300 cents on the dollar pre-collapse of losses.

    • Goldman’s payment demands on AIG probed: report

      U.S. regulators are investigating whether the mortgage insurance market was improperly distressed in 2008 because of payment demands that Goldman Sachs Group Inc and other banks made on American International Group Inc, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

    • The Question Unasked Again and Again of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein and Hank Paulson

      A stunning and disturbingly informative front page Sunday New York Times article was written by the Time’s Business Page columnist Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, “Testy Conflict With Goldman Helped Push A.I.G. to Precipice”. It quotes Bill Brown, a Duke University Law Professor and former Goldman and A.I.G. employee saying that the dispute between the two companies “was the tip of the iceberg of this whole crisis”.

    • Goldman Sachs Denies Sinister Behavior, Again

      Well. We wouldn’t say it is ridiculous, because Goldman demanding a few billion dollars at such an inopportune time clearly had an impact on AIG (as it would on anyone, few institutions, GS excepted, can take the loss of billions in stride). But does that make the collapse of AIG Goldman’s fault? And if so, does that mean if we borrow money from someone who is a known jerk, such as Citigroup*, and then don’t have the money to pay them back when they come after us with their scary phone calls, that is their fault, and not ours? Just curious, because that would be really handy.

  • Censorship/Civil Rights

    • FBI calls for two year retention for ISP data

      FBI director Robert Mueller is still keen to get US internet service providers to keep their customers’ web logs for up to two years.

      What is not clear is whether the director is talking about which websites are visited or the specific URL – which would require deep packet inspection and probably break US wiretap laws.

    • Kennard goes Mad Rhino on SWIFT

      He indicates the US would negotiate a bilateral agreement instead. Of course it seems legally impossible for member states to enter bilateral agreements and member states would be reluctant to follow that path. Hillary Clinton reportedly phoned Catherine Ashton(?!) and Parliament President Jerzy Buzek. I am sure Buzek and the other members will teach them manners.

    • Why SWIFT data proliferation is counter-terrorism gone worse

      It is not about “privacy” of citizens as the news agencies report, that is really the minor concern. A majority of European policy makers fully agrees in principles to use the data for anti-terrorism requests from law enforcement agencies (which requires careful administration and strongest safeguards).

      In a conventional narrative our personal “privacy” interests would be weighted against public “security” interests of our government which seeks to counter terrorism and other serious crimes. Some politicians and media observers think along these lines which are on a lower level. Here the general trust in financial transaction services, our European financial transaction markets are at stake.

  • Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • Appeals Court Says Internet Content Should Be Held To Standards Of Strictest Jurisdiction

      Of course, the court did say that punishment had to be limited to just looking at how many people in that smaller community accessed the content — which could limit the punishment given by the court, but it still seems problematic. Other courts, including one in California, have found differently on similar questions, so it seems likely that, at some point, this issue will finally go back to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will focus on what counts as “community standards” rather than whether or not laws against obscenity even make legal sense under the First Amendment.

    • The Pirate Bay To Be Censored in Italy, Again

      Following a lengthy legal procedure the Court of Bergamo has once again ruled that Italian ISPs have to censor their networks and prevent customer access to The Pirate Bay. Millions of Italian Internet users will be denied access to the popular torrent site in an attempt to prevent copyright infringement.

    • Authors Guild: ‘To RIAA or Not to RIAA’

      There’s equal reason to support or object to the proposed Google Books settlement.

      Creating a digital catalog of the worlds’ words might be the Holy Grail of intellectual empowerment.

      Yet building that library in the clouds would be allowed without the rights-holders’ consent — which the Justice Department and others contend is a complete and fundamental alteration of copyright law.

    • Oink.CD – Oink’s Pink Palace Part Two

      This is the second, of a long series of posts about OINK.CD, the music file sharing site run by Alan Ellis, and Alan’s acquittal on charges of Conspiracy to Defraud. My apologies for the delay – I have been trying to obtain information on the case, and while I have obtained some of what I need, I’m still working on getting more.

    • IP is not a joke

      After another comedian, the taping ended. We were informed that the crowd had to stay put because Bob Kelly had to come out and re-film a joke. It was the joke I just mentioned. They said it had to be re-taped because Comedy Central didn’t have the rights to the song “We Are The World”. (My guess is it probably wasn’t worth it to them to obtain the rights, for 1 or 2 seconds of a joke). How ridiculous is this? FOUR WORDS! We then had to hear the same joke, slightly modified, again, and pretend and cheer for it like we never heard it before. I am interested in seeing the final edited product, whenever it eventually airs.

    • Members of European Parliaments ask when they will receive the ACTA documents

      Some Member of the European Parliament have asked when they will receive the ACTA documents, mentioning the Lisbon Treaty article 218 which says that the Parliament have to be “fully informed” of the negotiations. The new trade commissioner Karel DeGucht said previously that the Lisbon Treaty do not apply to ACTA, because the confidentiality of the talks were negotiated before.

      Some Member of the European Parliament are asking the Commission and the Council when they plan to respect the Lisbon Treaty on ACTA, where the next Trade Commissioner Karel DeGucht said in a hearing that the Lisbon Treaty does not apply to the ACTA negotiations, because the confidentiality rules were negotiated before the entry into force of the Treaty.

    • Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner answers ACTA internet chapter question
    • Copyfighter Cory Doctorow.

      Thanks in no small part to Mr. Doctorow you can now get your ACTA news from a number of sources, including a weekly podcast that I help out with. To read his latest you can bookmark his blog, follow him on Twitter and keep an eye out for his posts on Boing Boing.

    • No, Copyright Has Never Been About Protecting Labor

      Ugh. So, we recently wrote about Matthew Yglesias’ quite accurate economic explanation for why the price of music was going to get pushed to zero, no matter what the industry said or what happened with copyright law.

    • Dear Helena Bonham Carter, How Do You Pay Your BT Bill Online?

      Even though you don’t know me, we do in fact share at least two things in common. Like you, I also have a double-barrelled surname, and as you live in the UK, there’s a good chance you’re also a British Telecom customer, and probably have an Internet subscription (although not necessarily with BT).

      The reason I’m writing you this open letter, is to enquire whether you pay your BT bill online, and if so then how? You see, I’ve discovered a rather annoying feature of BT: They seem to be biased against us double-barrellers.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

William Fischer, Harvard law professor and Free Culture Business Theorist 04 (2004)


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2010/02/09/openoffice-org-3-2-0-released/feed/ 0 Gates Foundation Funds Literature Supportive of Its Objectives http://techrights.org/2009/12/12/gates-funding-books/ http://techrights.org/2009/12/12/gates-funding-books/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:13:28 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=23575 Gates at Harper's Magazine

Summary: The Gates Foundation is also funding particular types of books now, not just press outlets

A READER of ours has sent us the image above, which he says is the “cover of Harper’s in [the] June 2009 issue.”

It leads nicely into today’s new observation that the Gates Foundation funds books on the feeding of poor people (with Monsanto-like monopolies; see gory details at the bottom), just like Microsoft funds books that spread lies about Linux and encourage lawsuits against this fine kernel

Gates may have moved on from computer monopolies to pharmaceutical and agricultural monopolies, but some methods apparently stayed the same.

So begins ‘Millions Fed‘, IFPRI’s collection of uplifting case studies of agricultural success, funded by the Gates Foundation. It offers an interesting science + private sector counterpoint to Ha-Joon Chang’s FAO book on role of the state (see previous blog).

Remember what Andrew Tanenbaum (creator of MINIX) said to the press a few years ago: “A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…” █

Related posts:

  1. With Microsoft Monopoly in Check, Bill Gates Proceeds to Creating More Monopolies
  2. Bill Gates Takes His GMO Patent Investments/Experiments to India
  3. How the Gates Foundation Privatises Africa
  4. Reader’s Article: The Gates Foundation and Genetically-Modified Foods
  5. Monsanto: The Microsoft of Food
  6. Seeds of Doubt in Bill Gates Investments
  7. Gates Foundation Accused of Faking/Fabricating Data to Advance Political Goals
  8. More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
  9. Video Transcript of Vandana Shiva on Insane Patents
  10. Explanation of What Bill Gates’ Patent Investments Do to Developing World
  11. Black Friday Film: What the Bill Gates-Backed Monsanto Does to Animals, Farmers, Food, and Patent Systems
  12. Gates Foundation Looking to Destroy Kenya with Intellectual Monopolies
  13. Young Napoleon Comes to Africa and Told Off
  14. Gates Foundation Denies Global Warming and Strives for Global Domination
  15. Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited
]]> http://techrights.org/2009/12/12/gates-funding-books/feed/ 0 Links 27/10/2009: Video Playback Hackfest, Mandriva Linux 2010 Comes Soon http://techrights.org/2009/10/27/video-playback-hackfest/ http://techrights.org/2009/10/27/video-playback-hackfest/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:02:03 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=20709

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux Incorporated

    I’ve known for ages that Linux had migrated from enthusiasts to big business. It wasn’t until this weekend’s Florida Linux Show, where I spoke on desktop Linux, that I realized how fully Linux has become part of the IT mainstream.

    The first thing that brought this home to me was a session on “Using Red Hat ClusterSuite and GFS (Global File System) to Provide Highly Available Virtual Machines.” I hadn’t expected a big turnout for this session. It’s a highly technical subject that only matters to big businesses with sophisticated IT departments. Besides, it was Saturday morning in Orlando, Florida! I was wrong.

  • I Can Haz Virus

    A virus run in Wine is akin to taking a ferocious tiger out of the jungle, paralyzing it, then hooking up all of its nerve endings to virtual jungle simulator. It’s not a perfect simulation, though, so the jungle maybe doesn’t look right, and plus there’s an omnipotent power that can change anything that goes on in the simulation, or even destroy it and the tiger’s consciousness with a few twitches of his fingers. Now that’s power.

  • MythTV: Turning Linux Into a Digital Video Recorder: The Server

    Digital video capture cards and USB dongles can be had for less than $50 a piece. With such cheap hardware, turning a Linux server into a personal Digital Video Recorder (DVR) becomes very tempting. Of course, you don’t just want to watch live TV but also pause it, setup automatic captures of those science programs that air at 3 am, or record the live network coverage of events you are planning to attend in person, so you can watch them at a more agreeable hour.

  • KELLNER: Linux hits user nerve

    We may well be at the start of a sea change in computing: If your OS costs more than, say, 10 percent to 15 percent of your hardware’s cost, it might be viewed as costing too much.

  • One more word about Linux and Windows ‘emulatiion’

    In Monday’s “On Computers” column, I make reference to WINE, which, technically is not a Windows “emulator.” I did so using the word “Emulatiion” up front. Here’s why: “Emulation” was the easiest word I could find to explain to fellow non-geeks what WINE actually does. No, it isn’t, strictly speaking, an “emulator.” WINE advocates say it’s much more than that, and I’m willing to believe them.

  • Crafting a custom Metallica pinball table with Linux, love

    What does it take to create a pinball machine for the biggest metal band in the world? Custom art, Linux programming, and a whole lot of love. Here is the Metallica pinball machine.

  • Zoom 1.6 Makes Linux Performance Tuning Easier Than Ever

    Zoom is an essential performance analysis tool for all Linux developers and users. Version 1.5 features several enhancements to help increase programmer productivity and optimize Linux application performance. This reduces costs by making software faster and more energy efficient. Zoom is available for $199 (USD) and offers a free 30-day evaluation period.

  • Desktop

    • Chrome OS: A World Without Installs

      In talking at the Web 2.0 Summit, Sundar Pichai, VP of product management at Google, mentioned how apps that work on the web will work in Chrome OS, adding, “As a user, you don’t install software, you don’t maintain software.”

    • Google gives hints about Chrome OS

      The vice president of product management at Google has said in an interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that the Chrome OS will be designed in light of the best features of the Chrome browser.

      “Chrome has been doing very well for us,” Sundar Pichai said, adding the browser has about 30 million users worldwide a year after a release.

    • Why I Use Linux

      So, once again, I make no apology for waving the flag for Linux. Indeed, I’d actively encourage users to give it a try. Yes, it is different from Windows, but certainly rewarding. Most distributions come as a LiveCD so you can run it without installing on your PC. As it is open source, you have nothing to lose other than a bit of your time.

    • Consider New Windows, Mac and Linux Releases an Early Gift

      For me, the end of October marks the release of Ubuntu 9.10, which calls itself “Linux for human beings.” I’ve been running the free Ubuntu Linux operating system on my main laptop since May, and I’m pretty happy with it.

    • Ubuntu Linux is Prime Time for your Business Desktop and Notebook Computing Environment

      So with the purchase of an IBM T40 (a tough notebook), increasing system administration time was not an option. This alone forced an serious consideration of Linux as an alternative operating environment. That was five years ago. Now an established Linux user, I can clearly profess the capabilities and benefits of Linux for small and large businesses, especially, when it comes to notebook deployment.

    • Why desktop market share shouldn’t be Linux’s priority

      After all, possibly the most important philosophy behind Linux today, is freedom.

  • Kernel Space

    • A Hackfest To Improve Linux Video Playback

      When it comes to video playback on Linux, the premiere choice for video acceleration is currently using VDPAU with its CPU-efficient, GPU-accelerated capabilities that even has no problems playing 1080p video files with extremely low-end hardware. However, VDPAU is not yet widespread in all Linux video drivers, and other free software developers have been working on improving other areas of the Linux video stack too. One of these developers is GNOME’s Benjamin Otte who has been working on using Cairo/Pixman for raw video in GStreamer. Additionally, he has organized a Linux video “hackfest” that will take place next month in Barcelona, Spain to further this Linux video playback work.

    • What’s missing in Btrfs

      So, after being completely betrayed[1] by Ext4 not once, but twice, I decided to evaluate my FS options for /home .

      * FAT* are not an option, neither is NTFS.
      * Ext2 is primitive and HFS/HFS+ is just not Linux.
      * JFS is nice, but (atleast parted) doesn’t support grow/shrink.
      * I’ve used XFS before, and found it to be more reliable than Ext4. However, deleting dirs with thousands of small files is too slow (a common operation when compiling)
      * ZFS would’ve been an option if my earlier experiences with ZFS-FUSE weren’t so horrid.
      * Did not even consider NILFS. It’s too new, and I don’t know much about it.

  • Applications

  • KDE

    • KDE at Ontario Linux Fest

      Yet another solution would be to always make sure there are representatives of at least one major KDE centric distro attending the same conference, and refer people to them. This one is the easiest solution, but it isn’t much in terms of solving an actual problem.

    • Good karma

      So in a slightly reckless move I decided to update the machine to the next Kubuntu: karmic koala. This meant going to KDE 4.3. To my relief the install went very well. All important settings for digikam and kmail were migrated automatically. Dolphin is really nice and more intuitive for non-professional users. The kwin effects add a nice touch of class (translucent wobbly windows). Plasmoids on the desktop (photo frames and weather forcast) were very well received.

      In short: good karma! Thank you very much, Kubuntu team.

    • NetworkManager
    • Hidden Linux : Learning to love KDE 4 (part III)

      Linux has had multiple desktops since Adam was a cowboy but under KDE 4 you can have multiple-multiple desktops. Confused? Bear with me …

    • Just another way of browsing your files

      The code that actually does something is minimal: a bit of UDS entry creation for dates and a simple SPARQL query to forward to the nepomuksearch KIO slave. Yes, it is as easy as that since we can simply set the UDS_URL property of an item to a nepomuksearch URL and KIO will take care of the rest. Smooth. Thanks a lot David Faure. Once again you paved the way.

  • Distributions

    • Reviews: GNOME SlackBuild 2.26.3 for Slackware 13.0

      GSB provides an integrated, easy-to-install, and rather complete GNOME desktop environment. In keeping with Slackware philosophy it installs just a minimal set of GNOME packages and then allows the user to add the applications he or she may need. GSB also includes packages which add improved package management and simplified localization to Slackware as well as offering some popular applications not included in the official Slackware repositories.

    • Chakra Alpha 3 – Review!

      Ive always prefered the minimalist DE. XFCE was always a favorite of mine and whilst my hardware is more than modern enough to run the latest DE, Ive always been of the opinion that no matter what your specs, you shouldn’t needlessly throw CPU cycles away on “bling features” that apart from being visually appealing serve little purpose. Having said that I cannot live in the past forever so “onwards and upwards” with KDE 4.3.1!

      [...]

      It would not be fair to be critical of Chakra on the basis of it being incomplete in terms of default packages, if this is an example of later versions I can see Chakra being VERY popular. Its fast, functional & compatible. In regards to KDE I found it smooth, fast and puts Windows 7 to shame since I was running a very GFX appealing distro on only 512mb of ram and an old rig.

    • Gentoo 10.1 LiveDVD Brings Fixes & Enhancements

      In celebration of Gentoo’s 10th birthday, the Gentoo engineering team banded together and created the Gentoo 10 LiveDVD of the latest packages for this rolling Linux distribution. Less than a month after releasing Gentoo 10.0, the Gentoo Ten team has released Gentoo 10.1.

    • Review: PC-BSD 7.1.1

      PC-BSD is a good distribution for the adventurous newbie up to the intermediate user who isn’t afraid to tinker or afraid of a little command line work to make things 100% the way they want. It’s still got some issues to iron out, but I figure that in time it’ll be one of the top desktops out there for people to use. But in the meantime I can’t really see it as a good daily driver.

    • Mandriva

      • Mandriva announces the upcoming launch of Mandriva Linux 2010

        Mandriva announces the upcoming launch of Mandriva Linux 2010, the latest version of its innovative operating system. Mandriva Linux 2010 will be available from Tuesday, 3rd November.

      • 20 Features in Mandriva 2010

        Mandriva 2010 will include OpenOffice.org 3.1 (based on the Go-OO branch) and that means more features like SVG support, 3D transitions ,VBA support, KDE 4 integration and Includes useful Extensions.

    • New Releases

      • Linux release flood

        Mandriva Linux 2010

        Mandriva is another much-anticipated Linux release and Mandriva Linux 2010 is expected to be released on November 3. One of the major features implemented in Mandriva Linux 2010 is the use of the Moblin platform for mobile devices. Built around the Atom processor used in most netbooks.
        Moblin is optimised for quick startup, shutdown and taking advantage of the smaller size of netbooks.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Open-Source ATI R600/700 3D Support In Fedora 12

        Fedora 12 provides “out of the box” support for kernel mode-setting with ATI R600/700 series graphics hardware, but it does not provide 3D acceleration by default. However, Red Hat’s X developers have made it very easy to enable this 3D support for the ATI Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series hardware by just installing a special Mesa package from yum. In this article we are taking a quick look at where the R600/700 3D support is at in Fedora 12.

      • 9 awesome features to look out for in Fedora 12

        Fedora 12 which is scheduled to debut this November has some of the best features ever. Like all it’s previous releases, Fedora has always included cutting edge technologies. In this article we will have a look at 9 awesome features that Fedora 12 has.

      • CentOS rev’s to version 5.4, tries on KVM

        CentOS 5.4 is based on RHEL 5.4, which was released in August. The key enhancement to RHEL 5.4 was the addition of full support for the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor, which has been implemented in preview form in CentOS 5.4. Other RHEL 5.4 enhancements include cluster improvements, new graphics drivers, laptop docking support, ALSA audio infrastructure, improved Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) enablement, security and tools enhancements, and a host of general Linux kernel improvements.

    • Debian Family

      • Eeebuntu eeevolves with Debian Linux

        The team behind Eeebuntu, an ASUS Eee netbook-optimised version of Ubuntu Linux, has announced that compatibility issues with Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala – has led them to abandon Ubuntu and build their work upon Debian Linux from now on.

      • What can we expect from 10.04 – Lucid Lynx?

        Boot speed has been a hot topic for a long time now and Ubuntu has come a long way in the last few releases. For Ubuntu 10.04 the target boot speed is 10 seconds! The reference platform for this target is a Dell Mini 9 netbook with a slow CPU and fast SSD that makes it an excellent “middle of the road” machine. Some people’s machines will be slower, some will be faster.

        There’s also a plan to improve the speed on the installation process. Currently when installing packages in Ubuntu the download is a separate step from the unpack/configure. Ubuntu will be able to install package faster by doing downloads and installs in parallel. While downloading the cpu and disk are mostly idle. While installing the network is idle. Doing them in parallel is a good way to utilize both systems.

      • [UPDATED] Initial thoughts on Ubuntu 9.10 beta

        One the whole there are some nice benefits to the upgrade, as long as you don’t depend on the features I mentioned above. As I finally finish this post we have a mere four days before Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” is released, now may be a great time to snag the ISO for the Release Candidate and try it out on your own system.

      • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 165

        Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #165 for the week October 18th – October 24th, 2009. In this issue we cover: Release Candidate for Ubuntu 9.10 now available, October 21st America’s Membership Board Meeting, Ubuntu IRC Council Elections, Keeping Ubuntu CD’s Available, LoCo News, Launchpad: The next six months, Meet Matthew Revell, Launchpad offline 4:00UTC – 4:30UTC October 26th, The Planet, TurnKey: 40 Ubuntu-based virtual appliances released into the cloud, and much, much more!

      • Counting the Days

        Yesterday the Ubuntu devs released Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Beta was Thursday, and after a quick check of the new LiveCD I must say the update looks pretty nice. Just booting in with the LiveCD brought a very nice new feature that I have to write about in the coming days. I saw a message that one of my partitions has a number of errors, something I suspected but hadn’t confirmed yet. You should definitely grab the ISO file and burn the disc yourself to see some of the great improvements coming down the pipeline for us.

      • Canonical limits free Ubuntu CDs

        The ShipIt scheme allows people to order a copy of Ubuntu on a CD for free through the mail. However, with Ubuntu growing in popularity Canonical has decided to make a few changes to the way the programme works.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • NAS device offers 14TB storage, Core 2 Duo

      Thecus Technology announced a Linux-based, seven-bay networked-attached storage (NAS) appliance. The N7700Pro runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo with up to 4GB of DDR2 800 memory, has dual gigabit Ethernet adapters plus a PCI Express x8 slot, and supports 14TB of storage, says the company.

    • Tilera pushes to 100 cores with mesh processor

      Upstart massively multicore chip designer Tilera has divulged the details on its upcoming third generation of Tile processors, which will sport from 16 to 100 cores on a single die.

      [...]

      There are a lot of differences between the Tile family of chips and these graphics processors, but the key one is that the Tile multicore processors run Linux directly (albeit a homegrown one) and are being designed not just for digital signal and networking processing, but to run that standard LAMP stack – Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

    • Phones

      • Nokia N900 hype refuses to die down despite global launch delay

        The hype surrounding the anticipated launch of Nokia’s flagship N900 smartphone is refusing to die down despite the Finnish mobile phone maker saying shipping of the smartphone has been delayed till November.

      • Linux in your hand; from geeks only to consumer friendly mass market

        Linux is not new to the mobile phone world, but in the past the majority of Linux-based phones were sold in China or were feature phones with “hidden” Linux builds, such as the Motorola RAZR2 V8, MotoZine ZN5, and Motorola ROKRs. Companies have taken the power of Linux and are bringing that to the mass market with these latest smartphones. These Linux-based operating systems are attractive to device makers because of the free or relatively inexpensive licensing agreements. We also see some of these high end Linux-based operating systems being quite open, primarily when looking at Google Android and Nokia Maemo 5 and 6. Palm’s WebOS is primarily a closed system at this time.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Monty, Stallman, MySQL, Oracle, and Sun: Open Letter Wars

    The moment the MySQL founders, who have been handsomely rewarded, took VC money they turned MySQL from being a hobby project/company, and into a major technology company and an asset. The change happened years ago, it’s just that they’re only starting to wise up now.

  • Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

    In order to try and bring some order to the conversation, we have brought together some of the most referenced blog posts and news stories in chronological order. We will continue to update this post until either the acquisition or the EC’s investigation closes.

  • 49 Hot New Open Source Applications

    Third, multimedia continues to be a hot topic. Songbird, cPlay, Kaltura, Elltube, and others aim to help users do more with their audio and video files.

  • Open Source Meets the Cloud

    Apart from the custom Line-of-Business (LOB) applications on LAMP, there are some really powerful frameworks built on OSS. A significant part of the web today runs on Open Source Content Management System (CMS) frameworks like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

  • Symbian kernel Open Source release and Tanenbaum

    As most people have noticed by now, The Symbian Foundation has released the source code of their microcernel under an open source license. While any open source release of formerly proprietary software is something I warmly welcome, I doubt that it will take of as an actual open source project.

    There’s a difference between releasing software under a FOSS license and running a successful FOSS project. The latter involves a sufficiently large community of developers, ways how they can contribute [...]

  • Exciting Open Source developments in Thailand

    The Blender Foundation just posted news of two e-books issued by the government of Thailand, one covering the 3d content creation suite Blender and one covering the GNU Image Manipulation Program, aka GIMP. I have a special affection for both of these programs, for several reasons.

    [...]

    GIMP proved that open source is not limited to uber-geeks and embedded systems. But the skeptics continued, revising their theory to say that “well, GIMP is just 2D, and that’s really not very hard. You’ll never see a complete open source 3D suite offering fully professional capabilities.”

  • FSF/GNU

    • GRUB 1.97 released

      GRUB, also known as the GRand Unified Bootloader, is a modular, portable bootloader that supports a number of platforms, including standard BIOS-based PCs, IEEE-1275 platforms (such as the OLPC and some PowerPC/Sparc64 hardware) and coreboot, the free (as in freedom) pre-boot initialization framework.

    • Brian Aker debates with Richard Stallman

      At foss.my 2009, Brian Aker asked Richard Stallman at his keynote, about the Oracle/Sun acquisition (with a focus on MySQL), with regards to the parallel licensing approach used by MySQL.

    • Keynote speech of Richard Stallman in FOSS.my about free software movement

      Today is the 2nd day of FOSS.my 2009, a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference organized and suported by grassroot communities in Malaysia, and the high tide being Richard Stallman’s keynote speech about free software movement of more than 2 hours, right before the delayed lunch.

  • Government

    • White House website goes open source

      Although the website looks the same, apparently the back-end is totally different and the existence of a large open source software community developing and supporting the code makes it more secure.

    • Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal

      Yesterday, the new media team at the White House announced via the Associated Press that whitehouse.gov is now running on Drupal, the open source content management system. That Drupal implementation is in turn running on a Red Hat Linux system with Apache, MySQL and the rest of the LAMP stack. Apache Solr is the new White House search engine.

    • Nation’s First Open Source Election Software Released

      A group working to produce an open and transparent voting system to replace current proprietary systems has published its first batches of code for public review.

  • Programming

    • LLVM 2.6 Released, Clang Is Now Production Ready

      Version 2.6 of LLVM, the Low-Level Virtual Machine, has been released. This modular compiler infrastructure, which can replace many parts of the GNU Compiler Collection and go far beyond the conventional roles as a code compiler such as being used within Apple’s Mac OS X OpenGL implementation for providing optimizations and is similarly going to be used within Gallium3D, has taken a major leap forward with the 2.6 release.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Peering Disputes Migrate to IPv6

      IPv6 is the next generation of the Internet Protocol, and will dramatically expand the number of addresses available for web sites, as well as millions of mobile devices with Internet access. Although the transition will address some of the network’s challenges, others will clearly persist. That includes disputes over peering, which have quickly made the jump from IPv4 to IPv6.

Leftovers

  • Lawsuit: Best Buy lies

    A class action lawsuit was filed yesterday against Best Buy alleging that its “Price Match Guarantee” is a fraud.

  • AstroTurf

  • Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

    • EFF: Chamber of Commerce Takes Aim at Yes Men

      Attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have issued a takedown notice in an attempt to silence a parody website that was posted in support of the Yes Men’s embarrassing prank poking fun at the Chamber’s stance on climate change legislation.

      In a letter sent to the Chamber’s attorneys today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) demands that the baseless claims be withdrawn immediately.

    • Xeni on Rachel Maddow Show: John McCain vs. the Internet

      Eternally excellent Rachel Maddow allowed me to join her tonight (pretty much the only reason I own a TV now is to watch her show) for a discussion about John McCain’s “Internet Freedom Act,” also known as “The Great Telecom Reacharound of 2009.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • On The Media Takes On The Music Industry

      He is, of course, defending Billboard’s obsolete “charts” which are still based mostly on CD sales and radio play, but just comes across as someone who doesn’t even realize what he’s measuring (at 43:15 on the podcast):

      “Right, okay, the one thing that does skew our ratings is that older people buy more music. They steal less music…. So like, you know, a Bruce Springsteen or a Madonna might overperform on the album sales chart relative to some more subjective measure of their popularity. But as far as like who’s stealing what… I mean, what use is that?”

      And that, right there, is why Billboard has become so obsolete. It’s lead by people who think that file sharing is “stealing” and that it’s meaningless in figuring out where the money is in music.

LPC 2009: The Battle for 2D Acceleration


Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/10/27/video-playback-hackfest/feed/ 1 Microsoft Still Says That Linux is Derived from Unix http://techrights.org/2009/08/09/microsoft-lies-about-linux/ http://techrights.org/2009/08/09/microsoft-lies-about-linux/#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:23:23 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=16356 “A couple of years ago this guy called Ken Brown wrote a book saying that Linus stole Linux from me… It later came out that Microsoft had paid him to do this…”

–Andrew S Tanenbaum, father on MINIX

Summary: Microsoft calls Linux a Unix derivative, and this is not the first time Microsoft is doing this, just like SCO

Dishonesty of this kind is nothing new at Microsoft. The same old myths that Microsoft is spreading are probably geared towards implying that Linux does something illegally.

Microsoft paid an author to write similar lies about MINIX [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], and in a conferences a few years ago Microsoft disseminated these lies, despite them being challenged. Microsoft also spread false rumours about Groklaw being a front of IBM.

“Microsoft also spread false rumours about Groklaw being a front of IBM.”Groklaw’s editor took a look an article from The Register where Microsoft’s SEC filing is quoted as follows: “The Linux operating system, which is also derived from Unix…”

“That’s not true,” says Pamela Jones, “It was what SCO claimed, but SCO has to date been unable to prove any such thing. Microsoft also calls Linux a “UNIX variant” like Apple. So why is Microsoft channeling SCO like this in its 10K? You tell me.”

A few days ago we wrote about how Microsoft uses its search engine to funnel in self-serving disinformation [1, 2, 3]. There is yet another analysis of this behaviour, which is over a year old.

The poster had searched for “why is microsoft word so expensive?” in both Google and Bing. The results were strikingly different. Google’s first two results were clearly web pages discussing that very question: one on MacRumors.com and the other on Ibibo.com. A look at Bing made me scratch my head…just as the post had intended. It’s first response was to the question, “Why is Manhattan so expensive?” If, in Bing’s algorithm, “microsoft” is the same as “manhattan” I think they need to check their programming. The second and third results were about the differences between various versions of Word.

Microsoft is very good at lying with apparent sincerity. █

“We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users.”

–Ashley Highfield, Microsoft

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/08/09/microsoft-lies-about-linux/feed/ 0 Links 17/06/2009: Microkernels Revisited, Mozilla Praises Ogg http://techrights.org/2009/06/17/microkernels-revisited/ http://techrights.org/2009/06/17/microkernels-revisited/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:23:17 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=13374

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Ubuntu, OpenX Chiefs Talk OS, Search Disruption

    To Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical — the lead commercial backer of the Ubuntu Linux distribution — squaring off against Windows is a battle worth fighting.

    “The operating system is the intersection of so many things in technology,” Shuttleworth said here at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference. “It’s where software meets technology.”

    And as Shuttleworth sees it, he and others who have built their businesses around open source — Canonical provides premium, paid services around Ubuntu in addition to supporting the OS’s development — have an distinct advantage against the Microsofts of the world.

  • Research and Markets: Fundamental TCP/IP Architecture, Design and Implementation in Linux

    This book provides thorough knowledge of Linux TCP/IP stack and kernel framework for its network stack, including complete knowledge of design and implementation. Starting with simple client-server socket programs and progressing to complex design and implementation of TCP/IP protocol in linux, this book provides different aspects of socket programming and major TCP/IP related algorithms

  • Dell netbook targets primary school market

    Unlike the still-mythical “$100 laptop” envisioned by the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child organisation, Dell’s machine starts at $706 and includes 1GB of RAM, 80GB HDD and runs on the Ubuntu operating system. It goes on sale tomorrow through Dell’s online store.

  • Canonical to Certify Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition on HP ProLiant G6

    Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux project, is expected to announce a collaboration with Hewlett-Packard to deliver an additional high-performance server configuration for Ubuntu users.

  • Kernel Space

    • Microkernels Address the OS Softspots on Your Network

      Right now Tanenbaum can point to Minix 3 — the latest version of Minix. This has a microkernel of just 5,000 lines of code running in kernel mode — less than 0.1% of the size of the Windows kernel. Device drivers run above the kernel in user mode, each one running as a separate process and restricted to accessing only its own memory. He points out that with just 5,000 lines of code there may be fewer than 100 bugs in the kernel, which could slowly be found and eliminated. In fact there could be far fewer: he says drivers typically have between 3 and 7 times as many bugs per 1,000 lines of code as the rest of the system. By removing the drivers from kernel space the most buggy kernel code is removed.

      Tanenbaum is currently embarking on a project to produce a stable and secure operating system based on a similar microkernel architecture, which he intends to design with a POSIX interface (perhaps extended with Linux system calls) so that it will run UNIX (and Linux) software “without too much effort.” (An alternative approach is to run a hypervisor in kernel mode, emulating a virtual machine running its own OS in user mode. But as operating systems are often paravirtualized to run in these virtual machines, and the hypervisor is adapted with an extensive API to provide services to the virtual machines, the distinction between a hypervisor and a microkernel becomes blurred, he says.)

    • FS-Cache & CacheFS: Caching for Network File Systems

      When *nix OS’s were developed, systems could be a bit on the slow side. Typical networks were either 10 Mb/s or, if you were lucky, 100 Mb/s. Accessing network based file systems such as NFS and AFS could be rather slow over these networks. In response to sometimes slow access, a local caching mechanism, called CacheFS, was developed to provide local caching for distributed file systems. This mechanism caches data (either complete files or parts of files) on local storage so that data can be possibly accessed from a local storage device instead of a network based file system.

  • Distributions

    • Coming home to Puppy Linux

      It’s been many months since I last used Puppy Linux. I bet more than a year has passed since I seriously ran Puppy, still one of the best Unix-like distributions/projects for older, underpowered computers.

      I decided tonight to break out the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt (233 MHz Pentium II MMX processor, 144 MB RAM), which has OpenBSD 4.2 on the 3 GB hard drive (yes, I know 4.5 is out, and yes I do have the CD set, and yes, I’ll probably reinstall) and two pup_save files in its 0.5 GB Linux partition.

    • Parted Magic 4.2 Has Clonezilla and Linux Kernel 2.6.30

      Yesterday evening, on June 16th, Patrick Verner proudly announced the immediate release of Parted Magic 4.2, a Slackware-based Linux distribution that was created to help users easily partition their hard drivers or perform recovery tasks.

  • Red Hat

    • CentOS Pulse #0902 – 16 June 2009

      Contents

      1. Foreword
      2. Announcements
      1. CentOS Pulse #0901 and centos-newsletter mailing list
      3. Featured Articles
      1. CentOS Artwork SIG
      2. Enabling multimedia on CentOS
      4. Community Threads
      1. What to do when your system is 0wned ?
      2. How can I view .docx files?
      3. 5.3 random reboots
      4. Programming language madness
      5. Wiki mugshot proposal and new HomepageTemplate
      5. Tip Of The Newsletter
      6. Jokes and Funny Stuff
      1. Always end a loop
      2. “\0″
      7. CentOS Errata
      1. CentOS-3
      2. CentOS-4
      3. CentOS-5
      8. CentOS in the Spotlight
      9. Upcoming Events
      10. Contributing to this newsletter

    • Benchmarks Of Fedora 9 Through 11

      Last week we delivered benchmarks comparing the performance of Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Fedora 11 and found for the most part that these two incredibly popular Linux distributions had performed about the same, except for a few areas where there notable differences. However, like in the past when we have looked at Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 benchmarks or benchmarking the past five Linux kernels, we are now looking at the performance of Fedora over their past few releases. In this article we have a range of system benchmarks from Fedora 9, 10, 11, and the latest Rawhide packages as of this week.

    • Red Hat’s standalone hypervisor goes beta

      Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat threw its, er, red hat into the virtualization ring back in February when it announced it was creating a standalone Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor based on KVM to compete with the likes of VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix Systems. Today, that standalone hypervisor and the tools to manage it for servers and desktops moved into beta.

  • Ubuntu

    • An interview with Clem from Linux Mint

      A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the “founder” of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.

    • Ubuntu Gets Satanic

      The combination of church and OS always struck me as a touch strange, but then, I suppose I’m not really the target audience for the Ubuntu Christian or Muslim editions. Nor am I exactly who developers were looking to when they first started working on Ubuntu Satanic Edition 666.6 (Jesus’ Jugular)666.6 (Jesus’ Jugular).It’s hard to say precisely when this got out so of hand.

    • ACTION: Ubuntu / Linux Gurus Needed – Iran Proxies

      H/T to Omir the Storyteller for this idea, I think it’s a great one. Now I need your help. The idea that Omir had was to roll a custom Linux Live CD that does one thing; creates a proxy that Iranians can use to connect and transmit photos and words outside the influence of their government.

Free Software/Open Source

  • Firefox 3.5, RC1, Slated for Friday–Many New Features

    Mozilla’s much awaited Release Candidate of the Firefox 3.5 browser has been through several delays, but, as Webware reports, Firefox director Mike Beltzner says it will arrive this Friday. Beltzner also says the final release of Firefox 3.5 will come out before the end of the month. If you haven’t been using the beta versions of the the browser, it’s much faster, and has more than 5,000 new features. Mozilla is also pointing out some articles and video demos that show off the new features.

  • Magnolia 4.1 Content Manager Arrives, With Pre-Built Templates

    Open source content management software applications have really blossomed in recent years, and I’ve written before about how a lot of companies and online publications are bound to switch to them, instead of expensive proprietary alternatives. Today, there is an updated version 4.1 of Magnolia available for download, and the long-standing open source content management platform now has pre-built templates that aim to make it easier for companies to share and publish everything from event calendars, to glossaries, to online forums.

  • Government

    • Open Source in the Enterprise: Safely Boring

      Yesterday I popped into part of the London Open Source Forum. This was a laudable effort organised by Red Hat in conjunction with some of its partners to corrupt young and innocent minds – well, senior managers, at least – and convince them about the immanent wonderfulness of open source. To that end, they wheeled out some of the big names in the enterprise free software world like Matt Asay, Simon Phipps and Jan Wildeboer.

    • Digital Britain, Analogue Thinking

      Time and again, then, this “Digital Britain” report betrays the fact that the government, its advisers and – most of all – the media industry lobby – are intent on locking down behaviour according to analogue norms. You can upgrade your broadband infrastructure until you are blue in the face, but if you are still trying to run it as if its payload were atoms, you’re doomed to failure.

  • Openness

    • Future of Open Source: Hack This Gadget

      The open source movement gave rise to Linux and spawned a generation of collaborative coders. Now it’s extending its reach to the hardware industry.

      Open source hardware is designed to be reprogrammed or physically modified to make it easy to install custom firmware and software to create entirely new products. The big idea: crowdsourcing hardware development will encourage innovation in unforeseen ways, much like how Creative Commons licenses have enabled artists to remix existing content to create new works.

    • Inside OER

      Interviews featuring people, projects, and the progress they’ve made in open education.

    • Wikipedia and open access journals – now more compatible than ever

      A couple of years ago, I posted a blog noting the complementarity between Wikipedia (which excludes original research from its scope, but strongly encourages citation of original sources), and open access journals which publish original research which Wikipedia authors can easily cite, and which Wikipedia readers can reliably follow links to gain access to.

    • ODC Open Database License (ODbL) Release Candidate 2 is Out

      Open Data Commons, a project we help host and run, has put out its second and final “Release Candidate” of the Open Database License (ODbL).

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Standards and the Smart Grid

      If you haven’t heard the words “smart grid” before, that’s likely to change soon. That’s especially so if you live in the U.S., where billions of dollars in incentive spending is pouring into making the smart grid a reality. As you might expect, since I’m talking about it here, the smart grid will rely on standards to become real. A whole lot of standards, in fact, and that’s a problem

    • Video

      • Google Considerations: OGG Theora or H.264?

        An employee of Google has expressed himself regarding the disadvantages of OGG Theora in comparison with H.264 in a discussion on the mailing list of the web hypertext application technology working group.

      • an update on open video codecs and quality

        Two days ago we posted a comparison by Greg Maxwell of low and medium resolution YouTube videos vs. Theora counterparts at the same bit rates. The result in that test was that Theora did much better at the low bit rate and more or less the same at the slightly higher bit rate. The conclusion being that Theora is perfectly appropriate for a site like YouTube.

      • theora video vs. h264

        I think that Theora+Vorbis absolutely trounces H.263+MP3 and I don’t think there’s even a question of which kind of artifacts you prefer. Theora+Vorbis is just plain better than the majority of what YouTube and many other Flash video sites have been serving to users for years.

Leftovers

  • Astroturf Expert Forms NIMBY Campaign

    The new Virginia-based group “Citizens for a Safe Alexandria” describes itself as a grassroots group, but its founder works for a public relations firm that specializes in “‘grassroots’ and ‘grasstops’ media strategies.

  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • Is Germany Following Australia Down The Slippery Slope Of Internet Censorship?

      Via Slashdot we learn that Germany is the latest country to consider a censorship regime that would create a blacklist of sites that ISPs would be required to block. As with most such things, the official claim is that this would be to block out child porn. Of course, this is a head-in-the-sand approach to fighting child porn. It’s about trying to pretend it’s not there, rather than tracking down those actually responsible

    • The Dawning of Internet Censorship in Germany

      Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.

    • Germany poised to impose police-run block list

      Germany’s main political parties have agreed the text of legislation designed to enshrine the blocking of selected internet sites in law.

      Critics of the plan insist that take down would be more effective – and express concerns that however well-intentioned a block list, it would forever be open to abuse by the state.

    • UK Court Says No Right To Being An Anonymous Blogger

      While there are certainly many problematic US laws, the fact that our court system recognizes and values the right to anonymous posting as a First Amendment issue is something that’s quite wonderful. Tragically, very few other countries view things the same way.

    • AACS license finalized; managed copy coming to Blu-ray

      After years of promising the feature, the finalization of the AACS licensing agreement brings managed copy to Blu-ray discs as early as Q1’10. But “managed copy” seems a day late and a dollar short.

    • EFF brief accuses DOJ of “backdoor wiretapping”

      In a new brief, the EFF alleges that in order to get around wiretapping’s “probable cause” requirements, the DOJ ordered a suspect’s ISP to start accumulating his emails so that they could later come in and use the Stored Communications Act to subpoena the archive.

  • Copyrights

    • Japan Makes Private Copying Illegal

      So, the recording industry has been lobbying hard in any country that carves out an exception for private copying, trying to make it illegal. Unfortunately, it appears they’ve won in Japan. A new copyright law has been passed that specifically says that private, non-commercial copying is infringing (via Cybeardjm).

    • NY Times ‘Corrects’ False Article About Pirate Bay Appeal… Still Gets It Wrong

      On Monday, however, some of our readers noted that the NY Times had “updated” or “corrected” its story. However, the really amazing thing? Even after realizing that it got the story wrong, it still hasn’t gotten the story right. Instead, they changed the first sentence from: “A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law…. ” into “A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them.”

    • Swedish Court Contests Bias Claim in Pirate Bay Case

      A Swedish court has said that the judge who presided over the case of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service, was not biased against them, The Hollywood Reporter said. In April a court in Stockholm ruled that Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, the three founders of the site, as well as Carl Lundstrom, who provided financing for it, had aided acts of copyright infringement.

    • Orphan Works

      In practice, most pre-20th century in-copyright materials are considered “ophan works” – items where the current copyright owners are impossible to identify, or trace. However orphan work status may also apply to more recently published works. The British Library, for example estimates that 40% of in-copyright works are orphan works.

    • HADOPI Copyright Law To Get New Set Of Teeth With Additional Law

      The Sarkozy government will implement a law aimed at promoting legal online downloading in the coming months despite being prevented from cutting off the internet access of alleged three-time offenders, according to official sources. Meanwhile, the government has already begun preparing a new law that would restore penalties this time decided by a judge rather than by the newly created HADOPI commission. This would conform to a constitutional ruling on the HADOPI law.

    • New Zealand tries to revive 3 strikes law

      The New Zealand government is still working hard — on behalf of the corporate movie and music cartels. And at taxpayer expense.

      It’s trying to find another way to implement the now thoroughly sullied Three Strikes plan, the fact French efforts have just been shot down in flames notwithstanding.

    • Playing Music In A Nightclub Just Got Ridiculously More Expensive In Australia

      We’ve pointed out in the past how ridiculous it is to have “collections societies” for music, which basically act as big bureaucracies for taxing any kind of music usage. These societies — both the for-profit and non-profit ones — have pretty much one goal and one goal only: to increase how much money they get. So when you hear about new schemes, like Choruss, to set up a new such collection society, you know it’s just a blatant money grab, rather than allowing for real business models to be developed. We’ve seen this all over the world, with SoundExchange

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Gerry Singleton, OpenOffice.org documentation lead 03 (2007)

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/06/17/microkernels-revisited/feed/ 0 IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: April 29th, 2009 – Part 3 http://techrights.org/2009/04/30/irc-log-29042009-3/ http://techrights.org/2009/04/30/irc-log-29042009-3/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:25:59 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=9708 GNOME Gedit

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

Balrog then what is it? Apr 29 15:52
Balrog or what do you think it is * Apr 29 15:52
schestowitz Anyway, that ZDNet FUS bothers me Apr 29 15:53
schestowitz Comes fro  the lair of Ou et al Apr 29 15:53
schestowitz TechRepublic Apr 29 15:53
schestowitz Some Windows/cCompTIA guy  spreads Linux FUD Apr 29 15:53
Balrog :/ Apr 29 15:53
schestowitz Pretending to be writing about “open source security” Apr 29 15:53
schestowitz Very typical Apr 29 15:53
Balrog url? Apr 29 15:53
Balrog                       http://www.zdnetasia.com/techguid… Apr 29 15:54
Balrog sorry Apr 29 15:54
*zer0c00l has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 29 15:56
schestowitz Accumulate damages caused by Windows/oft Apr 29 15:57
schestowitz Serve the bill every month to Microsoft/Windows users Apr 29 15:58
schestowitz They can take the tab Apr 29 15:58
trmanco Time for a banshee fork/port to c++ Apr 29 15:58
schestowitz That’s one option Apr 29 15:58
*zer0c00l (n=zer0c00l@117.199.132.106) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 15:58
trmanco schestowitz, does that option exist? -> http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content… Apr 29 15:59
MinceR :D Apr 29 15:59
schestowitz Sys-con (shills) spread a lot of Ballnux/Windows whitepapers ATM: http://opensource.sys-con.com… Apr 29 15:59
trmanco :-p Apr 29 15:59
schestowitz Lots of ballnux Apr 29 15:59
schestowitz trmanco: it should Apr 29 15:59
trmanco hehe Apr 29 15:59
schestowitz Does Cisco even count as much of a s/w company or is Asay being an ignorant non-programmer again? http://news.cnet.com/8301-… Apr 29 16:02
schestowitz Cisco, unlike IBM, makes a lot of its money selling equipment. Apr 29 16:02
schestowitz Titles should say somthing not about “software” in particular Apr 29 16:02
schestowitz Balrog: oh wait Apr 29 16:03
schestowitz Anroid FUD, eh Eruaran? Apr 29 16:03
schestowitz You know why? Apr 29 16:03
schestowitz 1.5 release of SDK Apr 29 16:03
schestowitz They need to pollute the news to scare away developers Apr 29 16:03
schestowitz Talking point: “if you develop for it, there will be no users” Apr 29 16:04
Balrog yes, android FUD Apr 29 16:04
Balrog heh. Apr 29 16:04
schestowitz About the MSNBC FUD:  http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/24… Apr 29 16:05
schestowitz They forgot iPhone too is just one phone Apr 29 16:05
Eruaran Microsoft are failing. Apr 29 16:06
MinceR they should hurry up and die. Apr 29 16:07
Eruaran Their Vista7 RC is all about feeding the media Apr 29 16:08
Balrog yes. Apr 29 16:08
Eruaran Ubuntu is building towards a critical mass I think Apr 29 16:09
Eruaran Its no surprise you get articles appearing on websites within a week or so of Ubuntu Jaunty’s release, announcing the impending availability of Windows 7 RC1… Apr 29 16:10
Eruaran I saw an article about Microsoft trying to do social networking with “Vine” Apr 29 16:13
Eruaran Paid subscription… Apr 29 16:13
Eruaran lol Apr 29 16:13
Balrog ?!? Apr 29 16:14
Eruaran serious Apr 29 16:14
schestowitz Eruaran: hehe Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz Vista7 articles Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz Notice how NOBODY mentioned Vista anymore Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz Not tyhe press, not people Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz That’s intentional Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz It’s what Microsoft wanted Apr 29 16:15
Eruaran yep Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz It become an epic, legendary failure Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz So it had to — by its own admission — chahnge the topic Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz Last week in the news Apr 29 16:15
schestowitz In headlines: “Vista” 2 time, “Windows 7″ 19 times Apr 29 16:16
Eruaran Dictionary entry for “Fail”: see “Windows Vista” Apr 29 16:16
schestowitz It figures Apr 29 16:16
schestowitz Even if there’s news about VIsta, MS will keep quiet about it Apr 29 16:16
schestowitz It encourages negative discussions. Apr 29 16:16
schestowitz I HATE the ‘press’ Apr 29 16:16
schestowitz Like ‘Times’, ‘BBC’, ‘CNN’ Apr 29 16:17
schestowitz Michael Moore giving it to CNN. http://www.youtube.com/w… Apr 29 16:17
schestowitz “Well!! I guess we’ll talk again in 3 years” (from memory) Apr 29 16:17
schestowitz There needs to be a segment like this in CNN every 6 hours Apr 29 16:17
schestowitz I dropped my CNN RSS feed last week also (for “technology”) Apr 29 16:18
schestowitz They cover dolphin and stuff rather than corruption where it really matters, esp. now. Apr 29 16:18
Balrog schestowitz: <http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid…> “Is Apache Or GPL Better For Open-Source Business?” Apr 29 16:18
Balrog “Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is ‘a confession of fear and weakness’ that ‘slows down open-source adoption’ because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes.” Apr 29 16:18
schestowitz ESR :| Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz I saw it some days ago Apr 29 16:19
MinceR wow, he’s really a nutcase now Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz “‘slows down open-source adoption’ because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes.”” Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz Haha. Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz Who from? Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz ESR? Apr 29 16:19
schestowitz Yes, FUD from ESR Apr 29 16:19
Eruaran o_0 Apr 29 16:20
schestowitz Microsoft is bad because I say it’s bad Apr 29 16:20
schestowitz Circular logic Apr 29 16:20
Eruaran ESR losing the plot ? Apr 29 16:20
schestowitz Losing the gun Apr 29 16:20
schestowitz *guns Apr 29 16:20
Eruaran He’s got a few horses loose in the top paddock. Apr 29 16:22
Eruaran or sheep Apr 29 16:22
Omar87 schestowitz: What do you think of Samba? Is it bad too? Apr 29 16:32
*neonfloss (n=neon@rdsl-0145.tor.pathcom.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 16:37
schestowitz Omar87: nope Apr 29 16:37
schestowitz Different scenario Apr 29 16:37
schestowitz Glyn Moody wrote about it Apr 29 16:37
schestowitz But in my mind, the key is that we don’t need Mono Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz We have other PLs Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz And they run on Windows too Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz Java, C, etc Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz Samba is another can of worms Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz And the EU handled it differently Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/… Apr 29 16:38
schestowitz We must hit Microsoft where it HURTS. Not market share, but MARGINS. ISVs can do so too. Apr 29 16:41
*neonfloss has quit (“Leaving”) Apr 29 16:43
tessier_ How do you calculate margins on software? Apr 29 16:49
*tessier_ is less and less a fan of esr also Apr 29 16:50
schestowitz tessier: development cost/sales revenue or something like that, I guess Apr 29 16:53
tessier_ Right. And by that measure their margins are HUGE. Apr 29 16:54
tessier_ And will be very difficult to hurt. Apr 29 16:54
schestowitz Are Xbox margins huge? Apr 29 17:07
schestowitz How about MSN/Live? Apr 29 17:07
schestowitz And Windows Mobile? Apr 29 17:07
schestowitz And Zune? Apr 29 17:07
_boo_ idk what’s msn/live even Apr 29 17:16
_boo_ and forgot what zune is Apr 29 17:17
schestowitz US technology panel: by megacorps for megacorps?  http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/29/sc… Apr 29 17:18
schestowitz MinceR: see the photo. Maybe you’ll recognise it Apr 29 17:18
MinceR hungarian parliament? Apr 29 17:19
MinceR oh, the url gives it away Apr 29 17:19
Balrog schestowitz: LLVM is very promising Apr 29 17:20
MinceR i just don’t see the connection Apr 29 17:20
Balrog though it is bsd-licensed Apr 29 17:20
*zer0c00l_ (n=zer0c00l@117.199.129.253) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 17:22
*Omar87 has quit (“Leaving.”) Apr 29 17:27
*zer0c00l has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 29 17:35
Balrog http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/… Apr 29 17:36
Balrog so much fud from the commenters :( Apr 29 17:36
*oso`perezoso (n=nonamme@cpe-74-64-125-220.nyc.res.rr.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 17:43
oso`perezoso hi Apr 29 17:43
oso`perezoso lol Apr 29 17:43
*zer0c00l__ (n=zer0c00l@117.199.131.129) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 17:44
schestowitz Hey Apr 29 17:49
schestowitz What’s up? Apr 29 17:49
oso`perezoso mm.. interesting any links to substantiate such a strong accusation? Apr 29 17:49
schestowitz Which one/s? Apr 29 17:49
*zer0c00l_ has quit (Read error: 113 (No route to host)) Apr 29 17:50
oso`perezoso ‘sever implications’ Apr 29 17:52
oso`perezoso I mean this is a bold claim to make so I sorta expected to have some grounds. Apr 29 17:55
*zer0c00l_ (n=zer0c00l@117.199.132.219) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 17:55
schestowitz Watch the new post titled “The Big Australian Press: “Microsoft Has Not Ruled Out Buying a Linux Company”” http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/29/on… Apr 29 17:56
schestowitz oso`perezoso: in the title? Apr 29 17:57
oso`perezoso nor the title neither the topic got links Apr 29 17:59
oso`perezoso wouldn’t be buying linux firms plant a open source trojan from within in m$$?? Apr 29 18:00
oso`perezoso I mean GPL is not reversible. Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz Yes Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz But Microsoft is miserable Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz It can hope to sell proprietary alongside or in addition to FOSS Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz It’s not so far fetched Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz But… Apr 29 18:01
schestowitz If it distributed GPLv3-ed s/w, that would get complicated Apr 29 18:02
oso`perezoso I’ll read your link Apr 29 18:04
*zer0c00l_ has quit (“gonna sleep”) Apr 29 18:04
oso`perezoso so this is squarely aimed at $u$e then? Apr 29 18:04
oso`perezoso since $u$e is Novell’s distro. Apr 29 18:05
*mib_cli40k (i=5f2467e8@gateway/web/ajax/mibbit.com/x-ba413d9ea4029332) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 18:05
schestowitz Linux’s ARM getting stronger against Wintel: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/… Apr 29 18:06
schestowitz oso`perezoso: what specifically aimed at SUSE? Apr 29 18:06
oso`perezoso these accusations Apr 29 18:08
schestowitz Oh, not again… SJVN joins the FUD party. http://practical-tech.com/develo… Apr 29 18:08
schestowitz oso`perezoso: it started with Novell Apr 29 18:08
oso`perezoso go linux go!! Apr 29 18:08
schestowitz There are more vendors, but Novell has the tightest relationship Apr 29 18:08
oso`perezoso this is really odd. Why on earth linux vendors would willingly side with m$$?? I mean linux got a strong foundation to defend and support any project. Linux Foundation. Not to mention HEAVY WEIGHT big iron backing us up Apr 29 18:10
*zer0c00l__ has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 29 18:11
schestowitz oso`perezoso: Microsoft paid them Apr 29 18:13
schestowitz $240,000,000 Apr 29 18:13
schestowitz And beyond Apr 29 18:13
schestowitz Quiz: History of Sun Microsystems Quiz < http://www.technologyandbusiness.com.au/pc… > Apr 29 18:13
*mib_cli40k has quit (“http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client”) Apr 29 18:14
*oso`perezoso has quit (Remote closed the connection) Apr 29 18:16
*oso`perezoso (n=nonamme@cpe-74-64-125-220.nyc.res.rr.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 18:16
oso`perezoso these are companies that long ago longed freeing from the yokes of m$$. Apr 29 18:18
schestowitz RIAA settles for $7,000 after 4 years pursuing NY mum < http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/0… > Apr 29 18:22
schestowitz Some artists want to get off the yokes of MAFIAA Apr 29 18:22
schestowitz YouTube gives a good platform to many Apr 29 18:23
oso`perezoso err.. not only youtube, new ways of producing are freeing artist from MAFIAA Apr 29 18:26
schestowitz Exec jumps from one Microsoft puppet to another: Top EMC exec jumps ship for HP < http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04… > Apr 29 18:29
schestowitz oso`perezoso: of course Apr 29 18:29
schestowitz “Installed Jaunty Jackalope with Wubi. Definitely feels like a smoother UI on my Lenovo.” http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/04/j… Apr 29 18:34
oso`perezoso LMAO@puppetry Apr 29 18:35
schestowitz Well, weasel word Apr 29 18:35
oso`perezoso did you hear about m$$ hiring the highest ranking CPU designer from Sun Microsystems? Apr 29 18:36
schestowitz Just meaning when a company serves another. Like the US and Canada sometimes Apr 29 18:36
schestowitz oso`perezoso: no big deal that Apr 29 18:36
schestowitz He had to find /some/ place to work Apr 29 18:36
schestowitz Oracle won’t do much h/w Apr 29 18:37
oso`perezoso I don’t know if are familiar but in Slashdot there was this article about m$$ entering in the CPU industry in the near future Apr 29 18:38
schestowitz oso`perezoso: It would not surprise me Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz Found today: http://www.wwj.com/B-ham-Native–Ex-… “a former Microsoft Corp. executive. He says the days of proprietary software are numbered and companies like Microsoft are likely doomed” Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz Their business model is dying Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz They try h/w now Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz They fail badly Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz Zune=disaster Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz XBox=billions in losses Apr 29 18:40
schestowitz SaaS= billions in losses(MSN/Live Apr 29 18:41
schestowitz They still have some bright people (even if they are criminal or unethical) Apr 29 18:41
schestowitz They need to put these people to use where they can make a PROFIT Apr 29 18:41
schestowitz In most divisions (ping tessier ) Microsoft is LOSING money. And software margins erode quickly. Apr 29 18:41
oso`perezoso lol Apr 29 18:43
oso`perezoso the interesting thing is that they try to copy stuff from companies that themselves innovated that specific product and were succesful. Apr 29 18:43
oso`perezoso apple=ipod, sony=ps2,ps3, google etc Apr 29 18:44
oso`perezoso and they do those thing simply by pouring $$$ on their projects but lack the innovative and creativity edge. Apr 29 18:45
schestowitz You forgot key ones Apr 29 18:45
schestowitz Adobe Apr 29 18:45
schestowitz x3 Apr 29 18:45
schestowitz Photoshop = Microsoft called its clone off Apr 29 18:45
schestowitz Flash = MS is nowhere, still bribing for Silver Lie deals Apr 29 18:45
oso`perezoso yeah just about anything. Apr 29 18:46
schestowitz XPS = seen it recently? Enough said… since 2005. Apr 29 18:46
schestowitz PDF is even embraced by MS now Apr 29 18:46
oso`perezoso but’s true that their business model won’t last. Apr 29 18:46
schestowitz They can’t quite monetise XPS anyway. Same with HD that they gave to JPEG Apr 29 18:46
schestowitz oso`perezoso: that’s why they leech via Novell Apr 29 18:47
schestowitz Novell: “yes, we signed a patent deal, blah blah” Apr 29 18:47
schestowitz Microsoft: “now y’all need to pay us” Apr 29 18:47
oso`perezoso look at the router industry, two years ago when I was trying to flash openwrt I found out that brands were using propiertary stuff and so on. I checked back recently to update and guess what. Apr 29 18:48
schestowitz Here’s a Microsoft employee advancing Ballmer et al today: http://tirania.org/blog/archive… Apr 29 18:48
oso`perezoso ALL the mayor brands switched to Openwrt!!!!!! Apr 29 18:48
oso`perezoso I was flaggerblsated!! Apr 29 18:48
oso`perezoso not exactly openwrt but the same with their own custom modifications!!! Apr 29 18:49
schestowitz LOL Apr 29 18:49
schestowitz flaggerblsated Apr 29 18:49
schestowitz flabbergasted? Apr 29 18:49
schestowitz There’s a GPL suit maybe Apr 29 18:50
oso`perezoso lol yeah. Apr 29 18:50
schestowitz Controversy Haunts Linux-based DD-WRT– GPL Violator? Betrayer of Open Source? < http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet… > Apr 29 18:50
oso`perezoso err, well linux gotta keep a eye on them. :D Apr 29 18:51
oso`perezoso I think companies are realizing how open source can help their products better by streamlining the drivers/software development and delivering bettor products. Apr 29 18:52
schestowitz zoobab01: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_… Apr 29 18:53
oso`perezoso this famous guy writing drivers for just about any webcam out there got support from Logitech Creative Labs etc. Apr 29 18:53
oso`perezoso I think companies feel like this when a driver not their own is making success, they get envious so they open the source and keep it in their site :D Apr 29 18:55
schestowitz Open Source Jobs: Olliance Group is Growing < http://robertogaloppini.net/2009/04/29/… > Apr 29 18:55
schestowitz Yes, a French man. Apr 29 18:56
schestowitz it was misstated Apr 29 18:56
oso`perezoso yep Apr 29 18:56
schestowitz There’s lots of overlap in driver development there Apr 29 18:56
schestowitz He didn’t write drivers for 200+ devices ONE BY ONE Apr 29 18:56
oso`perezoso I know, but maintains Apr 29 18:56
oso`perezoso do you code?? Apr 29 18:57
oso`perezoso lol@Olliance!!! Apr 29 18:57
oso`perezoso Open + Alliance = Olliance?? Apr 29 18:57
schestowitz ODF news is currently floored by news about the company that attacked ODF endlessly Apr 29 18:59
schestowitz They cheer over something they’ll try to just screw Apr 29 18:59
schestowitz wait and watch Apr 29 18:59
schestowitz oso`perezoso: Yes, I code Apr 29 18:59
oso`perezoso I don’t Apr 29 18:59
schestowitz Never done drivers Apr 29 18:59
oso`perezoso ODF is the good one or evil? Apr 29 19:00
schestowitz Greg K-H from Novell wrote some tutorials IIRCt Apr 29 19:00
schestowitz There’s more volunteers for drivers work than drivers to be done Apr 29 19:00
schestowitz The good one Apr 29 19:00
schestowitz Although IBM needs to be watched. Oracle too. Apr 29 19:00
schestowitz If they collude with MS, then that’s the end of that Apr 29 19:00
oso`perezoso the end of whon? Apr 29 19:02
oso`perezoso m$ can’t pick a fight with Oracle and IBM Apr 29 19:02
oso`perezoso Oracle that recently   bought Sun?? no way Apr 29 19:02
*DaemonFC (n=DaemonFC@c-67-173-86-85.hsd1.il.comcast.net) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 29 19:03
schestowitz Manchester, UK – MIT’s FabLab scheme is adding the UK to its growing network. < http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp… > Apr 29 19:07
schestowitz oso`perezoso: no, I was thinking about something else Apr 29 19:08
schestowitz Grouping over standards Apr 29 19:08
schestowitz Marbux wrote about it last year Apr 29 19:08
schestowitz There may be substance to that Apr 29 19:08
schestowitz Some kind of a ceasefire from Sutor et al Apr 29 19:08
schestowitz Welcome to the Ubuntu-Women website < http://ubuntu-women.org/ > Apr 29 19:09
schestowitz This is good in a way. Not separation based on gender, but it’s an indication of growth. Apr 29 19:09
DaemonFC http://www.istartedsomething.com/2… Apr 29 19:09
DaemonFC heh Apr 29 19:09
oso`perezoso LMAO@Ubuntu-women!! Apr 29 19:10
DaemonFC not touching that one Apr 29 19:11
schestowitz Does corporate hog farming breed swine flu? < http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/… > Apr 29 19:11
schestowitz Hehe. Extras. Apr 29 19:11
schestowitz Still not arrived at the scene like promised, eh? Apr 29 19:12
schestowitz Where are people lining up for refunds? Apr 29 19:12
schestowitz Or class action? Apr 29 19:12
schestowitz They have complained since 2007 Apr 29 19:12
schestowitz BTW I haven’t opened that URL yet. istartedsomething is a bit of a Microsoft guerrilla marketing blog IMHO. Apr 29 19:12
DaemonFC “Update 2: It looks like Microsoft Australia even offered someone a downgrade from Ultimate to Home Premium over at the Neowin forums because he thought he wasn’t getting enough value.” Apr 29 19:13
DaemonFC lmao Apr 29 19:13
DaemonFC the Ultimate version’s main thing is it has everything from Business and Home Premium Apr 29 19:14
DaemonFC Home Premium doesn’t have the policy editors, volume shadow service, etc Apr 29 19:14
DaemonFC I know there’s other limits on it Apr 29 19:15
schestowitz CSS naked: http://thenextweb.com/2009/04/28… Apr 29 19:15
DaemonFC it’s so close in Price to Business that you may as well get Ultimate Apr 29 19:16
oso`perezoso neowin is pro-linux or m$$?? Apr 29 19:16
DaemonFC because ate that point you’re talking $20 Apr 29 19:16
DaemonFC *at Apr 29 19:16
schestowitz oso`perezoso: yes Apr 29 19:16
schestowitz We have posts about that Apr 29 19:16
schestowitz Also pro-SUSE, obviouslty Apr 29 19:16
DaemonFC Neowin posts some stuff I download occasionally Apr 29 19:16
oso`perezoso ah ok Apr 29 19:16
DaemonFC they had the uxtheme multi-patcher and some themes Apr 29 19:17
DaemonFC I think removing Aero Glass from Vista Basic was the biggest reason most people didn’t buy it Apr 29 19:17
oso`perezoso ok cool conversation Apr 29 19:18
DaemonFC there was a way to hack around that and re-enable it though Apr 29 19:18
oso`perezoso gonna read some of the links you posted. Apr 29 19:18
oso`perezoso I could’nt keep up with them all :) Apr 29 19:18
DaemonFC They crippled Vista Basic beyond belief Apr 29 19:18
DaemonFC it couldn’t even do some things XP Home could Apr 29 19:18
oso`perezoso what a complete retarded decision not include Aero for everyone Apr 29 19:19
DaemonFC I don’t mean “Go find other software to do that”, I mean they made Windows refuse at the kernel level Apr 29 19:19
DaemonFC things like home networking/shares Apr 29 19:19
DaemonFC it had limited XBOX 360 connectivity, but no more than XP Home with Windows Media Player 11 Apr 29 19:20
schestowitz Check out this one: http://linspire.com/ Apr 29 19:20
oso`perezoso wow, that’s why I was having a hell’ve time trying to share folders between OSX and Vista?? Apr 29 19:20
DaemonFC if you had Vista Basic? probably Apr 29 19:20
oso`perezoso is it confirmed that Vista Basic is b0orkd for sharing? Apr 29 19:21
schestowitz They seem to have totally elimated old site content Apr 29 19:21
DaemonFC Home Premium at least gives you enough networking ability to set up a small LAN Apr 29 19:21
DaemonFC and use your XBOX 360 :P Apr 29 19:21
schestowitz Maybe not… http://www.google.com/search?q=s… Apr 29 19:21
DaemonFC yeah Apr 29 19:21
DaemonFC Microsoft even says it Apr 29 19:21
DaemonFC in their comparison Apr 29 19:21
oso`perezoso ok, it wasn’t for me really, but a friend that has hell’uv issues with it I was trying to, help Apr 29 19:22
oso`perezoso heck, I got  multiple flavors of vi$ta and runnig  m$7 :D Apr 29 19:22
DaemonFC yeah, you will definitely notice crippling problems with Basic Apr 29 19:22
DaemonFC you have to get Business or Ultimate to escape that really Apr 29 19:23
DaemonFC Which i kind of the point Apr 29 19:23
DaemonFC *is Apr 29 19:23
DaemonFC Home Basic can also access 8 gigs of RAM, max, even the 64-bit version Apr 29 19:24
oso`perezoso crazy. Apr 29 19:24
_boo_ lol Apr 29 19:24
DaemonFC one of the limitations they imposed to keep anyone from using it as a cheap server Apr 29 19:24
_boo_ they’re limiting resources XD Apr 29 19:24
oso`perezoso err.. I only have 2GB lol Apr 29 19:24
oso`perezoso well, you can’t really blame them. Apr 29 19:24
DaemonFC 32-bit versions can access 2.8-3.2 gigs of RAM Apr 29 19:25
oso`perezoso that’s what they do, marketing. Apr 29 19:25
DaemonFC due to limitations in the PAE kernel Apr 29 19:25
_boo_ for what not to blame? Apr 29 19:25
_boo_ DaemonFC, 3.5 at max may be? Apr 29 19:25
DaemonFC meh, I got 3.2 gigs max Apr 29 19:25
oso`perezoso so they offer the cheapest crap one then the next one up more expensive with all the bells and whistles. Apr 29 19:25
DaemonFC I suppose if you have integrated video then 3.5 sounds possible Apr 29 19:25
DaemonFC but then the shared memory the video card takes will be about 256 megs anyway Apr 29 19:26
DaemonFC so have fun with that Apr 29 19:26
oso`perezoso So think a lusr walking into Best Buy and talking to the seller. Apr 29 19:26
DaemonFC Vista Basic was there to provide a $99 upgrade over XP Home Apr 29 19:26
oso`perezoso is like selling cars. ‘Well this one is better includes AC, radio Cushionde seats, etc’ Apr 29 19:26
DaemonFC which was intended to cover up the price increase on the one you want to use Apr 29 19:26
DaemonFC that way they had the $99 upgrade price point so you don’t feel cheated that the $160 upgrade is the cheapest one there Apr 29 19:27
DaemonFC the customer feels like they chose to spend another $61 Apr 29 19:27
DaemonFC B-) Apr 29 19:27
oso`perezoso you can’t blame m$$ really for anything. The alternatives are out there, ppl choose to go by marketing, then let them spend $$ for a cripple OS Apr 29 19:27
_boo_ why? Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC not like they HAD to spend another $651 to get it to do anything useful Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC :P Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC errr Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC $61 Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC it’s a way to hike the price without making it seem unfair Apr 29 19:28
oso`perezoso ppl support m$$ by buying their crap. Apr 29 19:28
schestowitz Heh. 8 People On 1 Motorcycle Going Faster Than A Car In China < http://www.chinasmack.com/pictures/8-… > Apr 29 19:28
DaemonFC old retail trick Apr 29 19:28
_boo_ oso`perezoso, what about the fact that i have to buy shitty vista if i want to buy just good notebook? Apr 29 19:29
DaemonFC if you go in Walmart they may have a piece of shit $30 microwave to get your attention, then you find out it’s a piece of shit, and go on down the aisle Apr 29 19:29
oso`perezoso yes is all about retail and marketing business/decisions NOTHING to do with the lusr’s lol Apr 29 19:29
DaemonFC end up leaving the store with a $70 model Apr 29 19:29
DaemonFC not feeling robbed Apr 29 19:29
oso`perezoso _boo_: slap some other OS on it Apr 29 19:29
DaemonFC Microsoft is essentially doing that with Vista Apr 29 19:29
_boo_ but i have to buy vista Apr 29 19:30
_boo_ it insults me Apr 29 19:30
Balrog oso`perezoso: but MS is still getting money Apr 29 19:30
MinceR oso`perezoso: they’ve still paid the m$ tax Apr 29 19:30
DaemonFC Vista Basic is the piece of shit $30 no-name microwave designed to soften you up for the more expensive models Apr 29 19:30
oso`perezoso LMAO@WalMart microwave example Apr 29 19:30
Balrog _boo_: are there computer companies other than apple that don’t ship windows on a computer? Apr 29 19:30
MinceR there are Apr 29 19:30
Balrog and not just netbooks Apr 29 19:30
MinceR dell? Apr 29 19:30
DaemonFC System76 Apr 29 19:30
DaemonFC and Dell Apr 29 19:30
MinceR (even though they’re assholes) Apr 29 19:30
_boo_ Balrog, yup Apr 29 19:31
DaemonFC Dell has Ubuntu, Suse, and Red Hat Apr 29 19:31
oso`perezoso _boo_: use torrents, there are more fun vi$ta options Apr 29 19:31
DaemonFC but their consumer models have Ubuntu Apr 29 19:31
Balrog Dell’s quality has been quite good lately Apr 29 19:31
Balrog oso`perezoso: the idea is to STOP USING vista Apr 29 19:31
_boo_ there are quite a small amount of notebooks with linux and freedos Apr 29 19:31
Balrog not dl it Apr 29 19:31
MinceR the quality of my almost 1 year old dell laptop is crap. Apr 29 19:31
DaemonFC the ones with Linux are pre-installed Apr 29 19:31
MinceR and their support is crap, too Apr 29 19:31
oso`perezoso Balrog: you don’t have to tell me that :) Apr 29 19:31
DaemonFC the ones with FreeDOS have just the CD with FreeDOS to not break their agreement with MS Apr 29 19:31
DaemonFC that all systems shipped will have an “operating system” Apr 29 19:32
Balrog ah. MS forces that? Apr 29 19:32
DaemonFC yes Apr 29 19:32
Balrog heh Apr 29 19:32
DaemonFC used to be that MS jacked the price on Windows if you shipped any other OS Apr 29 19:32
Balrog but they can’t do that anymore ….? Apr 29 19:32
DaemonFC cause those systems would “simply be formatted and will end up running pirate Windows” Apr 29 19:32
DaemonFC :) Apr 29 19:32
MinceR here in hungary there’s also albacomp and blackpanther Apr 29 19:32
DaemonFC no, the US courts ordered that that was illegal Apr 29 19:32
MinceR and probably others worldwide, but i’m not up-to-date Apr 29 19:32
Balrog obviously. Apr 29 19:33
DaemonFC so Microsoft’s agreement with OEMs is now “All systems sold must include an operating system” Apr 29 19:33
DaemonFC and MS can’t penalize for that OS not being Windows Apr 29 19:33
oso`perezoso wow crazy Apr 29 19:33
Balrog it’s easy enough to install linux or freedos Apr 29 19:33
schestowitz MinceR: I put a photo of Budapest in BN’s FP. Apr 29 19:33
DaemonFC right, but the idea is that every OEM copy of Windows lands them about $50 Apr 29 19:34
DaemonFC so by buying the Windows system, you pay MS $50 Apr 29 19:34
Balrog and those $50 add up Apr 29 19:34
DaemonFC even if it ends up running something else Apr 29 19:34
Balrog yes. something like ‘per-CPU’ licensing Apr 29 19:34
DaemonFC so people were banding up and demanding the $50 be refunded Apr 29 19:34
Balrog though that’s illegal now Apr 29 19:34
DaemonFC so that’s why Dell puts Ubuntu on a few models Apr 29 19:34
oso`perezoso ok is not buying vi$ta but it’s more about showing the ppl how they paid for an utter piece of crap and that there are better alternatives. Apr 29 19:35
DaemonFC HP and Gateway still issue refunds Apr 29 19:35
DaemonFC you have to mail back your Windows disc and COA label Apr 29 19:35
MinceR schestowitz: i’ve seen it, but i don’t know why it’s there :> Apr 29 19:35
oso`perezoso didn’t m$$ server have per ip license? Apr 29 19:35
DaemonFC I mailed my copy of OEM Vista back to Gateway Apr 29 19:35
Balrog oso`perezoso: I don’t mean per IP Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC got $52 check in the mail Apr 29 19:36
oso`perezoso is illegal to get $50 refund???!! Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC no Apr 29 19:36
Balrog I meant that for every computer that a company made, they had to pay for a Windows license, whether or not windows was reinstalled Apr 29 19:36
Balrog installed * Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC Microsoft’s EULA states you have that right Apr 29 19:36
Balrog or included Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC and the OEM is a party to that agreement Apr 29 19:36
_boo_ oso`perezoso, when you buy server you also buy the license to use it for some number of clients Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC and shall refund the price Apr 29 19:36
DaemonFC been held up by the US courts that Microsoft and the OEM must refund Windows if you disagree with the EULA and destroy/send back all copies Apr 29 19:37
oso`perezoso _boo_: I can’t even begin to think how a m$$ server sets stuff up Apr 29 19:37
_boo_ there are even calculators for m$ servers Apr 29 19:37
DaemonFC there’s different amounts I’ve seen people get Apr 29 19:37
DaemonFC $52 is the refund for Home Premium Apr 29 19:37
_boo_ it ends up with a good amount of money Apr 29 19:38
DaemonFC I think it goes all the way up to about $100 for Ultimate Apr 29 19:38
oso`perezoso ah ok, that’d be a bit excessive ILLEGAL to ask refund. Apr 29 19:38
DaemonFC no, it’s not illegal Apr 29 19:38
DaemonFC you are exercising your rights under the Windows EULA to demand a refund for the copy of Windows you will not be using Apr 29 19:38
oso`perezoso I understand, I am just saying would some  sort of dictatorial practice. Apr 29 19:39
DaemonFC and they give you back the amount that the OEM has paid Microsoft Apr 29 19:39
DaemonFC OEM Windows price – whatever volume license discount the OEM got Apr 29 19:39
oso`perezoso what if a retailer ask for refunds for all the computers sold and keeps the money and sells the computers  with free  OS such as linux?? :) Apr 29 19:40
DaemonFC are they the end user of the system? Apr 29 19:40
DaemonFC no Apr 29 19:40
DaemonFC the retailer can’t do that Apr 29 19:40
oso`perezoso ah  true. Apr 29 19:40
DaemonFC End User means the person or organization that buys the system at retail and uses it themselves Apr 29 19:40
oso`perezoso I remember seeing RedHat box CD in CompUSA back in 2003 or 2004. Apr 29 19:41
oso`perezoso That’s interesting they been there very early on. Apr 29 19:41
DaemonFC Staples used to have Red Hat and Mandrake Apr 29 19:41
DaemonFC they gave up cause it wasn’t selling well Apr 29 19:41
DaemonFC 8-9 years ago, Linux was not a system most people would want to use Apr 29 19:42
DaemonFC bad performance, crippling driver issues, etc Apr 29 19:42
oso`perezoso but those are server distros, there should be an OS for Desktops users Apr 29 19:42
DaemonFC and you had to pay for it or download several CDs on likely a dial up connection Apr 29 19:42
oso`perezoso lol Apr 29 19:42
DaemonFC so it wasn’t, really freely available Apr 29 19:42
oso`perezoso i only noticed red hat back then because I started using linux. I didn’t buy anything, Gentoo here. Apr 29 19:43
schestowitz MinceR: cause of Stock Exchange Apr 29 19:43
DaemonFC Red Hat actually gave up trying to make any money on desktop Linux over 10 years ago Apr 29 19:43
schestowitz It’s always an Hungarian site that I use for free pics Apr 29 19:43
oso`perezoso a lot of ppl aren’t aware about Linux Apr 29 19:43
DaemonFC that announcement a few weeks ago by their CEO is not new or exciting Apr 29 19:44
oso`perezoso LMAO!!! Apr 29 19:44
schestowitz They can afford to wait Apr 29 19:44
schestowitz Others develop Linux for them Apr 29 19:44
schestowitz Mandriva, Ubuntu… Apr 29 19:44
MinceR schestowitz: oh. Apr 29 19:44
schestowitz When Red Hat wants to enter the destkop it just takes the latest peices Apr 29 19:45
DaemonFC Ubuntu doesn’t develop anything Apr 29 19:45
DaemonFC Mandriva does a little Apr 29 19:45
schestowitz It does it share of stuff too, e.g. pulseaudio Apr 29 19:45
oso`perezoso Linux Desktop 10 years ago??? That sounds quite impossible, with what kernel 2.2 and one video/audio code availble and three drivers working?? Apr 29 19:45
schestowitz Mandriva does KDE stuff, still. Apr 29 19:45
schestowitz RPMs Apr 29 19:45
DaemonFC Red Hat and Novell basically represent a half of the kernel work Apr 29 19:45
DaemonFC and probably at least 1/4th of X Apr 29 19:45
schestowitz I used Red Hat in 2000 Apr 29 19:45
schestowitz Desktop Apr 29 19:46
schestowitz KDE 2 IIRC Apr 29 19:46
schestowitz It was VERY usable Apr 29 19:46
schestowitz Also great for development Apr 29 19:46
DaemonFC Ubuntu has released less than 200 patches since 2005 Apr 29 19:46
schestowitz And it had ncie transparent windows decorations that looked nifty at the time Apr 29 19:46
MinceR 205628 < DaemonFC> Ubuntu doesn’t develop anything Apr 29 19:46
DaemonFC Fedora has released over 40,000 Apr 29 19:46
MinceR m$ FUD Apr 29 19:46
schestowitz Windows was just ugly (win2k or win98 on my laptop) Apr 29 19:46
oso`perezoso wow you are leaving out IBM and Sun Apr 29 19:46
DaemonFC it’s not FUD, Ubuntu is a passive consumer Apr 29 19:46
DaemonFC they are not an authority on anything but Ubuntu Apr 29 19:47
schestowitz DaemonFC: Fedora claims 100k downloads/week nw Apr 29 19:47
schestowitz F10 Apr 29 19:47
MinceR m$ FUD saying it isn’t FUD Apr 29 19:47
MinceR how surprising! Apr 29 19:47
Balrog are you talking about the kernel or the other software? Apr 29 19:47
schestowitz Many in places like NASA use it Apr 29 19:47
Balrog Ubuntu contributes to other software, AFAIK Apr 29 19:47
DaemonFC if Red Hat and Novell went under, it would be catastrophic, not because of who they are Apr 29 19:47
DaemonFC because of how much work they do that nobody else is stepping up to do Apr 29 19:47
schestowitz DaemonFC: a lot of KDE is built by volunteers Apr 29 19:48
schestowitz like 70% IIRC Apr 29 19:48
DaemonFC some of the people doing it would go to other places and keep doing it Apr 29 19:48
oso`perezoso no, they maintain certain parts and they receive thousands of patches Apr 29 19:48
DaemonFC but you’re still losing a lot of people Apr 29 19:48
oso`perezoso that’s how it works Apr 29 19:48
MinceR DaemonFC: most of those people were doing the same thing elsewhere Apr 29 19:48
DaemonFC The Linux Foundation said that 7 of 10 people working on Linux are paid to do it Apr 29 19:49
schestowitz Nothing happend when reiser dived Apr 29 19:49
schestowitz There are too many DEs and distros Apr 29 19:49
DaemonFC so that’s like the organization Linus Torvalds works at? Apr 29 19:49
DaemonFC not Microsoft? Apr 29 19:49
schestowitz No single point of failure Apr 29 19:49
MinceR RMS wrote most of GNU without being paid for it at all Apr 29 19:49
schestowitz 18 years and still going Apr 29 19:49
oso`perezoso for instance Solaris has been using Gnome as default DE for 10 years Apr 29 19:49
schestowitz Unlike Solaris on the face of it Apr 29 19:49
DaemonFC well, it’s obvious that the kernel was something that the GNU people were out of their league on Apr 29 19:50
DaemonFC they undertook an enormous task without the talent or manpower to do it Apr 29 19:50
MinceR it’s not the same task Apr 29 19:50
oso`perezoso MinceR: what are the GNU parts? the compiler, debugger etc?? Apr 29 19:50
DaemonFC and it’s as old as I am and still is not good enough to want to use Apr 29 19:50
MinceR remember the GNU kernel is a microkernel Apr 29 19:50
MinceR oso`perezoso: command line tools, shell, compiler, linker, assembler, debugger, text editor, way too much stuff to list Apr 29 19:50
_boo_ oso`perezoso, compilers are not developed by 1 man Apr 29 19:50
Balrog DaemonFC: when Linux was made, most work on Hurd stopped Apr 29 19:50
DaemonFC their kernel layout is a monumental act of stupidity, it has dubious or no benefit over Linux Apr 29 19:51
DaemonFC even if it worked as stated (it doesn’t) Apr 29 19:51
MinceR oso`perezoso: i don’t know what exactly was written by RMS, but i’ve seen credits to him all over the manpages Apr 29 19:51
oso`perezoso RMS is Stallman or Raymond? Apr 29 19:51
_boo_ stallman Apr 29 19:51
Balrog MinceR: RMS wrote a lot of the early code Apr 29 19:51
MinceR DaemonFC: tell that to Tanenbaum Apr 29 19:51
Balrog others took over later Apr 29 19:51
MinceR Balrog: i suspected so Apr 29 19:51
MinceR i know he wrote all of emacs, at least back then Apr 29 19:52
DaemonFC MINIX works, I don’t see anyone using it Apr 29 19:52
DaemonFC but it does have interesting ideas Apr 29 19:52
MinceR DaemonFC: microkernels are still very new Apr 29 19:52
oso`perezoso lol@minix works Apr 29 19:52
_boo_ minix aint got enough people working on it Apr 29 19:52
DaemonFC no they aren’t Apr 29 19:52
DaemonFC 30 years is new? Apr 29 19:53
_boo_ oso`perezoso, linus was writing linux kernel working in minix Apr 29 19:53
MinceR DaemonFC: ok, tell me one mature mainstream OS using a microkernel on desktop or servers Apr 29 19:53
*oso`perezoso imagines minix being a single CPU driver Apr 29 19:53
Balrog OS X runs a part-microkernel … works well. Apr 29 19:53
MinceR no, osx runs a nightmare Apr 29 19:53
DaemonFC MinceR: They inherently don’t work right Apr 29 19:53
Balrog MinceR: maybe for you Apr 29 19:53
MinceR it’s not a microkernel once you bolt half of freebsd over it in kernelspace Apr 29 19:53
MinceR that’s not how a microkernel works. Apr 29 19:53
DaemonFC so you end up with monolithic+ some features of microkernel Apr 29 19:53
Balrog not for the other 98% of people I meant Apr 29 19:53
Balrog MinceR: I said part Apr 29 19:53
DaemonFC Which is Windows, Darwin/OS X. Linux…. Apr 29 19:53
MinceR the other 98% of people have no idea what a microkernel is Apr 29 19:53
MinceR they eat crApple marketing bullshit Apr 29 19:53
oso`perezoso m$$7 is based on microkernel Apr 29 19:54
MinceR DaemonFC: winnt isn’t a microkernel either Apr 29 19:54
MinceR neither is Linux Apr 29 19:54
oso`perezoso j/k Apr 29 19:54
MinceR modular != microkernel Apr 29 19:54
DaemonFC Windows is a monolithic with some of the features of microkernels Apr 29 19:54
oso`perezoso MinceR: ok, which ones are microkernel? Apr 29 19:54
MinceR DaemonFC: microkernels per definition do not include most of a gui :> Apr 29 19:54
DaemonFC Windows has a lot of common features of Linux Apr 29 19:54
DaemonFC loadable modules, user space driver framework Apr 29 19:54
DaemonFC slow pool thread Apr 29 19:54
MinceR oso`perezoso: there’s Minix and QNX Apr 29 19:55
oso`perezoso MinceR: are they free? Apr 29 19:55
DaemonFC well, it’s a component of Windows, because end users would not buy a kernel Apr 29 19:55
DaemonFC they want something you can use Apr 29 19:55
MinceR QNX might be mainstream in embedded, but i’m not sure Apr 29 19:55
MinceR Minix is certainly not mainstream Apr 29 19:55
MinceR oso`perezoso: Minix is free, QNX isn’t Apr 29 19:55
oso`perezoso LMAO@users nod buying a kernel Apr 29 19:55
MinceR then there’s L4Linux, which is practically a research project Apr 29 19:55
Balrog and Mach 3.0 Apr 29 19:55
MinceR Mach is too, it’s used in HURD, for example Apr 29 19:56
DaemonFC this is from the same “Linux is useless without GNU!!!!!” spammers Apr 29 19:56
MinceR and probably in lots of places Apr 29 19:56
DaemonFC :P Apr 29 19:56
MinceR DaemonFC: Linux works without GNU, see android Apr 29 19:56
MinceR but it’s nothing like what we know Apr 29 19:56
MinceR android sucks Apr 29 19:56
Balrog MinceR: everything you don’t like sucks Apr 29 19:56
_boo_ android is google, ’nuff said Apr 29 19:56
MinceR Balrog: that’s why i don’t like them, surprise surprise Apr 29 19:56
oso`perezoso wow google stripped GPL outta all the code used in android? Apr 29 19:57
Balrog you’re looking from a subjective point of view … the fact that *you* don’t like them doesn’t mean they’re bad Apr 29 19:57
schestowitz minix has just been granted millions in funding Apr 29 19:57
MinceR not all, it’s still Linux-based Apr 29 19:57
schestowitz 3 million euro iirc Apr 29 19:57
schestowitz Intel Releases New Driver, Kills EXA/DRI1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page… Apr 29 19:58
MinceR iirc the policy is that they only allow GPL code in the kernel Apr 29 19:58
MinceR not in their crap java userspace Apr 29 19:58
Balrog MinceR: GPL compatible code too? Apr 29 19:58
MinceR Balrog: my point of view is based on technological merit Apr 29 19:58
Balrog doesn’t seem that way. Apr 29 19:58
schestowitz leave google allllllllllone :–((( Apr 29 19:58
schestowitz leave firefox allllllllllone :–((( Apr 29 19:58
oso`perezoso schestowitz: millions from where? do you have a link? you got links for everything Apr 29 19:58
]]> http://techrights.org/2009/04/30/irc-log-29042009-3/feed/ 0 Links 28/04/2009: Sharing Banned in EU; Phorm Collusion http://techrights.org/2009/04/28/phorm-collusion/ http://techrights.org/2009/04/28/phorm-collusion/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:32:38 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=9571

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Europe Funds Secure Operating System Research

    A Dutch university has landed a European Research Council grant to continue work on a Unix-type operating system that aims to be more reliable and secure than Linux or Microsoft Windows.

    The €2.5 million (US$3.3 million) grant will fund three researchers and two programmers, said Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands.

  • Google plugs PC power into cloud computing

    It’s this attribute that appeals to programmer Mark Seaborn, a non-Google programmer who has successfully contributed to the project. He’s been working on a Native Client version of a major supporting library used by GNU and Linux. “That could bring open-source software from GNU/Linux to a wider audience, because it could then run on Windows under NaCl without needing to be ported to Windows,” Seaborn said.

  • Open Source in Cloud Computing Really “Under the Radar”

    According to Wolski, prospective cloud buyers were looking for self service and automation as well as protection from unexpected deployment and storage costs. Eucalyptus, built from commodity Linux components, currently has a services and consulting model but plans to offer premium enterprise products.

  • Linux Boxee users get Hulu relief

    The Linux version of Boxee’s eponymously-named multimedia platform has finally been updated to include several new features introduced into the OS X and Windows versions over the past few months. Key additions include an “App Box” and restored support for Hulu.

  • Kernel Space

    • HP Officejet Pro 8500 – Happy with Mac, Linux and Windows XP

      The software loaded easily on the Mac and I was able to get the Linux machines on speaking terms with the printer quickly. With a bit of trepidation, I approached the Windows XP machine. I looked at it, it looked at me. Neither of us was looking forward to an ordeal loading the HP software.

      Although I had loads of trouble with HP’s software for the other printers, Loading the Officejet Pro 8500 software took only about 20 minutes. Only one problem was experienced with the procedure. The registration software wouldn’t work with Firefox, my primary Browser on all of my systems. It insisted that I use Internet Explorer 7. Since that software isn’t available on all of the other systems in use here, it has not been loaded on any of the systems.

    • Kernel Log: What’s coming in 2.6.30 – File systems: New and revamped file systems

      The patches adopted in Linux 2.6.30 introduce many significant changes affecting data security and Ext3 and Ext4 performance. Support for the EXOFS and NILFS2 file systems is new, as is the cache for the AFS and NFS network file systems. There are also a few fixes for the almost forgotten ReiserFS file system.

    • Intel Releases Set Of Linux GPU Tools

      Intel’s Eric Anholt has announced the release of version 1.0.0 for the intel-gpu-tools package.

  • Applications

    • A Battle For Good Open-Source Game Graphics?

      A few early screenshots of Alien Arena 2009 can be found on their project web-site. So far it does look like the graphics have improved a fair amount compared to the 2008 release, but we shall see once it is released. Let’s hope that more open-source game projects continue to refine their graphics capabilities.

  • KDE

  • Distributions

    • Weekly Distribution Roundup for April 20-26

      Not too many releases this week, but we do have the big Jaunty release that resulted in quite a few other releases.

    • Sugar on a Stick: Good for Kids’ Minds (and School Budgets)

      That’s not the case with the other sort of Sugar. Sugar, the kid-friendly open source desktop that was featured first on the OLPC XO laptop is now available (in a beta release) as a liveUSB image. The Sugar on a Stick environment is powered by Fedora 11 and features familiar Sugar desktop applications and functions, as well as new educational and collaborative tools, such as the InfoSlicer online content editor, remixer, and delivery application.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux SBC has CAN do personality

      Italian embedded vendor QSD Sistemi is shipping a single-board computer (SBC) that runs uClinux on a Freescale Coldfire MCF5329 system-on-chip (SoC). The Q129 board ships with a choice of 5.7- or 7-inch touchscreen displays, and provides Ethernet, USB, serial, and CAN-bus connectivity, says the company.

    • Phones

      • ‘Googlephone’ Isn’t a Model, It’s a Class

        Last fall, T-Mobile became the first wireless provider to offer a handset based on Google’s Android platform: the T-Mobile G1. And the world rejoiced. Now, some six months after that debut, Samsung has jumped in the game with its own Android offering.

    • Sub-notebooks

Free Software/Open Source

  • Doing the Impossible

    There is no “magic” to commons-based peer production. Most of the techniques that have brought free culture products ranging from software to art to electronic hardware have been in play for hundreds or thousands of years. But they do run counter to the patterns of commercial proprietary industry. Due to the massive improvements in communications and authoring technology, we have reached a point where we can be more productive in our “leisure” than we are in our “work”. And any labor of love is almost always going to be superior to labor alone.

    [...]

    Yet, the commons-based organization of the community, as exemplified by Wikipedia, shows up their productivity. GNU and Linux easily exceed their quality standards. Free arts may well exceed their artistic scope. In a few short years, the commons-based enterprise has out-produced centuries of corporate and government production.

  • Puppet: configuration management made easy

    When James Turnbull had his first look at the Puppet configuration management system two years ago, he had no inkling of the extent to which he would get involved in the project.

  • Funding

    • How many billions is open-source software worth?

      In other words, using OSS isn’t about being anti-Microsoft or believing in some sort of open-source ethical rightfulness, using OSS is simply a smart business move. Indeed, at $387-billion in value, OSS is twice as valuable as Microsoft’s current net worth of $183.5-billion. Not bad for ‘free software’ is it?

    • Gnash Developers and Linux Fund Raise Funds for OpenStreetMap Bounty

      In addition to direct donations to this cause, community members can help support all of the Linux Fund sponsored projects by applying for a Linux Fund Visa credit card. As a card holder each purchase you make will contribute to funding development of open source software.

  • Government

    • West Africa to invest in FOSS Study

      FOSSFA and OSIWA, in their Free and Open Source Software for West Africa and Beyond (FOSSWAY) project are set to invest in FOSS research in West Africa. In the recently published Call for Tender both organisations are awarding a research contract up to the tune of 65 000 US dollars for a Study to be carried out in five West African Countries.

    • The Trials and Tribulations Of Taking Open Source Public

      Companies, agencies, and organizations are interested in — and exploring — their open source options. The timing is falling into place, and there’s now, obviously, a demand — and a great opportunity — for those offering open source support services.

  • Licensing

    • Sorry, not right. An answer to Raymond’s post on the GPL

      In general, of all the aspects of OSS that are interesting (and there are many), I find the GPL family of licenses as the brightest examples of law engineering, and I believe that a substantial reason for the successes of OSS are dependent on it. Of course, there are other economical aspects that are relevant, and I agree with the fact that OSS is in general more efficient (as I wrote here, here and here). I disagree with both the premise and the conclusions, however, as I believe that the set of barriers created by the GPL are vital to create a sustainable market here and now, and not in an hypotetical future.

    • How not to play with “Open” license.

      The iMagic OS weird EULA
      “You may not (and shall not allow any member of Your Household or any other third party to): (i) copy, reproduce, distribute, relicense, sublicense, rent, lease or otherwise make available the Software or any portion or element thereof except as and to the extent expressly authorized herein by Licensor; (ii) translate, adapt, enhance, create derivative works of or otherwise modify the Software or any portion or element thereof; (iii) decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer (except as and to the extent permitted by applicable local law), or extract ideas, algorithms, procedures, workflows or hierarchies from, the Software or any portion or element thereof; (iv) use the Software or any portion or element thereof to provide facility management, service bureau or similar services to third parties; or (v) remove, modify or obscure any identification or proprietary or restrictive rights markings or notices from the Software or any component thereof. You shall keep a current record of the location of each copy of the Software You make.”

  • Open (But No Source Code)

    • BioIT in Boston: What is Open?

      My talk is “Open Semantic Data in Science”. I’ll probably write 3-4 blog posts on the various aspects of this, and at present I’m thinking of:

      * What is Open? (this post)
      * What is semantic? And what do we require for it?
      * What is data?
      * What are we able to offer (with some modest emphasis on our own endeavours).

    • Why online transparency matters

      Identifying corruption, says Swartz, requires more than a mere re-arrangement of data rows; data is just a veil – and usually useless at that -to more sinister activities – lunches with lobbyists and voting under emergency provisions – which almost never show up in official voting records that are being digitized and scrapped by Sunlight and its grantees (this is what Swartz means by “reality doesn’t live in databases”).

  • Programming

    • As Oracle Becomes Java’s Steward, It’s Also a Big Player in Mobile Tech

      JavaME is on almost every phone, Sun has traditionally gotten revenues from support contracts for it, and there is much work going on on JavaFX mobile applications. In acquiring Sun, Oracle will also acquire quite a lot of Java momentum on mobile platforms–a space where it has had nearly no presence in the past.

  • Applications

    • ISC Begins BIND 10 Development

      Even with full details on BIND 10 missing, ISC sketched out some cornerstones of its design. One among them is that BIND 10 will support DNSSEC. Many security experts called for higher security measures as a critical Internet infrastructure for DNS after they publicized holes in the protocol.

    • Firefox 3.5 to feature new window restore feature

      The latest nightlies of upcoming Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 now feature a new option in the History menu to restore recently closed windows and not only individual tabs as in previous versions.

    • Blender 2.49 RC1 released

      The developers have announced the first release candidate for Blender version 2.49. Blender is a free, cross-platform, open source, 3D content creation suite that allows users to model, shade, animate and render 3D objects.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • When Would You Use OOXML and When ODF? — What is OOXML For?

      Can anyone tell me what OOXML is for, other than for opening legacy Microsoft documents? What else is it for? When would you choose OOXML and when would you choose ODF, if you were, let’s say, a government or a government agency?

      [...]

      Rick Jelliffe recently said that OOXML “is fundamentally intended to document a format for a pre-existing technology and feature set of recent proprietary systems.”

      Gulp. How is that a proper purpose for an “open” standard?

      Well, leave that aside for the moment. Let’s assume that you are a government or an agency and you really want to make sure all citizens can access documents and interface with them, including GNU/Linux users and Microsoft users? Then when would you use one or the other?

Leftovers

  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • The Closing of the European Internet

      Indeed, both the music and book publishing businesses are pushing for P2P sites to be included in the DNS block list to prevent anyone in Germany accessing them.

    • German book publishers want Rapidshare on country-wide net censorship list

      Here we go again: German book publishers are tying to force local ISPs to block Rapidshare and similar websites through a controversial new Internet censorship bill. The bill, which received the backing of the German government two days ago, is meant to crack down on child porn with a centralized DNS block list that would include 1500 or so illegal child porn websites.

    • Plan to monitor all internet use

      Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics.

    • Home Office ‘colluded with Phorm’

      The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on “informal guidance” to the public on whether the company’s service is legal.

      E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be “comforted” by its position.

      The messages show Phorm making changes to the guidance sought by the ministry.

  • Copyrights

    • Copyright lobby targets “Pirate Bay for textbooks”

      Finnish book rental service Bookabooka is being threatened by national copyright lobby organization TTVK for running a service the lobby group calls “Pirate Bay for textbooks”.

    • Pirate Bay: industry lawyers’ websites attacked

      Lawyers who helped prosecute The Pirate Bay have become the latest targets in an internet backlash over the decision to jail the site’s founders.

    • Swedish ISPs Obstruct New Anti-Piracy Legislation

      While all eyes were on the Pirate Bay trial, Swedish parliament passed the IPRED law, making it easier for copyright holders to go after illicit file-sharers . The law has only been in effect for one month and anti-piracy outfits are already facing problems using it, as ISPs take measures to protect their customers.

    • DVD Copying Case Focuses on ‘Fair Use’

      The MPAA said there was no fair use defense to copying personal CDs. The MPAA presented that argument as it demanded a federal judge to continue barring sales of a DVD copying software that RealNetworks briefly put on the market last year. The MPAA also said RealDVD was based on the work of Ukrainian hackers.

    • Real DVD Copying Case Gets Off To An Inauspicious Start
    • Judge Rejects Internet Archive Motion to Intervene in Google Settlement

      A federal judge overseeing the approval process for the Google Book Search settlement has rejected an attempt by the Internet Archive (IA) to intervene in the action. In a short ruling released today, Judge Dennis Chin wrote that he construed the IA’s letter to the court, filed last week, as “a motion to intervene,” and denied it. “The proposed interveners are, however, free to file objections to the proposed settlement.” Objections and comments must be filed by May 5.

    • The More Things Change… The More They Stay The Same, Music Piracy Edition

      Via Boing Boing comes this link to a NY Times article from 1897 (yes, you read that right, not 1987) about the struggle of the music industry against “pirates” (you can see the original via the NY Times site here).

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

Natasha Humphries on globalization and job security with Free Open Source Software 11 (2004)

Ogg Theora

Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

]]> http://techrights.org/2009/04/28/phorm-collusion/feed/ 2 IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: April 26th, 2009 – Part 2 http://techrights.org/2009/04/27/irc-log-26042009-2/ http://techrights.org/2009/04/27/irc-log-26042009-2/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:13:24 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=9507 GNOME Gedit

Enter the IRC channel now

To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.

seller_liar schestowitz: we need to focus on ethics , not powerful software Apr 26 18:36
schestowitz “”Price is definitely on people’s minds, and if people can get free Office with basic functionality that does 80 percent of what they need, they’re going to go in this direction,” Crawford said.” http://www.crn.com/software/217100… Apr 26 18:36
seller_liar schestowitz: because all foss software is equivalent or more powerful than proprietary software Apr 26 18:36
seller_liar schestowitz: There ‘s no need to focus more and more in features Apr 26 18:37
seller_liar schestowitz: Now, we only need to focus in promoting ethics in free software Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz nicks: they’ll deliver too early Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz But…. Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz It’ll have XP SP3 in it Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz VM Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz so they’ll say, “look, it’s not buggy” Apr 26 18:37
schestowitz “It took us 8 years to make XP… wrapped up in a 7″ Apr 26 18:38
seller_liar schestowitz: oh god , Go-oo in GSoC!!!! Apr 26 18:38
trmanco “Conventional wisdom says Linux is incredibly stable. Always skeptical, we decided to put that claim to the test over a 10-month period. In our test, we ran Caldera Systems OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, and Windows NT Server 4.0 with Service Pack 3 on duplicate 100MHz Pentium systems with 64MB of memory. Ever since we first booted up our test systems in January, network requests have been sent to each server in parallel for standard Inter Apr 26 18:39
trmanco net, file and print services. The results were quite revealing. Our NT server crashed an average of once every six weeks. Each failure took roughly 30 minutes to fix. That’s not so bad, until you consider that neither Linux server ever went down. “ Apr 26 18:39
nicks Linux should have Most valuable professionals program Apr 26 18:39
schestowitz Firefox is misbahaving for me Apr 26 18:40
schestowitz I wish I knew what was causing this Apr 26 18:40
trmanco schestowitz, perhaps a plugin? Apr 26 18:40
trmanco “There are good reasons why one would want large FAT32 partitions (for example, it might be necessary to share data on such partitions with other operating systems) but Microsoft forces you to use their own, proprietary NTFS instead. This creates an artificial barrier for non-Microsoft products for no good reason whatsoever and overrules the customers’ needs.” Apr 26 18:42
schestowitz trmanco: yes Apr 26 18:44
trmanco http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants… Apr 26 18:44
trmanco more here Apr 26 18:44
trmanco Summary: Microsoft and standard <- made this up Apr 26 18:44
trmanco standards* Apr 26 18:44
trmanco “Microsoft’s contempt for HTML and related global standards is nicely illustrated by the way Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 alter HTML code before presenting it to the user. For example, a web page header might contain a directive that an ISO (i.e. platform-independent) character set be used, with the following command: Apr 26 18:45
trmanco     <META HTTP-EQUIV=”Content-Type” CONTENT=”text/html charset=ISO-8859-1″> Apr 26 18:45
trmanco But after downloading and saving the web page source code with Internet Explorer 5.5 or later, this line looks quite different: Apr 26 18:45
trmanco     <META http-equiv=Content-Type content=”text/html; charset=windows-1252″> “ Apr 26 18:45
nicks interesting Apr 26 18:46
schestowitz └─(18:44 $)─> firefox Apr 26 18:48
schestowitz bash: /usr/bin/firefox: No such file or directory Apr 26 18:48
schestowitz I’m going to install this forefix thngie Apr 26 18:49
schestowitz It’s probably the profile though. Apr 26 18:49
schestowitz Still sthe same problem after reinstalling Apr 26 18:51
schestowitz So my profile is poisoned somewhere Apr 26 18:51
schestowitz Who knows where. Apr 26 18:51
schestowitz I’ve carries the same .mozilla since 2004 Apr 26 18:52
schestowitz *carried Apr 26 18:52
Neonflow heh Apr 26 18:57
schestowitz It’s not too bad Apr 26 18:57
Neonflow not bad Apr 26 18:58
Neonflow at all Apr 26 18:58
Neonflow I just usually break things after a while Apr 26 18:58
schestowitz The argument for free fonts < http://blogs.zdnet.com/community/?p=272 >. Microsoft still abuses a fonts monopoly and Apple ain’t helping Apr 26 18:59
schestowitz “I Drank The Ubuntu Kool-Aid And It Didn’t Taste Good” Apr 26 18:59
schestowitz ” So after modifying the system to increase the snappiness and failing to be happy with the results, I reinstalled Arch Linux this morning. ” http://www.customdistros.com/2009/04/i-dr… Apr 26 18:59
nicks its interesting that they need to put their fingers in everything Apr 26 19:00
schestowitz It’s dirty Uncle Fester Apr 26 19:01
*seller_liar has quit (“http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client”) Apr 26 19:01
schestowitz Abuse is the key to profit in unregulated economies (or deregulated, assuming you can lull them with cronies like Barnett) Apr 26 19:01
schestowitz Well, Microsoft gives even crime a bad name Apr 26 19:03
schestowitz :-) Limited Edition Jaunty Jackalope T-shirts < http://www.earobinson.org/2009/04/24/l… > Apr 26 19:03
Neonflow overall jaunty seems faster than intrepid for me, except the graphics are slower (because there are more and fancier I guess) so I had to turn them off. then again I have a 6 yo computer iwth integrated graphics :p Apr 26 19:05
nicks oh well noone can be perfect. Apr 26 19:10
schestowitz Damn. This site is still mirroring us… even IRC. http://www.allaboutms.net/2009/04/… Apr 26 19:11
schestowitz Jaunty review are still very good… latest examples: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips… http://listento.jaketolbert.com/linux/… http://www.h-online.com/open/Ubuntu-… Apr 26 19:12
schestowitz GNU/Linux performs better in 64-bit than in 32-bit. Possible proof: http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu… Apr 26 19:17
schestowitz Using open source software [..]. “However, many Linux desktops [open source] provide a free Live CD-ROM, which allows you to run the complete Linux desktop [directly from the disc], without installing any software on your computer at all,” he says. “Try OpenSUSE (software.opensuse.org). Apr 26 19:20
schestowitz http://smallbusiness.theage.com.au/star… Why OpenSUSE?? Apr 26 19:20
*Neonflow has quit (“Leaving”) Apr 26 19:22
schestowitz The guy who writes about Microsoft and was given a Vista7 laptop in a Microsoft even spits on Ubuntu 9.04: http://www.itwriting.com/blog/13… Apr 26 19:22
schestowitz /even/event/ Apr 26 19:22
schestowitz http://www.dwasifar.com/?p=560 ““DSL” means “doesn’t support Linux” if you’re AT&T”” Apr 26 19:24
schestowitz Another blow from the AT&T bastards :-) Apr 26 19:25
*trmanco has quit (“ERROR: crap-talking overflow – Aborting”) Apr 26 19:27
schestowitz read this: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/b… Apr 26 19:27
*trmanco_ (n=trmanco@drwxr-xr-x.org) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 19:27
*trmanco_ is now known as trmanco Apr 26 19:28
schestowitz I am very worried about Oracle: http://www.softwarefreedom.org/blo… Apr 26 19:32
nicks i wonder would twitter be good place to start oss community Apr 26 19:34
schestowitz Here’s a though Apr 26 19:35
schestowitz could they rebuiild mysql AB? Apr 26 19:35
schestowitz Like bring Monty and David Axmark into it? Apr 26 19:35
schestowitz They sold the trademark to Sun Apr 26 19:36
schestowitz But the code is GPLv2 (almost all of it) Apr 26 19:36
schestowitz They can regroup as an independent company and steal the engineers from Oralce Apr 26 19:36
schestowitz They have cipita Apr 26 19:36
schestowitz But Oracle won’t allow this to happen,. I bet. Apr 26 19:36
schestowitz nicks: what type of oss community? Apr 26 19:37
schestowitz Tough time with Kubuntu: Five Minutes of Kubuntu 9.04 < http://benhay.blogspot.com/2009/04/f… > Is it possible that only Canonical implements it poorly? Apr 26 19:39
*mib_ufm0wf has quit (“http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client”) Apr 26 19:42
nicks well the one which will share it’s thoughts with others Apr 26 19:42
nicks and as well maybe the free software company Apr 26 19:43
nicks The people need is what matters. Apr 26 19:45
schestowitz There’s identi.ca Apr 26 19:45
schestowitz I talk to some people there. Apr 26 19:46
schestowitz It’s filled with FOSS people Apr 26 19:46
nicks it would be good to create more communities like this one which you linked me to Apr 26 19:48
schestowitz hehe. Ubuntu is for spinners < http://ubuntusyndrome.wordpress.com/2… > Apr 26 19:50
schestowitz “gentoo is for ricers” Apr 26 19:50
nicks soon my ubuntu 9.04 cd will come :P Apr 26 19:52
schestowitz Screw Intel.. http://keithp.com/blogs/Sharpe… Apr 26 19:53
schestowitz nicks: they have nice artwork Apr 26 19:54
schestowitz Like a man with hands aside and also a badger or something Apr 26 19:54
schestowitz Visual art/illusion Apr 26 19:54
*twitter (i=willhill@97-113-229-227.tukw.qwest.net) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 20:02
schestowitz What is Britney and RMS mated: http://www.junauza.com/2009/04/hum… Apr 26 20:04
schestowitz My brother installed Red hat just now Apr 26 20:06
trmanco OT: http://farm4.static.flickr.com… Apr 26 20:15
*NeonFloss (n=neon@rdsl-0145.tor.pathcom.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 20:22
schestowitz “Opinion: Microsoft still harming netbook markets. A memo that Microsoft reportedly issued to its Top 20 OEMs told them what they could and could not have in a Windows netbook computer. Is the company imposing restrictive limitations on what hardware can run what operating system?” Apr 26 20:25
*lis` has quit (“baibai<3″) Apr 26 20:30
nicks schestowitz Apr 26 20:39
schestowitz Yo Apr 26 20:39
nicks are you interested to start oss community dedicated to its users? Apr 26 20:39
schestowitz This one if fuddy: http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/… (question mark indicates trolling) Apr 26 20:39
schestowitz nicks: does that not exist already? Apr 26 20:39
nicks nah at least its not updated or its empty Apr 26 20:40
schestowitz Haha: http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.p… Apr 26 20:41
*DavidGerard (n=Diva_@wikimedia/DavidGerard) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 21:00
DavidGerard good evening Apr 26 21:00
*kentma has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 26 21:00
*kentma (n=user@ellandroad.demon.co.uk) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 21:01
schestowitz Hey Apr 26 21:04
schestowitz What’s up, David? Apr 26 21:05
*nicks has quit (“http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client”) Apr 26 21:09
MinceR hay Apr 26 21:12
schestowitz Vista7: we do Vista, we do XP too… at half the speed. *snigger* Apr 26 21:14
*Neonflow (n=neon@rdsl-0145.tor.pathcom.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 21:16
amarsh04 most frequent questions on HP support forums are to do with obtaining drivers to downgrade from vista to xp Apr 26 21:27
schestowitz Hehe. People know what they want. How about Linux? Apr 26 21:29
*NeonFloss has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 26 21:30
schestowitz trmanco: be sure to blog about gnote. It’s an important milestone to cleaning GNOME also because it raises awareness. Any momentum it can receive will help a lot. Apr 26 21:38
schestowitz I hope Homer comes back to IRC soon Apr 26 21:39
trmanco yeah, I will Apr 26 21:39
schestowitz It’s like network effect Apr 26 21:39
trmanco the next version that comes out, I will spread some love Apr 26 21:39
schestowitz Your readers in turn will start mentionning it Apr 26 21:39
schestowitz You just need to seed the notion Apr 26 21:39
trmanco I forgot to that that when 0.2.0 came out :| Apr 26 21:39
schestowitz I subscribed to his rss Apr 26 21:39
schestowitz hub Apr 26 21:39
trmanco I posted it to cola and everything but forgot to post on my own blog :| Apr 26 21:40
schestowitz The trolls are pro-Mono Apr 26 21:40
schestowitz Good Apr 26 21:40
schestowitz It means Microsoft likes it Apr 26 21:40
schestowitz It also confirms that it’s bad for Linux Apr 26 21:40
trmanco hehe Apr 26 21:42
amarsh04 on HP forums, linux usually get mentioned as something that just works (-: Apr 26 21:44
*jose_X (n=jose@adsl-233-171-33.mia.bellsouth.net) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 21:46
DavidGerard i have discovered that bacon is the viral killer! Apr 26 21:46
DavidGerard and got to use the bacon bra photo on an article Apr 26 21:46
DavidGerard been saving it up for one Apr 26 21:46
DavidGerard brb, laptop being commandeered! Apr 26 21:46
schestowitz I thought you mean Jono Apr 26 21:47
schestowitz When I hear about Bacon… Apr 26 21:47
schestowitz amarsh04: and helpdesks wonder why no-one asks about Linux Apr 26 21:47
schestowitz I heard stories about “Linux users knowing how to take care of their own computers” Apr 26 21:47
schestowitz Translation: they don’t need to run to other people for fixing (Linux). Apr 26 21:48
trmanco Don really kicked a trolls arse today Apr 26 21:48
jose_X schestowitz, I’m thinking of starting a series of postings on the flaws with the sw patent system. I have related ideas as well. Wanted to have them posted on BN. I think more people would participate in writing to reps if they had access to a good discussion. Also, “the other side” (spooky music heard in background) has some arguments. These all need to be addressed. Apr 26 21:49
twitter Hi David. Apr 26 21:52
twitter Did you really say it was a “pleasure” to run W2K at work, or was that some troll impersonating you? Apr 26 21:52
twitter They had an insulting little avatar, sort of a give away. Apr 26 21:53
schestowitz jose_X: sounds great Apr 26 21:55
jose_X thanx, i’ll email you the posts as they come out. Apr 26 21:55
schestowitz You said you’d go more parts of Mono Trap Apr 26 21:55
schestowitz But it doesn’t matter if there’s no sequence Apr 26 21:55
jose_X can’t say right now if this will be a regular occurrence or how frequently Apr 26 21:55
schestowitz You write very well. I’d publish what you send me Apr 26 21:55
schestowitz jose_X: you can also send us copies of comments in LT Apr 26 21:56
jose_X omg, that other post I wrote took a long time.. and only after i had chewed the ideas over and over and over. Apr 26 21:56
schestowitz I sometimes quote just portions (fair use) Apr 26 21:56
jose_X i won’t be putting that much effort.. in general Apr 26 21:56
schestowitz jose_X: yes, it’s no journal Apr 26 21:56
schestowitz You don’t need to brush it up like it’s Elsevier ot something Apr 26 21:56
jose_X ask me if you want to post more. why would i want to stop that? Apr 26 21:57
schestowitz jose_X: needs permission from you Apr 26 21:57
schestowitz Also, sometimes the context/background is missing from a comment Apr 26 21:57
jose_X what i meant was that if you asked, why would i say no.. in general Apr 26 21:57
jose_X i don’t put a CC license at the bottom of everything (anything) i write, but if you really wanted to post more, ask me Apr 26 21:58
twitter hypertext is a beautiful thing.  it adds context Apr 26 21:58
jose_X anyway, i’ll consider myself a hobbyist column writer for BN :-) Apr 26 21:58
twitter good stuff, jose! Apr 26 21:58
jose_X ok.. and in addition i would like to write to reps and post these somewhere.. keep a long list of submitted letters with intent to make it easier for others to do same Apr 26 21:59
jose_X i would love MANY people writing original letters to their reps weekly Apr 26 22:00
jose_X if we can make that contagious, the numbers would eventually balloon. Apr 26 22:00
jose_X we have to reach into the ears of these people “representing” us Apr 26 22:00
jose_X and we need to figure out and address every single arg being used by the high priced advisers that have the special access Apr 26 22:01
schestowitz I just cited you Apr 26 22:02
schestowitz http://boycottnovell.com/2009/04/2… Apr 26 22:02
jose_X a multitude of letters can get out of hand.. we can try to tag it well to facilitate lookups, but also a wiki on “why software patents stink” would eventually be great Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz In this discussion about Mono the Silver Lie compat issue came up Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz twitter: Aye Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz I hate books Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz Find number, page to end Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz Find refernece Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz To to library… Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz Order  books/search… Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz Good luck with all that., Apr 26 22:03
schestowitz Internet -> Google/click link. Maaagic. Apr 26 22:04
schestowitz jose_X: sounds great if you can pass some of your writings (even from LT) for us to publish. You cover the same topics Apr 26 22:04
schestowitz Since you typically comment on Microsoft’s attempt to force its way into FOSS Apr 26 22:05
schestowitz jose_X: we cover sw patents too. Very few sites do, so it’s unique Apr 26 22:05
schestowitz DM does that ( zoobab01 ) and Groklaw to an extent. The rest ignore it, but it’s getting hard with TomTom and all. Apr 26 22:06
jose_X I’ve seen good discussions in places. I’d like for the “best practices” eventually to be gathered in one place. It would encourage more to challenge patents once attacked. It would make it easier for many to write to their gov reps. etc Apr 26 22:11
schestowitz Pooling papers? Apr 26 22:12
schestowitz One could write a letter and brush it up in a Wiki Apr 26 22:12
schestowitz See how quickly the Mono page came about and edited by all of us: http://boycottnovell.com/wiki/index.php?tit… Apr 26 22:13
jose_X with many ideas and analogies from which to draw, you have a much better chance of getting original letters where the particular constituents voice can better shine through Apr 26 22:13
schestowitz Microsoft has fakers writing letter Apr 26 22:17
jose_X just modified the mono page with link to qtcreator as a good alternate ide Apr 26 22:17
schestowitz Microsoft BUYS letters to Congress Apr 26 22:17
jose_X we counter the fakers.. Apr 26 22:17
schestowitz Expose them Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz Don’t counter Apr 26 22:18
jose_X by (a) getting many people and (b) having better arguments Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz See the news about MS PR cuts Apr 26 22:18
jose_X we have the better args Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz They have some “citizenship” lobby Apr 26 22:18
jose_X we just need the numbers Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz jose_X: it’s not about arguments Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz Dimplomats gets bribes Apr 26 22:18
jose_X yes, it’s about convincing Apr 26 22:18
schestowitz *Diplomats get bribed Apr 26 22:18
jose_X ok, sure, that is why we need the numbers Apr 26 22:18
jose_X however, there are reasonable people Apr 26 22:18
jose_X when you put up money.. your args sound better than normal.. but we can put up votes as sub for $$ Apr 26 22:19
jose_X in any case, public awareness is what we are after.. the rest will take care of itself Apr 26 22:20
jose_X create a distro that is useful (eg, has links to current events, tutorials, comics, etc) and which focuses on helping the user understand issues Apr 26 22:21
twitter lol, money does work magic on logic Apr 26 22:21
jose_X eg, all of these apps that have little pop up lessons “did you know” or reminders can be done but with topics that users care about.. we need to humanize these issues and create a community of interest behind them Apr 26 22:22
jose_X did you know that sw patents hurts you whenever…blah blah. Apr 26 22:23
jose_X “sw patents would have prevented you from doing that!” Apr 26 22:23
jose_X sw patents humorous comic strip Apr 26 22:23
jose_X ditto for linux, btw.. Apr 26 22:23
jose_X we need authors that can write what wide audiences find entertaining Apr 26 22:24
jose_X we can write a gui front end/ app called Patentizer or Zap the Pat or whatever that does something humorous while educating Apr 26 22:24
jose_X a distro could have a mode (like when you install a different desktop), eg, a modified kde, that is like a sw patents (or pick other social conscience topic) command center Apr 26 22:25
schestowitz jose_X: money does distort Apr 26 22:26
schestowitz See one of the Lessig talks on corrruption Apr 26 22:26
schestowitz Also the Hillary Clinton example Apr 26 22:26
jose_X agreed.. which is why i want to be smart about this and seek numbers Apr 26 22:26
schestowitz jose_X: see http://www.thepirategoogle.com/ Apr 26 22:27
schestowitz it’s new Apr 26 22:27
schestowitz VERY funny Apr 26 22:27
jose_X look , there are groups that do fundraising well and try to represent the citizen Apr 26 22:27
jose_X we have to pitch our angles to these more reasonable people.. and give them goodies and good analogies and show the threats etc Apr 26 22:27
jose_X good link, schestowitz :D Apr 26 22:28
jose_X that is just the sort of thing that needs to happen more Apr 26 22:29
schestowitz Yes, I know Apr 26 22:29
schestowitz Gets attention Apr 26 22:29
jose_X a distro (here I go again) can feature all of these things and make it easy for the user to participate Apr 26 22:29
DavidGerard twitter: i didn’t say it was a pleasure to run win2k at work … just one compared to 98 or NT Apr 26 22:29
DavidGerard in the office, win2k is basically “windows that more or less works properly” Apr 26 22:30
DavidGerard i.e. its failure rate was way better than win95 Apr 26 22:30
DavidGerard not up to a real operating system, but better than dos with pictures Apr 26 22:30
DavidGerard heh. i used to use a kubuntu laptop i took to work with me. Apr 26 22:31
DavidGerard moving between  kde 3.5 and  win2k, i’d get confused occasionally which one i was using for a moment ;-) Apr 26 22:32
jose_X speaking of quality.. linux can get a lot of mileage by focusing on social conscience and special benefits to the user (part owner and control privacy etc) Apr 26 22:32
DavidGerard they’re similar in interface and firefox is identical. Apr 26 22:32
schestowitz jose_X:agreed Apr 26 22:32
DavidGerard when converting windows users, give ‘em kde3. they’ll be right at home. Apr 26 22:32
DavidGerard kde4, even at 4.2, seems to just confuse the heck out of them IME. Apr 26 22:32
jose_X the quality naturally improves as you gain more hands on board.. new users should know that. it helps with the network effect. “come help out” Apr 26 22:32
DavidGerard jose_X: this is why one killer feature of open source: localisation into every language ever. Apr 26 22:33
DavidGerard because the people who care can actually do it, rather than going begging to the vendor. Apr 26 22:33
jose_X localization is a good example of something many can contribute to and see immediate powerful benefits Apr 26 22:33
DavidGerard precisely Apr 26 22:34
jose_X with re-mixes, you can customize even further.. to create a distro for the “local club” Apr 26 22:34
DavidGerard http://translatewiki.net does this for MediaWiki – getting your interface sufficiently localised is one of the requirements before getting a wikipedia in that language Apr 26 22:34
DavidGerard sometimes this requires inventing computer jargon for a language. this is considered a bad thing. Apr 26 22:35
DavidGerard (rather than just using transliterated english) Apr 26 22:35
DavidGerard (although the invention is probably better) Apr 26 22:35
jose_X users pick kde3 or 4 or whatever.. it’s so easy to just have what you want.. upgrade at own pace.. but know that x or y exists should you want a change of pace Apr 26 22:37
twitter good insight, David, thanks Apr 26 22:37
jose_X for $0 Apr 26 22:37
twitter I agree with you about KDE. Apr 26 22:37
twitter The success of Ubunu amazes me because it uses Gnome by default. Apr 26 22:37
jose_X we don’t make $$$ only when users go to the latest and greatest. in fact, many would love to service the older stuff better. Apr 26 22:38
jose_X ie, for $$ Apr 26 22:38
twitter Gnome works but it’s not as Windoze friendly as KDE 3.5 is Apr 26 22:38
jose_X ie, the proprietary model is bad for users Apr 26 22:38
twitter bad for vendors, bad for everyone. Apr 26 22:38
jose_X meanwhile service providers can survive with old stuff just fine .. especially when they can add on to it for life (access to source and licenses) Apr 26 22:38
jose_X and $0 cost to them Apr 26 22:39
jose_X ie, microsoft’s model is a dead end AND their ecosystem may not have realized it but they really have Linux in their blood Apr 26 22:40
twitter everyone benefits with inefficiency is removed from a market, Windows is a giant cost to everone Apr 26 22:40
DavidGerard twitter: i don’t think you quite realise just how low microsoft has set expectations Apr 26 22:40
DavidGerard windows 2000 was a paragon of stability as far as its main users (office workers) were concerned Apr 26 22:40
DavidGerard the problems with it you described actually sound like dodgy hardware Apr 26 22:41
twitter No. Apr 26 22:41
twitter I had these problems at more than one place. Apr 26 22:41
DavidGerard ok :-) Apr 26 22:41
twitter One of them was a fortune 100 company. Apr 26 22:41
DavidGerard i mean, it was crasharama Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard as was nt4 Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard but both were way better than 95 or 98 Apr 26 22:42
twitter They had money for the best hardware and service M$ could provide. Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard and at this late stage, i typically run xp at work for a week before switching off on friday Apr 26 22:42
jose_X opacity contributes to problems Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard i just spent a week on call for work Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard on this laptop Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard booted into xp Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard the fan was screaming flat-out continuously Apr 26 22:42
DavidGerard then boot into kubuntu 9.04 with kernel 2.6.28 Apr 26 22:43
jose_X many users with greater demands run into dead ends on Windows.. certainly for what they can afford Apr 26 22:43
twitter probably from all the spam the poor thing was sending. Apr 26 22:43
DavidGerard and power consumption drops to 11.3 watts on battery (per powertop) Apr 26 22:43
twitter awesome Apr 26 22:43
DavidGerard no, from the antivirus (symantec i think) taking up an entire cpu Apr 26 22:43
twitter whatever Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard so from all the spam the poor thing was avoiding Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard antivirus software is the stupidest thing ever Apr 26 22:44
twitter have you checked it? Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard yeah Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard i used to work at an antivirus vendor Apr 26 22:44
twitter the only way to know is to watch it with another box that’s not running Winblows Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard i knew it was time to quit when i had an actual nightmare about the internal structure of windows nt Apr 26 22:44
DavidGerard true. Apr 26 22:45
twitter gahhh Apr 26 22:45
*DavidGerard goes to install clamav and run it over the windows partition Apr 26 22:45
twitter a better check is just to watch the network traffic for a few days of sitting. Apr 26 22:45
DavidGerard the structure of NT is: a layer of crap on a layer of crap on a layer of crap on a core that was designed well by computer science geniuses Apr 26 22:45
DavidGerard twitter: that’s not a useful measure when you’re on a vpn Apr 26 22:46
DavidGerard there’s a microsoft white paper that everyone should read Apr 26 22:46
jose_X i presume what they mean by signatures is that you specifically look for code that you already know is harmful and then try to cut it off Apr 26 22:46
DavidGerard “Windows NT From A Unix Point Of View” Apr 26 22:46
jose_X vs actually fixing the software or security model etc Apr 26 22:46
twitter Hook it to a hub, If it’s spamming the world, you will see it. Apr 26 22:46
DavidGerard it explains the internals of nt really well Apr 26 22:46
DavidGerard it was written between 3.51 and 4 Apr 26 22:46
jose_X i get the impression microsoft’s obscurity model is about moving weaknesses around Apr 26 22:46
DavidGerard it really has lots of great ideas in it Apr 26 22:47
DavidGerard and of course it’s the implementation. Apr 26 22:47
jose_X having the weaknesses in the systems to some degree is something they like as they can exploit it Apr 26 22:47
DavidGerard ideas are cheap. Apr 26 22:47
twitter he he Apr 26 22:47
DavidGerard (this is another problem with software patents.) Apr 26 22:47
jose_X >> it explains the internals of nt really well Apr 26 22:47
DavidGerard microsoft has taken this paper off the internet, so presumably they don’t want people knowing this stuff. Apr 26 22:47
twitter patents are supposed to be for inventions, not ideas Apr 26 22:48
jose_X source code would do better.. too bad they don’t provide what they actually ship instead of the pretty diagrams they like to sell Apr 26 22:48
DavidGerard if you must do this sort of thing, copyrights are the right model, not patents Apr 26 22:48
twitter People who care already know, I’m sure. Apr 26 22:48
DavidGerard i’d love a copy of that paper again Apr 26 22:48
twitter If there were any good ideas, someone in the GNU/Linux world has them. Apr 26 22:48
DavidGerard linux demonstrates quite well: it’s not the ideas, it’s the execution Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz DavidGerard: I might have that Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz I also have some Comes slides from MS Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz About Windows not being developed for security Apr 26 22:49
DavidGerard the point of the torvalds/tanenbaum flameware is torvalds was talking engineering, tanenbaum was talking comp sci Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz There’s a missing article where MS exec says Windows is not engineered for security Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz It vbanished months ago Apr 26 22:49
schestowitz I contacted the edtior Apr 26 22:49
DavidGerard schestowitz: cool :-) I strongly recommend it as reading for all, including windows fans. it’s interesting to see what cutler et al were trying to do. Apr 26 22:50
schestowitz I don’t know if they have already resotored it Apr 26 22:50
schestowitz But a friend who is a teacher says it could be sabotage Apr 26 22:50
schestowitz cutler? Apr 26 22:50
DavidGerard there are no new ideas in linux. there dont’ have to be. Apr 26 22:50
DavidGerard dave cutler, designer of vms and wnt Apr 26 22:50
schestowitz Can you get hold of the paper? Apr 26 22:51
schestowitz Web Archive? Apr 26 22:51
jose_X cutler (deceased) helped build a system which got ms security marks Apr 26 22:51
DavidGerard no, that’s what i said! Apr 26 22:51
DavidGerard hmm Apr 26 22:51
schestowitz We can put it it in BN Apr 26 22:51
jose_X them ms goes and changes things .. which is what they sell customers Apr 26 22:51
DavidGerard might be on archive.org if i knew *where* Apr 26 22:51
DavidGerard archive.org needs a google appliance ;-) Apr 26 22:51
jose_X but their ads are over the model that got the good security marks Apr 26 22:51
schestowitz DavidGerard: find links TO it Apr 26 22:51
DavidGerard it’s done an amazing disappearing act Apr 26 22:52
schestowitz What’s the gist? Apr 26 22:52
jose_X i was talking about a different person.. just realized it Apr 26 22:53
jose_X always forget the name but “cutler” sounded like it Apr 26 22:53
DavidGerard aha! here’s the ancient link http://www.microsoft.com/BackOffi… Apr 26 22:54
DavidGerard WIN! Apr 26 22:55
DavidGerard here’s the index page of the document http://web.archive.org/web/19961020102243/h… Apr 26 22:56
DavidGerard note it links to a .exe- yes really. Apr 26 22:56
*magentar has quit (Remote closed the connection) Apr 26 22:56
DavidGerard it’s as described on that archive.org link Apr 26 22:58
jose_X guy’s name is Curry: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security… Apr 26 22:58
DavidGerard it’s a techical discussion of the internal structure of nt Apr 26 22:58
DavidGerard or at least, what it was supposed to be Apr 26 22:58
jose_X >> Microsoft has been in pursuit of the C2 rating for NT 4 for more than a year. Originally, Microsoft had hired an independent contractor named Edward Curry to help the company obtain a C2 rating for NT 3.5 in the mid-1980s. But in 1995, Microsoft ended Curry’s contract for reasons the company declined to divulge publicly. Apr 26 22:58
jose_X >> Curry brought to the Department of Defence’s attention late last year the fact that Microsoft had not obtained C2 certification for any release of NT beyond 3.5. In March of this year, while continuing to make known his concerns regarding Microsoft’s alleged lack of operating-system security, Curry died suddenly of a stroke. Prior to Curry’s death, Microsoft hired Science Applications International (SAIC) to continue its C2 cert Apr 26 22:59
jose_X ification efforts. A year ago, SAIC was predicting Microsoft would pass its first C2 milestone within weeks. Apr 26 22:59
DavidGerard the paper was a reference in the SAMS book “Windows NT Internet and Intranet Development” Apr 26 22:59
jose_X http://www.linux.com/?module=commen… Apr 26 23:00
schestowitz “Not in Archive.” http://web.archive.org/web/19961020102243/… Apr 26 23:01
jose_X >> was the defense industry computer security insider who secured an Orange Book C2 rating for Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 SP3, running in a specific hardware and OS configuration. Note that the rating did not apply to an out-of-the-box deployment, or any other version of Windows NT, although Microsoft made representations that it did, or that the security rating was at the higher Red Book level. Apr 26 23:01
DavidGerard GOT IT. Apr 26 23:02
DavidGerard http://moose.darktech.org/FTPMIRRORS/… – that’s the self-extracting archive Apr 26 23:04
DavidGerard i’ve just opened it in wine Apr 26 23:04
DavidGerard let’s see if that’s the paper i remember Apr 26 23:04
DavidGerard a pile of old ms papers in http://moose.darktech.org/FTPMIRRORS/ft… Apr 26 23:05
DavidGerard if it’s in the comes documents, you could put it up Apr 26 23:05
DavidGerard yes, this is the document Apr 26 23:10
DavidGerard you read all this description of a very nice sounding design, and it turns out the catch is that all practical applications live in win32. Apr 26 23:10
DavidGerard which has the shoddy unreliability of userland combined with the same consequences of failure (from the user perspective) as the kernel. Apr 26 23:11
DavidGerard because it’s where you and your apps and your data are. not in all these lower layers. Apr 26 23:11
DavidGerard i’m now reading it trying to work out why microsoft wanted it disappeared. Apr 26 23:11
DavidGerard (this is the same problem X11 has, as jim gettys identified in his 2000? 2003? paper. it’s a userland app, but for the user it needs kernel level reliability, because any user who you say “linux didn’t crash, x did” will think you’re just being obnoxious.) Apr 26 23:14
DavidGerard (their data is gone and that’s the bit they care about.) Apr 26 23:15
MinceR windows has some processes marked ‘crash the system if this process exits’ :) Apr 26 23:15
MinceR as for x crashes — they just won’t happen on a server ;) Apr 26 23:16
DavidGerard oh yeah Apr 26 23:16
DavidGerard windows on a server is just … what. Apr 26 23:17
*_Hicham_ (n=hicham@wana-129-245-12-196.wanamaroc.com) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 23:18
_Hicham_ Hi schestowitz! Apr 26 23:19
schestowitz Hey Apr 26 23:20
schestowitz DavidGerard: hold on to the copy Apr 26 23:21
DavidGerard well, i’ve found one sentence that makes me boggle Apr 26 23:21
schestowitz Is it copyrighted explicitly? Apr 26 23:21
DavidGerard “If the software is interoperable, it does not need to be compliant” Apr 26 23:21
schestowitz Huh? Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard the paragraph that’s from doesnt’ really make sense Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz Oh I see.. Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz Depends on context Apr 26 23:22
_Hicham_ DavidGerard : what software is that? Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard The Microsoft RPC is compatible with the OSF® DCE® RPC. Being compatible is Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard not the same as being compliant. Compliance, in this case, means starting Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard with the OSF source code and building upon it. The key element here is not Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard compliance; it is interoperability. If the software is interoperable, it Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard does not need to be compliant, and the Microsoft RPC facility is completely Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard interoperable with other DCE-based RPC systems, such as those from Hewlett- Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard Packard and IBM. Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard windows nt. Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz I.e. if someone ports to OUR ‘standards’, then it’s OK Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz Ingore POSIX Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz Just do it your way (they say so) Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz let others like Samba pray they can mimic Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz And then fear lawsuits Apr 26 23:22
DavidGerard it seems to mean “the code is the definition of the protocol, if it works well enough in practice that’ll do, specs are for wimpy girlymen” Apr 26 23:22
schestowitz Yes Apr 26 23:23
DavidGerard i think when ms claims this they really mean it Apr 26 23:23
schestowitz That’s the bad, bad Microsoft Apr 26 23:23
DavidGerard there is no secret document at microsoft properly defining SMB Apr 26 23:23
schestowitz There’s a bunch of good quoies about using non-standard protocols Apr 26 23:23
schestowitz To screw Oracle, Sun, etc. Apr 26 23:23
DavidGerard quite literally, no-one left there understands it. the samba guys understand it better than anyone at microsoft does. Apr 26 23:23
DavidGerard same for the word .doc format in all its iterations, etc. Apr 26 23:24
twitter that might be true Apr 26 23:24
DavidGerard i think it is true. Apr 26 23:24
twitter they made it malicious and forgot how to fix it. Apr 26 23:24
twitter ha ha Apr 26 23:24
DavidGerard yep. Apr 26 23:24
DavidGerard remember that recent story? how the permatemp apocalypse meant they fired literally everyone who knew how to build windows 2000 Apr 26 23:24
DavidGerard and wiped their machines when they were kicked out Apr 26 23:25
DavidGerard meaning that XP was actually built starting with NT4 and backporting as much of windows 2000 as they could get to compile Apr 26 23:25
DavidGerard this explains the feel of it – an odd mix of slick and clunky Apr 26 23:25
DavidGerard at twice the size and half the speed, of course Apr 26 23:25
twitter That makes Windows hopeless, as Vista proved.  It would have sucked before they DRM’d it to death. Apr 26 23:25
DavidGerard windows 2000 was the best they knew how to do, and they forgot how to. Apr 26 23:26
twitter Oh well. Apr 26 23:26
twitter If they GPL it, someone might fix it. Apr 26 23:26
twitter If they don’t, no one should care. Apr 26 23:26
DavidGerard “Let’s be absolutely clear about this: the goal is distributed computing.” Apr 26 23:29
DavidGerard and they’re promising clustering in windows 8. Apr 26 23:29
DavidGerard man. they should just have paid DEC the money for VMS straight up. Apr 26 23:29
MinceR gn Apr 26 23:30
twitter should have, could have, did not. Apr 26 23:30
twitter said nasty things about DEC instead. Apr 26 23:30
twitter idiots Apr 26 23:30
DavidGerard just imagine how 0wned computing would be if microsoft were technically competent Apr 26 23:30
schestowitz DavidGerard: hehe. Funny quote about distributed computing Apr 26 23:30
schestowitz CDNs are all Linux Apr 26 23:30
schestowitz And Microsoft memos shows them going frantic about it Apr 26 23:30
twitter If they were technically competent, they would not be M$. Apr 26 23:31
schestowitz Yes Apr 26 23:31
schestowitz With bad engineering you need to kick below the crotch Apr 26 23:31
schestowitz Oracle sells well without crime Apr 26 23:31
twitter Here’s one for Bill Gates.  GNU/Linux power management works great! Apr 26 23:31
schestowitz Because they don’t need to force people to buy Oracle with EVERY server sold Apr 26 23:32
DavidGerard matthew garrett wouldn’t agree ;-) Apr 26 23:32
twitter I just got Lenny to resume from hard  drive, using ACPI Apr 26 23:32
DavidGerard a lot of windows’ insecurity comes from using distributed computing protocols inside the system Apr 26 23:32
DavidGerard any process can send any other process a chunk of code and tell it to run it. WHAT. Apr 26 23:33
DavidGerard WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA Apr 26 23:33
DavidGerard AND WHY Apr 26 23:33
DavidGerard GOOD LORD Apr 26 23:33
twitter relevant quote found here:  http://slashdot.org/~twitte… Apr 26 23:33
*ushimitsudoki1 (n=ushimits@p3103-ipad03yosemiya.okinawa.ocn.ne.jp) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 23:33
DavidGerard linux’s acpi is painstakingly reverse-engineered and special-cased Apr 26 23:33
DavidGerard not even as nice as samba, more like on the level of horror of wine Apr 26 23:34
DavidGerard (wine is not horror. what wine has to do is horror.) Apr 26 23:34
_Hicham_ DavidGerad : but it is better than Windows’ one Apr 26 23:34
_Hicham_ acpi on Linux rocks Apr 26 23:34
DavidGerard uh … it rocks if your hardware is supported. Apr 26 23:34
_Hicham_ u have all the tools to control ur computer Apr 26 23:34
DavidGerard if not it’s a nightmare. Apr 26 23:34
twitter ” the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work” – Bill Gates.  I’m aware of how horrible it is and how much work it took to make it work and exactly why. Apr 26 23:34
twitter I’m happy to tell him that it works well, despite his best efforts otherwise. Apr 26 23:35
DavidGerard much like linux and hardware in general. if your hw’s supported you get mac like levels of Just Works – if not, you have a world of pain ahead of you. Apr 26 23:35
twitter I’m also happy to laugh in the face of OEMs who can’t get their hardware to work the M$ way. Apr 26 23:35
DavidGerard i’m glad linux’s won on the server. Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard i say that because no manufacturer is stupid enough to release server hardware that doesn’t run well on linux immediately. Apr 26 23:36
twitter the desktop is not far off. Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard yes Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard i read that dell was already asking its suppliers to use linux-supported hardware Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard asking so far, not demanding Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard that’s what it’ll take Apr 26 23:36
DavidGerard 2008 was the year of the linux desktop, in the form of the netbook. Apr 26 23:37
twitter When a giant like Dell asks, it’s a big demand. Apr 26 23:37
_Hicham_ DavidGerard : u have to check before buying hardware Apr 26 23:37
DavidGerard ms’s financials show the totally unintentional side effect has happened. Apr 26 23:37
DavidGerard _Hicham_: well yeah. Apr 26 23:37
twitter it’s not like it used to be Apr 26 23:37
twitter Retailers that stuck with M$ have gone out of business, CompUSA, Circuit City, and others teeter on bankruptcy Apr 26 23:38
twitter They’ve got piles of stuff that does not work and people won’t buy Apr 26 23:39
schestowitz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U8e… Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard cut’n’paste bomb: Apr 26 23:42
_Hicham_ Windows is Obsolete Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard Windows NT is a portable operating system in the true sense of the word. It Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard runs on many different hardware platforms and supports a multitude of Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard peripheral devices. Windows NT gives you choice. Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard This was the dream of Unix, which, even today, is largely unrealized. There Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard is no such thing as Unix; there are only Unixes, and each is slightly Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard different from and generally incompatible with the others. Sometimes there Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard are even incompatibilities within different versions of Unix from the same Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard vendor. The application software that you buy to run on their workstation Apr 26 23:42
DavidGerard version of Unix will not run “as-is” on their server version of Unix. If Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard you want to run it there, you need to purchase a different copy of the same Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard application. In most cases, the same holds true with Unix itself. When you Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard buy Unix you are very often locked in to a single-vendor hardware solution, Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard and that vendor is usually the same one that sold you the copy of Unix. Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard what they promise there is realised with linux Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard i realised that when i saw the tiny MIPS notebook. Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard “that’s gnu/linux just like I use every day!” Apr 26 23:43
DavidGerard hrm. I still can’t see what in this paper is such a slipup they wiped it off the web Apr 26 23:44
jose_X anyone know if windows 2000 had bsd code or instead code that ms had no right to use? Apr 26 23:44
DavidGerard no-one has evidence of such Apr 26 23:45
DavidGerard that i recall Apr 26 23:45
schestowitz :-) http://www.youtube.com/wa… Apr 26 23:45
_Hicham_ jose_X : go download windows 2000 code from piratebay.org Apr 26 23:46
_Hicham_ jose_X : these are the portions leaked by MainSoft Apr 26 23:47
jose_X smb the spec is immaterial. it’s ms’s code that matters. that can change version to version or day to day.. complexity is how you thwart interop and provides some amount of “i dunno” protection from legal attacks.. Apr 26 23:47
_Hicham_ jose_X : there is some Windows 2000 code as well as some Windows NT code Apr 26 23:47
jose_X ms “those dumb” people is much safer for ms than ms those shrewd individuals Apr 26 23:47
DavidGerard hmm. i’m now wondering if this *was* the paper I recall. i’m sure that was the title. Apr 26 23:48
jose_X portions? what are portions? portions can mean anything. patch “portions” enough and you get Linux Apr 26 23:48
DavidGerard jose_X: there’s malice *and* stupidity. they’re not mutually exclusive. Apr 26 23:48
*schestowitz prepared BN links for today Apr 26 23:49
jose_X DavidGerard, I agree.. at the same time however Apr 26 23:49
jose_X there are variations and it can depend on what part of the code you are looking at Apr 26 23:49
jose_X and which group within ms you are looking at Apr 26 23:49
*ushimitsudoki has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)) Apr 26 23:49
jose_X i’m generalizing.. i have no direct knowledge Apr 26 23:50
*seller_liar (i=c91babce@gateway/web/ajax/mibbit.com/x-a4092436871ccc5a) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 23:50
*mib_ksosr5 (i=c352a48c@gateway/web/ajax/mibbit.com/x-1f455d46970835ee) has joined #boycottnovell Apr 26 23:56
DavidGerard you have the smartest people they could find, working for the stupid and evil Apr 26 23:56
jose_X ..working for money. that’s the trade off. it’s enough for some. it’s not enough for others. Apr 26 23:57
jose_X but google may have pulled in many of those that were after money or control or better karma or …. Apr 26 23:58
jose_X control in a different sense.. Apr 26 23:58
twitter there are a lot more smart people outside of M$ than there are inside M$. Apr 26 23:59
jose_X ms certainly gives the impression many times that they can’t execute.. but other times i’m not so sure.. in any case, they are about money. they know how to sell can capture (within their contraints) Apr 26 23:59
]]> http://techrights.org/2009/04/27/irc-log-26042009-2/feed/ 0