● 10.21.09

● Links 21/10/2009: Fedora 12 Looks Good, Solang and Gnote Enter Ubuntu 9.10 Repository

Posted in News Roundup at 6:26 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• EvriChart had some unique requirements which included replacing a Windows-based line-of-business application for document management that would not scale with the continuing growth of their business. By migrating to a Linux/Open Source-based Web application, it paved the way for full desktop Linux adoption at his company. I asked Tony to summarize his experience so that I could share it with you in the hopes that you might gain some valuable insight from the process he had to go through.

• Summary: · Announced Distro: First Alpha of Dreamlinux 4.0 XFCE Edition Released · Announced Distro: Parsix GNU/Linux 3.0r0 Has EXT4 and GRUB 2 · Announced Distro: openSUSE 11.2 RC1 Puts the 2.6.31.3 Linux Kernel to Work · Announced Distro: LinuxConsole 1.0.2009 Is Out · Other news: Banshee 1.5.1, Dell and Ubuntu 9.04

• IP Infusion Inc., a provider of intelligent software for Next Generation Network equipment manufacturers and converged IP service providers, today announced the ZebOS® Internet Route Server, a Linux®-based platform that will enable service providers to remotely view, monitor, filter and track routes on their networks, thus mitigating Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijacking and other DOS attacks.

• Clear Cut Pictures has adopted Forbidden Technologies’ FORscene as part of its client service offering.

• With FORscene’s Load Linux system installed at Clear Cut Pictures, rushes and edit playouts were uploaded directly into FORscene at the same time as digitising occurred into local Avid Unity storage – all in real time.

• Texet, a UK company better known for its calculators and low cost digital gadgets, is working on a tablet PC shown off during a recent sourcing fair in Hong Kong.

• “At Canonical, we have been enormously impressed with what Marvell’s Armada 510-based systems can do when running a desktop-class operating system like Ubuntu,” said Chris Kenyon, vice president of OEM services at Canonical.

• “The ARM ecosystem is using Armada 510 because of its outstanding display resolution, performance, hardware multimedia and large memory support. We believe users will love where this takes Ubuntu in terms of quality, price, and range of device availability.”

• Marvell has announced four processor families — Armada 100, Armada 500, Armada 600, and Armada 1000 — based on ARM cores. Touted as “a top to bottom solution for mobile computing and intelligent devices,” the SoCs offer single or dual cores with clock speeds from 400MHz to 1.2GHz, the company says.

Server

• It spans UNIX/Linux, mainframe, x86 and storage systems and networks.

• The London Stock Exchange has completed its acquisition of MillenniumIT, in a deal which will provide it with a new trading platform to replace its Microsoft-based TradElect technology.

• The company said that it can provide enterprises with a single view of IT systems and virtualisation technologies, taking in Unix/Linux, mainframe, x86 and storage systems and networks.

Kernel Space

• At the last Real-Time Linux Workshop, held in September in Dresden, there was a lot of discussion about the possibility of enhancing real-time capabilities of Linux by adding a new scheduling class to the Linux kernel.

Applications

• So from now until we finally make a Compiz 0.9.0 beta release I will be doing some short blog posts on what the differences between Compiz 0.8 and Compiz 0.9 are for both users and developers. Compiz 0.9 is a complete re-thinking of Compiz 0.8. It’s like KDE4 was to KDE3. Totally new frameworks. Totally new buildsystem. Totally new API. It’s supposed to clear the ground from major architectural flaws that were in older versions of compiz to make development far easier and faster even for future version of compiz.

• The best video editor for Linux ‘OpenShot’ has finally gotten itself some new icons! Yes it is a slow news day…

• These new ‘tango’ style icons bring a much needed visual refresh to the (at times) slightly odd looking default set of “glassy” icons.

• Gnumed is an open source management tool for medical practices. If your practice (or a practice you do IT for) is in need of an electronic record-keeping system, and you do not want to have to shell out your entire IT budget for a proprietary solution, Gnumed might be the perfect tool for you.

KDE

• Other changes . . . there will no longer be a KUBUNTU since that is essentially going to be what UBUNTU is. Furthermore, since KDE will now be the default desktop for Ubuntu, that what used to be Ubuntu will have to be renamed. My vision tells me that they will go with GNUBUNTU. It makes sense on so many levels if you stop to think about it.

• A feature that has been floating around in a few places but hasn’t been a significant feature in KDE is web slicing. This is the ability to take a piece of a web page (commonly a div) and render it as a standalone object. It’s useful for stuff like putting a weather forcast on your desktop, watching new comments on a forum etc. This weekend I made a start on implementing it as tool for Project Silk.

• This post comes a bit late, so some of you may already have heard the news: KDE Edu will ship a new application in 4.4: Cantor*.

Distributions

• click2try(TM) (http://www.click2try.com) today announced that it has added the Arramagong 2.0.3 Live DVD, a suite of more than a dozen geospatial, data transformation, and mapping tools to its online catalog of Open Source software.

• Today brought the release of Greenie Linux 5.1J. Yet another Ubuntu-based Linux desktop, the Greenie Linux distribution is aimed at Slovak users. I was able to reach English by pressing f2 from the boot menu.

• “Hannah Montana Linux” is little more than a desktop theme applied to fairly out-of-the box Kubuntu, running KDE 4.x. It’s not approved by Disney or Miley Cyrus, it’s simply just the efforts of a single programmer, who thought it might be a good idea to attract children to Linux.

• As compared with earlier candidates, version 4.3 of Puppy Linux puts you in total control of choosing the desired packages from various Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Arch or Slackware. The Puppy Unleashed build system was replaced by a new one, called Woof, which is capable to process packages from almost any existing Linux distribution.

• But it should be noted that we live in a wide world. And Mandriva is actually very popular overseas in places like France, Brazil and in Central America. North America has seemed to largely fall into the Ubuntu or OpenSuSE camps, along with some Fedora among others.

Red Hat Family

• According to the company’s EMEA boss, Werner Knoblich, who spoke to The Register at Red Hat’s London office yesterday, the battle to win the hearts and minds of enterprise outfits was slowly but surely starting to pay off.

• While Microsoft, as always, wants to tie you down, desktop, laptop, server and all to Windows, Red Hat is continuing to show that an open-source, open-standards Linux server company can deliver the IT goods to business customers. Besides owning the lion’s share of the Linux server market, Linux’s overall market-share of the server market continues to grow. According to the latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker numbers, despite the fact that everyone in the server biz’s revenue is taking a hit, Linux server revenue actually continues to grow. It’s now up to 13.8% of all server revenue, which, in practice, means that Red Hat is continuing to gain on Windows’ server revenue lead.

Fedora

• The Fedora Project has released the first beta of Fedora 12, the next major revision of the Fedora Linux line, and though it’s still a work in progress, there are already some standout features, including a much improved power management system and support for the Moblin project, Intel’s effort to make Linux work better on netbooks and mobile devices.

• Speed is a key issue for all Linux distros, and Fedora is taking an interesting approach by compiling all of its software for i686 with ‘special’ optimization for Intel Atom. What that means is instead of the typical generic x86 compilation, all apps could potentially run faster. Fedora now does have a specific netbook Moblin graphical interface and a Fedora 12 Moblin Fedora Remix too — who said Fedora (or Red Hat) wasn’t interested in netbooks or the Linux desktop?

• The first Fedora 12 beta is now available and at first glance it sure looks to me like it’s jammed pack full of interesting and innovative new features.

• Speed is a key issue for all Linux distros, and Fedora is taking an interesting approach by compiling all of its software for i686 with ‘special’ optimization for Intel Atom. What that means is instead of the typical generic x86 compilation, all apps could potentially run faster. Fedora now does have a specific netbook Moblin graphical interface and a Fedora 12 Moblin Fedora Remix too — who said Fedora (or Red Hat) wasn’t interested in netbooks or the Linux desktop?

• We’re really pretty happy with this release: we think the quality is excellent for a beta release, and the level of new features and improvements over its predecessors is great. I linked to the release announcement, which highlights some of those improvements, a couple of days ago. Just to go over the highlights again…

Debian Family

• Your mono-free photo manager for Gnome and non, Solang (alternative to F-Spot)) is now included in Ubuntu 9.10 repositories. Karmic Koala users can now install Solang v0.3 from the command-line with sudo apt-get install solang or via the “Ubuntu Software Center”.

• First off, Happy 5th Birthday Ubuntu! I first installed Ubuntu on a machine on March 12, 2005. Impressively precise date, huh? That’s because I signed up on ubuntuforums.org the same day.

• This Package contains:

• GDM theme* Icons Theme* GTK Theme Wallpapers Sounds Gnomenu theme* Panel Backgrounds* Cursor theme DockBar

Devices/Embedded

• Since the initial card’s launch, we’ve seen numerous follow-up models to suit different needs and budgets. There was the DX, a sub-$100 offering that delivered pristine audio quality, like the D2, and then there’s the HDAV1.3, a card designed specifically for higher-end home theater setups. Even though ASUS proved that it was thinking outside the box, I admit I was still taken back when I saw the Essense STX at Computex 2008.

• Timesys® Corporation (http://www.timesys.com), provider of LinuxLink, the first commercial software development framework for building custom embedded Linux®-based products, today announced LinuxLink support for four Ensemble(TM) 3000 Series and Ensemble 6000 Series modules from Mercury Computer Systems: the HCD3200, HCD6220, HCD6410 and SBC6120 platforms.

• Korenix is pleased to release the brand new performance-optimized JetBox 5300-w embedded Linux computer with -40 to 80°C wide operating temperature for front-end industrial control deployments. The RISC-based computer with low power consumption brings flexibility and reliability to the industrial networking market through its rich interface, featuring 2 LAN ports, 2 USB ports, 2 RS232/422/485 and 2 RS232 serial ports. In addition, the compact JetBox 5300-w carries 4 DI & 4 DO channels allowing users to integrate alarms, indicators, and sensors into their complex networking system.

• MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition is an embedded development platform that allows telephone operators to implement systems that feature high reliability, availability and serviceability. The latest release of this platform builds a whole range of new features on top of a Linux Standard Base compliant system powered by the 2.6.21 Linux kernel.

• Raytheon Company’s (NYSE: RTN) Linux cryptographic module embedded in its government insider threat solution has been awarded federal validation.

• Italian remote access specialist NoMachine announced a version of its X Windows-based, Linux-compatible NX Remote Access solution for small businesses. The NX Small Business Server, which offers up to 10 concurrent sessions, incorporates last month’s release of NX 3.4.0, which added multi-monitor support.

• Freescale Semiconductor and E Ink Corporation announced they will jointly develop SoCs (system on chip) products integrating the former’s i.MX processor technology and the latter’s Vizplex display controller. The collaboration will “spark innovation” and lower the cost of producing e-readers, according to the companies.

Android

• That is the power of open source, and it’s how Google has made such intelligent use of Android. It’s not about freedom from lock-in; it’s about freedom to demolish competitors and serve customers by shifting the rules of the game.

• Verizon and Motorola finally lifted the curtain on their new Droid Android phone yesterday. Make no mistake, this is Android’s flagship product, and the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple’s iPhone. And it will be available very soon, possibly as early as the end of this month.

• There are many Linux based mobile platforms available today: Maemo, Openmoko and Android. Of these, it is probably Android that has created the most noise in and out of open sources circles. Until now however there have not been many successful devices running Google’s mobile OS, and the ones that exist didn’t present much of a challenge to the iPhone. Things are starting to change however.

• In his latest “top-ten” analysis piece, eWEEK’s Don Reisinger warns Apple that the recent alliance between Google and Verizon Wireless over Android could prove formidable indeed. In recent days, Verizon teased the public with ads about a new Droid phone (from all accounts, the much-rumored Motorola “Sholes,” pictured at right in an image from the Android Guys). The ads provokes Apple directly over alleged limitations to the iPhone compared to the Droid.

• It’s based on a Snapdragon processor, likely clocked at 1 GHz, with 256 MB RAM. The Android 1.6 operating system (code named “Donut”) is housed on its internal 512 MB Flash drive and there is a microSDHC slot for adding extra storage. The 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen has a resolution of 800 × 480 pixels.

• And since Google has not yet come out with an official stable version of Chrome for Linux, the Android system still runs on Mozilla Firefox. Of course, using the default Android Web browser for cell phones would be quite inconvenient on a computer. The reviewer notes that while it handles most Web sites like any normal Windows version of Firefox would, sometimes, certain key commands wouldn’t register in Google Search or Firefox.

• Too busy to bother with buying an Android-powered Archos 5? Then you’re probably way too busy to bother with this here hack. But just in case you’ve got a morning you can wipe clean and a few afternoons where you can scoot out early, it’s apparently possible to load up an Android 1.6 port onto one’s Samsung Q1 UMPC.

• Google’s all new Android 2.0, also known as Eclair, has just been detailed. There are plans for a slew of new features for the open source OS, including native Exchange support, Facebook integration, better YouTube support and a rejigged Google Maps app.

• Droid release date Droid commercial Droid Motorola Verizon Droid. Motorola Droid has created a sort of hysteria across the globe. People are eager to know its features and how it will improve upon the iPhone that it has tried to attack.

• The idea behind the two screens is the option to include links within the e-ink book (or magazine, or newspaper or whatever electronic literature you’re reading) which can then be opened in the wi-fi and 3G connected lower screen.

• Previous rumors indicated that the Reader will have WiFi as well, which would also lend credence to the Athena running Android (though Linux is always possible).

• Like its Amazonian nemesis, the Nook has a built-in cellular wireless connection for downloading texts. AT&T is the carrier (the Kindle uses Sprint). But there’s also a built-in WiFi adapter, giving you free access the AT&T-powered hotspots in Barnes&Noble retail stores.

• Agilemobile.com Ltd., a software development company with its primary focus on development of software for mobile phones and handheld computers, today announced the release and immediate availability of its award winning Agile Messenger for the Open Handset Alliance’s Android operating system. Agile Messenger is available for immediate download from the Android Marketplace.

Free Software/Open Source

• The open source *community*, by contrast, is not in it for the money, but the software – that’s how it’s defined: by its interest and involvement in a piece of code. When that code is sold, the community gains nothing, and might even suffer if the new owner is buying an open software project for the wrong reasons – to remove a threat to its own closed-source offerings, for example.

• [...]

• That’s handy for open source companies, but breaks the underlying contract of mutual benefit with companies and people that contribute code. And without the reciprocity, I think the urge to contribute is bound to diminish, because there is likely to be an underlying feeling that external contributors are being unfairly exploited – not least when a company decides to “sell out”.

• The EU-funded SHARE (‘Sharing open source software middleware to improve industry competitiveness in the embedded systems domain’) project is organising an international workshop on open source software in the domain of embedded systems on 28 October in Madrid, Spain.

• ApacheCon 2009, held November 2-6 in Oakland, California, will also be a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation. In this interview, Noirin Shirley, VP of the ASF, discusses her work as a technical writer at Google and the upcoming ApacheCon event.

• Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual worldwide celebration of free and open source software held during third Saturday of September every year. SFD 2009 was celebrated around the world with great zeal and vigour on the 19th September this year.

• The National Housing Authority (NHA) is deploying open-source software in its 2,000 desktop computers with the aim of saving costs while improving its ability to provide Web-based services.

• And it’s all because the thinking has fallen in line with international industry best practices. South Africa’s government seems to have realised that one of the most effective ways of moving towards solutions that subscribe to open standards is, in fact, to embrace and make use of open source solutions.

• Around 400 developers and entrepreneurs focussed on the next wave of geospatial enabled applications are converging on Sydney this week for FOSS4G – the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference.

• Open Source testing tools are being used aggressively and there are many tools over the web for Java Applications. These tools are great asset to the development teams and provides many features / services over the quality of applications under development. We can use this as the starting point and focus more efforts on the uncovered areas for better quality.

• Most users will simply do without the software or switch to something more affordable or even open source. A huge part of the problem with software is that it is expensive and most users just can’t afford the price tag. Having a pirated copy is nice but not nice enough to convince them to hand over thousands of rands to buy a legitimate copy.

• Solid-state low-light detector manufacturer sensL (Cork, Ireland) announced its collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL; Berkeley, CA) on an open-source positron emission tomography (PET) electronics program called openPET.

• Mozilla and Opera urge use of the Ogg Theora video format, which may be implemented in open-source software without licensing complications, and Firefox has had Ogg support since version 3.5 of the browser arrived earlier this year.

• The Centre for Advanced Training in Free Open Source Software (CATFOSS), IT Kerala’s initiative to promote the use of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) in the State, has seen success with the first batch of FOSS-skilled professionals placed totally in various government and private firms.

BI

• Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ: ACTU), the people behind BIRT™, today revealed that it has made available for download, five detailed open source reports featuring the results from the fourth annual Actuate Open Source Survey. For the first time, the survey includes results from China, in addition to North America, the UK, Germany and France. It encompasses the responses of almost 1,500 respondents spanning several verticals and features an overview of attitudes and trends in open source growth and adoption for each region, making it one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind.

• Q. What do you think of the open source trend in BI – where is it heading?

• A. This is an interesting one. If I am going to be a bit controversial on this, I would have to say that there is actually no true ‘open source’ BI platform. The model in use by the likes of BIRT and Pentaho is a hybrid and more of a marketing position than a true commitment to open source. To test this position I would say let’s take a step back and look at the goals of open source and then see if these principles are being applied to the Business intelligence open source vendors. Does the hybrid model of commercial open source actually deliver on the principles of transparency, openness and availability of source code. Taking a big deep breath one would have to say not.

CMS

• The new global Jahia Business Partner Program gives partners more control and flexibility with free pre-sales support and various levels of certification, including those for VARs and SIs scenarios.

• Moodlerooms is a private company that wraps its customization and programming services around the open source learning management system Moodle. Moodle provides a means for educational institutions to put course management online. It also features e-mail, blogs, wikis, forums, chat, RSS feeds, and multi-language support.

• On Friday we announced the release of the second annual 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report. The project was a collaboration with water & stone, an APAC-based interactive agency. The initial announcement addressed what the report covers, its purpose and some key highlights.

Funding

• REvolution Computing, the “RedHat” for the open source ?R? statistical computing language, has received $9 million in Series B funding from North Bridge Venture Partners and Intel Capital. The company also announced that founder and former chairman of SPSS, Norman Nie, has been named CEO.

• Open-Source means: increased security, superior reliability, and continuous professional development on all fronts because it is free and supported by the community.

• Scientific Systems Company Inc (SSCI), a developer of technology solutions for defence and industrial suppliers, announced on Tuesday that the US Air Force has awarded the company a Small Business Investment Research (SBIR) contract worth USD750,000.

Releases

• The Midgard Project has released the sixth maintenance release of Midgard 8.09 Ragnaroek LTS. Ragnaroek LTS is a Long Term Support version of the free software content management framework.

• On top of that, Nuxeo EP 5.3, the vendor’s enterprise content management system core, reached the RC stage.

• Cynthia Kurtz, one of the pioneers in the story-listening world and author of “Working With Stories,” has developed an open-source package called Rakontu, which is the best thing I’ve seen at collecting and presenting narrative data, involving a community in adding to it, and making it generally useful to a group of people–the contributors included.

• Syntext, Inc. (http://www.syntext.com/) has released Serna Free Open Source XML Editor v4.2 (http://www.syntext.com/products/serna-free/). Syntext Serna Free is an easy-to-use yet powerful solution for WYSIWYG XML authoring.

Licensing

• I’m delighted to report that this has a happy ending. CVC3′s license has just been changed to a straight BSD license – a well-known license that is universally acknowledged as being FLOSS. This means that there are no licensing problems for Linux distributions. Only about a day after he found this out, Jerry James has submitted a CVC3 package to Fedora. So, I expect that in a relatively short time we’ll see CVC3 available directly in common Linux distribution repositories.

• Much of my thinking on this issue stems from an interview I did in 2006 with Peter Brown, the executive director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). At the time, the FSF was launching its first social campaigns, and Brown said that he wanted to see free software become as much of a mainstream issue as recycling.

Openness

• Developers are already putting the City of Vancouver’s new open-data catalogue to good use.

• [...]

• More local open-data projects are listed on the Vancouver Open Data Wiki. There’s no doubt these are just the tip of the iceberg, as more projects will sprout up as time goes by and as more data is released.

• The article suggests that the kinds of online courses that will be created are already on offer: well, no, because those produced by “major textbook publishers, and hundreds of smaller providers” are neither “free of charge” nor “free” in the other, more interesting sense that you can take them, rework them, reshape them, and then share them. And why might that be a good idea? Well, most importantly, because it means that you don’t have to “reinvent courses that have already been invented.”

• [...]

• So, someone coming from an organisation that has no qualms defending the tobacco industry is unlikely to have much problem denouncing initiatives that spread learning, participation, collaboration, creativity, generosity and general joy in favour of all their antitheses. And the fact that such a mighty machine of FUD should stoop to attack little old opencourseware shows that we are clearly winning.

• Perhaps because she is not an economist, Ostrom was able to see that free-market theories fail to explain many things of economic importance. Perhaps because she is a woman, she was more attentive to the relational aspects of economic activity — the ways in which people interact and negotiate with each other to forge rules and informal social understandings. The social, moral and political, she realized in the 1960s as a graduate student, may hold many important clues for how communities can govern themselves and manage collective resources. It’s not all about economics (as traditionally construed).

• Most of Ostrom’s work has focused on the governance of common-pool resources — resources that are “rivalrous,” as economists like to put it. They are finite and can be used up. The prevailing wisdom among economists is that shared resources — forests, fisheries, irrigation waters — will be usually be over-exploited and ruined.

• The Boston Book Festival is coming up on Saturday. We already talked to an organizer; now it’s time for a participant. Nicholas Negroponte is perhaps most famous for founding the MIT Media Lab and One Laptop Per Child, but he’s also written his share of content. We talked to him about the role of technology and the future of books. He will be on the Digital Inclusion panel Saturday at 3pm.

• The addition of a touch screen has made the Nintendo DS a very popular console for the homebrew and ‘hacking’ community, and the creators of the DS brut have made things even easier for would be tinkerers with their DS Bluetooth Adapter.

Programming

• Mark Gray is a software development engineer working at Intel on Real-Time embedded systems for Telephony. Julien Carreno is a software architect and senior software developer at specializing in embedded Real-time applications on Linux.

Leftovers

• The nuclear industry funds the special armed police force which guards its installations across the UK, and secret documents, seen by the Guardian, show the 750-strong force is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters, one of its main targets.

• America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates — even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

• Besides covert intelligence, the CIA is interested in accumulating open source intelligence. Surprisingly, the CIA’s definition of open source is not that much different from ours.

• American spies are investing in technology designed to monitor websites including blogs, Twitter, YouTube and even reading habits on Amazon.

Corruption

• City bank bonuses for 2009 will rise by 50%, a report predicts – a year after a huge financial bail-out.

• Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson met privately with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s board in Moscow last year and kept the occasion off his official calendar, according to a new book about the financial crisis.

• Paulson, who was chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs before taking the Treasury post in 2006, arranged the meeting when he realized he’d be in the Russian city on business at the same time as the New York-based firm’s board was meeting there, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin’s“Too Big to Fail.”

• In his almost two years leading the Treasury Department, Paulson had only had one other private event with a company’s board, attending a cocktail party hosted by BlackRock Inc., according to the book. The meeting with Goldman’s board in late June 2008 was deemed a “social event” to ensure it didn’t violate U.S. government ethics rules, the book said. Still, Paulson aide Jim Wilkinson asked John Rogers, the firm’s chief of staff, to keep the plans quiet, the book says.

• Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book is out today, and breaks some pretty stunning news, dating from the end of June, 2008. At this point, we’re still months away from the now-famous but then-secret waiver, issued in mid-September, which allowed Hank Paulson to talk to Goldman Sachs; he’d promised not to do that when he moved from Goldman to Treasury.

• During that long summer between the collapse of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Hank Paulson held a secret meeting with the board of Goldman Sachs in Moscow.

• Sooo. We have Carl Icahn offering to bail out CIT. We have Goldman Sachs suing Carl Icahn over a an entirely different matter. We have Goldman looking to profit from a CIT collapse. We have Mr. Icahn in a similar position, but in a more stealth kind of way.

• Wondering how they made roughly $6.8 billion last quarter “trading”? Philip Greenspun’s friend explains.

• Think about it – we’ve been bombarded by “good” news for months now. What is the good news? Well, when you dig in to the numbers, its all about how things aren’t as bad as some people predicted, while profits are better than some other people predicted.

• Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that received a $10 billion bailout from taxpayers via the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), recently released its income statement for the third quarter of 2009, and at least on the face of it the firm’s recovery from a November 2008 loss in net income of over $2 billion seems a success. For the third quarter in a row, net earnings increased dramatically, reaching $3.2 billion for the quarter ending September 25.

• Are we supposed to be impressed that Goldman Sachs is spending $200 million on a foundation to support “education”?

• Goldman Sachs certainly thinks so.

• That foundation has been much hyped recently, as America’s premier financial magnate has tried to offset the news that, shortly after being rescued by the taxpayers, it is expecting to dole out some $23 billion in bonuses this year.

• As we noted earlier, this will surely lead to people complaining that A VAMPIRE SQUID IS RUNNING THE SEC.

• Here’s a video from Dylan Ratigan that speaks for itself. It’s about how Goldman Sachs has taken all of us to the cleaners.

• Can there be any clearer sign of our government’s corrupt economic policies than the news Wall Street firms are set to give their workers record compensation?

• Most of these people should be out of work. Instead, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and their minions handed their firms trillions of dollars, enabling them to dole out an estimated $140 billion in bonuses this year. That’s $140 million multiplied a thousand times.

• Despite the lower percentage set aside, the bank has set aside $16.7 billion for pay and benefits and will likely top the record $20 billion set in 2007.

Internet/Censorship/Web Abuse/Rights

• Take, for example, the backlash today on the news that AT&T’s chief lobbyist sent out an email to all AT&T employees urging them to protest any new net neutrality laws and hide their AT&T affiliation as they do so. AT&T has confirmed the email, which has numerous factual errors (and remember, I actually agree that net neutrality laws don’t make sense). But, more importantly, the mainstream media is now calling AT&T out for this outrageous effort to have employees pretend they’re not employees in protesting these rules.

• The EU must defend citizens’ rights from the machinations of member states – internet access is part of freedom of expression

Intellectual Monopolies

• Despite tough talking by government and legislators, not to mention action against Pirate Bay, fewer Swedes than ever before believe that downloading copyrighted material is theft.

• Sweden’s new IPRED legislation and attempts by politicians to demonize file-sharing don’t seem to be working.

• You may recall that EMI not only sued Michael Robertson’s most recent company, MP3Tunes, but also sued Robertson personally, which is an intimidation technique that creates tremendous chilling effects for any executive or founder of any company.

• However, it’s really difficult to see what sort of complaint any newspaper could have with such a service whose sole purpose is to drive more traffic.

• News aggregator NewsNow has been on the receiving end of legal threats from a number of UK newspapers, a move that is the equivalent of a herd of donkeys filing a class action suit against the inventor of the wheel.

• The MPAA is currently involved in legal battles against several BitTorrent sites. Last year Hollywood’s lobby organization booked a victory in court when they managed to shut TorrentSpy down, but despite these efforts the studio bosses are still not satisfied. Three of the MPAA’s anti-piracy leaders have now been fired.

Trademarks

• The Sex Pistols are threatening legal action against a boutique ice-cream maker for using the advertising strapline “God Save the Cream” and images of a version of the band’s famous single sleeve featuring the Queen on a union flag background.

• Apparently, the monster madness doesn’t stop there. Andrew points us to the news that that Continental Enterprises, on behalf of Hansen’s and Monster Energy Drink has also threatened a working actor who was in a monster movie a few years ago, and had a photo taken of himself in costume holding a Monster Energy Drink. This amusing joke photo is apparently too much for the fine folks at Continental Enterprises, who insist it’s “advertising and/or selling products that are confusingly similar to Monster Energy Drink” and demand that he cease and desist.

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